Album Review: Haiku Redo – Disco Summer (2025)

As I read through the Failsafe Records promo blurb for the Auckland-based Haiku Redo’s debut album Disco Summer, I’m reminded of the ancient proverb “mighty oaks from little acorns grow”.

The little acorns, in this instance, are a bunch of demo recordings from the late 90s, made by drummer and songsmith Craig Horne and his bass playing partner, Barbara Morgan. The mighty oak, if you will (hey, just go with it), is Disco Summer itself.

The demos were recorded during a period when both Horne and Morgan were preoccupied elsewhere, working alongside Kiwi pop chameleon Andrew Fagan (The Mockers), as members of the band Lig. The shelved demos never really went anywhere, but they did catch the ear of Failsafe Records guru Rob Mayes, and roughly a quarter of a century later, they were the remote catalyst for a brand-new album release.

 The timeline isn’t totally clear for me, but at some stage in the Haiku Redo backstory there was a suggestion that those demos be tidied or spruced up for wider consumption and a release on Failsafe. Horne decided he wanted to do a little bit more than that, and he wound up writing a whole bunch of new tunes. Those new tunes, plus one solitary original demo, became Disco Summer.

Joined by another former Lig associate, guitarist Kevin Moody, plus fellow guitarist Dianne Swann (The BADS, Julie Dolphin, many others), Horne and Morgan formed Haiku Redo, and the band released a series of catchy digital singles across 2024 ahead of Disco Summer’s more recent release.

All of the advance singles feature on the album itself, with the best of those for me being ‘Thinking of You’ which opens Disco Summer and almost works as a statement of intent – it is tight, melodic, and full of exactly the sort of guitar-led goodness most of us readily associate with Failsafe and indie rock in general.

Horne writes well. For the most part these songs are clever and well-crafted low key indie pop gems, with hooks aplenty, and there’s a deceptively strong element of humour threaded into the lyrics of many of the twelve tracks on offer (‘My Sisters Name’, ‘Fleetwood Mac Cover’).

The band can do slow and light (the title track, plus ‘It’s Just Too Long’) or they can do fast and heavy (‘Radio 1’, ‘Change is the Only Certainty’), but the overriding sense I get listening to Disco Summer is that this is a group of musicians who know what they’re about and what they want to achieve. A sense that they’ve played together a lot and enjoy that experience. I guess, also, their past connection from as far back as two decades ago would tend to support that notion. It all feels quite effortless.

The final track ‘Fleetwood Mac Cover’ might feel like a belated add-on at first, an irreverent lightweight novelty track perhaps, but it becomes quite a charmer when afforded the familiarity of a couple of listens. It isn’t, naturally, a Fleetwood Mac cover, rather it scoffs at the idea of performing one, and it’s a pretty cool way to close out the album.

You can pick up a copy of Disco Summer at Haiku Redo’s Bandcamp page (here).

 

Album Review: Springloader - Just Like Yesterday (2024)

Well, this is a lovely surprise, and a bit of a trip. An album which started its journey as far back as 1994, finally springing to life in November 2024. 

As the old Mainland Cheese advert used to tell us … “good things take time”. 

Springloader was initially the shared vision of Failsafe Records guru, Rob Mayes (guitars, bass), and founding drummer Dave Toland. In late 1993, with the band still very much in its infancy, they were joined by Michael Oakley (vocals, guitars), and Che Rogers (bass). 

The fledgling album began its rather fragmented life with the earliest recordings in Christchurch in the summer and autumn of 1994. Thirty years on, with a fair bit of interim tweaking, the (not really) ironically titled Just Like Yesterday has finally been released. There was essentially a dry run of the album in 2005, a low key release called Just Like Falling, which featured demo tracks and “as is” recordings of many of the tunes that make up the fully formed album we see today. 

