THE ADVENTURES OF LABRADFORD

Rip It Up, Issue 216, 1 August 1995, Page 15

THE ADVENTURES OF LABRADFORD

Flying Nun Records have just signed a new band with a member whose name is Carter.

Carter Brown is the bespectacled keyboardist with the American ambient-pop band Labradford. He’s already well acquainted with the history of New Zealand’s longest serving indie; he counts Bailter Space and the Gordons amongst his favourite noisemakers, and his Virginia-based trio once played a rather unsuccessful set on a bill with the 3Ds. “We opened for the 3Ds and Super Chunk at this club full of 16 and 17 year old kids who were there to rock and bang their heads. They weren’t very receptive to what we were playing. They yelled a lot and start-

ed to throw things... I think Labradford are a pretty significant challenge for your average rock club goer.” If that’s an understatement, then it suits Labradford’s music perfectly. Their favoured approach is to build a mostly vocal-free song, using an atmospheric keyboard melody as a starting point, then let the tune develop its our course. Coming over all introspective and insular on their second album, A Stable Reference, the tempo is so sloooooow you want to question its makers whether they own a pulse, or just gobble valium like smarties. "At this point, none of us are that active

with drugs. They’re an influence in terms of being part of life experience, but they’re not something we need. But if you smoke some pot and sit in a dark room, I think we’d feel that was a fairly good approach to the music.” The Flying Nun connection came about when Brown and his fellow bandmates Mark Nelson (guitar/vocals) and Bobby Dunne (bass) first toured the UK, where they met Brian O’Neill, publicist at the Nun’s London office. A deal was, quite simply, struck. Nun NZ will soon release Labradford’s debut record, Prazision, an album that had unsuspecting music writers Stateside salivating,

and unashamedly competing to write the most intellectual analysis of the album possible. Mark: “That’s quite true and sort of ironic, because it’s music that aims to be almost free of any intellectual process. I really believe the enjoyment has to come first, because I think Labradford is by, for, and about, the imagination, and the emotional realm of experiences. It’s something that is left open to the human urge to understand and define something, but I do think some people agonised over it too much. It should just be enjoyed.”

JOHN RUSSELL