History
kRkRkRk was founded in 1992 by James Robinson and Peter Wright — both members of TMA-1, alongside Richard Calder — as a cassette label and vehicle for self-releasing their home recordings and those of an expanding community of like-minded Christchurch artists. Operating as a calculated parody of the mainstream music industry, the label ran on a DIY ethic from the outset, producing high-quality, low-run releases for a small but dedicated national scene. The kRkRkRk catalogue would eventually number in excess of one hundred and thirty separate releases.
The label grew directly out of TMA-1’s own home-recording culture. Robinson, Wright and Calder recorded prolifically at informal spaces they called the Spent Member and Unslung Cat studios — the names were in-jokes rather than real venues — where the group combined post-industrial noise, drum machine, and self-deprecating humour into an enthralling body of sonic mayhem. kRkRkRk Cassettes became their outlet, and soon the outlet for a steadily growing roster of artists orbiting the same underground scene.
David Khan was central to the label from its earliest years. A contributor to TMA-1’s recording sessions and the driving force behind several of his own kRkRkRk projects — including leonard nimoy, vaccine, and later Drawing Room — Khan brought both performance and technical skills to the collective. His work with Drawing Room from 1999 onwards marked a key turning point: it introduced kRkRkRk to digital recording, as Khan worked with the Ensoniq ASR-10 sampling keyboard and CD-R production to expand the label’s sonic palette beyond its cassette origins.
James Robinson — who appears across the catalogue variously as J-Mz Robinson, J-MZ, and Jaemz Robinson — was one of the label’s most prolific contributors throughout the 1990s, recording as NoTV, Brainlego, Placenta Cookbook, Antibody, and under his own name. Drawing on early 1980s punk, new wave, and electro-industrial influences, Robinson produced a body of work spread across dozens of kRkRkRk releases. By the early 2000s he had assembled a substantial solo catalogue alongside continued contributions to label compilations.
Peter Wright was equally prolific, releasing material under aliases including Bent Gastropod Omnibus, In Vitro, and Coitus, while working collaboratively with Khan on several releases. In 1998, Wright established a parallel imprint, Apoplexy, for solo material, while continuing to co-run kRkRkRk. His solo output also appeared on other local labels including Last Visible Dog, Pseudoarcana, and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. In 2003, Wright moved to England, and operational responsibility for kRkRkRk passed fully to Khan.
Under Khan’s stewardship the label continued to release new material — including work by MiG-21, Drawing Room, and zerO — while Khan himself became an active portable studio engineer, working primarily on a Fostex X-26 four-track cassette multi-tracker before eventually upgrading to a Fostex VF16 digital hard-disk recorder. He brought the same home-recording ethic that had defined kRkRkRk into live and rehearsal environments, recording Christchurch acts on a mobile basis. A serious cardiac episode in later years significantly curtailed his capacity to sustain the label’s output, and kRkRkRk wound down gradually. Khan subsequently digitised the original cassette archive and made it available via Bandcamp, preserving decades of recordings that might otherwise have been lost.
Several kRkRkRk acts achieved recognition beyond New Zealand. TMA-1’s Screech! — the label’s most celebrated release — was issued on vinyl by Melbourne’s Ready to Rock Records (RTR 002, limited to 150 copies), one of the few times the kRkRkRk catalogue reached a physical format distributed internationally. Psycho-Kat contributor Justin Schilder later went on to collaborate with UK trance act Chicane.
Label Roster
- Alien
- Antibody
- Bent Gastropod Omnibus
- BOCCTAHИЕ
- Brainlego
- Coitus
- Crone
- Crude
- Cubicle
- Cute Robots
- David Khan
- DiS
- Drawing Room
- Ed Wilson
- Flinch
- Hiatus
- In Vitro
- leonard Nimoy
- Matt Alien And The Slaves Of Elvis
- MiG-21
- Montessouri
- Nick Hodgson
- Noise/Horror Collision
- NoTV
- Pish
- Placenta Cookbook
- Psycho-Kat
- Redrum
- Sedative
- TMA-1
- The Department Of Eccrinology
- The Urine Ate Her
- Thee Strapons
- Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One
- vaccine
- Wormwood
- zerO
Compilation Discography
- Fragment G (1994, KRK020)
- Two Slotted Cores, A Rectangular Window And A Thicker Section With Openings And Holes At The Front (1995, KRK040)
- Panic-Stricken Nurse Perambulator (1996, KRK071)
- The sequel to secret burning desire (1997, KRK082)
- TA/W (2001, KRK113)
- Strch prst skrz krk (2002, KRK127)