It's not long since you got back from your second European tour. How was it a different experience from the first time around? 
 
Well one difference is that it was considerably shorter, we were only there for 2 weeks this time but we packed out the schedule with 14 shows, so you could say we made the most of our time there. It felt great to be back, some people who came last year travelled to see us this time round so it felt like we had a bit of a following growing. We did a slightly different route this time, spending more time in Spain – Spain rules, very like-minded people who love to party. Some things remain unchanged – impeccable hospitality no matter whether you're playing a festival or a squat, and the service stations still sell 10% Bicardi and cokes and very good cheese.  
 

Dream Believe Achieve is out on Friday. What was the writing and recording process like? 
 
It was quite a different buzz this time, firstly we were lucky enough to record at Roundhead which was a bloody dream, Dee Stevens (engineer) and Peter Rudell (producer) were a bloody great team to work with too. With the previous albums we had spent the year writing and playing the new songs, so the albums were really a record of our work, whereas this time we were under a little bit more pressure to get it done and ended up writing some songs in the room, which was a new fun and exciting (stressful and frustrating) process for us. We are definitely not a jam band, so it was good for us to be pushed out of our comfort zone, I think. But hey pressure makes diamonds, right? Maybe! But we are stoked with the result, we can’t wait for yas to hear it. ​

Cheesy question time. Tell me your biggest dream, weirdest belief, and proudest achievement.  
 
Biggest dream right now is that we find an actual socialist like Zorhan Mamdani and next year vote out the freaks currently running the country.

Weirdest belief – you are speaking with Lucy Suttor and I’m taking liberties here as I’m sure there are other weird beliefs in the band, but as a child I thought aliens were communicating with me through the squiggles termites made in driftwood. Guess that’s pretty weird. 

​Our biggest achievement is probably 6 years and 3 albums, and hopefully this Friday we sell out Double Whammy – that would be a great achievement. 


What else should I have asked about? 
 
Nothing, that was great. See you at The Yard this weekend! Let's party! ​

Dreams That Feel Like Falling is neither a bare restatement of Cowboy Dan's appreciable past, nor an unneeded reinvention. It shows a noisy side we've never heard before and it tells us that adult life has kicked in. As indie rockers, ‘Temporary’ is a career high water mark. 

After two whip-tight EPs this is effectively Cowboy Dan's difficult second album. They've handled it deftly and built a nice addition to their discography. They deserve for their audience to grow along with it.
---

Cowboy Dan bring the album release tour to Last Place on Friday October 3, supported by Echo Children and Halcyon Birds. It'll be awesome.

As a result, Lukas says that Bots is “a little more chopped up” than their earlier albums. 

“My own tastes still kind of bring it in line with the rest of my discography so I can’t pretend it’s a radical shift, but my approach was definitely a lot different. I wasn’t thinking in terms of writing songs, I was more trying to think of each track as a kind of recording/production piece. The ‘songs’ kind of emerged through the actual production, if that makes sense.”

So if their process has evolved, how different will the music itself be? Lukas isn’t sure. “Honestly when I’m making something it always feels like a big shift from a creative point of view, but who knows how much that actually comes across to the listener!”
​
The official pre-release announcement calls it “an album built from fragments, from warped sounds and half-memories, stitched together into something that still somehow pulses with life.” That’s not necessarily a recipe that most musicians would want to follow, or could do well with. But Pickle Darling isn’t like most musicians.

Other influences will come through on the album. Lukas says, “When I was making Bots, I was listening to a lot of Four Tet, Burial, The Wrens/Car Colors, Madonna, Beth Orton, Pet Shop Boys…I feel like as a musician I’m always trying to be either Elliott Smith or Pet Shop Boys, I like those two extremes but I never want to be in between.”

Bots hasn’t only been teased by singles. Early May saw the surprise release of Pickle Darling: The Game, a fittingly lo-fi quest that invites you to “play as legendary NZ rockstar PICKLE DARLING as you navigate through a very normal ALBUM RELEASE day!!”

