In early 1990s London there was an exceptionally small and exclusive pool of musicians, producers and journalists who promoted each other’s gigs, played together, drank together, and cast themselves into the spotlight of the media and music fans. This was The Scene That Celebrated Itself. Such mutual support within a scene – although a charming idea – should be a prospect that is horribly familiar for most Wellingtonians, seeing that our music scene is embedded with the most self-promoting, self-glorifying and incestuous bad blood to ever plague New Zealand music DNA: A Low Hum.
A Low Hum (ALH) was born when ‘Blink’ (Ian Jorgenson) began organising tours for small indie bands around New Zealand. The first ALH tour featured Ejector and Degrees K in September 2003. After a Batrider tour the following April, Blink continued to tour bands almost every month or so until 2007, and it was awesome. During these early years A Low Hum held a light to the unexplored abyss of New Zealand music. Not only did it promote small bands by touring them, it also released compilation CDs, catalogues, and a local knowledge publication to educate anyone interested of the unknown potential New Zealand music holds.
A Low Hum gigs gained a reputation of being unique and chaotic, where the barrier between celebrity performer and grateful audience were smashed down. The music offered by bands such as The Phoenix Foundation, Cut Off Your Hands (aka Shaky Hands), So So Modern, The Shocking Pinks, Connan and the Mockasins, and Die! Die! Die! was so very different, so very original, and so full of fresh untapped energy which was unleashed live, and poured into the audience through electric waves of ecstasy. Provoked by yet another DIY revolution The Mint Chicks and This Night Creeps had initiated, bizarre previously unheard music escaped the bedroom and entered the spotlight, with A Low Hum as its mentor.
For a while it was beautiful. A new movement, so full of promise was in motion; the future of New Zealand alternative music away from the insipid New Zealand On Air funded bands looked bright. A Low Hum gained momentum, and the first Camp A Low Hum festival was held in February 2007. A shambolic, folkey festival, Camp was all about the music: musicians in trees, people strumming guitars, singing and dancing, music was always happening somewhere: it was small, peaceful, and wonderful. Camp 2008 would prove to be very different.
Their live spectacle at the 2007 Camp combined with over a year of extensive touring saw Wellington’s So So Modern begin to lead the pack as they became the quintisential Low Hum act, and kings of the Wellington indie scene, and not undeservingly. Why? Because they were fucking amazing. More than possibly any other Low Hum act, So So Modern released a beast on stage. Their music was powerful, forceful, and out of control. Through this band ALH and its followers found a central identity, a force strong enough to carry the movement, be it’s Jack Skellington and see ALH endure. With all the love, trust, and potential of the movement placed in this band, So So Modern and it’s Wellington sub-scene became a figure which if corrupted would corrupt everything.
As well as flowering a new scene, So So Modern set a benchmark for all ‘indie’ bands that came after them, and brought maturity and concreted credibility to ALH. This is what ‘indie’ looked like, and this is what A Low Hum could do: start an entirely new movement of explosive sounds, bright clothing, and awesome feelings. Little if any thought was given to the fact that So So Modern, sooner or later, would have done it by themselves, and consequently A Low Hum has been given nothing but support from a Wellington scene which has lapped up everything ALH likes, recommends or masturbates over and heralded it as law. So So Modern were the new shit, and everybody wanted to be like the new shit.
In early 2007 things were already changing. This Night Creeps had broken up the year before. The Sneaks and Connan and the Mockasins moved overseas, and most importantly The Mint Chicks and So So Modern’s live performances started to seriously deteriorate. In the sense of the former, perhaps they had just passed their New Zealand use-by date and needed to move on, but in the case of So So Modern there is little excuse. In the absence of such live whirlwinds that once exercised the underground fans of New Zealand, ALH and its subscenes in the cities grew fat and bloated.
The scene extended to include a network of copy-cat wannabe bands who retained little of the original force and ethics of the ALH movement and thus ushered in a very lazy fat-cat indie scene, crystalised through the medium of ALH which was beginning to change character.
The result has been a surge of psuedo-alternative acts riding off the strength of the A Low Hum scene, and its fresh, trendy ‘indie’ image. Bands such as Teenwolf and Brand New Math in Auckland; Frase + Bri and Bang! Bang! Eche! in Christchurch; and the now departed Holiday with Friends, and Little Pictures here in Wellington have wriggled their way into popularity by playing the right-sound to sedated-ALHloyalists and befriending their way through the right channels. But in reality these bands are no more than the crusting semen of New Zealand underground music after the orgasm that was So So Modern. It felt good at first, but now we’re all just covered in wank. Especially here in Wellington, what we are left with is a scene that simply cannot think for itself and question the quality music that is produced. Instead of playing music for the pleasure of communicating ideas, feelings, and experiences (which music is supposed to do) ALH bands it seems now play for the sake of being seen and being scene.
Camp 2008 only highlighted this fact. So So Modern were the prize celebrities of the event, alienated from the audience by their extensive network of leech friends, and scene bands, the barrier only contributing further to a deterioration of their live act. Little attention was paid to the actual quality of music present, and special attention was paid to the quality of ‘party’. Music is meant to be a party: the motto of the new ALH scene.
Fortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg and New Zealand is riddled with a wealth of promising bands, full of potential and waiting to be discovered. Bands such as Death in Gaza, New Friend, Sora Shima, and Amy Racecar are continuing to show an absurd amount of awesomeness, and absolutely rip apart Wellington-ALH-scene bands live, but are still struggling for recognition. Granted, some of these bands have played at the Campfestival but the four days’ attention they’re given there compared to the years of attention a band like Shaky Hands was gifted is hardly compensation. And so unfortunately these bands are not attaining the attention and credit they deserve, and the fat-cat indie scene refuses to roll.
A Low Hum’s purpose in New Zealand is dwindling. Early ALH celebrities have either grown too big for their boots and moved offshore (The Sneaks, Cut Off Your Hands) or have been forgotten and left in the dust in the shadow of more successful and profitable acts (Yokel Ono). Its future will probably involve a more concentrated focus on the Camp festival and on the record label (which has already signed three artists), while Blink casts his eyes overseas to see what international talent he can dig up. Blink probably never predicted the monster that his movement has turned out to be, but like it or not we’re all stuck with it. New Zealanders have loved the emergence of an institution that has brought the undercurrents of kiwi music into the light, but now maybe it is time for ALH to step aside, release its tight grasp on the power it holds, and a let a new movement arise.
