Band’s back in the
It was 20 years ago that Pitch Black played its first festival gig near Nelson. – who helped make it happen – catches up as the band prepares to return to the Kiwi summer circuit at Splore.
It is, people tell me, the best summer festival in the country. Less hedonistic than the earlier New Year’s Eve events. Not as clogged with drunken teenage munters.
A little calmer, a tad cooler, much more eclectic. A stronger focus on community and sustainability, apparently.
And rather than simply bashing out loud music for days on end to a paddock full of wide-eyed dancers, the organisers also lay on art exhibitions, film screenings, theatre performances, comedy shows, and workshops.
Beach on one side, bush on the other, just an hour’s drive southeast of Auckland. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s nearly time for Splore.
‘‘I can’t wait, to be honest,’’ says Mike Hodgeson, a multimedia artist who’s one half of electronic dub duo, Pitch Black, one of the festival headliners.
Raised in Christchurch, Hodgeson lives these days in Hackney in east London, but he and musical partner Paddy Free have played every notable summer festival in New Zealand at one time or another, and Splore remains a firm favourite.
‘‘We played a couple of early Splores, when it was at a different site, and it has always had a certain something a lot of other festivals lack. It’s based on great British festivals like The Big Chill where the main aim is to break down barriers between musical genres, and between the people who come along.’’
Founded in 1998, Splore is ‘‘more nurturing, less banging’’, he says, attracting party-goers who’ve grown tired of the ‘‘relentlessness’’ of a lot of other festivals.
‘‘They focus on a far wider range of music, and people bring their families along. They even turn the music off late at night, so people can sleep!’’
Full disclosure. I knew Hodgeson before he was famous. In a former life, I co-founded one of New Zealand’s first outdoor dance festivals, The Gathering, a three-day event that drew more than 10,000 people to a remote site on the top of Takaka Hill near Nelson every New Year’s Eve.
Pitch Black played at our first event in 1996. It was a milestone for us and them.
‘‘You were the instigator for our very first gig!’’ says Hodgeson, as if accusing me of some heinous crime. ‘‘Twenty years ago, it was you guys who kicked it all off for us, in a way. When we played that first Gathering in 1996, I’d only met Paddy six months earlier. We only had two tracks ready to play live that night, and just kept stretching them out until we made them last for half an hour.’’
In the 20 years since, Pitch Black has built a substantial international audience. A distinctive collision of techno and dub, 1999 debut album Futureproof topped our local dance charts despite zero advertising, and was championed by club and radio DJs around the globe, including pioneering BBC announcer, the late John Peel.
The duo toured Australia, Europe, America, Japan, and the UK, making a righteous racket from Amsterdam to Zagreb, each gig an audio-visual extravaganza, with Hodgeson’s elaborate live-triggered video projections leading to major commissions for Louis Vuitton and the NZ Tourism Board, among others.
There have been five studio albums, three remix albums, six world tours.
Along the way, their music soundtracked fashion shows and PlayStation games, showed up on primetime US TV series such as True Blood and CSI: Miami, and graced the soundtrack of many films, including Whale Rider.
‘‘The music we make is very emotional for people,’’ reckons Hodgeson.
‘‘We’re not a chart-topping act, by any means, but we sit very deeply inside the hearts of people who’ve stumbled across our records and, for whatever reason, love our sound.’’
Hodgeson has lived in London for the past four years, while Free lives in New York with his partner, dancer/ choreographer Louise Potiki Bryant.
Years go by without much contact, then they get together sporadically to record or tour. Besides Splore, this latest trip home sees Pitch Black whipping around a host of other summer festivals, showcasing new studio album Filtered Senses, their first in nine years.
‘‘We started sending sound files back and forth between London and New York, then eventually Paddy flew over here and we started working on it in my studio in the loft. For 12 days, we worked up there, keeping very gentlemanly hours. I would walk the kids to school, then we’d make a start, and ’[Splore focuses] on a far wider range of music, and people bring their families along. They even turn the music off late at night, so people can sleep!’ we’d keep going until midnight or so. Paddy was sleeping up in the loft, too, so sometimes he’d go to bed and I’d keep on working quietly in the same room. If I saw his foot tapping, I’d know I was on the right track.’’
An odd couple, these two, yet their musical marriage endures. A veteran of Christchurch industrial band Tinnitus and his own dub project Projector Mix, Hodgeson’s roots were in ‘‘punk, noise, and sound sculpture’’.
He was a sonic thrill-seeker, equally excited by King Tubby and The Gordons, Plastikman and Throbbing Gristle. Above all, he loved messing up people’s heads with light, sound, and images, telling one interviewer ‘‘a burst of static’s just as powerful as a good tune’’.
Free, meanwhile, served a long apprenticeship in more traditional bands, and was widely in demand as a keyboardist, drum programmer, and producer, working with Salmonella Dub, Killing Joke, Supergroove and Neil Finn, among others.
Together, they made music that recalled the expansive festival-friendly techno of UK acts such as Underworld and Orbital, but with an overlay of their trademark hallucinogenic echo effects, drum and bass break beats, and subterranean bass rumbles, the tempo veering between near-ambient soundscapes and pounding dance floor anthems.
‘‘Somehow, we’ve found a nice middle ground between our tastes, I think. I’ve come from a background in dub and industrial music, and Paddy is more melodic, but when we get together, we’ll only carry a track forward if we both like where it’s going.’’
Their long period apart has also informed the direction of the new album.