​The game’s a throwback to 8-bit gaming (remember the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum?) that pits you, as a heavily pixelated Pickle Darling, against your own insecurities and a few other things that get in the way of your new album launch. It’s fun and funny, and Lukas reckons it’s “pretty easy”. About 700 people have played it so far, and “if they didn’t finish it, shame on them!”

Before the album’s name change, Battlebots was described as “a reference to clashing ideologies—internally and externally, between past and present versions, between the desire to create something and the frustration of the process. It’s a reflection of how our thoughts never settle, how music is never really about one singular thing, how an album can hold a hundred tiny conflicts at once”. After the change, Lukas’s glass-half-full take is that the new name is “quicker to say”.

The redesigned cover is wordless now. Its art continues a long-term partnership with Heather Marigold, who has illustrated every Pickle Darling album. Lukas says it’s “a woodcut print (I think that’s the term), and I think it’s my favourite album cover of mine. It feels kind of iconic, and I think the two hands remind me of a bunch of other iconic album covers; the Antlers, Godspeed, etc.”

It’s party time on the 27th
​You’ll get the chance to look beyond the cover and preview Bots at a Bandcamp listening party on August 27. After that it will be out for real on September 5 (vinyl/CD preorders are open, and my goodness I want one of those companion comic books), and we’ll have a review up just as soon as we can.

HUP: Many of my generation and older will remember ‘The Waltons’ as a wholesome 1970s American TV drama, which focussed on a large rural family navigating the Great Depression and World War II. In what ways do you consider yourselves to be False Waltons?
 
Marcus:  We’ve been advised not to comment on this matter.
 
Ben:  We’ve been advised not to comment on this matter.
 
Pete:  We’ve been advised not to comment on this matter.
 
HUP: ...okay... who’s in the band, how and when did you all get together, and what are your respective roles?
 
Marcus:  Pete and Ben continue to play in a covers band called Splinta.  I had an ad running on Jam Space for two years - before Pete sent me a message telling me he liked the songs. He said the lyrics were cool, but weird and that he wanted to meet me in person to make sure I wasn’t a nut-job. His exact words. At that point, I was literally on the verge of giving up - thinking my songs were obviously garbage, or that I had somehow wronged some kind of powerful, omnipotent, spiteful entity that refused to let me be in a band. But they showed up ready to play.  And then they continued to show up ready to play - which, as you know, is the difficult part.  Personally I want to be in a band with other people contributing. Pete might choose some harmonic content that I would never come up with.  And that’s where it’s at for me. I like being musically caught off-guard, or surprised. Calling the shots is a drag and I’m just not good at it regardless. Peter [bass] is very strong with his composition/arrangement skills, which is a huge benefit for the band in general. Ben [drums] is also very good and comes up with broader ideas. So, if we are composing, they’ll both take the reins and tell me what to play. This gives us room for no-one in particular to be responsible for the outcome/results. Pete is a big melody man - while Ben is more at the grunt-end - favouring the harder songs as opposed to the softer songs - which he calls our 'nana-songs’. Which is nice.
 
Pete: We were all born in the '60s. Falsely speaking, when sex, drugs and rock ’n roll were born. When I saw the ad on Jam Space, Marcus had a song on there called Yamaduta and I thought ‘fuck this is cool'. It was so not standard shit that I thought 'that's a bit of me'. The rest is all too painful to talk about because we have to put up with Marcus. Don’t listen to Marcus. It’s all lies. He’s a dick.
 
Ben: I’m the drummer in this band.  I’m also the creative genius in The False Waltons.  Question.  Do we get any free beer at The Last Place?  Marcus thinks he’s cool.  He isn’t.  I like his Gibson SG guitar, tho.  He also has a Jazzmaster - which is just pretentious.  He keeps wanking on about bands I’ve never heard of.  Frybrain?  Scooter?  Bitter Defeat?  Hand of Glory?  Mud People?  Give me AC/DC and a box of beer any day.  I use 5a drum-sticks.  Chicks like drummers.  I like chicks and beer ’n stuff.  It’s the only reason I’m in The False Waltons.

HUP: Many of us who have been stuck in the swamplands for an extended period remember Marcus from his time in Watershed. Are there similarities in the sounds and songs of that band and what you do in False Waltons?
 
