LOOP Recordings and ABC Recordings present Return Of The Aotearoanz at Fabric, London on July 4th 2002.

LIVE: Pitch Black, International Observer, Fat Freddy's Drop, Ebb, epsilon-blue and Koru

DJs: Freq Nasty, Nathan Haines, Downtown Brown's Sunshine Sound System, Salmonella Dub Sound System, peak:shift, Flic, Tubbs, Dean Webb (SouthSideSoul), Simone (Kog Transmissions UK), Golden Bay Sound System

THURSDAY 4th JULY - FABRIC, LONDON, UK
Three rooms and one fuck off 100% kiwi line-up
£10 presales/£12 door sales

What will undoubtedly be the largest showcase for New Zealand music outside of our own shores in 2002, Return Of The Aotearoanz is the follow-up to last year's roadblock London gig The Underground Sounds Of The Aotearoanz, held at Cargo on August 23rd 2001. The first Aotearoanz gig, which featured Pitch Black, Freq Nasty, Max Maxwell, Automatic and a Kog Transmissions crew, sold out with over 300 people having to be turned away. The buzz around the gig itself and feedback following the event have convinced us that there is a healthy demand for New Zealand acts in London, home to a 300,000+ market of ex-pat New Zealanders alone.

This year's gig Return Of The Aotearoanz features a bigger, broader line-up and will through necessity be held at larger venue Fabric, one of London's most popular clubs. With Return Of The Aotearoanz LOOP Recordings Aot(ear)oa and ABC Recordings will present a multicultural, multimedia spectacular starring last year's headliners Pitch Black alongside New Zealand's hottest live dance acts including Fat Freddys Drop, Ebb, epsilon-blue and others, with support from New Zealand DJs including London-based Freq Nasty, Nathan Haines, Flic and Dean Webb. The combined musical output of these artists spans the entire scope of modern electronic music, from reggae and dub to jazz and broken beats, hip hop and drum and bass, breakbeats, house and trance.

The reggae and dub scene in New Zealand has grown to be huge thanks in to dedicated DJs like the decade old Roots Foundation Sound System, and today New Zealand represents one of the largest markets in the world for Jamaican music. The reggae/dub influence is evident in the music of artists ranging from popular live dub soul "big band" Fat Freddy's Drop to bedroom boffins International Observer.

Performance-based artists Nathan Haines and Ebb are renowned in New Zealand and internationally for spectacular live shows, while home-recording house and techno artists like epsilon-blue and peak:shift are well known all around the world thanks to the efforts of leading local record labels like Kog Transmissions, Nurture Recordings and LOOP Recordings Aot(ear)oa.

The visual side of proceedings will be as much a highlight at Return Of The Aotearoanz as the excellent musical line-up, with premiere New Zealand VJs Mike Hodgson (Pitch Black) and award-winning music video director Reuben Sutherland (Ebb) co-ordinating projected visuals and Anneke Stewart, a young up and coming installation artist featured in the latest edition of LOOP magazine, in charge of décor.

LOOP Recordings Aot(ear)oa are using this event to launch themselves and their artists onto the UK market, with the simultaneous release of their first product available in the UK - a double CD and book entitled LOOP Select 003, based on the fresh new wave of New Zealand musical talent and including tracks from most of the artists appearing at this gig.

PITCH BLACK
Having pumped through New Zealand's electronic music scene since their inaugural performance at the annual electronic festival The Gathering in 1997, Pitch Black have spent five years rousing dance floor punters, generating rave reviews and winning thousands of fans around New Zealand and Australia. Hard to pigeonhole into a single musical genre, Pitch Black is a combination of musical journeys. Their sound is distinctive, ranging from organic ambient beginnings and layered soundscapes to skanking keyboards, cutting acid riffs and thumping rhythmic grooves, with dub being the glue that holds their sound together.

Their debut album Futureproof, released in September 1998, rose to the top of the NZ electronic charts despite no marketing or advertising. "It was the result of twelve months of musical and technological development, honing and refining the process of modern dub techniques, distilling songs developed during live gigs and refining them into finished tracks for release" according to Paddy Free. Their second album Electronomicon was released in August 2000, and followed by a sell out 30 date tour of New Zealand and Australia. It reaffirmed their position as the trailblazers in the flourishing New Zealand electronic scene. Last year they released a limited edition 12" in the UK through Kog Transmissions, which featured three of their tracks edited and remixed to be more suitable for the dancefloor, which Jockey Slut described as sounding "like a robotic Thievery Corporation"! It has been played by DJs such as Greg from Dreadzone and John Peel. They also spent several months during 2001 touring Europe extensively to play gigs and festivals in Holland, France and the UK, and will do the same over this year's Northern Hemisphere summer, with confirmed gigs including the prestigious Big Chill festival in June.

