I started making noise in 1993 – the year I became involved with the kRkRkRk Recordings collective. The sonic detritus from broken instruments, sound-generating implements and devices was recorded on equally dodgy 4-track gear in an effort to vaguely emulate music I admired in the areas of punk and industrial rock. No small inspiration was provided by classic DIY NZers such as This Kind of Punishment, Bruce Russell, Xpressway et al...

As well as noodling away in the corner of my room, I also played in various bands, the most notorious of which was leonard Nimoy – an aggressive industrial noise-rock outfit which endured from 1994-97. Following the demise of the Nimoy, I started a solo project called Drawing Room. This traded drum machines and metal bashing for a more introspective kind of music based around an Ensoniq sampling keyboard. Although Drawing Room was initially devoted to song/lyric experiments, after about 2000 I largely abandoned writing songs (due to acute embarrassment and technical ineptitude) and focussed more on abstract music in what you might call electro-acoustic mode.

On a purely formal level, this involved combining various found sounds and acoustic textures with their digitally sampled and processed complements. In hindsight, I can see that the lure of abstract music was its promise of untrammelled freedom – especially in contrast to the structural constraints of songwriting. However, after tinkering with and within the medium for several years, I’m now inclined to see ‘structure’ and ‘improvisation’ as reciprocating currents within the same field of creativity. If my current musical activity has a ‘goal’ at all, it lies perhaps in seeking to illuminate the co-dependence of these seemingly incommensurable elements.

My primary collaborator in leonard Nimoy was Peter Wright with whom I have continued to work over the years. Our first post-Nimoy project, in the company of Justine O’Gahdra-Sharp, was DiS (1998-2000) – an electro-acoustic, performance art trio. More recently (2002-03), Peter and I teamed up with ex-Aesthetics drummer Rustle Covini in The Beautiful Losers – an improv, avant-rock project, which of course bears absolutely no relation to overseas acts like Angels of Light, Godspeed or Stars of the Lid. Collaborations with other artists have included the Morricone-inflected, folk-noir trio BOCCTAHNE (1999-2000), with Megan Gallacher and Ed Wilson, and MiG-21 (2001-03) – a wilfully playful & tasteless industrial-glam-pop outfit, which also featured Ed as well as ex-Nimoy Mikel Goodwin & kRkRkRk co-founder J-mz Robinson. Since mid 2005, I have continued to work with Rustle and Mikel (kRkRkRk has always been so incestuous it’s a wonder we don’t all have two heads!) in zerO – an experimental rock project that combines Nimoy-era intensity with the pop aesthetic of MiG-21. CDR collections of all these projects have been duly released to deafening silence. However, even if our early (and naïve) fantasies of fame and fortune have faded away almost to nothing, the fascination with strange textures and noises remains undiminished.