The 1980s

Sam grew up in Ōtautahi; his mother was a trained classical pianist who compelled his brother to play piano while Sam learned recorder. “I started playing guitar at about thirteen or fourteen,” he says. “Just taught myself guitar, and some rudimentary keyboard skills. But they’re, yeah, very rudimentary.”

He can play a bassline but is not a bassist, and he can hold a beat, but is not a drummer: “I couldn’t do a fill to save my life. I can play a one-drop and a hiphop beat, and a four-four dub beat. That’s about it.”

So, what music did he hear at home? “The Beatles, Tom Waits, that sort of thing,” he says, “some classical stuff, just a lot of boomer music really.” And did he get into the classical stuff himself? “Yeah. Just by playing it. I was really into Handel.”

With its peaks and troughs, layering of instrumentation, and commitment to a piece taking as long as it needs to, dance music has often been compared to classical. How does this relate to what he later did with Alpharhythm? “Some of the melodic sensibilities are a little bit, I would say, overblown,” he says, “but I can think of a couple of songs that are strings-driven, sort of anthemic. Not neoclassical, but alluding to it, I guess.”

In his hometown, Sam played in several bands, including one playing grindcore, and they influenced his musical journey. He went from “Zeppelin to punk rock, to metal, to industrial, which went into dance music. Then I got a drum machine and started ticking away on that.”

1990s & 2000s

The year was 1990, and the drum machine was a Roland MC-303. Sam “pretty much” taught himself how to use it. “It was just a step sequencer really,” he says. “Basically, people considered the MC-303 to be a toy, and I pushed it to its limits. Everything had to be really minimal, because if I put too much stuff in, it would just start glitching and freaking out. I was quite constrained by how many layers I could put in a song. But I was all about minimal techno anyway, so it didn’t really faze me too much.”

Sam moved to Dunedin in 1998 to study anthropology at University of Otago. There, he played at Eudaemony parties as Algorhythm, and caught the attention of Simon Kong, who “dragged” him into playing at the 1998/99 Gathering, which was “actually, a pretty fucking cool thing to do,” he concedes. Cool enough that he played the legendary New Year’s Eve party two more times.

In 1999, Sam got a computer and started programming on it. The same year, Kog Transmissions released a house compilation called Algorhythm, so he decided it was time for a slight name change. “I was a bit over the mathematical overtones, and I did like the name Alpharhythm. So, I just went with that.”

In 2006, Sentient Beings was released on CD, the first and (so far) only Alpharhythm album, and it sold 400 copies. The tracks fall at various points on a matrix between dub, trance, and techno, but mostly it is an album of lovely long instrumentals, where the withheld drops are all the sweeter when they fall.

Irie Eyes and Italiks

In the 2000s, Sam was part of a band in Dunedin called Irie Eyes, initially with Jesse Gubb, Luke Parry, Nick Aitcheson, and Johnny McCaughan. Gubb and McCaughan left early on, and singer Tokerau Wilson joined. Sam says that after hearing “a couple of absolutely stunningly beautiful” reggae songs written by Tokerau, he decided they needed a band behind them. He played guitar and sang, and recalls they had “so many drummers” (including Stu Harwood, Jarney Murphy), before Paul McClennan-Kissell “made the drum stool his own”. Other members included Kerry Dale on saxophone and the late AJ Hickling, who played drums for their last show.

Irie Eyes played at Alpine Unity (2000/01), Kaikōura Roots Festival (2005), Rippon (2006), and performed support slots for Salmonella Dub, The Black Seeds, and Rhombus. They made some recordings, but Sam notes that most of it is still sitting in a hard drive and due to differences in opinion between band members, “probably won’t see the light of day”. However, Irie Eyes played a crucial part in his musical development and there are echoes of the band in his latest productions, although Sam thinks his vocals are “a hundred times better than that now”.

Sam has been teaching himself to sing, and he admits that in terms of finding his voice, getting more technically proficient has taken some time. He enjoys singing as Italiks, a dub outlet through which he performs with Ben Dudding (who is in Deep Fried Dub along with Ben Hartley). With Sam playing guitar and singing, and Dudding on beats, dubs and melodica, Italiks and Deep Fried Dub are now a live act, featuring tunes written individually but also ones they’ve worked on together.

They’ve known each other since the mid-1990s, “just going to parties in the early days in Christchurch,” but it wasn’t until Ben returned from Melbourne to Christchurch in 2022 that Sam realised that they should “probably do some shit together” and hit him up. Then Sam got Covid, and had to isolate at a friend’s crib at the Taieri Mouth. So when Ben sent some beats he says he started writing to them in “a slightly delirious state”.

On their first single, ‘Crown’ (available from Dubmission on 7" vinyl), the duo lay down a classic dub beat, with Ben’s high melodica line swooping in before the bass drops, warranting another buildup before the vocal finally joins, Sam sounding confident in voice and lyrics. You can really hear the seamless blend of styles on the B-side, a dub remix that showcases the pairing of the phat-as bassline with Jamaican-inspired melodica. The Bandcamp digital download features a Misled Convoy ‘Shadows of Humanity Remix’, where Michael Hodgson (Pitch Black) brings his love of echo and delay for some pre-dawn darkness.

Like most local musicians, Sam has day jobs. A painter by trade, he also subcontracts to the Department of Conservation, undertaking trapping and repairs on the remote tracks he loves: “Every few weeks I sneak away for a bit, and that’s actually become part of my creative process, certainly in terms of lyric writing. I’ll be walking through the bush, and just start writing as I go, especially if I’ve got a long walk ahead. Might as well occupy myself while I climb a big hill. Quite a few of the songs that I’ve been working on, the genesis has been plodding around in the bush just writing as I go.”

So why is he so underground? The answer is uncharacteristically expansive, and takes in his commitment to his family, but also his love of lo-fi underground artists, until he gets to this: “I guess I just make music mostly for my own edification, but also to get respect from people whose opinions that I value. Like, the fact that someone like Jasper [Edwards, of Dubmission] liked one of my songs enough to press on vinyl, that’s a fucking big bucket list tick for me. Just getting respect from people whose opinions I respect. That’s all I’ve really been chasing.”