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JORDAN REYNE: How The Dead Live

A concept album exploring the story of early settler Susannah Hawes, ‘How the Dead Live’ was produced in partnership with DOC and Creative NZ. Reyne immersed herself in the Karamea with artifacts of Hawes to construct a narrative describing the harsh living conditions of an unsupported pioneer. Reyne has never been afraid to explore dark spaces and this conjures a barren and harrowing environment. The songs form a narrative following four characters: Susannah, her husband Henry, History and Death. It sounds highbrow to explain it, but the content is spare, intimate and has enough guts and shade to provide a satisfying mind excursion. Instrumentation is basic and mostly 19th century appropriate, along with an array of sampled wind, seas and clanking implements. Much Kiwi music isn’t inherently Kiwi at all, so it is interesting to encounter a work that delves deeply into the psyche of the land and our European forebears. A soundtrack to the cinema of unease, it is being distributed here by SOUNZ.

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