What is Dunedin Sound?

The southern New Zealand university city of Dunedin spawned a style of indie pop music in the early 1980s known as "The Dunedin Sound".

Similar in many ways to the traditional indie pop sound, the Dunedin Sound uses "jingly jangly" guitaring, minimal bass lines and loose drumming. Keyboards are also often prevalent. Amateur recording techniques also gave this genre a lo-fi sound that endeared its earnest music, but occasionally hard to understand vocal accompaniment, to university students worldwide.

The Dunedin Sound can be traced back to the emergence of punk rock as a musical influence in New Zealand in the late 1970s. Isolated from the country's main punk scene in Auckland (which had been influenced by bands such as England's Buzzcocks), Dunedin's punk groups such as The Enemy (which became Toy Love) and The Same (which later developed into The Chills) developed a sound more heavily influenced by artists like The Velvet Underground and The Stooges. This was complemented by jangly, psychedelic-influenced guitar work reminiscent of 1960s bands such as The Beatles and The Byrds, and the combination of the two developed into the style which became known as the Dunedin Sound.

New Zealand based Flying Nun Records championed the Dunedin Sound, starting with their earliest releases (including The Clean's single Tally ho! and the four-band compilation Dunedin Double EP), and many artists gained a dedicated "college music" following, both at home and overseas. The development of parallel musical trends such as the Paisley Underground in California and the resurgence of Jangle pop aided a growth in the popularity of the Dunedin Sound on college radio in the USA and Europe. The heyday of the movement was in the mid-to-late 1980s, although music in the style is still being recorded and released.

California's Pavement is but one overseas band that claims the Dunedin Sound as a major influence, and overseas artists such as Superchunk, Barbara Manning, Elf Power and Cat Power have each covered Dunedin Sound songs on several occasions.

Though the bands themselves tend to eschew the genre title, "Dunedin Sound" artists include the following bands and soloists. Not all of these musicians are from Dunedin, but all show the influence of the music which emanated from that city in the 1980s:

• Tall Dwarfs (see also Chris Knox, Alec Bathgate, Toy Love)
• Sneaky Feelings
• The Clean (see also David Kilgour, The Great Unwashed, Mad Scene)
• The Bats
• The Chills
• The Verlaines
• 3Ds
• Look Blue Go Purple
• Straitjacket Fits
• The DoubleHappys
• Alastair Galbraith
• Jean-Paul Sartre Experience
• Loves Ugly Children
• This Kind Of Punishment (see also Peter Jefferies, Graeme Jefferies, The Cake Kitchen)
• Superette
• Stereobus
• Bailterspace
• The Tin Soldiers
• Garageland
• Able Tasmans
• Bird Nest Roys

External links

• Flying Nun History 1980-1995
• Martin Phillipps & The Chills' Official Homepage
• In Love With Those Times - Article on Stylus Magazine

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