Photo: Finn Zemba

Just prior to Christmas Muzic.NZ's Tim Gruar dialled up Te Whanganui a Tara based five-piece Electric Tapestry to have a bit of a korero over MS Teams about the band’s evolution, DIY recording in a leaky chapel and songwriting about space and toxic masculinity.

The band (Nick – guitar, vocals; Aaron – guitar; Geoff – guitar, vocals; ‘V’ or Volker - bass; Gabe - drums) describe their output as “a space rock dish of creamy psychedelics, metal chunks with a pop topping”.

Songs vary significantly from 80’s South African soul to shimmering Dunedin, chunky funk, layers of warm fuzz, crystalline blues lines and occasional heavy metal lead guitar riffs.

With three very different guitar players there was always going to be some extremes of diversity in their repertoire. Perhaps this was founded out of frustration from their previous musical groups and the new found freedom to create from scratch, especially when it came to creating a show case soundscape for rhythmic noise, echoing harmonies and sonic washes - disparate styles stolen from across decades of alt-rock.

We’re chatting online, instead of in person mainly because it’s the Silly Season Christmas and we are all currently rushing about sorting their Secret Santas and so forth.

Also, Nick’s had a bit of a run in with a rubbish truck and confined to barracks for the time being. He was traversing one of the Capital’s ridiculously narrow streets on his cargo bike when he slipped on the greasy street surface just as a big Garbage truck came hurtling up towards him. Splattering arse-over-kite across the road Nick’s leg went under one of the back tires and his tibia and fibula was broken in two places. “When I got to the hospital,” he tells me, “They said that it was one of the luckiest we’d seen. If the truck had been travelling slower, my leg would have just been amputated on the road or if the tire was in a different place my foot could have been crushed or my knee destroyed. Or even my thigh.”

At least there’s material for a song. “Ha Ha. Yes, I was thinking of my bones knitting back together and that made me think of tapping and I wrote a song around that – like the arpeggio of an 80’s synthesizer.”

Photo: Supplied

Electric Tapestry, Nick tells me started off about 5 or 6 years ago when he and Aaron worked together at the same school. They knew of each other but not that well. “Aaron was the IT guy at the school,” says Nick. “And right before he left to work elsewhere, I found him listening to Mastodon. He said he was trying to learn their songs. And I said “Wait, you play guitar? Maybe this whole time we should have jammed together”. But later he came around to mine and we started jamming. I had no idea he had such similar tastes in music. We had similar tastes. We like the heavy style music, but also other stuff mixed up like postpunk. Also, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, indie pop bands, 80’s Dunedin bands, Kiwi legends like The Mutton Birds, Blam Blam Blam, The Clean, Straightjacket Fits. A lot of different sounds.”

They started jamming in Nick’s garage. Then Geoff was invited to jam as well. “But there was a problem because now we had three guitars. Who leads, plays rhythm, etc.?” But instead of a complication, it became a strength. They worked out a formation, using drum sequencers for backbeats.

“We started writing songs almost straight away, working as a three piece. But then it was ‘Lockdown’. During that time we just swapped ideas by email and on Zoom. But as soon as that lifted, we wanted to take the bank further doing actual live gigs – Valhalla, Moon (lots), San Fran, Meow, some house parties, Aro Valley Hall, Thistle Hall, supporting bands like and Dave and The Dirty Humans, Voodoo Blue, Mister Unit, S H E, Cherry Punch, Lung and other Welly alt-rock acts.

The band have embraced the DIY ethic from the beginning, especially in the studio, having been completely hands on for all three of their three EPs: Origins (2021), Adrift (2022) and Warship Across (2024). “Mainly these were home recorded. But another friend of ours, Rob Morrison, had a small studio up the road from me,” Nick tells me. “He did drum parts on some of the tracks on the Origins EP” His little studio was called The Church. It was a small A-frame with a tiny steeple roof” Not the securest of buildings, though, Nick notes that after on particularly bad storm the roof developed a leak and nearly destroyed the computer holding the files of one artist’s latest album. “Fortunately, they’d already mastered most of it because the leak eventually fried the whole computer!”

For Origins, not having a drummer or bassist did provide a few challenges, Geoff says “we made some choices about not using a click track. But somehow the bass and drum parts were recorded together and we couldn’t separate them out, posing a few challenges. But that ‘added to the uniqueness of some of those songs.’

The end result was a result of a huge learning curve for the band. There were moments when the recordings were ‘very organic’. Two tracks could get away with digital drums tracks but more complicated songs like St Kilda which has multiple time changes needs a live drummer. “We also learned that even the more obvious ones, which you could use a drum track, like the funky Octavius can really benefit from a live engine room. Which is why we still include it in our set.”

When it came time to lay down tracks for the second EP, Adrift, the lessons of the last efforts could be applied. Nick laughs. “You think so!" For that they’d recruited a drummer and bassist determined to get a better, more cohesive sound in the sessions. “The first time we did the drum tracks; it was on an electronic kit. But the sample for the open hi-hats wasn’t loaded or didn’t appear loud enough. So, after laying everything down, we had to record the whole thing over again!”

Covid, understandably had a major impact on the band, who were especially itching to get back out and play live after a 15-month forced hiatus. That was when then took on a number of gigs around the capital and wider afield such as Napier and Auckland.

