- what / Promoter, Label, Publication, Sound System
- likes / Techno
Obscure is the original New Zealand dance music website, a long time event promoter (along with it's offshoot) and occasional record label.
Obscure has been around since about 1993 or so, and online since 1995. (it's the longest running, no matter what some others say - check the DNS records, and we were online for at least six months before the obscure.co.nz domain was used)
We've been organising (mainly techno) events in Wellington City, New Zealand since that time, most recently the Fun Poison series, but through the years almost too many to count.
After a couple of out there rock gigs, things really started with a seminal event called Psychic Droid, along with Andy Pickering who now edits remix Magazine...
A few months later Andy and Psi opened a club called Biosphere. Biosphere ran for three months or so before the inetivable burnout of both punters and cashflow. Fond memories though.
Obscure matured, with regular one-off events, alongside covering the evolution of Wellington and New Zealand's dance culture, releasing the Skankatronics and LRS CDs, and creating the Psurkit series of parties.
More recently, upping the sound quality stakes, we created such monsters as The Visit, featuring Cristian Vogel, Bang Psurkit and the now legendary Fun Poison label.
- Driven to Oblivion
- Psychic Droid (With andy P)
- Biosphere (With Andy P and the Unarius crew)
- Hexanaut (Feat Mechanism, Omni and the first jungle played in Wellington)
- Aspera (With Halogen)
- Sequential (At Valve, with Coda, Feat Mechanism)
- PRG (Warehouse party, with Mike O)
- Psurreal (Invite only psurkit list party)
- Psurkit (Bangin! with Liebling)
- Skankatronics (Several gigs, With Teth)
- Psurkit++ (Feat Whinge)
- Bang Psurkit (Feat Polarity)
- Psurkit Breaker (Introducing Cuffy anf the Stereonasties)
- Push Psurkit
- The Visit (Fear Cristian Vogel)
- Jerk
- Fun Poison
- Funpoison 2
- Fun Poison 3 (Feat Nick Spice)
- Fun Poison: JP (Osaka, Japan, Feat LRS, Polarity and VJ Edison Shop)
- Fun Poison 5 (Nick Spice, Nelson, Wellington),
- Fun Poison 6 (Brighton, UK, Feat Jason Leach of Subhead)
- Fun Poison: Karnage (Feat DJ Sueme of Subhead)
- Fun Poison: X (Feat Mayuri Fastback form Tokyo)
- Funpoison: Audiovenom
The Obscure website started back in the days of Netscape version 1 - using a crusty old Mac and Teachtext to put together pages.
News and info on the Welly scene went up, maybe weekly or fortnightly. It was pretty primitive. But so was everything back then.
The Wellington scene really started rolling around that time, our first steady flow of international djs, lots of promoters trying to make it happen. Compulsive sleepdodgying and seedy dj's.
The addition of a video camera led to a huge collection of thumbnail pics over the next couple of years. UK based DJ magazine featured us in one of their early internet columns. Cool!
Around that time Lily Star came on board, the Skankatronics gigs and CD happened, we were updating daily, with pics, gossip and tall stories. We also opened the Psurkit mailing list, the first dance list in NZ. Word has it the even the police were watching, wondering if we were tied in to a dance party drug cartel.
Psurkit was a wild ride, almost killed our pal's mailserver. One day we decided to kill it, cos it was just getting too noisy. The next day a new, invite only list called Psecret started - and still runs to this day - where the old and crusty of the NZ scene get together, gossip and chat about the rugby.
Obscure is run out of Sydney, Australia, with agents in Wellington, Queenstown, Auckland, Christchurch and all over the planet.
We cover dance music in New Zealand, and check the occasional outsider who dips their toes in to our pecular variety of this culture.
New Zealand has top talent, and seems to finally be looking inwards and realising this instead of lapping up the next best thing from offshore.
Obscure will be here as things mature further, documenting and recording, providing some history and perspective.
Respect to
Masif
Juice
Eden
Radioactive
The Roots Foundation
Discotek
The Gathering
Entrain
Espressoholic
Midnight / Havana
The Matterhorn
