Soundscapes of Aotearoa

Traditional Māori instruments feature in two truly indigenous contemporary albums.

Alistair Fraser began working with taonga pūoro, Māori traditional instruments, almost two decades ago, inspired by the composer Hirini Melbourne and his collaborators Richard Nunns and instrument-maker Brian Flintoff. Fraser has performed with groups and soloists as diverse as TrinityRoots, the New Zealand String Quartet, Stroma and singer Ariana Tikao and is a University of Otago researcher investigating Moriori and Māori taonga pūoro from Rēkohu/ Chatham Islands.

On the gruff-voiced Ponguru, Fraser works with jazz bassist Phil Boniface in a dozen evocative pieces that smoulder in lower registers, the improvising musicians taking their time in a highly imaginative sound-world. In the eponymous final track, birdsong and voice add to the drama.

For Shearwater Drift, Fraser collaborates with sound engineer Steve Burridge and New Zealand-based Scottish conceptual artist Neil Johnstone, who also designed the handsome packaging. The title refers to migration, the sleeve notes to a “vast sonic collage”. Birdsong features again alongside other inspiration from the natural world. The ancient landscapes conjured up by haunting taonga pūoro alongside contemporary electronica could take us back to Douglas Lilburn’s lecture “A Search for a Language”. The taonga pūoro renaissance came too late to influence Lilburn’s work, but he would probably have been intrigued by these unique soundscapes of Aotearoa.