My First New Zealand Pop CD.



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(90mb .zip file)

Sleevenotes:

The odd and beguiling sounds emanating from New Zealand, from the birth of the legendary Flying Nun label at dawn of the ‘80s onwards, have exerted a huge influence on the world of underground guitar pop and weirdo music in general over the past twenty five years. To see that, you only need look at the impressive rollcall of indie troops marshaled for the recent benefit concerts and album for scene mainstay/Tall Dwarfs member/venerable four-track wizard Chris Knox, who has sadly suffered a stroke.

Due to poor distribution, a lack of overseas publicity and the virtual invisibility of many of the scene’s key recording though, the NZ music has remained a pretty ‘cult’ concern over the years – the sole province of those nerdy enough to actually seek out scattered background info and pay inflated prices and international shipping for weird records by scrappy bands, sound unheard.

For the rest of us, the internet has helped a hell of a lot of course, with most of the key Flying Nun bands being widely featured on assorted shady and not-so-shady download blogs, allowing instant access to those of us who’ve heard the hallowed names of The Clean and The Verlaines being tossed around for years, but have never actually heard the music. Long story short: the record nerds were right, IT’S GREAT, and I’ve been consuming as much as I can get my hands on over the past couple of years.

Mentioning this to otherwise well-informed people now and then, I’ve sometimes had response like “wow, there are bands in New Zealand..?”, and this makes me sad. Frankly, anyone who enjoys the work of all the classic American/British indie-rock bands from the ‘80s/’90s really deserves the chance to hear this music, and will almost certainly get a real kick out of it, I hope.

So obviously this is a mix CD I’ve thrown together of some of my favourite Flying Nun/NZ tracks. Even though I’ve started with a few of the scene-defining hits, the emphasis is definitely on “my favourite”, as opposed to “the best/most representative”, so if you like what you hear here there are still whole (kaleidoscope) worlds left to explore.

I’ve started out with some of the defining moments from most of the essential early Flying Nun bands, but things get a bit weirder in the second half of the disc where I’ve included a bunch of my favourite tracks that originated on the Xpressway label (largely pulled from their excellent “Making Losers Happy” singles anthology). The early Xpressway stuff I think presents a useful bridge between the more pop-orientated Flying Nun sound and New Zealand’s equally fertile loner/noise underground… but that’s another story that some of these cuts will hopefully give you a taste of.

I’d imagine any, er, Kiwi-heads (if you will) stumbling upon this post will be pretty outraged by the limited scope of my selections (Wot, no Gordons? No Bailterspace? Straightjacket Fits? 3Ds? Sneaky Feelings? Birds Nest Roys? Three Bats tracks and only one by Tall Dwarfs? etc), but again, I’ve gone for the stuff I like the best – make yr own comp and I’ll be glad to put up a link.

For the record, tunes reluctantly nixed for running time reasons included “Joe 90” by Bored Games, “ Venus Fly Trap” by Goblin Mix, Marie & The Atom, “Life Is Strange” by Tall Dwarfs, “Oncoming Day” by The Chills and something off the Toy Love album. I can’t really defend pushing that lot out in favour of squeezing in six Clean tracks… what can I tell you? I just really like The Clean. If you’ve not heard them before, hopefully you will too.

And if you do, why not show some love by doing the decent thing and buying their excellent “Mister Pop” album from last year, or the Chris Knox tribute comp, or that last Bats record, or whatever?

Images on the cover are taken from the pop video I still want to live in:



I can’t stress enough how brilliant and magical the songs on this CD are – please give them a listen.

Labels: Chris Knox, mixtapes, New Zealand, The Clean, The Verlaines