Dance music comes out of the clubs
Dozens of tracks made in bedrooms, flats and makeshift studios across Aotearoa are available for the first time in a generation. Chris Reed reports.
‘‘The most important thing is to give people their credit, particularly the producers, and the people who were involved at the time.’’ Joost Langeveld, left, with Roger Perry
Imagine a time when banging nightclub beats didn’t soundtrack ads, brunch and clothes shopping. Go on. Try. You probably can’t, but it wasn’t all that long ago. House music, and its relentless ‘‘oonst oonst’’ beat only began its journey to the New Zealand mainstream around the start of the century, driven by a then-new George FM and glossy mags like Pavement and Remix.
What had been a strictly underground rhythm through most of the 90s exploded, with giant dance parties.
The boom was fuelled by a fastgrowing group of homegrown DJs scrambling to buy the latest vinyl releases from a string of thriving record stores.
But as the millennium loomed, something was missing: Next to no tracks being played here were actually made here.
There were good reasons, most of them around geographic isolation. Certainly the equipment needed to make house music was much more expensive here than in the United Kingdom and the United States, where a generation of producers had been releasing music made in their bedrooms since the early-1990s.
Enter Reliable Recordings. The Auckland-based label was the brainchild of a musical polymath who loved clubbing so much he wanted to release music by early adopters with no other outlet.
Dutch by birth, Joost Langeveld arrived in Aotearoa on the final day of 1979. A crack bassist, he played punk, ska, dub, techno and trip hop alongside luminaries including Greg Johnson, Paul Casserly and ‘‘Stinky’’ Jim Pinckney before focusing, primarily, on house music in its many forms.
Reliable began after a chance meeting. Langeveld was performing at the second Gathering – those multi-day New Year festivals held in fields an hour from Nelson – in 1997. There he bumped into members of the Kog Transmissions crew.
Kog was a family of labels started by a group of mates. It had at least a bit to do with the early steps of globally successful artists including P-Money, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Pitch Black, Scribe and Concord Dawn.
Initial releases were dominated by somewhat cerebral electronica and dub. From that meeting at the Gathering it was decided Langeveld should compile a compilation of Kiwi-made club tracks.
The result was Algorhythm, released by Kog in 1999. Its sequel, on the newly-minted Reliable came a year later.
Two further compilations – this time titled Sun Valley Sounds and put together with house music royalty Roger Perry (who got his first gig from Russell Crowe in the mid-80s) – came in 2003 and 2004. In between, a string of vinyl releases and an album by Subware, Langeveld’s project with club and radio DJ Jason ‘‘Rockpig’’ Hall.
Across the four compilations, a string of instant Kiwi club classics: Reactor Music’s Calibre 98 (named for a club at the centre of the Auckland scene), Cuffy & Leon D’s 19c Trumpet, Disco Hoopla by Subware; work by Dick Johnson, Greg Churchill and the late, great Soane.
For almost the first time, people could make dance music at home, have it released by a local label then go to their favourite club and watch how it went down.
‘‘My personal quest was always to make a track that a DJ would play, that was the buzz for me,’’ says Langeveld. ‘‘But it was also very much about working with DJs to build that local thing.’’
Churchill, who went on to a recording career that includes a UK chart hit, says the compilations are a great insight into the vibrancy of the Auckland and Wellington house scenes 20 years ago.
‘‘[In] five brief years the local scene (from a production perspective) went from pretty much nothing to actually gaining a degree of international recognition.’’ (At this point,
I should note a significant conflict of interest – I co-produced tracks on both volumes of Sun Valley Sounds. I consider Langeveld a pal and helped him with the project to give the Reliable catalogue its first digital release.)
Dozens of tracks made in bedrooms, flats and makeshift studios across Aotearoa are available for the first time in a generation.
Langeveld had thought often about whether to revisit the past. Ahead of a full label relaunch and new music, he explains why the time is finally right.
‘‘The most important thing is to give people their credit, particularly the producers, and the people who were involved at the time,’’ he says.
‘‘I also think music goes in roughly 20-year cycles, and I think, particularly where house is at, people are interested in learning about some of the stuff that was happening.’’
That’s due, in part, to the huge number of people engaging with Facebook pages like The Lost Nightlife of Inner-city Auckland, run by Simon Grigg’s Audio Culture brand.
Grigg, the former club and record store owner who masterminded OMC’s rise to international glory, says New Zealand has only recently realised it has a ‘‘viable culture’’ of its own.
‘‘Until then we had this cultural cringe thing where we were slightly ashamed of the fact that we had bands like Ray Columbus and the Invaders.
‘‘You say to kids, ‘they’re actually quite good, these are our Rolling Stones’. And once you start telling people these stories they get an awareness of the music. And it’s the same with dance music.’’
Reliable’s full catalogue is available for streaming and download now. For a full list of sites, visit linktr.ee/reliablerecordings