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 …
When
Michel Rowland of Disjecta Membra revealed late last year that the band’s debut
album from 1997, Achromaticia, was about to benefit from a twentieth anniversary
makeover, I knew immediately that I needed to pick up a copy. Despite already having
a copy of the album in digital form, I pre-ordered the expanded triple CD set
online and waited some months for its arrival. There were delays,
mostly due to the fact that Rowland is a staunch perfectionist who wanted to
get every last detail of the release exactly right, but late last month the
CD(s) finally turned up in my letterbox. It’s fair to say, it was well worth
the wait.
The
release is made up of the original album on one CD, plus two further CDs
containing demos, live tracks, covers, and excerpts from a Contact FM radio
interview recorded while the band was still in its infancy. My purchase
included a fourth element in the form of an additional digital download, which
features more odds and ends of that ilk. The whole thing presents a fascinating,
comprehensive, grassroots-level overview of one of Aotearoa’s most unique
bands. In
fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe the Hamilton-born, now
Wellington-based Disjecta Membra as this country’s leading darkwave or goth
rock band. Rowland – as founder (in late 1993), vocalist, and principal
songwriter – has always been at the heart of all things Disjecta Membra, with
various band members coming and going over the course of the past two decades. The
album’s inlay and liner notes acknowledge the other key individuals involved,
and to some extent those notes work as a potted history of the band. That booklet, and the packaging in
general (photos, artwork, notes), is a lovely bonus. The
music on the core album itself is typically dark and cinematic. It opens with
the dramatic ‘Cathedral’ and builds in intensity from there. ‘Cathedral’ finds
Rowland channelling the not-quite-yet ghost of Andrew Eldritch and that track pops up again later in the form of a Deus ex Machina
remix. For me, it is the heavier tunes within the 14-track set, such as ‘Rats’,
‘Cauldron of Cerridwen’, and ‘The Sleep’ which hold the most appeal. But
there’s a good mix of stuff – from shorter tracks like the dreamy spoken word wonderment
of ‘Malcolm’, and the one-minute interlude of ‘Androgyne Waltz’, to the
theatrical-almost-epic qualities of the 11-minute-plus closer ‘Danse Macabre’,
which never quite lets you breathe out. In short, the album covers a great deal
of ground. Probably
not quite as much ground as the three bonus sets (two discs, one download) however,
which offer huge insight into how the band evolved. It has to be said, some of
the earliest demos, the basement and garage recordings, are a hard listen,
simply because of the poor audio quality. As you’d expect from material of that
description, and vintage. Similarly, a lot of the live stuff sounds a little
worse for wear. Yet, for all of those flaws, there’s real energy there, and a
genuine sense of the post-punk spirit which clearly drove the band in its
fledgling form. Most captivating, for me, are the various covers on offer, with
work by some of my own favourites – The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, and
Siouxsie – all getting at least one box ticked. Overall,
the triple CD/four-set release is a wonderful snapshot of early Disjecta
Membra. It’s one of those time-and-place things. If you weren’t there – and I
wasn’t – it doesn’t really matter, you can catch up now with this massive collection
of archive material. Probably more Disjecta Membra than you’ll ever really
need, but well worth the indulgence all the same. Terrific stuff. Read
more about Disjecta Membra here, here, and here. Disjecta Membra's website And you
can read more about Michel Rowland’s “other” project here. Here's Cathedral ...