I’ve got to be honest: beyond the music of Supergroove, Strawpeople, and one of two other local acts, much of the first half of the 1990s is a giant vacant void for yours truly when it comes to music from Aotearoa. I do know that it was a highly productive period for the genre we call “New Zealand Music” but because I was based in the UK for much of that era, I missed a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t land on those then-faraway shores. There was no internet back then, kids, and I’ve more or less been playing catch-up ever since.

And I also know - beyond nascent electronica, hip hop, and perhaps a bit of “rave” - one of the most prominent or popular genres in the UK in 1994 was this thing we’ve come to call shoegaze, with bands like Ride, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, plus the even more niche likes of Boo Radleys and Swervedriver, all creating their own unique brands of driving guitar rock. Guitar rock that had an even more distinctive sound than the job-lots of US grunge being imported into the UK at that time. Mostly indie-driven - during an era when the Independent charts mattered more than the pop charts - it was a brand of rock that was fresh and melodic, and one which mostly relied upon its carefully crafted wall-of-sound aesthetic. When done well, especially in a live setting, it could be exhilarating. 

Which is pretty much where Springloader comes in. If the then abandoned album, had somehow - by dint of some miracle - managed to find the ear of one or two of the influential UK radio DJs back in 1994, it may well have been a very big deal. Because when I listen to the title track, which opens proceedings, I’m instantly transported back to the central Glasgow bedsit I occupied for most of that year, and the music on the radio shows I spent most evenings listening to. 

But more than any of that, there’s an experimental bent at play on Just Like Yesterday which might just give the album an important point of difference. Alternate tunings and unorthodox guitar techniques, with Mayes, perhaps better known as a bass player, clearly enjoying the creative freedom that every guitarist-at-heart craves. 

Something that, with the aid of no little post-millennium spit and polish, tends to give it, with accidental reverence to its very title, a degree of timelessness. And there’s a sense that Just Like Yesterday could just as easily have been made during any of the rock n roll eras, bar perhaps, the very first one. 

‘Just Like Yesterday’ (the track) really is the perfect title track and advance single. An almost Byrdsian indie power-pop gem, it also offers us an early taster of one or two of the more unorthodox guitar settings that then go on to proliferate the rest of the album. 

There’s a good balance of higher tempo tracks (‘Nothing I Want More’, ‘Looking Out For You’) and more introspective slower tunes (‘Closer To Further Away’, ‘All That I Want’) before the album builds to a couple of dense near mini-epics in the form of ‘One More Thing’ and ‘Too Close’, nearer the end. 

At ten tracks, clocking in at around 45 minutes, Just Like Yesterday feels a bit more than the mere sum of its parts. Whatever else it might be, for me, it is already working as a stylistic reference point to a particular time and place. Which is never a bad thing to be. And yet, yet … as alluded to above, it’s not really that at all. 

It’s an album that comes complete with its very own very-rock n roll backstory. A story that has taken some 30 years to be told. A story told in quite some detail in the extensive sleeve notes that come with the release. The story of a previously lost album finally being found. 

The sleeve notes also offer a lot of other stuff - lyrics and chords - that for the most part can be filed away in the drawer labelled: Unrepentant Guitar Nerd Stuff. 

(Everyone has a drawer with that label, right?) 

And bonus upon bonus, if the accompanying press release is to be believed, there’s already a follow-up album locked and loaded to go for Springloader in 2025. 

Check it out the Springloader Bandcamp page (here).

Album Review: Beat Rhythm Fashion - Critical Mass (2024)

When Beat Rhythm Fashion returned after a 35-plus-year hiatus in early 2019 with a tour and a new album (Tenterhook, reviewed here) it felt like it would be a one-off. A chance for key protagonist Nino Birch to get some stuff off his chest. A belated swansong of sorts, and closure for a band that never really drew a definitive line under its former life as one of Wellington’s original post-punk pioneers.

An early/mid-1980s move to Australia, followed by the death of Nino’s brother and band mate Dan Birch in 2011, plus, I imagine, a host of other key sliding door moments along the way, meant the music of BRF, and that of Nino Birch specifically, was in danger of becoming little more than a distant memory for fans of the band’s earliest incarnation.