Marcus: That’s odd territory to broach, or even consider - so apologies if the answer is long-winded, or slightly off.  Back in Watershed days, I could’ve been [and was] charged with being ignorant of many things and so I think musicians I played with had to deal with my personal volume being cranked a bit higher than most - in later years someone told me I was like a blank compact disc cranked up to ten - which was a big chunk to choke on at the time.  But, with Watershed, being perceived as the primary song-writer theoretically afforded me much more headroom.  It wasn’t like that, though. Most of our songs were jammed out in the rehearsal room - so that concept is not entirely apt. I was just the main singer/frontman.  Watershed achieved quite a lot - given the fact we were 20 year olds either on the dole, or ostensibly at university. But none of that could’ve been achieved without the influences of everyone involved - be it other musicians, Contact FM, the scene in general, the drama scene, the McGillicuddy’s, etc. With The False Waltons, no song makes it out alive without being put through The Waltoniser - basically jamming it live, seeing what we can do with any idea/riff, etc. It’s still a learning curve. But what is apparent is that any band that’s out there - as you would know from being in Bitter Defeat - is that what you get is a melting pot of everyone involved. Band members have to negotiate the psychology of everyone involved - and that goes all ways. At times it becomes much more than simply being in a band. So The False Waltons are way less directionally focused. Anything could pop out. Take Carry Fire for example.  No-one is going to sit there by themselves and be able to write that.  Ben recently asked ‘how did we write that’?  And the answer is that we jammed it and it chonked through The Waltoniser very quickly. We are not fans of any song sounding like any other song in our set - which has its own issues.  So, I like to change up the vocal approach as much as possible. I can still belt but I also like frailty and ‘getting into character’ for any particular song we are writing at the time. The songs we have are a good indication of a band enjoying the process. But we really look forward to the next phase and seeing what we can come up with. We’re looking forward to ‘ditching our rudder’ as it were.
 
Pete: I served my time in the '80s in a band called Blue Network with Mark Peterson who took over from Andrew Brough playing for Straitjacket Fits. I think this opened the door to being more creative and bringing something to add to The False Waltons. I have never heard of Watershed. Marcus said he was in a band while he was at university, in Hamilton. Hamilton.  30 August.  30 August.  At the Last Place. Hamilton. Hamilton. With Bitter Defeat.  30 August. Hamilton. Ja, natrulich. Das ist gut.
 
Ben: Beer. Any free beer in Hamilton? I’m the drummer. I can sing and play drums at the same time. We have a song called Sideways Is King.  But it’s super-not.  Beer is king.
 
HUP: Tauranga seems to have a healthy music scene, with at least a couple of great venues. Have all of you been in active in bands over there previously?
 
Marcus:  There is a very healthy scene in Tauranga.  It’s not the exception to the rule to be in a band in Tauranga. Austin Cunningham, who plays in a band called Threat Meet Protocol is a major focus point - having been a player and general ‘make gigs happen’ guy.  He wears shorts year-round and is a great frontman [funny and great to watch]. He organises a 12 hour event called Loserpalooza with a different band every half hour - two stages - it’s big-time worth checking out. The bands are all really something - stretching from Fun-Velvets Groove [Club Meds], '70s cocaine-rock influenced bands [Somacaine], Industrial-Disturbo [Threat Meet Protocol], Punk-Skill [Stunt Clown], Skeleton-Metal [Carrion Bride], Synth-Art [We Will Ride Fast], Earth-Rock [Eddie and the Dreamers], Two Piece Mayhem Trick-Rock [Grown Downz], Wall of Noise Macho-Drone [This is How We Die] and stuff you might not be able to attribute to any particular genre [Skonk]. There are too many bands to name - but the level of talent is frightening. Austin seems to give any band a crack at playing - which I believe is part of his whole ‘get up there and do your shit’ ethos.  It’s super impressive - given that most people struggle to organise doing the dishes - only to give up, not bother, and watch crap on Netflix.  Or is that just me? Ben drinks beer.
 
