Playing a rare show at City Gallery Wellington, The Dead C continue to fly under the New Zealand music radar despite international lauds. MATTHEW DAVIS asked guitarist and vocalist Michael Morley if it was still a bugbear.


YOU WOULD expect The Dead C to be a household name around New Zealand. Instead, mention the three-piece to many local music fans and you are more than likely to receive a blank stare.

Despite constant praise from esteemed international music rags along with performances at some of the world’s biggest music festivals, this pioneering noise-rock outfit have remained an anomaly in their homeland for the last 20 years.

Yet speaking with guitarist and vocalist Michael Morley from his Dunedin studio it seems that this is far from a concern.

“It is not frustrating; it goes with the territory I think. I guess they [New Zealanders] just didn’t like what we were doing,” guitarist and vocalist Michael Morley laughs. “We don’t feel like we have been passed over in any kind of New Zealand music history, it is just something that occurred.”

“It is no big deal really, because we have this very interesting life that is outside of here, which keeps us kind of removed in a way I guess. We don’t want to be like that but it has kind of been forced upon us by circumstances not really of our design,” he says.

Nevertheless it has not prevented the trio influencing a wide range of bands from the likes of Pavement, Sebadoh to Will Oldham, meanwhile last December they even played the popular All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in the UK. Invited by their good friend Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), the group performed alongside infamous acts such as The Stooges, MC5 and The Gang of Four.

With the music scene thriving in Dunedin during the late 1980s, Morley would often gather with guitarist Bruce Russell and former Verlaines drummer Robbie Yeats to listen and talk about music till eventually they decided to form a band.

“We got together to play music because we kind of thought at the time we could do that. It sounds a little punk rock in some ways and it kind of is, as we were all influenced by that,” Morley recalls.

Over the last two decades The Dead C have developed an exciting and raucous reputation, built around storming rhythms and fiery feedback all nestled in a psychedelic ambience and plenty of sonic experimentalism.

“I think it is true we are an acquired taste but I think a lot of music is like that but I don’t think we are unique, we just sound the way we do and we operate the way we do and guess I have kind of been able to survive like that,” the ever modest Morley says.

Throughout the threesomes output has been nothing less than prolific, having recorded so many albums even Morley has lost count, while last-year saw the band release a two-CD retrospect, Vain, Erudite and Stupid: Selected Works 1987-2005.

“There has never been a rush to do a whole pile of stuff, it has just been a slow evolution of figuring out what we might do. It has been good to have it like that,” he says of their working process.

It is an approach that has also allowed Morley to establish himself as an artist, and some of his more recent work is currently being exhibited in this year’s Telecom Prospect at the City Gallery Wellington.

Much like his music, Morley’s pieces plays with the contrasts that occur in moments framed by silence. In one explosively coloured painting he depicts a record player mid-song and by titling it after the first Palace Brothers LP, There Is No-One, What Will Take Care of You, he draws out the unique and personal cultural connotations that will come from each individual viewer.

“I have been painting for 20 years so it is just an ongoing research of looking at painting and what it can do, and silence’s has kind of offered itself as an interesting area,” he explains.

“You have different responses to what it is. I am looking at how that can be manipulated as a visual thing.”

In turn his music has had a more direct effect, with overseas touring allowing him to visit galleries and speak with artists around the world.

“Yes, that is the benefit. Anytime I have gone to another big city it has been with the band generally and it’s always been being able to fit in a gallery show or a museum show,” he says.

“I have to admit to having dragged Robbie and Bruce around London, going to these hilarious video shows where not a lot happens but I was having a great time.”

In some respects this has come full circle, with Morley’s work now providing the band with an opportunity to play their first Wellington show since supporting Sonic Youth in 1993.

Unfortunately Morley says this is the only New Zealand performance planned, however the group is set to soon release their umpteenth album, For Future Artists. Maybe this time it will not be just those overseas that notice.