Erewhon Calling : Experimental Sound in New Zealand (The Audio Foundation/CMR)

Bruce Russell, who edits this 2012 collection of essays, describes the book’s primary intention as avoiding a "single-author text-book approach [which] could only ever be both inherently biased and too limited in perspective.” Instead, Erewhon Calling includes a “room for many voices . . . a collage [made] from multiple and possibly conflicting voices and points of view.” Because the book’s topic involves experimental music/sound from New Zealand, this is going to be quite a collage, filled with conflict.

Focused mostly on the late 1990s and early 2000s, Erewhon Calling includes a range of voices and perspectives on experimental music in New Zealand. Some of the contributors are participants. Others write from a critical distance, academics and archivists documenting and theorizing about what makes this sliver of down under so important.

Contributors include Branden W. Joseph, Michael Morley (The Dead C, Gate, Wreck Small Speakers, et al.), Byron Coley, Alastair Galbraith, Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel) and Antony Milton (PseudoArcana label), Nathan Thompson (Sandoz Lab Technicians), Sean O’Reilly (Chug), Kim Pieters (Dadamah, Flies inside the Sun, et al.), Rachel Shearer (Lovely Midget, Queen Meanie Puss), among others.

If curious, Graham Reid offers a very useful critique of the strengths and weaknesses in this text. Lean in on the strengths.