Pete: Ben and I do the covers band thing for beer-money. But it’s getting tough with city urbanisation. Original music is where it’s at.  
 
Ben: I’m the drummer in both bands and the glue that holds them together. No me equals no bands. I am the creative genius in The False Waltons. You’re welcome. Beer anyone? I’m not offering. I’m asking if anyone has any beer.

HUP: Over the last few months there have been various hints of a forthcoming album. How close is that to coming to fruition?
 
Marcus: Yes. Eight songs. It’s all engineered, tracked, and mixed.  We’re all from the generation where vinyl albums were a thing - so it ended up being a case of waking up at 4am to mix until the day started. It’ll be up on Spotify very soon. From this point, as we write them, we’ll record them maybe two songs at a time. These days, it’s a good idea to know how to engineer your own music. I play in a studio band called Window - with a compadre called Damian who has been into recording music since he was a kid - making his own mixing desk, using reel-to-reel tape recorders [in a Greg Locke stylee] and then transitioning all that knowledge to the digital realm using Pro Tools, etc. He has been very generous with his expertise - urging me to get a particular set of microphones, a particular compressor, or whatever. I play drums for that band - because we had no drummer and wanted to track real drums - which is a dark-art in itself.
 
Pete: We’re pretty happy with the sound of the album.  it’s not bad for having been recorded in a lounge - in the sticks - where we rehearse. I get scared when I go there. There’s chickens walking around wanting to be picked up and it’s up a long, skinny, country road - with corners that hit pretty hard. But we know the road pretty good now. We like to get sideways around the corners on the way home - while we slag off Marcus for being a shit guitarist and a crap singer.  Is Ben banging on about beer in his replies to these questions? I bet he is.
 
Ben: There’d better be free beer at this gig in Hamilton. I’m the drummer. Humble yourselves and bring offerings of the amber liquid, or I’ll get shitty. If I get up from my drums to get a beer - BOOM!! - Marcus is on the kit, thinking he can play. He can’t. He’s a horrible drummer. Sitting there with his face and hair and socks and wanking on about paradiddles and some wrong concept called ‘constant release’ on the kick pedal. What’s that all about? He’s lucky we even play music with him. Pete and I are the engine of the band and then there’s Marcus - thinking he’s the shit - on my drums?  Wanker. My name is Ben.  I have a beard.

​- with Ian Duggan

Critic Te Ārohi has just informed me that they’re a bunch of Ōtepoti Dunedin music students, and their songwriting’s obvious smarts make that easy to believe. There’s been a good groove coming out of that most terrific of cities in recent years. Like L. Hotel, Purple Dog have that Otago knack of wrapping pop up as rock. Fun and cool, which can be a tricky combo, is something that southern bands have been doing in different ways for decades now. Yet this is no throwback.

Dog Years has undeniable energy. Opening pair ‘Always and Forever’ and ‘Hold On’ are pacy and sunny, then things get rockier and harder through ‘Delusion’ and ‘Cold Case’, a relatively dark number. They're a five-piece but there’s no overcrowding and no passengers. Vocalist Imogen sounds like she’s been radio-ready for years.

Cowboy Dan, those fine jangly happy-sad rockers who have been on our favourites list for so long, have all sorts of great news today. A new single, 'Change'! A new album, their first! Plus a gig at Last Place next month! With Bitter Defeat! And the False Waltons! And another trip to Hamilton in October!

So we got Leighton (guitar/vocals/looking exactly like Jared the drummer) to talk us through it all.

Hello! It's been a year and half since we last heard from you. What's new?

Leighton: Kia ora, it's been a little bit huh! I think the last time we spoke we were playing Hamilton to celebrate the vinyl release of our Two EPs record. We’ve definitely kept fairly busy since then. We went on a couple of North Island tours, which were a blast. We have also finished recording our debut album, Dreams That Feel Like Falling, which is set to be released on vinyl and streaming September 19th. We are super stoked with it. We have just dropped 'Change' too, the third single. We'll tour the North Island to support the album in September and October. But before all that, we are stopping by your wonderful city on August 30 to play alongside our buddies, Bitter Defeat. So lots of good times coming. 

