Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes, it takes completely different forms.
During the early 1990s, a generation of hardware and laptop-based music makers from the UK and the US began crafting electronic music that made an equal degree of sense on dancefloors and in living rooms. Broadly speaking, it was a mercurial blend of acid house, atmospheric techno, electro, and ambient, often underpinned by an open-eared approach to sampling. Sometimes it combined programmed beats and loops with live instrumentation; other times, it was all machine music.
By the late 90s, albums from overseas artists associated with these concepts – including Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre and Squarepusher – were prominently displayed in Wellington’s inner-city record stores. You’d find them filed under genre tags like IDM (intelligent dance music), electronica, or perhaps even braindance. You could also hear some of this music by listening to specialist shows on the local student radio station, Radio Active, or hanging out in the chill-out zones at all-ages warehouse raves.
Unsurprisingly, a small but dedicated number of electronic music producers from around New Zealand caught the bug. Soon enough, they started making music that played with the styles and conventions drawn from these musical ideas and embraced a futuristic and often faceless visual aesthetic. With local vinyl production having slowed to a crawl, this generation embraced the then-still-rising CD format. Working to the dazzling possibilities afforded by the medium, they recorded long, elaborate and immersive albums. As shown by this list of 10 New Zealand IDM and electronica albums from the late 1990s and early 2000s, more often than not, the work has aged very well.
Before the decade was out, many of the key UK and US artists associated with the idea of intelligent dance music were already kicking back against being classified under the term. I’d surmise that most of the New Zealand musicians who have made comparable work probably feel similar. Creativity is a restless thing. Where you start isn’t always where you end.
You can read the full article here.
ADDENDUM
One of the main acts missing from this list is Kenattah C. Selinedyah aka Dooblong Tongdra. Between 1999 and 2001, Selinedyah released two fascinating albums, Anything Anywhere For No Reason At All and Discontinued. Sadly, they’re both almost completely slipped off the internet. We really need to get ontop of this stuff. Much to ponder.
FIN.
