Peter Wright profile

Although only peripherally involved with kRkRkRk in recent times, Peter Wright was probably the single most important contributor to the label from the time of its inception, in 1992, up until late 1997 when he disengaged from kRkRkRk to pursue musical interests under the mantle of his own Apoplexy label.

Peter co-founded kRkRkRk, with J-mz Robinson, & was instrumental in the organisation & promotion of the label from the very start. His willingness to contribute equipment (primarily his Fostex X-26 multitracker) & technical expertise encouraged many of kRkRkRk's personnel to enter the murky world of home recording.

Peter's earliest home recordings date back to the late 80's, in Motueka, under the moniker Pink Litmus Paper Shirt (resulting in the limited release cassettes Broom & Sinus). Even at this early stage, Peter's music revealed an appreciation for the eccentric kiwiana of Chris Knox & an ironic sense of humour owing something to the Goon Show & Monty Python.

In September 1991 Peter befriended fellow student radio volunteer J-mz Robinson &, shortly afterwards, began collaborating with him in TMA-1. This band, in its 3 year lifespan, defined both the sound & direction of kRkRkRk in its formative period. The concept of a psuedo music label to parody the workings of the real music industry was Peter's - although both he & J-mz drew inspiration from Robin James' book: Cassette Mythos. It was J-mz who eventually renamed Peter's Big Bottom Records: kRkRkRk.

Eccentric, noisy & implicitly political, TMA-1's punk-flavoured electro-pop was always accompanied by a darker, moodier aspect. This moodiness & introspection has always defined Peter's music. Intensely private, deeply personal &, occasionally, introverted to an extraordinary degree, his work seldom admits easy interpretation - although there are obvious autobiographical references for those in the know. For all of Peter's sound pop instincts & wry sense of humour, his music has always tended towards subtlety & understatement rather than bombast & excess. His post 1997 work, in particular, readily eschews the obvious & the accessible in favour of an expressive formalism, which is, at once, intensely reflective, restless & searching.

These characteristics began to be visible in Peter's solo project in the TMA-1 era: Bent Gastropod Omnobus - an entity that helped to sop up the detritus from the prolific TMA-1 recording activities. Bent Gastropod Omnibus also served as a testing ground for Peter's experiments with cut-ups & noise, & for music too personal & private to be pursued in a group context. Both of these early projects constituted a kind of musical apprenticeship for Peter whereby he developed the technical skills & sensibilities that would contribute to the form & content of his later work.

In March 1994 Peter began collaborating with another friend & student radio volunteer, David Khan, in a project which would become leonard Nimoy. As with TMA-1, much has been said elsewhere about this group, suffice to say that, for both Peter & David, leonard Nimoy represented a self-conscious attempt to get serious about music. Although the Nimoy never attained the ad-hoc brilliance & unpretentious charm of TMA-1, they did, eventually, produce some of the most intense & powerful music seen in NZ before or since.

Peter's more serious intentions with regard to music actually predated leonard Nimoy to some extent. They can be discerned on TMA-1's definitive work: Screech! KRK063 (originally released February 1994 on cassette as KRK005 & mostly Peter's music in fact) &, also, on his final Bent Gastropod Omnibus album: Haggis (originally released July 1994 on cassette as KRK010). Haggis, with its layers of multitracked open-chord-tuned guitars, Boss DR550mkII drum machine rhythms, opulent reverb & moody atmosphere, directly anticipated Peter's primary, solo, song-lyric project, in the late 1994 - late 1995 period: In Vitro.

In terms of musical focus & maturity, the debut, self-titled In Vitro album (released on cassette as KRK021 in January 1995) set an entirely new standard for kRkRkRk. Also notable was the outstanding sound quality. Peter had extended the possibilities of 4-track home recording well beyond their usual limits to create a most professional-sounding collection of songs & soundscapes that exuded an artistic flair & assurance never before achieved on a kRkRkRk release.

