Dark Matter - Live, Christchurch 2012-14

Three live (audience) recordings

Dark Matter - Live, Wunderbar, Christchurch, 23 Jun 2012
Dark Matter - Live, The Darkroom, Christchurch, 11 May 2013 (second half)
Dark Matter - Live, Wunderbar, Christchurch, 7 Feb 2014

Not much attempt to edit them - the 2014 show has 5 minutes preamble and tuning.

This post is to compliment the previous post, some small celebration of Dead C/Terminals playing this Friday.

Also a point worth making loudly: Siltbreeze have just released a Dark Matter LP

Listening to Broken on YouTube the most striking thing is background orchestration (horns/strings) in the recording adding more depth and seething melancholy to the proceedings.  A fine thing.

If at all possible I will communicate with the 'powers' behind http://www.lingering.co.nz/, in which case you'll have the same LP available there for attractive local (=FREE) postage.  If you like the sound of that, say Hell Yeh (in the comments or via the usual social channel).

Label description:
Hold the tidings, reconnoiterers. This is a new set of songs from Stephen Cogle of Vacuum, The Victor Dimisich Band and The Terminals. Dark Matter stands with contemporaries The Renderers and The Puddle in exemplifying a “late” style of New Zealand post-punk—more concrete, more distilled.

Cogle’s vocal flourish stills reminds one of Roxy Music—a band that, recall, is only ten years older than Cogle’s earliest projects. The continued relevance of an ensemble like Dark Matter over Roxy Music can only be attributed to the richness of the musical moment that birthed it. Trusted names like Cogle, John Christoffels, John Billows, Joanne Billesdon, Nicole Moffat and Michael Daly continue into the 21st century in new combinations with new aspects to notice. But more than just an update on the Christchurch Sound, Dark Matter plays with punk nostalgia to craft an overwhelmingly romantic (with a lowercase r) pop record.

Too cat-like to be reflective, totally immersed in the garage rock impetus, their flat, gothic psychedelia is equal parts Chills, Television Personalities and Scientists, with the intimacy of Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos or Small World Experience. With a breadth of material fitting to the subject of “getting older,” Dark Matter is perhaps the most finessed document of Cogle’s vision yet.

The Dead C - Live, Super 8, Dunedin, 22 Jul 1994

As a precursor to this event
The Dead C and The Terminals

Here's an old Dead C set.

The Dead C - Live, Super 8, Dunedin, 22 Jul 1994

A lo-fi recording by yours truly of a lo-fi band on a totally shitty lo-er than lo-fi old tape. Managed to put it in my pocket the wrong way round after I flipped the tape for the last track, so you get a metronomic accompaniment of my artery with 'Angel'.  Perhaps seeking redemption, it's an updated digitization with Dolby-S - a raw version (yes, even shittier) from 10yrs+ ago with split 'tracks' is probably floating round in some collections.   Kim Pieters was recording the same night (a track turned up on the God Came Between Us compilation), and it's no doubt far better quality.  But this is what you get.

As this guy wrote:
The year is 1995 and The Dead C are playing at the Super 8 Arts Collective in the basement of a deconsecrated church in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island. After eight years together, they have fully developed their improvised free noise strategy: beginning without an end in mind, their 'songs' sometimes bear a vague resemblance to their records - then they lurch abruptly into unfamiliar areas -in a manner utterly alien to rock conventions.

Some Terminals related, here:
Dark Matter - Live, Christchurch 2012-14