During the Christmas of 2023, the majority of their latest EP Warship Across was recorded at St James’ Church in Lower Hutt. The building is an imposing 50’s modernist concrete box, which provides plenty of ambient reverbs. Nick found the space through the school he teaches at, which is affiliated to it. “It’s very sparse, not a lot of stock materials inside. The outside is very brutalist. It’s quite ‘concrete’, even the cross on top of the roof. It’s very angular. I went there, with one of the school’s worship bands and I was listening. And even they sounded amazing. And thought “Man, I should just bring my band in to record there. ”So, a while later we moved all our gear in and set up for a day. We got the sound engineer from San Fran to set up some mics, closed mics on the snare and the bass, but the rest was what was bouncing off the walls.”

A place like that can be really bright, sound bouncing off all the walls and hard surfaces. “Mics were moved around until we found the sweet spots. One mic, quite far away and two were surprisingly close. At the time I was obsessed with Steve Albini’s (Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies) blunt, harsh recording style.”

“Our old drummer, Paul, wasn’t happy, telling me not to release it.” Nick reflects, “But I thought it sounded amazing, the sound of us in a big room, minus the audience.”

“But” he continues “Paul liked drummers like Phil Collins, people like that, recorded with closed mics. He loved that 80’s precision, like Genesis. I wasn’t into that.”

There’s a long tradition of recording in churches, halls and similar spaces. Cowboy Junkies made Trinity Sessions in a chapel, with the ambience of the midday traffic bleeding in from time to time. Joy Division’s Martin Hannet recorded in lift wells, toilets and a crypt (where songs for Closer were tracked).

“I think for Warship Across people could have a problem because there was potentially too much echo present. But I wanted to do it (record in a church) at least once, and those songs were lending themselves to that ‘space’, I think. But in a vast space like that you get what you get. It’s true, that the more control you have around a recording the more you can alter it, reverse it, and change pitch, tempo etc. Do whatever you want. But recording live, you capture the ‘action’ of the band. The performance. It (the recording) creates its own flavour.”

But they all acknowledge that when V and Gabe had joined, with the overall sound of the band also changed and those recordings don’t necessarily represent where the band is right now, it’s evolutionary path. It would be fair to say the band have a love/hate relationship with them. However, Nick was still keen to put it out having spent so much time, energy and money on the project.

“Since then,” he says, “We have recorded new material at Music Planet with our current lineup which we hope to release in due course.”

Photo: Finn Zemba

I ask about how the band goes about writing and composing material. Initially, our songs had outer space and sci-fi themes. “I’m not great at lyrics,” admits Nick. “Usually when I write music, I have a kind of ‘vibe’ around it. I give to Geoff, for him to write the lyrics. Maybe I have a theme, concept or even a song name. He’ll take that rough thing and go and create something”

Geoff notes that when recording, it was always the guitars that took prominence, with the vocals placed back in the mix, making it had to understand the lyrics. “But in the early ones, we were into ‘space themes’, like being ‘adrift’, floating, stars and weightlessness, stars…”

That’s the musical direction they were initially following. “Even St. Kilda (from their debut Origins EP),” Nick adds, “Has some floating bizarre space-rock moments. And with feedback and long distortion trail which is kind of sci-fi rock.”

To me, it’s a reminder of alt no wave acts like Big Black and Sonic Youth. “My first gig,” says Nick, “was Sonic Youth – mid 1990’s, at the Logan Campbell Centre. Guess who the opening band was? Foo Fighters!” I saw the Sonics on the very same tour at a crumbling St James Theatre in Welly later that week. “Is that the gig where a huge piece of plaster fell down on the crowd? ”Yes, it was."

But it’s not all sci-fi these days. As the music progressed the themes have to changed. Most recent material, recorded at Underworld in Wellington (but not released yet) have more serious messages.

For example, Lions Breath (a yoga move) deals with toxic masculinity. “I was thinking about Old Boys Clubs and Schools like Auckland Grammar and the logo for Lion Red Beer. And then I overheard a conversation between my daughter and my wife about how evil guys can be. I was shocked. They were talking about what men really want and what they can do, their hidden agendas. I didn’t really know anyone like that. And they reminded me that all my friends were nice arty, liberal types not like those men they were talking about.”

“But the very next day I met this real (nasty guy) who totally fell into the criteria they were talking about. It was like ‘Life’ tapping me on the shoulder to remind me there are people who can be like that (and I shouldn’t be so naïve). I think the truth is in the middle between all the nice guys I knew and the evil ones they were talking about. So, the lyrics I wrote from the point of view of a guy trying to give advice and advantages to other men – ‘check your spam for the invitation to the Old Boys Club’.”

“I also wrote different song, called Kaleidoscope about micro-dosing. There’s a whole different message going on there.”

A video of both these songs are due out this year sometime. So, which the band works on new material, they plan to drip feed releases as they go. Keeping the momentum up.

Photo: Supplied

Because of Nick’s injury Electric Tapestry has been in hiatus but with recovery advancing rapidly.

Just confirmed is their next outing at Valhalla in Wellington on 9th January, with Danny Rascal, supporting local alt-rock grungers Intercite.

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