ŌTEPOTI MUSIC COMPILATION
“The Dunedin Sound” is a prominent fixture in New Zealand with bands like The Clean and The Verlaines inspiring a generation from their hometown, country and beyond. International acts like Pavement, MGMT and R.E.M. have all cited the Dunedin Sound as influences. While these bands like Straitjacket Fits and The Chills certainly shaped a cold, post punk sound inspired by the likes of The Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop, the lack of non-men in the scene was evident with bands like Look Blue Go Purple being an all women five piece sticking out like a sore thumb. The scene was overrun by men and the voices of smaller female bands and artists remained unheard.
There is a quote from Martin Phillipps for the Auckland Star in 1982; “The Dunedin Sound is the sound of honesty.” The Ōtepoti Music Compilation is a representation of that. Organised by Alex Huber of Hystera and Syrup Bois, The ŌMC is a compilation made of independent wāhine and gender queer artists from Dunedin. The compilation aims to shine a light on artists in the scene who do not yet have a voice or need their voices amplified to drown out the noise of the still male-dominated scene of Dunedin. I was able to interview Alex about the compilation and what it means for the Dunedin music scene.
How long have you been playing music and performing?
I’ve been playing music since I was 14, mainly in my bedroom. I was briefly in a band when I was a teeanger. We only played once and since then I’ve been solely a bedroom musician. With my current band we have been playing for 2 and a half years.
How is it being gender queer and performing in front of a majority male audience in your experience?
It’s been interesting discovering who our fanbase is. There are a lot of middle aged men who really enjoy our music which is really odd. I like it. It makes me happy when I look out at the audience when I see people I wouldn’t expect to enjoy our music enjoying it. Especially when we are singing about our periods and men being a bit shit
What are some experiences you have found unique being gender queer in music?
It’s definitely been interesting. I'm quite new to performing and being in a band. I'm almost 40 so it's probably an extremely different experience compared to the younger performers. I don’t know what it’s like to be a male musician but it seems like a bit of a boys club a lot of the time. It’s been really nice when we are organising gigs. We can curate them around wāhine and gender queer artists and it’s lovely to see lots of women and queer people at our gigs. I think it’s made me really appreciate the other underrepresented people in the music scene.
Why did you want to make a compilation for wāhine/gender queer musicians?
Well, it wasn’t actually my idea. It came out of a conversation with Chris Wilson who did the Dunedin New Music Compilation. He came to one of my gigs and he was like “Oh I thought it would be cool to do this [the compilation]” and we met up a couple of times, but eventually I took over the project and ran with it.
What was the process of making it? Was it harder or easier than expected?
It was a lot of work. I thought it would be and it was. It was a lot of admin which is not something that comes naturally to me. That part has been challenging. A lot of emails and chasing people up, organising things and finding where they are. I ran a crowdfunding campaign through Boosted to fund the mastering, art and production. Up until the first day of the fundraising I was really nervous that no one would be interested in the project, but then we reached half of our goal on the first day and I was like, oh cool, people are into this. That helped me feel motivated to keep going.
You are doing a zine for it right?
Yeah there will be a zine! I asked all the bands to contribute lyrics and art and answer some interview questions.
And you are having a release party?
Yeah, we are going to have an all ages one at Yours and an 18+ at the Crown. An afternoon and then evening thing. 5 bands at Yours and 6 at the Crown.
Who is the compilation for? Who are you trying to reach specifically? Is it the music community or the wāhine/gender queer community?
The gender queer community or just like underrepresented people in music and in general as well, but also just everyone. It’s for the artists who are on the compilation too, to have this thing that they’re part of, something tangible. I think we have a really special music scene in Dunedin and I think it's a well kept secret from the rest of New Zealand for some reason. Of course there are some bands who have broken out and are more known in wider New Zealand but I feel we get a bit forgotten about down here sometimes so it would be nice for it to reach wider New Zealand and people could discover.
How did the history of the Dunedin music scene and “The Dunedin Sound '' which has a very specific aura affect making the compilation? A lot of the artists on the compilation don’t fit the specific sound so what did you have in mind sound wise curating this?
I just wanted it to be as varied as possible and have something for everyone. I definitely did not want it to sound like a bunch of “Dunedin Sound” bands on it because I don’t even know if that sound even exists anymore. I think I have succeeded in that it’s a very chaotic but fun listen.