The 4 original In Vitro cassettes (In Vitro, Dust to Dust KRK043, June 1995, Drag KRK051 & Seep KRK057, both released September 1995) were characterised by majestic ensembles of droning, shimmering guitars, electronic rhythms, de-emphasised, whispered vocals - sometimes replaced entirely with tape loops & samples - & a cinematic space & atmosphere conferred with judicious use of David's Peavey Addverb II reverb/delay processor.

The music could be described as folk-noir with an industrial/ambient component. It was very much Peter's own (being distinctly private & introspective for the most part) - but shades of contemporary active guitar (My Bloody Valentine) or industrial (Nine Inch Nails) pop could be discerned. More fundamental & exotic influences included Swans & Einsturzende Neubauten - interests Peter shared with fellow Nimoys David Khan & Mikel Goodwin. Even more apparent, however, was the New Zealand flavour of the music: Skeptics, Nocturnal Projections & This Kind Of Punishment cast perceptible shadows over Peter's work at this time.

Ceaselessly restless & innovative with his musical interests, 1995 also saw Peter exploring figures in the classical avant garde (Stockhausen, Cage & Ligetti) as well as progenitors of industrial rock such as Throbbing Gristle & SPK. These influences contributed to his Noise/Horror Collision project which he pursued in tandem to the In Vitro works. The debut Noise/Horror Collision album (released on cassette in May '95 as The Antithesis Of Meaning KRK036) was just as much a kRkRkRk landmark as the debut In Vitro tape released only a few months earlier. This initial NHC release was the label's first true recording in the industrial/ambient arena & anticipated many later developments.

In fact, to be strictly accurate, the first tape Peter released in the NHC mode (ie: a noise cassette) was The Department Of Eccrinology's Spotted Dick KRK014 which appeared in mid 1994. This featured, among other things, Peter's first use of David's Akai AX60 analogue synth (thoroughly mutated, of course, by various distortion effects).

Most of the remaining quartet of NHC releases (Turbines KRK052, November 1995, Violation KRK053, June 1995, Several Reminders Of Mortality KRK 056, August 1995 & The Removal Of Obstacles KRK058, October 1995 - recorded with David in the back yard of 44 Ely St) were much less embellished & more acutely minimalist than the debut. Situated rather more in harsh noise than ambient territory they reflected Peter's true intentions for the NHC project - to explore noise & chance, rather than composition & melody, in making music. Although these latter 4 tapes were all genuine 4-track recordings, they were usually created in single sessions &, to some degree, could be regarded as documents of live performances.

1995 also saw Peter continuing his collaborations with J-mz Robinson in the playful & anarchic Brainlego project. Early in the year a single tape, The Stickiest Creamy Instant KRK028, materialised - featuring a guest appearance by Mathew Middleton (of CRUDE) on clarinet. A number of live performances followed during 1995-96 &, quite recently, J-mz & Peter have again reactivated the project in a more avant-garde, electronic guise.

The diversity of Peter's prolific output in the 1995-96 period revealed a growing tension in his work between structure & improvisation, melody & noise. The Coitus moniker he adopted in early 1996 (which retrospectively gathered the In Vitro recordings under its umbrella) was, initially, an attempt to reconcile these disparate trends. Although the first Coitus tape, 040769 KRK060, March '96, contained mainly industrial-flavoured rock music, the Man In Blue Box KRK064 & Man In Glass Cage KRK074 albums, both released in September 1996, signalled an important shift in emphasis. Song/lyric structures were finally & conclusively displaced by the drifting, improvisational, electro-acoustic compositions which have permeated Peter's music ever since.

During 1997 a selection of the Noise/Horror Collision & Coitus/In Vitro recordings appeared on a quartet of CDRs. The song/lyric Coitus/In Vitro compositions 1994-97 were compiled onto two CDR releases: Embolus KRK083 & Hypostasis KRK084. The more ambient & improvisational Coitus pieces appeared on Glass Cage KRK086. A subset of the NHC recordings resurfaced, towards the end of '97 as Great Disasters Of The 20th Century KRK087. However, much of Peter's important & impressive work, created in this period, was never released & languished, unmixed, on the original 4-track cassette tapes for several years. Even the material Peter remixed to DAT during 1996 & 1997, prior to release on CDR in latter '97, was not inclusive of the original cassette releases.