An inspired 2007 Failsafe Records compilation of early singles and other recordings, Bring Real Freedom, sought to remedy that, and it worked as a welcome reminder of the band’s early material. Underlining what might have been had choices and circumstances taken the brothers down a different path. It certainly stands as a great legacy document for that first phase of BRF’s existence.

 Another half decade on from Tenterhook, Birch and co-conspirator Rob Mayes have returned with Critical Mass, an eleven-track album release which expands on some of the themes explored on the “comeback” album, while also seamlessly merging the personal with the political.

One of the things I took from the band’s live performance at Meow in Wellington in 2019 (see here) in the immediate wake of the Christchurch terror attack - which had occurred a day prior - was a sense that Birch is a man who cares deeply about the world. A thinker, and someone who isn’t shy about asking hard questions. Almost every track on Critical Mass offers a lyric or line which seeks to provoke or prompt an alternative view of the world. Which is never really a bad thing.

And certainly, the intervening years between Tenterhook’s release and the slow burn evolution of Critical Mass have not been found wanting for source material: a marked worldwide political swing to the right, horrific wars - at least two of which border on mass genocide - and of course, there’s been that global pandemic thing.

Beat Rhythm Fashion offer takes on all of these things, and more, and it’s impossible to fully absorb Critical Mass without being prompted to think a little bit outside the box. Even if it’s just for a fleeting moment, that might be enough.

Musically the album is polished listen. Despite the logistical issues Birch and Mayes would have faced living in different countries, with Birch based in Australia and Mayes in Japan, sending lyrics, ideas, and musical stems back and forth in order to pull everything together. Something they’ve achieved with aplomb.

Naturally it has the same post-punk feel the band has always been associated with, but as with Tenterhook, it’s a much fuller sound than that really early stuff. Birch’s voice has aged well, and I’d contend that Critical Mass contains some of his strongest, most nuanced vocal work.

There’s a lot to love about where Beat Rhythm Fashion finds itself in 2024. I only hope there’s more to come …

Best tracks: I can’t go past ‘Asylum’, one of the softer mid-album tracks, as my favourite. There’s just something about that track which resonates strongly with me. Not only the delicate tensions within the music itself, but its lyrical content, and the wider resignation that “this is not my world” and we can’t just “make it go away” … plus, the pre-release single ‘No Wonder’, ‘Remote Science’, ‘Atonement’, and the closer ‘Doubt Benefit’.

But look, it feels churlish to single out specific tracks, and the whole album is solid. Critical Mass is one of those rare local (well, local-ish) releases that just gets stronger with each and every listen. An album, perhaps, that may require multiple listens before all of its subtle charms are fully exposed.

You can buy Critical Mass here.

The Return of Beat Rhythm Fashion

For me, Beat Rhythm Fashion were always one of the great lost New Zealand bands. Indeed, one of the great lost Wellington bands. A near mythical band I’d seen on Radio With Pictures back in the distant sepia-tinged days of 1981 or 1982. A band I was unable to witness live and up close, simply because I was too young. By the time I was of an age to start attending gigs, they’d long since disappeared. Over before they really got started. But I loved what I’d seen and heard, and over the past couple of decades I’ve regularly sought out YouTube clips of the band’s precious early singles, 'Beings Rest Finally', and 'Turn of the Century'. What I never expected to happen was that in 2019 there would be a new album, Tenterhook, or that I’d finally get the chance to see Beat Rhythm Fashion perform. Albeit a version of the band without founding member Dan Birch, who died in 2011.

Dan & Nino Birch, photo: Charles Jameson

That gig is at Wellington’s Meow, this coming Saturday night, and it will feature original guitarist/vocalist Nino Birch (Dan’s brother), well-travelled drummer Caroline Easther, whose connection with Birch and BRF extends all the way back to 1981, and Failsafe Records’ main man Rob Mayes, who produced Tenterhook. It is, to some extent, a bucket list event for me, and for the past few weeks I’ve had Beat Rhythm Fashion’s music on high rotation. Ahead of the gig, I want to share a few interesting/related links for the curious (see footer), and to record a few thoughts about each of the band’s albums - not comprehensive reviews - just a few notes on each.