INTENATIONAL OBSERVER
Perpetrators of the International Observer experience are New Zealand-based expat UK keyboardist, songwriter and producer Tom Bailey, formerly of the Thompson Twins, together with turntable selector and graphic arts whizz Rakai Karaitiana. Their debut album, 'Seen', released on Different Drummer in the UK, may just help to change the way we think about dub derivatives as it establishes its own template miles apart from - yet still authentically rooted to - the original Jamaican art form. It has been called the lushest, deepest, most caringly crafted dub-a-tronic exploration ever released.

FAT FREDDY'S DROP
Wellington dub/soul supergroup Fat Freddy's Drop is a collective of
the city's most talented singers and players. These accomplished
musicians, drawn from leading Wellington bands such as TrinityRoots, Ebb and The Black Seeds, deliver a quality sound that swings between live improvisation and structured songs, anchored by the MPC of renowned DJ/producer Mu and fronted by super smooth vocalist Dallas. Regular fixtures around Aotearoa, Fat Freddy's Drop pack a live performance based around solid grooves and lengthy jams. Fat Freddy's Drop's live album Live At The Matterhorn is a best seller back home and Mu and Dallas' recent promotional single "Midnight Marauders/Seconds" (recorded as Joe Dukie and DJ Fitchie) was internationally acclaimed and is now earmarked for release by Berlin's Sonar Kollektiv.

EBB
From New Zealand's capital city of Wellington, organic three piece
dance act Ebb are renowned for their smooth grooves and extravagant live shows. Together, musicians Iain Gordon and Reuben Sutherland and diva Lisa Tomlins concoct a sound likened by some to Donna Summer meeting George Clinton and the Mad Professor in a cheap motel for some funky late night thrills. An Ebb performance is a guaranteed multi-sensory experience - cool, sexy and laidback, and accessorised with fitted suits, white slit dresses, vinyl upholstery, stunning visuals and sophisticated sounds. Their debut EP Plush Bomb was released in fine style with a now legendary all night extravaganza at Wellington's majestic Embassy Theatre and will soon be followed up with EPs on Chicago producer Common Factor's Tactile Music imprint and LOOP/Vinyl Junkies.

epsilon-blue
Techno-trance act epsilon-blue is one of the most established and popular amongst the NZ electronic dance music scene. The main man behind it is called Leyton, who also records as rotor+ when making ambient soundscapes, and son.sine when creating tech house styles. He has a reputation for creative, uniquely beautiful music and strong ethical and political views. His debut album Waterland was released in 1998, and is a journey through epic trance to dub to deep techno (remixed by son.sine) to lush ambience. His latest album is called We Have A Responsibility To Our Shareholders and is a meditation on the state of the planet and humanities role in caring for it!

KORU
Koru is the Maori word for waves, spirals and energy, unfolding and evolving upwards. Koru music is produced and composed by Peter K, a Maori who is based in Brixton, with collaborations from UK, Jamaica, Canada, Africa, India, Aoetearoa, Australia, Malaysia, Italy and Brazil. The new album United Tribes is a combination of ambient, tribal, breakbeat and psychedellic drum n bass, which comes together with power and atmosphere. Singing, meditation and musical gatherings have been practiced in Maori culture for thousands of years. Brixton is one of the world's great cultural and musical mixing pots and as such the music of Koru is the mystical sound of an ancient culture combining with cutting edge technology and the sounds from the Brixton Streets. Koru has played live at the Ministry of Sound, Brixton Academy, Subterania, Mass, Ronnie Scott's and the Megadog Eclipse Festival.

FREQ NASTY
Freq Nasty, a.k.a. Darin McFadyen, has over the last few years become known as the man behind one of the most unique sounds in electronic music. Acid, bent out of shape, coupled with super tight percussion, breaks, pinned down by fierce low end response have become the Freq Nasty trademark sound. Darin's sound was perfect, more varied, eclectic, yet still blew speakers.

A residency at Bryan G's Movement taught Darin early on the key to his success as a DJ relied heavily on ! bass. It was just a matter of time Freq recently left the supportive Botchit and Scarper label for Skint Records. As if to show people changing labels wasn't going to change him Darin released his roughest release to date, the agenda setting 'That's My Style!', a record that almost broke the Fabric nightclub's sound system. Freq has recently finished his new mix cd for Distinctive's Y4K series, and will follow-up his devastating set at The Underground Sounds Of The Aotearoanz with another stonking dancefloor session.