This situation has, at long last, been rectified. Already, in mid 2000, Peter had edited & repackaged the Coitus Glass Cage CDR as Automaton apx10 on his Apoplexy label. In mid 2001, Peter began the considerable task of remastering the best recordings of his entire solo ouevre (Pink Litmus Paper Shirt to Coitus) using, either original DAT masters, or remixing the 4-track cassette masters to Apple Imac using Pro Tools software. This project culminated in the early 2002 release, under Peter's own name, of 4 new kRkRkRk CDRs (Bent Gastropod Omnibus KRK120, In Vitro No.1 KRK121, In Vitro No.2 KRK122 & Coitus KRK123) which supercede the previous label releases (with the exception of the NHC recordings which still await such attention). These new compilations group Peter's music in an, approximately, chronological fashion & contain many musical gems either long forgotten, or never before exposed to the light of day.

The demise of leonard Nimoy in early '97 saw Peter sporadically collaborating with former bandmates David Khan & Mikel Goodwin in the ad hoc, improv, gallery projects Noumenon & Death In A Nasty Accident. However, the most significant collaborative project to feature Peter's talents, in the post Nimoy period, was Flinch. Also featuring Mikel & Justine Sharp, Flinch combined acoustic percussion & electric guitar chaos with Justine's electrifying stage presence & voice. Over its 2 year lifespan, the trio was to leave no recorded legacy of any note, but thrilled audiences in Christchurch, Wellington & Auckland with live performances as powerful & as expressive as those delivered by leonard Nimoy.

In 1998 Peter finally disengaged from kRkRkRk with the creation of his own Apoplexy label. Liberated from the obligations & the weight of his long involvement with kRkRkRk, it was not surprising that the first tape & Geraldine lathe-cut 7" releases of his new Atonal Death project were solidly in free-noise territory. These releases are more fully described on Peter's Apoplexy website but, between mid 1997 & mid 1998, comprised the Plasma apx02 & Mechanique apx03 cassettes & the Olympic/Duress apx01 & Hinter Vit/Op.Cit apx04 7'' lathe cuts (the latter in collaboration with Witcyst). In some respects, the Atonal Death project recalled territory explored earlier by Noise/Horror Collision. New wrinkles included drones & demolitions utilising a violin & guitar pick-up Peter acquired at this time. With the Plasma & Mechanique tapes making use of David's Ensoniq ASR-10 (sampling & sound processing), there was a high-tech component to some of the music as well (not that this at all implied an accompanying cleanliness or sterility of sound).

Quite rapidly, however, Peter moved from exclusive explorations of harsh noise to music characterised by a moody & atmospheric ambience. The Atonal Death moniker was soon discarded in favour of his own name. In fact Peter has since revealed that the name he chose for the Atonal Death project was intended to be something of a joke - a parody of both the hardcore industrial & free noise scenes into which he was sick of being pigeon-holed. Unfortunately the joke was too subtle!

In a less abrasive vein the gorgeous, brooding recordings he created in the mid 1997 to late 1998 period emerged as Apoplexy releases lp#1 apx05 (originally a 12" lathe cut, later a CDR with extra tracks) & Syncopate apx06 (originally released on kRkRkRk in late '97 as KRK090 & subsequently remastered for Apoplexy in November 1998).

Syncopate, with its recycled, computer processed & cut-up sound collages of earlier, unused, analogue recordings from the Noise/Horror Collision days, introduced a parallel indentity, as a sound designer, composer & arranger, to Peter's more familiar role as improvisator & performer.

This trend was further reflected in the next Apoplexy releases: Moments Of Inappropriate Abandon apx07 (a double 7" lathe cut) & Radioplay apx09. On the former, Peter utilised the 4-side, double 7" format to present 4 discrete dronescapes - each generated by a different instrument & recorded live to 4-track. Three of these pieces used real instruments (bowed guitar, mandolin & violin respectively). The other was more virtual in nature - consisting of piano samples derived from David's Ensoniq ASR-10 - suitably tweaked & processed. Moments…, therefore, presented Peter, simultaneously, as sound designer & improvisator.