The rollout has been going quite well, a lot of support and following. Would you be willing to expand it out of Ōtepoti? Have other musicians come together and do something similar on a national scale?
I haven’t really thought about that. That sounds really cool though. The only distance I thought ahead was doing another one next year and see how that goes. Expanding nationally is interesting. Certainly if anyone was thinking of doing it and wanted to talk about it with me I would fully do that and it would be nice to share the workload.
Keira Wallace photographed by Craig Birch-Morunga
How careful were you about track listing?
A lot of thought went into it. I have bookended it with two very happy, positive songs and have some fun juxtapositions in there. It’s fun to listen to you won’t fall asleep.
Is that why you chose these specific artists because of their varied sound?
I mean that was part of it but not the only reason. My music taste is pretty broad so a lot of this was just bands I liked to listen to. I wanted a good balance of live band, electronic and singer/songwriter. That’s like the three main categories. We also just have a lot of variety in the Ōtepoti music scene, so it wasn’t hard.
Did you ask the artists to go for a specific sound or lyrical theme or just let them be themselves?
I just let them have it. I think next time I would have more of a theme. It’s been a learning experience.
Is that what you have gained most from this? The ability to learn how to do everything?
Yeah, it’s been quite empowering to find out I can just do something like this. You can just do something and if you do the work it will happen. It’s quite exciting; it’s nice to create something.
Is that what the audience should take away from this project? That you can just make things?
Yeah that would be a good takeaway. Also you can do it without any cis men involved. That was also really part of the kaupapa of the project. I hired a female producer to master it. I wanted anyone getting paid to be in the group we are representing. You often see projects that have this veneer or female and gender queerness and you look behind the scenes and it’s all men which is disappointing. I love a project with femme witchy coven vibes. I think that the things that women and queer people create are always so interesting and fresh. And this compilation is super crispy fresh!
E-Kare photographed by Craig Birch-Morunga
The Artist, Their Sound, Their Music:
Mads Harrop - Harmonise
Indie Rock, Psych, Hard Rock, Punk Rock
“Harmonise” is about the importance of connections through conversation. I have Autism, and that can make conversations quite hard for me. I want to get it right and be in harmony. This is a compilation album, and it’s all about our connections as Dunedinites!
E-Kare - Programme Freestyle (with edits)
Shitty ninetendocore, chipgrind technothrash????? But not this song, this song is special, beloved you could say! Experimental electronic music from 1200 Dutch waterways and 1300 Lake Wairarapa.
Close your eyes, imagine your thousands of years in the past. The sun is peeking over the horizon. It's been a great rave with your friends, maybe even the best rave. The fires are slowly dying down and the early morning air is still warm. You feel tau, āio and aroha nā te Ao katoa. With the taste of fermentation and blue mushrooms on your lips you turn to your lover, who cracks a funny as joke. All is well.
Keira Wallace - Your Surface Settles
At the core of my music reside my guitar and vocals, to which all other elements orbit around. They are the bones of the vessel that the songs bloom from. The folk artistry of Mount Eerie and Adrianne Lenker has inspired the warmth and depth of storytelling that are always present in my music. My sound replicates the indescribable feelings and sensations: the inescapable warmth of a swelling fire, the silent currents that sweep beneath glossy water, and the beauty of living amongst the expansive power of nature and humanity. My sound is the soundless moments of existence.
'Your Surface Settles' follows the passage through grief after my grandma's passing. That event brought light to how fleeting our lives are and how short the overlap between them often are. My grandma's life stretched far before mine, my life now extends past hers, and for a pocket of precious time, the two intertwined. At the time, I felt as though her presence and her beauty had ended so abruptly and I still had so much knowledge to absorb from her. But time spent with my remaining family reminded me that parts of her artistry, kindness, and wisdom remain in us all. Even though her surface settled, she still moves through the branches of the family that stem from her.
Hystera - friendship/combat
Punk adjacent, angry things, free therapy, scream along tunes.
friendship/combat is about trying to be friends with someone who is being very combative. It could also be about cats. Apply it to your own situation as required.
Fairuza - Dwight
Fairuza is witchy, queer, pop punk exclusively for those who smell like teen spirit.
Dwight is about the end of a relationship and realising the person you were dating isn’t as great as you thought they were.
