1. Primitive Art Group – An Arctic Waltz (1983)
Primitive Art Group - Five Tread Drop Down (2 x 12", Braille Records, 1984)
This is a great starting point for Primitive Art Group’s music. It’s a live recording from the first Off the Deep End festival of improvised music, held in Wellington in 1983. After a couple of years of somewhat fluid lineups, by 1983 Primitive Art Group had settled into a five-piece of Stuart Porter (alto sax), Neill Duncan (tenor sax), David Watson (guitar), David Donaldson (bass), and Anthony Donaldson (drums). This composition was the first-named piece in PAG’s repertoire, written by Stuart Porter for the group’s appearance on TVNZ’s Nock on Jazz, hosted by pianist Mike Nock. This recording captures PAG at peak energy and musical creativity.
2. Stuart Porter / Anthony Donaldson / Euan Frizzell – Improvisation (1978)
Going right back to the beginning. Stuart Porter and Anthony Donaldson first met and started playing music together in 1978. This is an early recording of them playing together, at Stuart’s flat in Aro Valley in 1978. Here Stuart is playing a bamboo flute with a saxophone mouthpiece, Anthony is playing percussion (woodblocks, cymbals, gongs), and they are joined by viola player Euan Frizzell. It’s free improvisation, but quite different to the full-throttle, high intensity free music they were making much of the time. It’s quiet, spacious, almost Japanese-like in the negative space around the notes. This is a mode of music making that was present in their work all through Primitive Art Group and beyond. Anthony was a big fan of Kurosawa’s films, so perhaps some of the atmosphere of those movies rubbed off on his music.
3. 46 Grit – Grit (1979, excerpt)
Phil Davison was an Auckland tenor-sax player and pianist who moved down to Wellington after he heard news of the burgeoning improvised music scene in the city. His approach was high-energy free jazz, the kind of “fire music” as pioneered by Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, et al. On arrival in Wellington Phil formed a group with Stuart, Anthony, and bassist Martin Wilson called 46 Grit, which played shows at the Artists’ Co-op, a cavernous loft space housed in the old Dalgety woolstore building on Thorndon Quay. Phil also released arguably the first free jazz record to come out of New Zealand, a solo LP called Songs for the Dead of Gandamak, self-released on Bent Records in 1979. This is a recording of ‘46 Grit’ from a live performance at the Govett-Brewster art gallery in New Plymouth. It’s a great example of the full-on energy music that these guys were exploring at the time, and features some outstanding alto playing by Stuart Porter.
4. Primitive Art Group – Chant (1981)
This is a live recording of Primitive Art Group’s early lineup, which featured the five members mentioned in track #1 as well as Pamela Gray (cello) and occasionally Gerard Crewdson as vocalist and dancer. This recording was made at Rawa House, a venue run by the Ananda Marga spiritual group which had a vegetarian eatery and performance space in a three-story building which still stands at the top of Cuba Street. It was one of the only venues available for independent groups at the time, and PAG played a series of concerts here in 1981-82. This was in the the context of the heightened atmosphere of the Springbok tour, during which time PAG played anti-tour fundraisers and chaotic warehouse parties with punk bands such as Life in the Fridge Exists. In contrast, Rawa House offered the band a hushed, meditative atmosphere to develop the subtler sides of their music.
5. Primitive Art Group – Anthem (of True Grit) (1984)
This recording is Primitive Art Group live at Off the Deep End II, held at Thistle Hall, Cuba Street, in April 1984. This gig took place just before PAG recorded their first album, Five Tread Drop Down and this piece, ‘Anthem (of True Grit)’ was included on the double LP. This track shows Primitive Art Group’s music growing into more sophisticated, structured compositions and arrangements, with room for improvisation within them, an approach which was to develop further with their second album, Future Jaw-Clap, the following year. The move away from free improvisation and towards a more recognisable sound was a point of some contention within the band, with Stuart Porter later commenting, “By that stage we had become musicians in the conventional sense, just in spite of ourselves.” Others saw the move as part of their growth as musicians and artists.
