VA - Kiwi Animals: Future/ Primitive Aotearoa (2020)

‘Kiwi Animals’ is a personal catalog of local oddities; affectionately recasting the 1980’s New Zealand Top 40 in a parallel universe of misfit pop, gonzo-tronics & voodoo-waves.

Channeling South Pacific gothic sensibilities and edge of world melancholia, the album highlights unexpected electronic tangents from iconic NZ groups Blam Blam Blam & Headless Chickens.

It dredges the C-90 revelations of art avante-gardists’ Drone & Kim Blackburn, along with the bittersweet pop of Rupert & Norma O’Malley. There’s the infectious minimal wave of Ballare and a reprised dance suite from Tom Ludvigson & Graeme Gash.

The furthest depths of Flying Nun’s catalog are also plundered- a brilliant earworm from Stiff Herbert and a mysterious Roger Knox birthday promo. Mining the various disparate seams of a local indie label awakening, ‘Kiwi Animals’ congeals with future/primitive ingenuity and an underlying Antipodean pop mischievousness…