Your recent single, 'Whole Thing Round', is about half as long and twice as loud as any other Cowboy Dan song I can think of. What led to the change of direction?

This one came about after we had recorded the first half of the album. Before committing to the tracks that would make up the remainder, I spent some time thinking about the balance of it and took stock of the songs we had for the second half. We needed something a little more driving and intense to balance out the album. I set a couple of parameters, it needed to be short, and it needed to be direct. It started almost as a joke, like, yeah, sure I can write a punk rock song. But then I got a feel for something and the lyric, "I will turn this whole thing ‘round", sounded kinda cool being repeated over and over, almost like saying it enough would make it true. A quick verse was in order to make it a song so I decided the verse would be 4 short couplets, one set per season, to paint a romanticised picture of a year; Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, all in a very short space of time.

​When I took it to the guys we fought the urge to flesh it out too much, and agreed that it could not go much past a minute. We loved how it turned out, both the energy and sentiment. We released it as the second single from the record as it just seemed like a fun point of difference for us. ​

'Autumn Leaves', which came out last year when you first announced the new album, has your familiar happy-sad jangle. How did you approach song-writing for the album? Should we expect any more surprises?    

Yeah, 'Autumn Leaves' felt like the right vibe for a first single. As you say, jangly, happy sounding, but with a definite sadness at its heart! It was one of the first songs that was written for the album, too, and it kinda set the tone. To us, an album remains a journey and therefore the songs that make it up, and the way they flow, needs to be thoroughly thought out. The songs that ended up on Dreams That Feel Like Falling have been carefully worked on over an extended period, to subtly push our palate in slightly different directions, whilst remaining true to our feel. At their core, these are still thoughtful, jangly, fuzzy rock songs that we enjoy playing live, but we have allowed ourselves to try a few new things within that world. We have focused a lot on different dynamics within and across the songs, and hope the result is an engaging whole that ebbs and flows a little. 

I hate to admit it but I missed your last Hamilton show with Search For Yeti in March, so I have to ask: have you been playing new material this year, or keeping it under wraps?

That was a fun show. Search for Yeti are a fantastic band, we love those guys! We definitely played songs from right across our catalogue. No hiding or saving tunes for us! We have played everything on the album live at one point or another. To start with we played them to kinda cement structures and parts. Then after finishing recording, towards the end of last year, it has been a natural process of them all finding their way into our sets. Some, like 'Change' and 'Autumn Leaves', have been staples since writing them, so they are well worn in. Others have slotted in fairly regularly, whilst others are rather mood dependent!


When it's far enough in the future to look back on recording your first album, what memories do you think will stick out?

I think in particular it will be little moments that really cemented the songs into the form that they took. Some tunes are ready to go from the moment they are written; easy and natural. Others may feel like a vibe, or are interesting in some way, but are missing something, or require a slight shift in perspective. I think the memories I'll hold are the little moments for each song, when it became clear they were needed for the album, and then the moments when we knew they were ready for the album. Sometimes there’s a good deal of work in between those two points, but that’s kinda the joy of the whole thing too, right? 

Quick, what are the top 3 reasons for people to leave the house and see you guys play on August 30?

1. Our happy-sad music is damn danceable. You’ll find even the most reluctant attendee tapping their toes, possibly even with a smile on their face, without realising the song is filled with dread, the breakdown of a relationship and a world spinning out of control. Fun for all.  

2. Our bassist Steve has been trying out a new shirt, it's fairly bold, but we are supporting his decision to wear it. He’s still a little unsure though. A little support would go a long way to boost his confidence in the wardrobe department. Steve needs you. 

3. Bitter Defeat are playing and they rule. Support your local artists, and reluctantly see us Aucklanders too.

HUP: Greg, how did you develop the concept for the ‘All Different Things’ video?