NATHAN HAINES
At times frustrating, at others precocious, but never less then inspirational, Nathan Haines is genuinely one the most talented musicians to step onto a stage or into a recording studio in New Zealand. Always destined to find New Zealand too small for his talent, Nathan recorded only two solo albums here. Nathan was a sensation around Auckland in his teens. His first recording with the band Freebass, 'Live At Cause Celebre', defined the inner-city club scene of Auckland perfectly in 1992 and although now deleted remains a classic example of acid jazz era Aotearoa music. In 1996, after fronting three years of legendary weekends at Cause Celebre with a band including DJ Manuel Bundy, pianist Kevin Field, and Nathan's guitarist brother Joel Haines, Nathan recorded his debut solo album "Shift Left", which remains as the biggest selling New Zealand jazz album in history. "Shift Left" was picked up internationally by legandary jazz label Verve, and released in 15 countries outside New Zealand.

Nathan quickly followed up "Shift Left" with the live album "Soundkilla Sessions 1", recorded at various gigs during 1996 and in a variety of studios in 1995-6. After a stint in New York, he reloccated to London, where he remains, playing and recording with the likes of Goldie & the Metalheadz crew and Phil Asher. His latest album "Sound Travels", co-produced by Phil Asher was the album that Nathan has always promised to make - a fusion of jazz themes, modern dance music and classic funk, and has been acclaimed as a masterwork by one of New Zealand's most successful internationally-based artists.

SUNSHINE SOUND SYSTEM featuring DOWNTOWN BROWN

The man not behind one of last year's cheekiest bootlegs - a hip hop cut up featuring Michael Jackson's Billy Jean bassline. Made 4 years ago as a DJ tool, this tune was favourably reviewed in Jockey Slut, Knowledge, Ministry (where it was leftfield single of the month), 7 and DJ. As Jockey Slut pointed out it was "wonderfully familiar and fantastically naïve", which Si attributes to the fact that in NZ they "are not subjected to hype .. and are (therefore) allowed to make a genuine connection with things we love." Based in Queenstown, Si is one of New Zealand's finest DJs, his style is very cut and paste and mix-up veering from ragga to dancehall to jungle to hip hop to funk in the space of minutes, it seems. His Sunshine Sound System features himself and two excellent MCs - P-Diggity and KP - who will both accompany him on his forthcoming tour of Europe. This year will see another track not by him, a bass heavy ode to Bob Marley's Mr Brown, due to be released on 4th July.

peak:shift
Currently based in the UK, Auckland techno artist Simon Flower (a.k.a. peak:shift) has been quietly releasing top quality New Zealand dance music for years on his vinyl-only record labels Nurture Recordings and South Exit. His previously low key local label Nurture Recordings was recently thrust into the limelight with the recent release of a compilation CD simply entitled Nurture, put out in conjunction with Kog Transmissions. Collecting tracks from the label's half a dozen 12"-only releases to date (and a previously unreleased track by newcomer Cyrus Facciano the compilation was an excellent overview of deep, minimal New Zealand-made house music, with tracks from Flower himself (both alone as Peak:Shift, and with Matt Cleland as Matton), Clone, Micronism and son.sine. Nurture's funkier house -focussed sibling label South Exit has thus far released 12"s by House Of Downtown and S.G.N.Y, and tracks from both labels will be featured in Flowers' showcase DJ set.

DEAN WEBB (SOUTHSIDESOUL)
Mixing records since 1991, Dean started with hip hop and eventually moved to house and techno. He was one of the establishing DJs at legendary Auckland club The Box from 1995-98 and has promoted some of NZ's most ground-breaking parties, including the Superfunk and Music People series which, among others, guested Joshua (Iz, Tweekin') and Corey Black (Imperial Dub). Now based in London, Dean is the resident DJ at SouthSideSoul - a Pacific-infused semi-regular Sunday session of funk, house, jazz, roots and whatever else feels right for a lazy Sunday afternoon. SouthSideSoul sessions have hosted guest New Zealand DJs including Manuel Bundy, Greg Churchill, Soane and Nathan Haines. Dean has DJed alongside the likes of Derrick Carter, DJ Sneak, Gene Farris, Gemini, Basement Jaxx, Ian Pooley, Jeff Mills, Luke Slater, Richie Hawtin, Nathan Haines, Rob Salmon, Dimitri from Paris, Space DJz and Doc Martin - but not all at the same time. He also released a mix CD with Greg Churchill on Huh Records and another on Freq Records, and is currently working on projects with Robert Barrett of Music Is... Records and a joint SouthSideSoul Base-meets-Flying Records venture with Second Base promotions and management partner Jen Fergusen. He also plays regularly in Leeds, Holland and France - where oddly enough they call him Dean Weeb.