The Blood & Wires label was formed in 2020 by Scott Brown in Tauranga out of a desire to raise the profile of New Zealand based electronic and experimental artists. I love the way they describe their ethic, “We focus on music with a difference, genres that get less commercial exposure and support. Think ambient, doombient, all the “bients”, noise, field recordings, experimental, that sort of thing. If you are running a flute through guitar pedals and modular systems, we want to talk to you.” Then they release the music not only digitally but also on cassette! I have seen this happening more and more these days, especially in the very underground extreme metal scene, and somehow it seems to be making its way into the mainstream.
Since starting with MNNZ some 18 months or so ago I have literally thrown myself into the NZ music scene, completing 200 reviews for the site in 2021, and I can often be found at one dive or another trying to capture in words what the live music is doing to my soul (off to my second home again tonight, the infamous Dead Witch in Auckland). But, for the site I tend to concentrate on all forms of rock and metal, folk, plus whatever else is needed which normally means pop, soul, jazz, but very little in the form of electronic. Consequently, when I look down the track listing of this release, I find 12 bands and I know nothing about any of them. There are another 8 on Volume 2 (which I have not heard), and I don’t know any of them either, but I have reviewed one of their other releases, Speech Act Theory’s “Holding Out”.
The label asked for submissions from artists working in the field of electronic and experimental music, and from more than 80 submissions they whittled it down to these 12, and the result is a release which shows this genre is alive and very well indeed in Aotearoa. Different bands have taken different starting points, but Tangerine Dream, early Kraftwerk, Can and other krautrock outfits are the main influences for most of these. This does not sound at all like a release from a small label and one of the joys in this compilation is the sheer variety of sounds on offer. The electronic percussive attack of ADC074 gives way to some delicate electronic guitar of Rack & Ruin which gradually turns into something quite different yet maintaining the same melody we first started with.
For those with a cassette player this is available for just $15 NZD + shipping for the tape, and just $9 for the download (which comes to $6 USD, £4.50 or €5.40) so cheap as chips.
Rating: 8/10