Radioplay, with its digitally processed (via Apple Imac) soundbites of shortwave static, represented a more focussed & minimalist development of the methodology Peter had introduced with the Syncopate album. The four sides/ four instruments aesthetic of Moments… had also been put through the reductive mill. Radioplay comprised a single track containing audio generated from a single sound source. By early 2000, when this album appeared, Peter's formal exploration & distillation of sonic essences had led him to the brink of a minimalist tabula rasa.

Not that this implied Radioplay was at all cold or clinical in atmosphere - or expressively stilted by virtue of its intrinsically constructed nature. The album radiated the same emotive force & poetry as any of Peter's contemporaneous works. The isolating & alienating consequences of information overload were elegantly conveyed. Radioplay expresses one of the great conundrums of our information age: that information does not necessarily equate to communication, let alone intimacy & empathy.

His own explorations & researches (often via the internet) notwithstanding, by 1999 the greater presence, in Peter's work, of electro-acoustic, atonal & improvised music could be attributed to a number of local factors. Firstly, there had been a long exposure to improv/experimental music (both local & international) released &/or distributed by Bruce Russell's Corpus Hermeticum label. Much of this music was publicised in Corpus Hermeticum's close ally, in the underground press: Opprobrium magazine - which ran to ~5 issues in the 1998-2000 period (& continues in operation on line). Corpus Hermeticum & Opprobrium were instrumental in the dissemination, to Christchurch audiences, of the Japanese free-noise scene. This climaxed with the 1999 NZ tour of Japanese underground luminary Keiji Haino.

Also significant, at this time, was the establishment of the Christchurch Jazz School & several local venues dedicated to the performance of jazz & related musics. Although the school & the venues were fundamentally mainstream in character, they contributed to a greater audience for, & tolerance of improvised music in general.

Finally, 1999 saw the beginning of experimental music performances in the atrium of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. These were initiated by Bruce Russell &, originally, facilitated by the McDougall's education officer: Anne Betts.

Therefore, by 1999, improvised & experimental music had gained a new prominence - not only in Christchurch, in fact, but throughout the country.

Peter's activities, in this new environment, were not restricted to his own projects. 1999 saw him contributing to longtime kRkRkRk associate Nick Hodgson's CM Ensemble. This highly fluid (in both personnel & music style) project evolved out of Nick's 1996-1998 improv rock outfits: Montessouri & Crone (both of which had featured on various kRkRkRk cassette releases). The CM Ensemble became Nick's primary vehicle for exploring a variety of genres ranging from free jazz & harsh noise to the classical avant garde. By late 2001 the CM Ensemble had gallery performances in Christchurch, Dunedin & Auckland to its credit, several Apoplexy lathe-cut & CDR releases (Last Refuge Of The Insane apx08, CDR & Total War apx11, 7" lathe cut - both produced during 2000) & a proper CD release, Love Central, on Peter Stapleton's Metonymic label (closely allied to Corpus Hermeticum). A considerably greater selection of CM Ensemble tapes, 7" lathe cuts & CDRs is also available from Nick's own CM Productions label - contact them via Apoplexy.

As far as kRkRkRk was concerned, Peter's primary contribution (aside from perennial support in the multimedia & computing departments), in this period, was with the project generally accepted to have succeeded Flinch: DiS. Also featuring Justine Sharp & David Khan, this trio produced 2 full length albums between January 1999 & March 2000. These two works (described in greater detail elsewhere), Earth/Clasm KRK096 (released early 1999 on cassette & again, in December 1999, on CDR) & Inferno KRK095 (released on CDR in June 2000), nicely combined David's interests in narrative structures, orchestration & sound design with Peter's more formalist inclinations & flair for improvisation.