​Greg: The ‘All Different Things’ concept was me trying to combine the Frankenstein idea with my own style, which was slowly forming. It's fun to look at it now and marvel at how much stuff we got in the clip. All the props and stuff. All the help and people acting. In hindsight, it's amazing. I went all in to get all the elements. Metropolis Caffe as a location, lots of paper mache and bespoke robots made with trash…

Justin did a great job and has the best cartoon eyes. Marky Mark was the drummer. I painted his kit as a thank you. It's cheesy and Hammy and like most narrative clips drags in the middle, but I still get a giggle at the awkward presentation of the flowers that leads to the Kirstin ‘dream girl’ getting hit by Andy Newth’s Mercedes. I wouldn't try to make a clip with that narrative and that huge amount of visual treatment now. I'm older and lazier and understand how much $5000 actually is. But back then, I had a million bucks worth of drive and energy. 

HUP: I know so many of your videos, but in the mists of time I can no longer place them all in context. Where were you at in your career at this point, and how did you come to the attention of Rob Mayes at Failsafe, or the band, to make this video?

Greg: This clip was pretty early in my clip making career. I was at Waikato Polytech in Hamiltron at the time. I think we hired in a 16 mm film camera and used lights from the Polytech. I also had access to the edit suite there, so I would have cut it myself at nighttime... I ended up failing my degree in the third year because I missed too many core classes. On the other hand, I made between five and ten clips outside of class and essentially worked my way into the film industry that way. I made a couple of ‘Throw’ clips. And did a bunch with Failsafe. Rob Mayes was the first record company person to give me a shot and trust me.

[A little while later…]: I made this massive list of all the clips I've made, funded and unfunded.  The total is 96!!  The first actual NZ on Air clip was Inchworm’s 'Come Out, Come Out', and Throw would have been the year after that, so definitely one the first twelve clips I ever made. It makes me think I had better lift my game if I wanna hit a century of clips!
 
Fun fact: I made a claymation clip from the Throw song 'Honey Blonde’: I built a miniature drum kit for a claymation drummer to play. Then I re-used that kit with the mighty Rob Talsma playing it in the Inchworm ‘Shine' clip. Hehe.
 
HUP: The NZ on Air logos were ubiquitous in New Zealand videos at this point, but you added a twist here, with the logo found spinning immersed in a liquid in some kind of scientific glassware. Is this the one that got you into a little bit of trouble?

​Greg: Back then I always tried to make the NZ on Air logo fit the clip. I've never read the actual fine print of the NZ on Air grants. I knew the required size and placement of the logo on any NZ on Air clip and always met that rule. I've always believed the logo stood out more and was better received if it had a point of difference.

HUP: Kirstin, you played the love-interest to Justin’s mad scientist. How did you come to be involved in the video?

Kirstin: I was at film school with Greg, at Waikato Polytech. I was the year ahead of him, but he was–by far–the most prolific and hard-working student, making the most amazing stuff, and working on external projects like music videos, way outside the set projects. He fully embodied the idea of film school being about access to gear and made the most of being able to work around the clock. Our tutor Paul Swadel had been frustrated by his experience at Ilam, where there was one project brief a year and limited access to equipment. So, he ensured that we had 24-hour access to everything, the first AVID at a film school in New Zealand, and a lot of great projects. But Greg took it way further than anyone else. He was an inspiration. I hope no one reads this and feels offended, but I think it’s true! To an extent that was demoralising almost... I’m pretty sure I must have offered to crew on his work in order to be doing more myself! And partly because I wanted to make music videos too, but was far too shy to broach it to anyone. 

I helped him out with a few projects as a crew member, but it was both exciting and slightly scary to be asked to be onscreen in this one. The other reason is that I loved Throw, loved the album, and loved ‘All Different Things’ in particular.
 
HUP: I knew you then, and I have seen you a bit recently, but in this video you are absolutely unrecognisable. What did they do to you?!

​Kirstin: Haha! Greg gave me a red curly wig, and I think his lovely girlfriend at the time, Rebekah (I hope I’m spelling that correctly) gave me a silent film makeup job. Then I just did my best to do what I was told and not smile constantly (my default expression). I also bought a nun-like black dress which I wore for years afterwards.

HUP: Do you remember what direction you got on the night, and how the story was explained to you?

Justin: I like how you expect anyone to remember things from that long ago. Umm, no idea. Probably just the usual direction of "Do it again, but good this time."
 