Paradox Princess - PARADONA ANTHEM
My sound is a chaotic yet sometimes ethereal blend of Experimental Hip Hop and Hyperpop that is always brought through in a punk attitude. Using trashy to poetic rhyme schemes to uplift my own queerness whilst dissing queerphobic and capitalist poisons that we deal with.
PARADONA ANTHEM is a hot mess of a Punk rap song. Taking on this glamorous yet aggressive stance of character to diss boring homophobic parties whilst bringing power to myself in a cheeky manner. It gets weirdly religious with the lil choir synths and chorus bringing an overall idea of being a queer trash star angel.
Calla - Strawberries
Dark Indie, Electronic opera fusion
Strawberries is an incredibly vulnerable and melancholic love song.The main theme of the chorus was inspired when I went travelling up north one summer and stumbled across a huge load of strawberries that had just been dumped underneath a rata tree by the beach. It made me think about the immense waste of resources that are put into our food systems where 40% of food is simply thrown away. Similarly, in relationships we invest so much time and energy. Then if something goes wrong - if someone cheats on you, the social norm is to dump their ass asap. This song is about exploring the alternative, how do you truly repair a relationship when there has been a massive breach of trust.
Heinous Coup - Foul Mosquito
Our sound is like an amalgamation of every two-piece band you've ever heard with none of the self-importance and all of the noise.
Our song is a stripped back more punk version of our regular stuff that features a virtuosic kazoo solo. We wrote it the day before our recording session and the speed and number of verses changes every time we play it.
Robots in Love - Call
We spend each night playing our guitars and staring at computer screens making sounds that go aaarrrggghhh
I was listening to an online session where musicians were submitting tracks to a label and the label owners were saying whether they would release it or not. Sometimes they only listened for a few seconds and the reasons for rejection were things like: the song didn’t start with a hook, the vocal wasn’t commercial, the beat was too slow, the vocal didn’t come in at 15 seconds or earlier. It was very formulaic and I felt concerned that creative music was being discouraged. So I wrote “Call” which is about being unique and having musical diversity. Call says “do not answer anyone else’s call” which means be yourself, do not squish yourself into someone else’s narrow definitions.
Fortunately, there is a huge diversity of music in Ōtepoti, and I love that. It makes me very happy living here.
Cuck - Eat Dirt
Power violence/Grindcore
Eat Dirt is about killing all the demons in your head and in real life, utu hard, and reassuring yourself that you are a badass.
beet-wix - Seventh Heaven
Minecraft chiptune hyperpop
It is called seventh heaven and it's kind of about how I used to just obsessively read shoujo manga in high school as a way to learn about dating because I wasn't allowed to date anyone and my lack of actual experience then + social anxiety has led me to overthink a lot of the dating situations I've been in since.
[Allophones] - Eyeball
Altrockfolkshoegazingslackerprogband
It’s about being gender diverse and having to constantly perform to others expectations, and what they see is what they think there is but it’s not. They think it do be but it don’t. Added silly words so it wasn’t too serious, the rats in my ribcage - gender
Jesse Dekel - Sinus
Jesse Dekel was a trans punk from Hamilton who moved to Dunedin in 2021. Sweetheart, shitstirrer and a truly unique force of nature, Jesse fronted punk bands Sicari and Munted. She lived hard and fast, burnt bright and took no prisoners.
This song is a departure from her other work, a more sombre piece found on her computer after her passing in November last year.
HŌHĀ - Dance Hunt
Sounds like two buds, recorded in the basement bandroom at Mads' whare. Sounds like scrapey guitar distortion, and an aluminium snare, and chanting. Hōhātaka, post punk probably.
It's about sniffing out fresh hot tracks with your best darling dance squad and or hunting convoy. Or maybe it's about being hunted? Scary! Or fun?
Neive Strang - Could I Reset
I describe my sound as being Indie/Folk/Rock but it fluctuates with every release.
Broadly put, it’s about coming to terms with change and the process of moving on. Taking you through those difficult moments, thoughts and realisations after parting with an ex.
Francisca Griffin and the Bus Shelter Boys - Circus
Loud-ish, rock-ish 4 piece fun
The line “I’m such a Circus sometimes” was the beginning of the song, a friend said it to me one day. Ya know, how we can get so tangled up in how we oughta be instead of simply living the gorgeous life we’ve already got.