Canterbury Commerce Club
Multi-purpose hall at 277 Kilmore Street that served Christchurch folk, rock and community events from 1968 until the 2011 earthquakes. Home to the Christchurch Folk Music Club for many years, with a capacity of around 120.
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C1 Espresso
Coffee shop and informal live music venue at 150 High Street, active from 1996 until the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes. Closely connected to student radio station RDU, which at one point operated a studio from the premises.
Blue Smoke
Live music bar within the Tannery complex in Woolston, opened in 2015 in the former Gustav’s Kitchen space alongside the Cassels and Sons Brewery. One of Christchurch’s more active mid-sized venues.
Wunderbar
Quirky two-room bar built into the hillside of Lyttelton, opened in 1991 by German publican Jörg Schwarz with a distinctly Berlin-influenced interior. One of the port town’s best-loved live music venues.
Quadrophenia
Central city bar that had live shows from local bands such as Future Stupid, Loves Ugly Children, Range, Hawaii Five-O, Creeley, Ape Management, Brother Love, Space Dust, Snort, Squirm, Pumpkinhead and early Salmonella Dub, plus touring groups such as Superette, Nothing At All, and Wendy House.
Located upstairs on the corner of Lichfield and Colombo Streets (though the address is Colombo Street, the entrance was actually on Lichfield) and ran by the Yee family for a few years in the mid 90’s.
#livemusic #christchurch
High Street Project
High Street Project was a long-running art gallery set up as an artist-run, not for-profit project with a particular focus on emerging artists. Housed by multiple venues (in and around Christchurch’s High Street) over the course of 19 years, it also functioned as a performance space for a number of underground or experimental acts prior to the Canterbury Earthquakes of 2010 – 2011.
#nzmusic #artgallery #highstreetproject #musicvenue
Ride On Super Sound
Ride On Super Sound is fundamentally a record store, stocking a wide variety of new and used vinyl along with comics, zines and merchandise as well as being the retail touch point for Johnny Electric Lathe Cuts, offering musicians the opportunity to cut, package and release their own records in a single location.
#recordstores #local #culture #comics #rideonsupersound
TV Eye
TV Eye was a collective rather than a label, with releases comprised of group, duo and solo material from the musicians that made up the South Island recording collective The Picnic Boys, plus a couple of hard-to-find compilations that include the same groups and a handful of others who may or may not feature key members Kevin Smith, Steve Watson, Pat Faigan, and Tim McCleod.
#tveye #nzmusic #thepicnicboys #sayyestoapes
Arclife Records
Arclife Records was an excellent ‘home-grown’ independent label formed by the Arclife Trust, an arts organization that formed out of the Arc Cafe in central Dunedin.
The label had a strong, tight-knit community of local Dunedin groups on its roster – many of whom had moved on from the by-then Auckland based Flying Nun Records.
#nzmusic #arcliferecords
Log Recording
Biography Log Recording was a warehouse and studio space occupied by ‘The Henrys’ – i.e. Henry Nicol and Henri Kerr of local industrial / punk / noise group Log Horn Breed (hence the name), plus local punk figurehead Lance Downing,… Read More »Log Recording
Celebrate Psi Phenomenon
Celebrate Psi Phenomenon is a drone, noise and experimental music-focused label from Upper Hutt’s Campbell Kneale, the prolific performer behind Birchville Cat Motel and Black Boned Angel. The label often utilises a distinctive wallpaper aesthetic to their cover designs.
The label was particularly prolific from the mid 1990s until around 2008.
#nzmusic #experimentalmusic #dronemusic #celebratepsiphenomenon
Monsterr Records
Short-lived Wellington-based label. Their catalogue is book-ended by a couple of compilations, but otherwise their roster included releases by a handful of local rock’n’roll groups, the most well-known of which is probably The Raskolnikovs.
#nzmusic #monsterrrecords #theraskolnikovs
Root Don Lonie For Cash
Prolific cassette, CDr and lathe-cut label run by Clayton Noone (aka CJA) and utilised by a fair few New Zealand (and some overseas) artists since the mid 1990s. Their first few years of releases had distinctive spray-painted covers. The original Don Lonie was billed as ‘America’s No. 1 high-school assembly speaker’, who recorded several albums for popular Christian record labels in the early 1960s.
#nzmusic #undergroundmusic #rootdonlonieforcash
Beat Atlas Records
Tiny late Christchurch-based label formed by Mike Richardson and headline act Barnard’s Star, who released 2 lathe cut 7″ singles and a CD EP of terrific electronic-infused shoegaze on the label. The other notable act is Hawaii Five-0, an excellent organ-driven indie-pop group that served as the debut of Annabel Alpers, who later found fame as Bachelorette.
#nzmusic #barnardsstar #hawaiifive0
Apoplexy
Fine formerly Christchurch-based (their first release was a 7″ Lathe by Atonal Death in 1998), that released 18 experimental or ambient productions between 1998 and 2003, before label-head Peter Wright moved to London in 2003.
Ever-linked with the similarly-focused kRkRkRk label (who also release Wright’s material), Apoplexy has a less industrial focus, releasing artists such as Polio, Antony Milton, and with a back-catalog that includes material as varied as Atonal Death and Nick Hodgsons’ CM Ensemble material.