6. The Family Mallet – Change of the Century (1985)
Off the Deep End II also ushered in some new faces to Wellington’s free jazz scene including Janet Roddick, Gerard Crewdson, David Long, Malcolm Reid and Richard Sedger, who formed groups with PAG members. These were called “subgroups”, with PAG referred to as the “mother group”. In the next few years this family of musicians would become known as the Braille Collective, self-publishing albums under the Braille Records label and forming around 20 different ensembles.
One of the first of the subgroups to emerge was the Family Mallet, a trio of Stuart Porter (sax), Anthony Donaldson (drums) and Gerard Crewdson (tuba). Crewdson was primarily a visual artist and playing tuba with the Family Mallet was his first foray into instrumental performance. His tuba playing gave the group a light, bouncy sound, which suited their reinterpretations of nursery rhymes and early New Orleans jazz tunes. For performances, Crewdson would often write dreamlike stories along with large, painted visual narratives (a practice he has continued since), which he would recite to Anthony and Stuart’s improvised soundtracks. This track is a recording made at the National Film Institute, an interpretation of Ornette Coleman's ‘Change of the Century’.
7. Our Name is Our Motto – Motto (1985)
Another of the Braille Collective’s many ensembles was Our Name is Our Motto, an all-horn quartet made up of Stuart Porter, Neill Duncan and Richard Sedger on reeds, and Gerard Crewdson on tuba and trombone. Sedger had been part of Wellington’s early punk scene in the late 70s with musicians including Kevin Hawkins (Shoes This High), George Henderson and Susan Ellis of Twisted Daydream, and had played bass in the And Band. Relatively new to the saxophone, in Motto he was required to read the charts of four-part compositions written by Porter and improvise with the others in the music’s free sections. Motto performed regularly in the mid 1980s at venues like Fred’s Cafe on Willis Street, the Depot Theatre, and Wellington City Council’s Summer City events at the Botanic gardens.
8. Jungle Suite – Improvisation (1985)
Jungle Suite - A Walk of Snipe (Braille Records, 1986)
Another of the Braille Collective ensembles was Jungle Suite, a trio of Neill Duncan (sax), Janet Roddick (vocals) and David Long (cello and guitar). Roddick had moved up to Wellington from Invercargill via Dunedin, where she studied opera singing. Improvising in Jungle Suite gave her the opportunity to develop a range of extended vocal techniques, which she put to good use in the Four Volts and later the Six Volts. While those groups used known songs as the basis for their musical explorations, Jungle Suite was pure sonic free improvisation. David Long, another newcomer into the Braille camp, was from the Hutt and had played guitar in Mark Austin’s Tin Syndrome.
9. Six Volts – These Boots are made for Walkin' (1988)
In 1986 Primitive Art Group and Braille split, with various members taking different musical roads. The Six Volts was the best known group to emerge post-Braille, and included Primitive Art Group members Anthony Donaldson (drums), David Donaldson (bass) and Neill Duncan (sax) alongside Janet Roddick (vocals), David Long (guitar/banjo) and Steve Roche (trumpet). Their byline, “A band of a thousand moods”, captures the sentiment of the group which aimed to be both entertaining and avant-garde at the same time. They would playfully jump between genres, perhaps doing a reggae version of the Coronation Street theme song before leaping into an improvised sound collage. As Neill Duncan stated, “The Six Volts gave me an opportunity to go, I’m an accessible saxophone player but I’m going to fuck you up by playing squeaks and pops, in an accessible way.” The band released two albums, toured New Zealand extensively, performed in several major theatre productions including the Threepenny Opera, and made one international sojourn to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
10. God – Piano (1989)
Post-Braille, Stuart Porter hooked up with a group of musicians living near Oak Park Ave, Te Aro, who found a new home in Angry Dog studio, housed in Stuart’s rundown flat on nearby Vivian Street. Here Stuart and his new collaborators including Brendan Ryniker, experimented with synths, samplers and electronic drums, creating a heavy, industrial sound. Their duo, God, featured Stuart’s screaming baritone alongside Brendan on drums and both playing an assortment of electronics. The sound was a radical departure from Braille’s more acoustic music, and paved the way for several more ensembles including Tongue, which featured Stuart and Brendan alongside Brian Hutson and Helen Johnstone. After departing the dingy Angry Dog studio, this group set up a well-equipped recording studio at Trojan House, near the Opera House in central Wellington.
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