Summer Reflections

Thinking about discovering music for myself in the late nineties and early 2000s.

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.

Do you ever think about how you really got into music? I’m not talking about being introduced to music by parents or family as a child, but more about the moments when you started really engaging with music on your own terms. At this point, it’s a bit murky, but for me, I think this process started happening during my first year of high school in the mid-to-late nineties.

Over about a year, I remember being introduced to grunge, alternative rock, punk and industrial (in the mode of Nine Inch Nails). After school and on the weekends, I’d head to the public library, hire cassettes and dub copies of them at home. It was all the obvious stuff: Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. I still like some of that stuff, but it didn’t really stay with me for very long. What it did do, however, was get me in a position where some friends dragged me along to all-ages punk and rock gigs in the city. I’ve got vague memories of moshing at a punk show held upstairs at Thistle Hall (a classic community space in Wellington), attending a Head Like A Hole music video shoot, and seeing Chris Cornell perform an acoustic version of ‘Black Hole Sun’ at the end of a Soundgarden show at the Town Hall. There was also a Tool gig at the town hall, which was quite the spectacle.

That summer, some family friends from Auckland came and visited us. One of the children, who was around my age, introduced me to the stoner hip-hop group Cypress Hill and helped me get my head around the hip-hop sections at a couple of CD stores. Soon enough, I was getting into trip-hop, downbeat, techno, jungle/drum & bass, 90s electronica, dub, reggae, etc.

Once I started spending more time at specialist music stores, I met other teens involved in the local music scene. Some of them were helping organise or run all-ages dance parties in warehouses and other repurposed spaces. The first significant one I remember attending was a party called STEPS, held in the now-demolished Wakefield Markets. It was one of those buildings with upstairs and downstairs sections. During the week, the ground floor was a food court (which helped incubate a bunch of great ethnic eateries), and the top floor housed all kinds of niche shops and stands - I’m sure you’ve been to a similar place before.

When I arrived at STEPS with some friends, we stumbled up the stairs and were greeted by loud jungle/drum & bass, camo netting, smoke machines and strobe lights. There might have been an ambient zone/bar down the end of the room, but I’m not sure if I’m imagining it. I do remember that the music sounded great; someone played ‘Super Sharp Shooter’, and we had no idea where the DJs were located. The vibe was all about the dancefloor and being together on it. I got home at 6 am, and let’s just say my parents weren’t particularly happy about that.

Nevertheless, I’d caught the bug. Soon, I was playing around with drum machines and keyboards I borrowed from one of my uncles, buying more CDs, and diving into underground music culture. Not long after, I went to another warehouse show, where The Orb performed. Later on, there were multi-zone dance parties held in the car park underneath the James Smith Building. When we turned 18 (literally the year they changed the drinking age from 21 to 18), we discovered nightclubs like Studio 9, where you could seemingly hear amazing DJs play techno, house, jungle/drum & bass and the like every weekend.

At the same time, during those years in Wellington, there was a big emphasis on free outdoor concerts, which helped cultivate a generation of dub-soul-reggae-sometimes-even-electronica bands, including Trinity Roots, Dub Connection, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Ebb, The Black Seeds, etc. There was also this great lounge bar called The Matterhorn, where they had the genius idea to host an MPC battle, and you could often find musicians, DJs and vocalists exploring the intersection of jazz, soul, hip-hop and electronica, which I guess was probably influenced by the nineties Auckland venues The Box/Cause Celebre.

The Gathering, 1999 - Photograph credit: (Bryce Haswell)

Over the summer, there were also loads of great outdoor music festivals being held down on the south island. These weren’t concerts; they were multi-day dance parties with names like The Gathering, Alpine Unity and Destination. The focus was on electronic music, often house or trance, with a very hippie vibe and minimal drinking. That all being said, bands performed at them as well and had breakout moments as a result. I’ll never forget when Fat Freddy’s Drop played Alpine Unity for the first time and pulled Ladi6 up on stage. That was a vibe. Attending these festivals was always a real adventure, which generally involved hitchhiking at some point or another. In the process, we made friends with a group of teens our age who lived in Golden Bay. Over twenty years on, I’m still in touch with some of them. I was actually just down there for a few days a couple of weeks ago—special days and nights.

Ladi6 performing with Fat Freddy’s Drop @ Alpine Unity - Photograph Credit: Ladi6

This was the milieu within which I became interested in DJing, broadcast radio, music journalism, production and organising events. By the time I was twenty, I was juggling daytime shifts as a barista at a cafe while writing for some magazines and websites, organising small gigs and DJ nights, running a boutique CD record label with a friend from Christchurch (we never made any money out of it) and thinking about what it might be like to try and get involved in doing some music stuff overseas.

A lot has changed over the last twenty-five years, but I’d like to think that the core reasons why people gather together to dance to music at night (or during the day) haven’t really. Even if it doesn’t always seem like it is on the surface, it’s still about a sense of community and connection. Once you pass a specific age line (this differs for everyone, I think), it’s easy to start feeling like things were golden back in “your day”, but in my experience, they were probably somewhat rotted on the inside as well. It’s always the best and worst of times. So, for me, it’s more a question of whether you want to be involved or not, and at least for now, I’m still down.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

Sensual, elegant and fully-realised modern trip-hop meets downtempo psychedelia from the minds of Ike Zwanikken and Brooklyn Mellar, aka Hysterical Love Project. I hear they’re CCL’s favourite new band, and after listening to their Lashes album a few times, I can totally see where CCL is coming from. The command of mood and tone on display here is rather special.

If you’ve enjoyed any past releases from the Māori electro/breaks producer and performer MOKOTRON, you’ll want to keep an eye out for his forthcoming remix album, THE UNITED TRIBES OF BASS. It exclusively features Māori and Cook Island Māori electronic practitioners from throughout the motu (New Zealand for those overseas), reworking his back catalogue. Right now, you can listen to Caru’s skippy UKG-style remix of ‘Tawhito’.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

“My Life Changed Overnight”: Dealing With Sudden Hearing Loss And Tinnitus - For the introductory feature of Mixmag’s Tinnitus Awareness Week series, their guest editor Seb Wheeler shares his experiences with hearing loss, tinnitus, and his journey of mental and physical rehabilitation. Read here.

Pitchfork: Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo, Jeff Mills - Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Last week, they revisited a groundbreaking 1996 mix from Detroit techno icon Jeff Mills, a brazen and electric performance that enshrined his reputation as the most ambitious DJ in the world. Read here.

How New Order embraced Ibiza's anything-goes energy on 'Technique': Released on 30th January 1989, New Order’s fifth album is a sun-flushed pinnacle of dance rock, directly inspired by the hedonistic energy of Ibiza’s burgeoning club scene of the time. 35 years on, with the help of the album’s engineer Michael Johnson, Ben Cardew reflects on its legacy and its influence on the acid house era. Ben Cardew for DJ Mag.

FIN.