Bring Real Freedom (2007) 

One of the reasons I refer to Beat Rhythm Fashion as one of this country’s “great lost bands” is because for some 25 years its only material legacy was three early singles, and no accompanying album. Failsafe Records put this right with the release of this 2007 compilation, which included those singles, the related B-sides, and a selection of live tracks from that same early period. It’s essentially the album we didn’t get at the time. The first two singles, ‘Beings Rest Finally’ and ‘Turn of the Century’ are obvious stand-outs, as are ‘Welfare State Rent’, ‘Song of the Hairless Ape’, ‘Art and Duty’, and ‘No Great Oaks’, although it remains something of a mystery to me all these years later which of the latter pair was the actual third single. I’d always thought it was ‘Art and Duty’ but I note that the band’s “Discogs” page lists ‘No Great Oaks’ as the A-side, not the flip. There’s also an early version of the current (2019, digital only) single ‘Hard as Hell’. Bring Real Freedom’s live material, recorded by Chris Cullinane, restored by Rob Mayes, scrubbed up very well, and was a long overdue bonus for those fans seeking a more expansive set than anything offered at the time. The belated album served to document the band’s pioneering post-punk roots and strong early-Cure influences, and given the overall strength of this work, I’m left to ponder what might have been had Dan Birch not made the decision to relocate to Australia in 1982. A move that ultimately meant the end of Beat Rhythm Fashion, or at least, what might become known as “phase one” of Beat Rhythm Fashion.

Tenterhook (2019) 

If there is a “phase two”, or to be a prolonged phase two - and Nino Birch has suggested there’s more to come - then Tenterhook is a great way to kick things off. There’s a lot to like here, and lost brother Dan’s influence remains omnipresent, with four co-writing credits on some the older material featured - ‘Hard as Hell’, ‘Freezing Mr Precedent’, ‘Optimism’, and ‘Property’ - plus there’s a Dan Birch original (from 1993) in the form of the excellent ‘Nothing Damaged’. More than that though, Nino Birch’s own songwriting on Tenterhook’s newer material is exceptional, and there’s a sense of genuine progression here, with an expansion beyond the band’s original palate to include more pop-styled hooks and a much fuller sound. I wouldn’t go so far as to say any of it is particularly uplifting, but it does feel less gloomy, less generic, and perhaps more personal than the circa 1980-1982 stuff. Particularly on the track ‘Dan’, where Nino Birch attempts to offer some context around his brother’s death, with that tune’s lyrics resonating most, to remain firmly stuck in my head long after the track has finished. Credit must go to the work of Easther and Mayes too. In fact, perhaps the biggest triumph of all, on an album full of them, is the fragmented way Tenterhook was pieced together, with the three core constituent parts - resident in Australia, Japan, and New Zealand - somehow managing to produce an immaculate fully formed whole. 

Sample lyrics from ‘Dan’ … 

“You were never at home, so you got wild with all your drinking
Your common pathways were lost in the acute darkness of your thinking
And your friends watched you leave from the tyranny of distance
But you never achieved from this path of least resistance

Oh your mind, twist and turned
As your soul crashed and burned
You were never up for this ride
So what the hell were you thinking
Damn it Dan, Damn it Dan!”

Some great links if you’re keen to learn more about Beat Rhythm Fashion, both past and present: 

Andrew Schmidt’s Audioculture profile from 2013

Radio New Zealand’s interview on the second coming (broadcast last week)

Gary Steel’s recently published Q&A with Nino Birch. A prolific writer about the Wellington 1980s post-punk scene, Steel was there for the first incarnation of the band

Beat Rhythm Fashion on Bandcamp