Goldenhorse: Flogging the Goldenhorse
Author: Mark Bell
The laws of physics tell us that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and boy was there ever a reaction to progressive rock. Where prog was complex, sprawling and technical, punk was simple, direct and visceral. It led Frank Zappa to comment rather peevishly that people were getting dumber, but in truth punk was just the Anti-Prog Avenging Angel, wresting control from the bloated behemoth rock music had become.
It's been 25 years since the punk explosion, and while a return to the excesses of the early '70s is unlikely, the musical climate now seems capable of supporting musical lifeforms that display a certain disdain for the powerchord, conventional chord progressions and even, heaven forefend, the dance-floor.
Reined together three years ago, Auckland band Goldenhorse are currently riding a mini-wave of musical expression that has quietly rippled its way through the country, finding wide acceptance among those with an ear for something original and unique, not to mention haunting, diverse, lyrical, cinematic and yes, complex.
This mini-wave appears to have kicked off about the time that Ed 'Cake' McWilliams and Goldenhorse co-founder Geoff 'Creeting' Maddock first came to prominence with the brilliant and willfully wiggy Bressa Creeting Cake.
Having released the wildly original 'Papa People' album they promptly disbanded, in their wake have emerged the likes of Pluto, The Brunettes, Lucid 3 and, from the ashes of BCC, Goldenhorse to carry on the fight against the dumbing-down of our musical gene pool.
Ex-Sneaky Feeling Matthew Bannister, currently finishing a PhD on NZ rock history and no dummy himself, was recently moved to write a treatise on this dumb-backlash in Metro magazine, with Goldenhorse rightly playing a starring role. Geoff however, won't buy into any messiah nonsense.
"I don't really feel part of a movement, although often those things reveal themselves in retrospect," he sagely points out.
I'm talking to bassist/ acoustic player Ben King, keyboardist/guitarist/arranger/producer/songwriter/vocalist Maddock and his golden-voiced offsider, vocalist/songwriter Kirsten Morelle in a conference room at distributors EMI Music. We're talking about their brand new debut album 'Riverhead', their brand new record deal with brand new label Siren and plenty more besides.
In real life Kirsten Morelle does not look at all well. Last night on TV in their 'Golden Dawn' video she was a ruby-lipped vampire temptress, but today she looks like she's had all the blood drained out of her. The diminutive singer has a raging cold, a bad cough and should really take her wan features home to bed. The fact she's here doing an interview at all says a lot about the commitment Goldenhorse have to their music. Geoff, always something of an enigmatic type, initially appears to wish he was elsewhere too, but eventually warms up as the interview progresses.
The story of the making of 'Riverhead' is a somewhat sprawling one, as befits the stylistic diversity of the music. It began in a now condemned building in downtown Auckland's Fort St on 24-track analogue gear owned and lent by Tim Finn, who happens to be a fan. This equipment was then moved out to a house in the Waitakere Ranges - Waiatarua, where the band set about the major task of soundproofing and setting up from scratch.
Living in an adjacent house made for a pretty intense period of recording for Ben, Geoff and Kirsten, while drummer Joel Wilton, also late of Bressa Creeting Cake, would commute to sessions after work.
Eventually Waitarua also became untenable, forcing a re-think as to the viability of making the pure analogue record Geoff had wanted.
"We were trying to finish off and being a bit long-winded, and so we had to try and tie things up. One of the ways we could do that was to move to Pro Tools, because then we could work not only in the studio we had, which had become cumbersome - the rent was up, the owner wanted to move back..."
