leonard Nimoy profile

Compared with earlier kRkRkRk projects, leonard Nimoy adopted a more concrete & focussed stance which reflected the desire of both David & Peter to get more serious about music. In spite of this fact (or perhaps because of it!), leonard Nimoy was forever a project in search of itself. The group passed through a number of distinct stylistic phases - each of which involved a near complete reinventing of themselves & an abandoning of previous work. No wonder so much of leonard Nimoy's music brims with a sense of restlessness & frustration. The group never really knew where they wanted to go &, perhaps, they tried too hard to get there! Undoubtably, all of these issues contributed to the expressive power of leonard Nimoy's music - but also to the group's eventual demise.

With the benefit of hindsight it's clear that leonard Nimoy never achieved the ironic detachment, refreshing lack of pretension & sheer charm of kRkRkRk's founding group: TMA-1. They would, however, attain a level of expressive violence & intensity in their music seldom seen in New Zealand, let alone Christchurch.

The story went as follows… in March 1994 David Khan approached Peter Wright (a fellow student radio DJ &, already, a good friend) with the idea of forming an experimental band to perform & record music of (locally at least) unprecedented extremity & intensity. Disenchanted with the shoe-gazing Britpop & American grunge-rock dominant in Christchurch at the time (this was still early days for rave culture), David & Peter had begun to explore authentic industrial/ambient music & early 80's New York no-wave antirock.

Things were not entirely barren on the local scene. In the preceding year both David & Peter had witnessed several astounding performance art events staged by Leyton Davis & Jason Lane under the monikers Silium 19 & CeLL. In a considerably higher-tech & more polished manner than the kRkRkRk projects of the time, Jason & Leyton fused electronics, samplers & synths with elements of traditional rock & heavy dance music. Their performances usually involved close associates (for example: Simon McClaren of Love's Ugly Children & Emily Buttle - later to work with Leyton in the astonishing art group Melisma) playing other instruments or indulging in more performance art style activities such as pantomimes, body sculpture & action painting.

Ultimately, however, leonard Nimoy would not follow Silium 19 & CeLL down the track of Skinny Puppy, Frontline Assembly et al. Rather, David & Peter took their cues from classic New Zealand experimental bands such as This Kind Of Punishment, Skeptics & The Dead C. Overseas influences included the industrial primitivism of early Einsturzende Neubauten &, most especially, the no-wave dirge & brutality of early Swans.

Therefore, leonard Nimoy mark 1 concentrated on minimalist, dirge rock driven by David's Boss DR550mk11 drum machine, variously overdriven guitars & electric bass, David's Akai AX60 analogue synth & lots of screaming into microphones. At this early stage David & Peter shared the rhythm programming; anything with strings & pick-ups was Peter's department - whilst keyboard work, stage crawling & microphone abuse was David's responsibility.

Initially the group was more a home recording project than anything. Their first, & only, gig as a 2-piece occurred in August 1994 at the first ever kRkRkRk label event. This performance, dreamed up by Peter, was called The Tepid Interference Cluster & was held at the shortlived Interzone venue on Lichfield St. Other participating artists included Tracey Pagey as the Psycho-Kat (backed up by Snort's Reta Le Quesne on drums & Justine Schilder - later of Chicane - on guitar), a very brief debut NoTV live performance from J-mz Robinson & J-mz also collaborating with Mikel Goodwin in the thunderously loud first outing by Placenta Cookbook.

About a month after this performance Tracey joined David & Peter in leonard Nimoy. She subsequently provided voice, percussion & guitar noise on about half of the group's first release: Fucked KRK12, a 60min cassette unleashed upon the unsuspecting general public (most of whom never knew it existed of course) in October 1994. Tracey's Psycho-Kat solo project, which had endured throughout 1994, was largely discontinued at this time - although she continued to record pieces for various kRkRkRk compilation tapes.

Stylistically Fucked was a rather schizoid debut. The album veered from potent & percussive industrial rock compositions to far more melodic & atmospheric pieces. These latter songs usually combined rich analogue synth pad sounds with breathy vocals from both David & Tracey. Peter performed all of the recording work (on his Fostex X-26) &, in truth, contributed the best material.

On the production front Fucked benefited (or suffered, whichever way you looked at it) from David's recent purchase of a 2nd hand Peavey Addverb II 16-bit multieffects rack. This piece of equipment would soon transform kRkRkRk's future releases - endowing them with a greater interior space & a more produced, glassy sheen. The unit is still in kRkRkRk hands today - now owned by Megan Gallacher.

After this initial burst of activity Peter's OE plans appeared to signal the end of the group. In January 1995 David & Peter whipped off (no pun intended) leonard Nimoy's 2nd tape: Sexual Violence KRK029. Tracey was absent from this project which resulted in 45min of dirge rock & synth-driven atmospherics. There were even a couple of soundscape pieces - included more to fill up the tape than for any serious aesthetic purpose. The bulk of the engineering & production work on Sexual Violence was undertaken by David. Over the summer of 1994/95, having learned the operation of Peter's 4-track, he had recorded his first Vaccine album, Panacea KRK024. Sexual Violence was David's 2nd time in the production seat.

leonard Nimoy's early efforts had some good points - but they could not hope to compete, on any level, with what Peter had achieved solo on his first, self-titled In Vitro release, KRK021, in January 1995. It's no accident that, whilst kRkRkRk's reissue programme has embraced most of TMA-1's original releases, Fucked & Sexual Violence have been allowed to quietly disappear. Not until the final Nimoy release, The Screaming Cage KRK078 of late 1996, did the group's music remotely live up to their expectations of it.