Collaborative efforts between the two have continued in more recent times. Confinement & Release apx12 (released April 2001) derives from a Robert McDougall Art Gallery performance conceived by David & executed in June 2000. Tranfusion, another McDougall performance, was Peter's brainchild. Performed in August 2000, it involved Peter, David, Nick & various other members of the CM Ensemble. A recording of this performance exists, but it has not yet been released. Any takers should hassle Peter via his Apoplexy website.

Both of these mid 2000 projects stressed improvisation & spontaneity. Both purely electronic & purely acoustic sound generators & instruments were utilised. The Confinement & Release performance combined Peter's electric guitar treatments with David's Akai AX60 analogue synth & acoustic percussion in the form of an internally miked 44 gallon drum, metal implements & a concrete block. The Tranfusion project attempted to reclaim acoustic sounds from the electronic realm. Pre-programmed, computer-generated sounds (derived from actual string instrument sounds) initiated a series of movements, culmunating in a totally freeform, acoustic sequence performed on violins, cello & double bass.

Both of the above projects reveal to what extent Peter has progressively eschewed noise & distortion, in his music, in favour of an exploration of the intrinsic sounds & possibilities of various musical instruments. Since 1999, in both group & solo contexts, distortion, reverb/delay effects & other forms of sonic colouration have been progressively de-emphasized.

Peter draws a link between this more austere approach to music & the theme of information overload expressed in releases such as Radioplay & (so he maintains) in the Transfusion performance discussed above. The struggle to reach out of oneself & communicate with a wider world (which may or may not be at all interested) is a central preoccupation that Peter has identified in all of his music. Therefore, a more careful & judicious use of effects devices can be interpreted as reflecting Peter's desire to communicate more clearly & immediately with his audience. Perhaps this desire for clarity, immediacy & artistic integrity also attracts musicians like Peter towards improvisation as a mode of creative expression.

Some recent examples of Peter's music have been released by 3rd parties (specialist, international CDR & 7" labels). These include Duna (an album comprised entirely of atonal guitar explorations, created early-mid 2000 & released early 2001 on CDR by The Last Visible Dog), A Tiny Camp In The Wilderness (recorded September 2000 - January 2001 & almost a return to rich, ambient atmospherics after the minimalism of Radioplay - released mid 2001 on CDR by Celebrate Psi Phenomena) & The Clavius/Kepler 7" (more expressive, dark ambience - recorded June & September 2000 & released in mid 2001 on the Japanese label 20 City). A recent release, as of October 2001, via the Freedom From label, is Peter's debut CDR under the new moniker: Polio - a descriptor coined to embrace his current & future experiments with computer-based sound creation & music composition in the vein of Syncopate or Radioplay. We refer you to his Apoplexy site for full details.

Polio has, in fact, already enjoyed an official release on the brand new kRkRkRk live compilation: Ta/W KRK113 which gathers together music performed (by NoTV, Ed Wilson, Drawing Room, Polio, Richard Neave & KYN - Charles Horn), in March 2001, at a party celebrating the release of Ed Wilson's Fragmentation KRK104 album. Peter's contribution comprised computer-generated pure tones, transferred to CDRs & manipulated live from 3 separate CD players. Peter also released the second Polio album, Gemini, on Apoplexy in December 2001 as apx13. This work features some mesmerizing dronescapes largely created from processed recordings of bowed cymbal sounds.

Peter's most recent music has shown signs of a partial return to melody & structure. His latest collaborative venture, The Beautiful Losers (in the company of David Khan on keyboards & Rustle Covini on drums), combines atmospheric, electro-acoustic minimalism with epic, avant-rock in a manner not dissimilar to late era Swans or Canadian group Godspeed You Black Emperor. Beautiful Losers began operations in June 2002.

Apoplexy
Peter Wright solo releases on kRkRkRk
DiS
leonard Nimoy
TMA-1

info artists releases mp3

kRkRkRk recordings
krkrkrk@hotmail.com

Text by David Khan. Web-building by Ed Wilson. No apologies for disinformation.
August 2004