“Turn Out The Lights” by Water

Auckland band Water have an album called “Supa” out next month. Here’s the opening track “Turn Out the Lights” to insinuate its way into your senses with a winning mix of jangling rhythm guitar and snaking saturated fuzz lead guitar.

If your favourite bands are Wurld Series and Kool Aid (current bands from Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand) and Pavement (1990s US band who were influenced by bands from New Zealand) and then Water is perfect for you.

Wurld Series and Kool Aid feature inter-changeable line-ups of overlapping band members from the Christchurch scene. Water are also made up of members of other past and present Auckland bands, like Rackets (Oscar Davies-Kay and Vince Nairn),  Eyes No Eyes, and Couchmaster (Rikki Sutton), Surf City (Mike Ellis), Nae Nae Express (Mason Fairey), The Mint Chicks (Joel BB) and Greenfog (Elliot Lawless).

Fuzz + Jangle + Melody = Water.

“Honey over Thunder” by Couchmaster

Day 31 of our 31 days of May New Zealand Music Month marathon closes the set of songs with something only a few days old from Auckland shoegaze ensemble Couchmaster. Here’s “Honey over Thunder” from a 5 song EP called “Tumor” released on 25 May.

I was going to select the opening track “Psychogenic Fugue” because it is dedicated to Dunedin music legend Peter Gutteridge and packs that familiar Snapper drone and drumbeat. But for the closing song for this year’s NZ music month trawl through the wonderful online underground of Bandcamp I couldn’t go past “Honey Over Thunder” with it’s wistfully melodic vocal from drummer Rachel Charlie and effortless reverb drenched psychedelia.

The EP is a wonderfully eclectic mix of guitar rock heavy on the atmospheric effects. It appears to be mostly the project of Rikki Sutton, from another shoegaze style Auckland band Eyes No Eyes. He’s guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and vocalist on most of the tracks as well as engineering and mixing the recording. Rachel Charlie on drums and vocals and Adison Whitley on guitar are the other two people who play on all the tracks. Extra points for naming the band after a great album by The Bats too.