With the fizzling of Peter's travel plans the way was opened for leonard Nimoy mark 2. This version of the group featured the addition of Mikel Goodwin & commenced operations in May 1995. Throughout this year regular jam sessions & gigs saw the 4-piece evolving away from noise & brutality & towards a more melodic, folk noir style. This new music owed something to the Swans' middle period (their 1987 album Children Of God, for example) or Swans' side projects such as the World Of Skin. However, leonard Nimoy's guitar/drum machine sound still connected them with classic New Zealand bands such as the Skeptics, early Headless Chickens & This Kind Of Punishment.

By this stage the group had become quite a complex organism in a musical sense. Peter, Mikel & David all played guitar. David also played occasional synth & Tracey had settled in on bass guitar. Drum programming was still mainly shared by David & Peter - but Mikel did make some contributions. In an effort to promote an atmosphere of democracy in the band, everybody took turns writing lyrics & performing lead vocals. The intention here was to frustrate traditional rock audience expectations that there might be a lead-Nimoy by ensuring that a dominant, central, focussing personality in the group never materialized.

Three guitars, bass, drum machine, keyboard & up to three vocal mics added up to a mixing nightmare in live situations. Not surprisingly, the group very seldom enjoyed a live sound that they could be happy with. This fact alone spurred David on to learn more about live sound engineering in the post-Nimoy period.

In a notable act of folly, as far as recording leonard Nimoy mark 2 was concerned, Peter & David temporarily abandoned home recordings in favour of half-inch 8-track tape recording at the local student radio station production studio. This was facilitated by the station's music director, Tim Baird, who also acted as sound engineer.

In a story doubtless familiar to many fledgling bands, no one really knew what they were doing & much time & money was wasted - although, thanks to Tim, the studio time was very cheap. Peter, in particular, began to have grave doubts about the style of the music & the manner in which it was recorded. After 6 months sporadic effort & several hundred dollars the whole project ground to a halt. The 8-track master tapes continue to gather dust in a dark corner of Peter's home - may they rot in peace!

1995 was not a complete loss for leonard Nimoy. In August that year they toured to Dunedin at the urging of J-mz Robinson who had moved there in February. Here they performed with Whispering City (J-mz Robinson's collaborative improv-electronic-rock project with CRUDE'S Mathew Middleton) & Drugs vs Grandchildren. DVG was the astonishingly primal art-noise project of Shaun Jury & Kerry Baser - then, & now, a totally unique group to experience live.

DVG built their music from dark, surreal narratives penned by Kerry. These she would perform in a variety of voices, ranging from a whisper to a scream, whilst Shaun added layer upon layer of pulverizing guitar noise & feedback. Seeing this 2-piece perform delivered the death-blow to leonard Nimoy's folk-noir phase. During the summer of 1995/96 they again reinvented themselves - abandoning melody & folk-noir trappings in favour of the early Swans-meets-Neubauten ritual violence that had been their original inspiration.

Another contributing factor to the demise of Nimoy mark 2 was the exposure of the group to a video of the Swans live in 1985. Entitled A Long Slow Screw this film documented Swans around the period of their Greed/Holy Money releases. The video was lent to Peter & David by Don Gone & Bev Greene of the Strap Ons in January 1996 & had an immediate & dramatic impact on the group.

leonard Nimoy mark 3 placed a much greater emphasis on percussion than ever before. Mikel, in particular, encouraged the weilding of rusty bits of metal a la early Einsturzende Neubauten (Here another video lent by Don & Bev - shot for Neubauten's 1985 Halber Mench album - was also influential). Tracey began to use floor toms for some songs. This combination of live & electronic percussion was to prove a potent strategy live - greatly increasing the physical presence & sound of the group. Even the music became increasingly percussive - melody being largely sacrificed in favour of bone crushing slabs of rhythmic guitar noise & feedback.

1996 was to be the year when the foursome finally achieved the cohesion necessary for delivering performances of impressive violence & intensity. These performances were also wonders of choreography. The democratic ethos of the Nimoy encouraged widespread swapping of instruments, implements & vocal duties. This all looked great in a live situation - but required exhaustive rehearsals (usually twice a week) to ensure that their gigs flowed smoothly. All this work was to prove too much in the end.

Peter felt frustrated by constant reprisals of the same old material. David was too distracted by the demands of tertiary study to make as strong a creative contribution as he would have liked. Creative differences between David & Peter were also causing friction & straining friendships. By the end of the year the writing was on the wall for the group.