Kirstin: I distinctly remember how much fun it was. We were in Metropolis Caffe after hours and, as always, Greg’s exploding creativity turned it into a mad scientist setting for a reanimated band, all designed to express feels to a lady. 

My job was to stay still, and try to be a mysterious silent era ingénue. Greg is a fabulous director. I was nervous but he definitely put me at my ease, gave me reassuring direction, and made it fun. His energy and enthusiasm carried everyone through, but we were all into it anyway. I loved this time at film school–and in my twenties–when working all night on creative projects was just part of every week. And perfectly for me I was a small part of the video, and not the main performance it rested on as Justin was.
​
Greg’s vision for the whole thing is so fabulous and well realised. He made or helped others make all the props from scratch, did or oversaw all the production design, storyboarded, directed, edited, produced, probably did a tonne of other stuff too. I put together a selection of music videos from Hamilton bands recently from the Contact 89FM era; about two-thirds of them directed by Greg, and all really, really good and madly creative. It’s hard to imagine the music scene of that time without his contributions. It was amazing to see just how many videos he made, and some that at first glance weren’t even obviously his, as he tried out different styles and genres. ‘All Different Things’ didn’t make the cut as Throw were from Christchurch, but it’s one of my favourites of Greg’s. Even down to the lovely touch of the NZ ON AIR logo in the specimen jar. 

This being the ‘90s and me being a tall girl who’d grown up on solid home cooked meals in the country, I was of course anxious I was going to be too heavy to carry. Justin staggers very convincingly. I’m not sure to what extent it’s acting!
​
I think Justin is fantastic in the video, as are the band. He really projects believable emotion, and luckily he carries the story, because to be honest I think it’s definitive proof I belong behind the camera and not in front of it! But it was an incredibly fun experience, and I loved being involved, and I can say I’ve been directed by Greg Page in a video for one of my favourite songs in which I died and was on the verge of being cut open and reanimated–which is ridiculously cool. 
 
HUP: Justin, do you have any other particular memories of the experience?

​Justin: Again, memory problems. I only really remember the order of filming. We filmed the ending early on. The lab stuff was done somewhere in the Polytech, I think. Actually, we spent a fair bit of time at the Polytech in those days. That's where Greg was often editing stuff, and we filmed at least part of two Inchworm videos there too. The cafe stuff in Metropolis was done late at night after they closed, I think. Then we went back to the Polytech to film the carrying Kirstin bit. I don't know if there was a fog machine involved or if we were waiting for some authentic Hamilton fog and that's why it was the last thing filmed. Then again, this could all be wrong. I'd suggest listening to what the others say and go with that as fact.

HUP: Kirstin, you are a screenwriter and film director, famous enough to have your very own proper Wikipedia page! Do you see this a stepping stone on your way to that?

​Kirstin: Well, you know the truth about the Wikipedia page. And Paul Swadel’s password is lost to time. I’ve considered writing to Wikipedia and explaining he made it to help me promote my film at the time, but I’m worried explaining would be a road to nowhere. [HUP: should we tell Kirstin that any page on Wikipedia is editable by anyone?]

I think being at film school with someone as hardworking and prolific as Greg was genuinely a stepping-stone - in terms of seeing evidence of what was possible if you genuinely went for it. I am more of a slow burn person, who’s made an order of magnitude less work than Greg, but I figured out my own path and somehow have just kept going. I’ve been working on scripts for a new project for years now but nothing has been right to go ahead with, although it’s starting to come together now... I am just grateful to Greg for the inspiration and showing me what was possible. It was also incredible to get to come through film school in the nineties. We didn’t realise sexism would be a thing we had to deal with. We had never heard the phrase 'self-care', and no one thought that sleep was something to prioritise. We all thought that the only thing that mattered was the work. I’m super glad that was my era, even as I’m glad some things have since changed for the better. The Hamilton music/film school/Contact 89FM scene was an incredible thing to be a small part of. 

Find Rememory on Bandcamp, or in the meantime, listen to the wonderful 'Wishes From Her Heart', below:

- Ian Duggan