So alone among the Welling­ton­ista, I have a ter­ri­ble secret: apart from an ear­ly album from the Black Seeds, I have no cur­rent Welling­ton Music in my col­lec­tion.

None.

Not even Fat Fred­dy’s Drop.

In my major peri­od of buy­ing music, Welling­ton music for me was a bit fringe and wacky, and worst of all, not on Fly­ing Nun. There were occa­sion­al songs that caught my atten­tion: Bill Direen & the Bilders’ Do the Alli­ga­tor; that amus­ing Ele­phunk song; one or two songs from the Six Volts… and that’s about it. Welling­ton was full of arty jazzy stuff that frankly I despised.

Time has moved on — about 20 years in fact — and some­how Welling­ton’s musi­cal renais­sance has passed me by. This is not good.

So I need help!

What are the top five albums by Welling­ton bands in the last five years? Answers please: I must remove the shame­ful stain of my musi­cal igno­rance!

Some favourites:

The Avengers
For a time in the late six­ties The Avengers were one of the high­est pro­file rock bands on the New Zealand scene. Their song Water­pipe is one of the great­est songs to ever glo­ri­fy the joys of using water in your bong. The 1968 debut LP Elec­tric Record­ing has pos­si­bly my favourite album cov­er art ever — look how cool they are — as well as being a damn good record. They went to try their luck in Aus­tralia and broke up in ’69.

Bail­ter Space
Look — we have to let Christchurch have The Gor­dons, and The Skep­tics were undoubt­ed­ly from Palmer­ston North, but I’m going to have to insist despite them begin­ning in Christchurch and end­ing up in New York, that Welling­ton be allowed to claim shoe-gazey atmos­pher­ic noise rock­ers Bail­ter Space as its own. They were an incred­i­ble live band, known for being one of the loud­est of their era. Their gigs were few and far between, and many peo­ple still speak in hushed, rev­er­en­tial tones about the week in 1993 when there were TWO Bail­ter Space gigs. And their albums still stand up as being some of the best music to ever come out of New Zealand.

Birchville Cat Motel
a.k.a. Camp­bell Kneale. As Wikipedia sez,

although large­ly unknown in his home coun­try, Kneale has toured many times through­out Asia, Amer­i­ca, Europe, and Aus­tralia.

Daft name, and yet this one-man tran­cen­den­tal drone/noise act is sure­ly the clos­est thing Welling­ton and New Zealand has ever had to a glob­al music super­star.

Eight more, after this…

Skallan­der — The Camels
Take the welly dub eth­ic, mix it up with some gui­tar and ambi­ent noise, and you end up with this bril­liant slab of aur­al inven­tive­ness. One of the many projects to come from the musi­cal mind of the very tal­ent­ed and mas­sive­ly under-rat­ed Bevan Smith.

Shi­had — Killjoy
Best NZ rock album. Ever. Nuff said.

The Bilge Fes­ti­val — Cape Goat
The good side of Welling­ton wacky rock. Two mad singer/songwriters and a super-tight rhythm sec­tion, cre­ate an opus of bizarre yet funky songs. Wilde­beest a go-go!!

Over the Atlantic — Juni­ca
Anoth­er Bevan Smith col­lab­o­ra­tion — this is like a Welling­ton­ian take on what the defin­i­tive New Order album might sound like. The noise wig-out on the last track ‘Fly to the States’ is the best bit of dis­tor­tion you’ll ever hear. (Video below is the track ’35 Black & White’)…

Debris — She’s the Bomb
Yeah, I played on it. And tech­ni­cal­ly we’re all from Christchurch. But we were liv­ing here at the time, it was record­ed at the infa­mous Church on Fred­er­ick St., and it’s f**kin’ awe­some.

If you ever talk to me and I can’t hear you, these bands and these songs are prob­a­bly to blame for the con­di­tion of my ears.

• ‘Deb’s night out’ — Shi­had. They might turn the noise up to 11 on oth­er num­bers, but this is qui­eter, more con­tem­pla­tive and all the more pow­er­ful and bit­ter for it.
• ‘The Lover’ — Fur Patrol. Is there any line more gut­ting than “This is the lover you left me for and I hope you’re hap­py now”? I don’t think so. Find it on their first EP Star­lifter.
• ‘The Drinker’ — The Phoenix Foun­da­tion. “At the bot­tom of the bot­tle you can wipe your con­science clean” — and lord knows the Welling­ton­ista try that, although for us it should be “At the bot­tom of the pineap­ple…”
• ‘And the truth fad­ed into dust’ — The Dukes of Leisure. Get your son­ic noise on. Best heard at the plan­e­teri­um for max­i­mum impact.
• ‘I’m on fire’ — Head like a Hole. Nor­mal­ly it’s the Phoenix Foun­da­tion who get all The Boss up on us, but this cov­er is just per­fect, from Booga’s sleaze, to the wig-out at the end, and the video that fea­tured them play­ing on the roof ala U2, with the old Chan­nel Z Carhoona dri­ving around below.

We thought that we’d cel­e­brate NZ Music month by high­light­ing some of our favourite Welling­ton music. Here’s my top 5, veer­ing between the obscure and the down­right main­stream.

Aspen, Are you that retail snob?. This was the album that got me back into mak­ing music. It’s some­where between ambi­ent, glitch and ear­ly 90s IDM, but all you need to know is that it’s drip­ping with gor­geous tex­tures and melodies.

Rhi­an Shee­han, Tiny Blue Bios­phere. I know, I know: it’s over-pro­duced cof­fee table music for yup­pies, but hell, maybe that’s what I am (even though I don’t own a cof­fee table). And any album that sam­ples Carl Sagan not once but twice has to get bonus geek points.

Dis­as­tera­dio, Syn­thtease. Damn, this guy’s ran­sacked my child­hood! Yazoo with a VIC 20, Kraftwerk play­ing Aster­oids, 8‑bit beats and viral melodies.

Rhom­bus, Future Ref­er­ence. Yep, it’s a Welly list, so there had to be some dub some­where. But Rhom­bus’ influ­ences range far wider than most, and touch­es of funk, hip-hop, elec­tron­i­ca and jazz give their sound an infec­tious enthu­si­asm. “Scorch­ing Bay” has to be an instant Welling­ton clas­sic.

Twin­set and friends, Christ­mas Pud­din’. The only Christ­mas album that does­n’t make me want to stick Rudolph’s antlers where the sun don’t shine. They know that you can’t take car­ols too seri­ous­ly, but while Benj Berry­man injects some swingin’ cheese into ‘God Rest Ye Mer­ry Gen­tle­men’, there are some sur­pris­ing­ly straight jazz treat­ments and del­i­cate moments. As you can prob­a­bly tell, I’m still hang­ing out for the lounge revival revival.