Despite these difficulties, 1996 was a most productive year for leonard Nimoy with tours to Palmerston North & Auckland (in the company of Claire's Un-Natural Twin) & to Dunedin (where they performed with Nick Hodgson, Drugs vs Grandchildren & an early version of Sleep - an improv project featuring Peter Stapleton, Kim Peiters, Nathan Thompson & Susan Ballard).

Beginning in February, the group also returned to home recording. Peter largely initiated the 30min Metal Monster Gear KRK059 tape release which was mostly recorded at Spent Member Studios on February 12th. The plan was to capture the Nimoy's brutal new sound on a quickie demo tape. One song did eventually appear on the Yellow Bike Records CD compilation, Valve No. 7 Device Was Too Fleshy, in June that year. However, the real aim was to impress Brendan Hoffman of IMD records in Dunedin. Unfortunately the label (& associated Volt Studios) folded before anything could come of this.

The group's swansong, The Screaming Cage KRK078, was originally recorded between November 8th & December 9th 1996 - again at Spent Member Studios on 44 Ely St. This final release was created at David's urging. Sensing that the end was nigh for the Nimoy, he was keen to see something approaching a definitive document being produced by the group. The alternative was 3 years of creative activity with nothing much to show at the end of it!

The Screaming Cage (named after a semi free-form piece dreamed up for the group by Peter) was the first kRkRkRk release to be recorded on David's recently purchased Tascam 424mkII portastudio. It was also the first release to feature samples, sequences & effects processing courtesy of David's very recently hire-purchased Ensoniq ASR-10 workstation.

Every effort was made, during the production of the album, to maximise sound quality. In some respects leonard Nimoy's final work could be regarded as an exercise in pushing the limits of home recording! For example, the highest quality chrome tapes were used throughout (TDK SAX60s which cost as much then as a whole pack of cheap CDRs do today!). Live & sampled percussion sounds benefited from David's newly acquired AKG D3500 instrument mic. The sound engineering was shared between Peter & David who both took great pains to achieve the very best results possible with the equipment at hand.

The album itself consisted of most of the Nimoy's suite of brutal industrial rock songs, composed during 1996, combined with a number of new, & altogether more atmospheric, industrial/ambient constructions. It was originally released as a 60min cassette in January 1997. Some further recording took place in August 1997, when the album was being mastered from DAT to CDR, on Mikel's brand new Pentium 166 PC. In particular, Peter added a long end track comprised of samples & cut-ups from leonard Nimoy practice sessions & live performances. This sort of digital manipulation prefigured the experiments he would make on some of his later Apoplexy solo albums (for example: Syncopate & Radioplay) &, also, with his current solo project: Polio. Finally, during 2000, David again remastered the album to CDR from DAT (increasing loudness, fixing a few mistakes, etc…) to create the definitive version which is available today.

In hindsight The Screaming Cage was a fine work which accurately portrayed the many different faces of the group. In its own way it is as much a kRkRkRk classic as TMA-1's Screech! or Peter's first In Vitro album. Of course leonard Nimoy's final album took itself rather too seriously &, no doubt, some listeners saw the album ponderously collapsing under the weight of its sheer earnestness & the lack of anything remotely approaching a sense of humour. But this music was also powerful, dirty, dirgy & loud. In terms of its atmosphere of sustained & uncompromising brutality, nothing like it had ever been done in New Zealand previously (certain pieces by the Gordons, Skeptics, Children's Hour or early Headless Chickens excepted). It took 3 years & pretty much exhausted the enthusiasm for the project of everyone involved, but, with The Screaming Cage, leonard Nimoy came very close to realising their original ideals for the group.

One final project was undertaken by the Nimoy prior to their break-up. This, a 40min, performance-art, audio-visual piece presented at the Canterbury University 1997 Orientation festival on March 5th, amounted to yet another complete reinvention of the group.

Entitled Memories Of Violence, the performance explored the idea that violence is a necessary aspect of the human condition. The project nicely accomodated David's interest in narrative structures & orchestration with Peter's passion for improvisation & noise. Comprising several distinct movements, the piece combined both sequenced drones & rhythms with live music, metal percussion, angle-grinding & (this last Mikel's specialty) custom-built electronic noise generators. The performance was also accompanied by a specially contrived video-film. Gradually evolving over three months of informal meetings & practice sessions - it was among the most genuinely collaborative & successful ventures ever undertaken by leonard Nimoy.

Memories Of Violence also served as an important pointer to the post-Nimoy directions David & Peter (&, to some extent Mikel & Tracey) would take in their music. Many later kRkRkRk projects such as Flinch, DiS, BOCCTAHNE & the Drawing Room all de-emphasized rock overtones &, generally, abandoned rhythm cues generated by electronic devices such as drum machines. In their respective post-Nimoy solo work, David, Peter & Mikel all explored more abstract musical territories in varying degrees. This was particularly true of Peter. His Apoplexy label releases reveal an almost total abandonment of song/lyric structures in favour of free-form improvisation.

The Screaming Cage KRK078
leonard Nimoy intro
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Text by David Khan. Web-building by Ed Wilson. No apologies for disinformation.
August 2004