Also known as: –
Location: 172 Kilmore Street, Central Christchurch
Christchurch Central, Christchurch 8013, New Zealand
Current Status: Demolished post-earthquake
Active as a live music venue: 2000’s – 2015
Bar Manager: –
Bookings: –
Website: –
Capacity: –
All-Ages: House-Parties
History
Crime Front was not a bar or licensed venue in any conventional sense — it was a sprawling six-room wooden villa at 172 Kilmore Street in central Christchurch that doubled as a communal hub for the city’s independent music scene from the early 2000s through to 2015. Built in the colonial villa style typical of inner Christchurch, the house offered ridiculously cheap rent and a large footprint that attracted musicians, recording engineers, and creative workers who could not afford studio or rehearsal space elsewhere. At its core it was simultaneously a home, a recording studio, and a rehearsal room — and on a regular basis, a late-night performance space for the city’s underground.
A decrepit old wooden villa on Kilmore Street occupied primarily by Michael Boulden (who used the space as a recording studio / video editing office) and professional musician Simon Nunn, whilst other musicians (including The Pickups / Terror of the Deeps William Daymond) came and went over the years — taking advantage of the 6 rooms and ridiculously cheap $200 rent.
Both Boulden and Nunn have strong connections to the Christchurch live music scene – particularly the Stefan van Soest Hit Machine (of which Nunn has been a long-time member), and as such hosted a large number of house parties over the years.
One room was set up as a practice space, so there was always an array of amplifiers and a drum kit available, and parties would often stretch far in to the early hours, particularly after the earthquake impacted neighbors gradually moved out.
In the early 2010’s, Boulden lent keyboards to Nunn’s drums, guitar and vocals, forming the duo Bergerac – an eclectic studio creation, forming the pseudo-label Crime Front Kilmore to release the material.
Nunn, originally from Whanganui, had been a fixture of the Christchurch scene for nearly two decades by this point, with credits spanning Kate and the Lemon Tree (SFRQ 1994 winners), The Steffan van Soest Hit Machine, The Undercurrents, and the High Tone Destroyers. Boulden brought a complementary background as a self-taught sound engineer with sixteen years in television post-production. The duo’s debut album Freezing was released via Bandcamp in December 2014 under the Crime Front Kilmore imprint – a blend of funk, psychedelic, world, folk, and rock textures built around an arsenal of organs and Casiotone keyboards.
The house was heavily damaged in the Canterbury Earthquakes, however it was still habitable for quite a period after, until finally being marked for demolition in 2015.