Disjecta Membra on AudioCulture

New Zealand pop culture heritage site, AudioCulture, recently published my profile of pioneering local darkwave band Disjecta Membra. A band I’ve mentioned a few times already on the blog, and although I’m a big fan, writing this became quite a mission. It started out as a labour of love and wound up being something else entirely. 

I think the initial bare bones of the piece were drafted in early 2019, maybe earlier, then it was abandoned for months, before I could finally summon the energy to finish it, edit it, and submit for publication late in the year. It became something of a huge “mental block” for me - I carried on with various other writing projects throughout the year while this piece sat lonely and unloved in my work-in-progress file (aka, the “too hard” basket).

What I learned most of all during this protracted process is that you never quite know a band as well as you think you do. Even after it was published, after further editing by the site, the band’s key protagonist Michel Rowland politely contacted me to ask if a few factual errors could be corrected (done, to some extent, I think). When you’re writing a profile about something niche for a site as widely read and mainstream as AudioCulture, there is a danger that your account becomes definitive by default, and it’s hugely important to get timelines and band line-ups absolutely spot on. Otherwise, why bother? 

Another thing I learned is that it’s very difficult to condense 20-plus years of band history, particularly one with so many band personnel changes across that period, into a manageable, readable, digestible 1500 to 2000 words. Nobody visiting a pop culture website wants War and Peace, after all. 

Initially, back when the idea of a Disjecta Membra profile was still forming in my befuddled brain, I had approached Rowland to ask if we could sit down to record a conversation about the band’s 20-odd year journey. We’d previously met at one of his gigs a few years back, we shared mutual friends, and tentatively planned to co-author a piece about local musician Chris Sheehan (R.I.P.) for AudioCulture. Rowland is something of a keen historian and researcher, and a Sheehan fan, and I was hoping my own fandom and knowledge of Sheehan’s early years would help shape that piece. For one reason or another, that idea has been (temporarily?) shelved, and it turns out that life also got in the way of Rowland and I sitting down to chat about Disjecta Membra. I’d have transcribed the chat and use his direct quotes to form the basis of a band profile. 

With the benefit of hindsight, that would have been the best thing for all concerned. It is certainly what worked best for three of the four profiles I’ve previously submitted to AudioCulture, and it is a process I’ve become more used to when writing similar stuff for NZ Musician. Left to my own devices, without the time, will, or any real insight, it became very difficult, despite the band’s own meticulously detailed website being on hand to guide me. I still feel I didn’t do a particularly great job.

Anyway, you’re not here for War and Peace, and I’m most definitely not Leo Tolstoy, so just click here (Disjecta Membra profile on AudioCulture) to learn a little bit more about one of Aotearoa’s most underrated bands of the past couple of decades …