“Summer Eyes” by Full Moon Fiasco

Full Moon Fiasco [photo by Laura Cherry]

Day 14 of PopLib’s 31 Days of May for New Zealand Music Month comes from Wellington psychedelic group Full Moon Fiasco and “Summer Eyes”.

“Summer Eyes” is the title track of an excellent album released late last year on Fantasy Fiction. Full Moon Fiasco is another Will Rattray band, and listening to this track, and the other songs there’s a clear link to the music of his other band, Thought Creature.

While Thought Creature mix their psychedelic approach with a bit of dance music and even glam rock, Full Moon Fiasco are more of a ‘traditional’ style of psychedelia. There’s a bit of the spirit of Pink Floyd’s “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” to the sound at times, but mostly it has more of a grainy “Pebbles”/ “Nuggets” era style of garage rock psychedelia. It’s an album well worth the time tracking down an LP copy if you are that way inclined.

“Talk In Tongues” by Thought Creature

Thought Creature performing in the Radio One studio in Dunedin during their 2018 “Ocean Dream” album tour.

Day 6 of PopLib’s 31 days of May New Zealand Music Month madness marathon on psychedelic Sunday is “Talking in Tongues” from the new album “Ocean Dream” by Wellington via Berlin group Thought Creature.

Thought Creature have a distinctive sound and “Talking in Tongues” here shows the range of influences; combining dance music, some Cure-ish post-punk/ New Wave, the raw spirit of garage rock, and a liberal dusting of psychedelia effortlessly into a cartoonish fusion of danceable grooviness.

There’s a good interview with Thought Creature on Under the Radar NZ here.

Here’s Thought Creature’s recent live-to-air in Radio One’s studio in Dunedin – first track is “Talking in Tongues” and hang around for more psychedelic dance goodness after that (including the glorious “Paradise” to finish).

If you recognise the bassist here, it’s Danny Brady of Dunedin bands Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital. Thought Creature was the first band I saw Danny play in, on an A Low Hum tour show at Arc Cafe about 10 years ago. After Thought Creature moved to Berlin, Danny met a couple of other travelling NZ musicians – Lucinda King and Renee Barrance. On his return to NZ and move down to Dunedin he formed Death And The Maiden with Lucinda King and then Élan Vital with Renee Barrance.

As well as Danny, Thought Creature still has it’s original nucleus of guitarist/ vocalist Will Rattray (also in the excellent and closely-related psychedelic garage rock band Full Moon Fiasco) and supplemented on their recent NZ tour by drummer Andy Frost (Coyote) and Jelena Mirceta (Full Moon Fiasco) on keyboards.

 

 

“Costume Cave” by Thought Creature

Went to see Wellington-via-Berlin band Thought Creature play the first show of their NZ tour last night at the Cook in Dunedin. It was a brilliant night of energetic and therapeutic psychedelic garage dance music. If you are in NZ, make sure you catch them on tour this week. In the words of Will Creature on “Costume Cave” here – “don’t be late!”

“Custom Cave” is from their new album “Ocean Dream”. It fully captures the live energy of their distinctive mix of dance music energy to which a miasma of psychedelic guitar and keyboards and overdriven bass is added.

Thought Creature still has it’s original nucleus of guitarist/ vocalist Will Rattray (also in the excellent and closely-related psychedelic garage rock band Full Moon Fiasco) and bassist Danny Brady (also of Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital) and supplemented on this tour by drummer Andy Frost (Coyote) and Jelena Mirceta (Full Moon Fiasco) on keyboards.

There’s a good interview with Thought Creature on Under the Radar NZ here.

“Paradise” by Thought Creature

Day 27 of our 31 Days of May New Zealand Music Month marathon is a lost classic from 5 years ago by Wellington-via-Berlin band Thought Creature that not enough people have heard. Time to rectify that with a trip to their “Paradise” (play this L O U D)

“Paradise” is a guitar-heavy psychedelic dance groove celebration which would have sounded at home on a late 1980s Julian Cope album when the 1980s psychedelic pop revival was morphing into rave culture’s transcendental dance music.

Thought Creature’s Berlin sojourn in the early 2010s and their transformation into a noisy psychedelic electronica+guitar outfit led to the formation of two of Dunedin’s best genre melting electronica+ bands today – Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital. Both Dunedin bands trace their formation to Berlin around the time this song was released and the common denominator to all three bands is Danny Brady.

There’s another common denominator too: Erica Sklenars, who appears in this live video of “Paradise” from a Berlin house party and is a regular collaborator with Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital for music videos and live performance visuals.

“The Blueness” by The Blueness

Day 19 of the May Month of Madness Marathon for NZ Music Month comes from Dunedin’s retro-futurist space-pop group The Blueness.

Their only album “Ravendah Dream” is an excellent cartoon-colourful space fantasy, merging a bit of glam rock with a bit of spacey synth-pop.

The Blueness were John White (Mestar and original bassist for The Prophet Hens, appearing on their debut “Popular People Do Popular People”), Lucinda King (Bad Sav, Death And The Maiden), Mike McLeod (Bad Sav, The Shifting Sands) and Kristen Wineera.

The Blueness have become a forgotten footnote in Dunedin’s Pop Underground. They reigned briefly, wonderfully for a year or less in Dunedin before making it to Los Angeles in the second half of 2012 for the start of a low-key US tour, so low-key it never happened…

Anyway, that all set off a chain of events around the world, and eventually back in Dunedin. Lucinda carried on from LA to Berlin, meeting up with Danny Brady (Thought Creature) and finding the Munch sketch which provided the name for the band they formed on their return to New Zealand in – Death And The Maiden.

So… don’t forget The Blueness. This is an album worth downloading.

‘Freedom Town’ by Full Moon Fiasco

Day 25 of the 31 Days of May New Zealand Music Month via Bandcamp challenge is from an album I somehow missed a few years ago. Although I’d heard the name Full Moon Fiasco I’d never heard the music associated with the name. Inexplicable really…

Full Moon Fiasco is mostly from the imagination of Will Rattray of Thought Creature and is exactly like it is described on the wrapper: “Washed out Psychedelia From the Bottom of the Earth”

“Freedom Town” is from the album “Cosmic Palms” and the CD is on sale (at the bargain price of only $7.50) at Muzai Records right now.

[Postscript: Sources tell me this splendid album (it really is one of NZ’s lost/ forgotten psychedelic masterpieces) was recorded on Chris Knox’s old 4 track reel-to-reel recorder – the same one that many of the early Flying Nun Records recordings were made on.]