DEEPGROOVES; A RECORD LABEL DEEP IN THE PACIFIC OF BASS AND THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE IT A VOICE by PETER MCLENNAN

In the decade since Simon Grigg's exceptional How Bizarre: Pauly Fuemana and the Song That Stormed the World there have been many insightful books which address music, popular culture and the social climate of a period.

Among them Nick Bollinger's memoir Gonville (2017) and Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022); Norman Meehan's Jenny McLeod: A Life in Music (2023), the late Jonathan Besser's memoir Around the Corner, Out to the Edge and most recently Daniel Beban's Future Jaw Clap about Wellington's Primitive Art Group in the 1980s.

To this informative, enjoyable list we add Peter McLennan's scrupulously researched Deepgrooves; A Record Label Deep in the Pacific of Bass and the People Who Gave It a Voice which could be read as a discrete continuation of John Dix's Stranded in Paradise; New Zealand Rock'n'Roll 1955-1988 that didn't explore this emerging culture of hip-hop, house, jazz and breakbeats.

Deepgrooves had chart singles and was instrumental in the early careers of London-based radio star Zane Lowe, Manuel Bundy, Unitone Hi-Fi, New Loungehead and many more.

Many who recorded for Deepgrooves contributed just one song or instrumental, a few got more, rare ones made an album.

But it delivered 3 the Hard Way's chart-topping Hip-Hop Holiday and the sublime Black Sand Shore album by the short-lived Grace.

Despite poor returns, indifferent radio programmers, unreliable artists, money and invoicing issues, Deepgrooves released almost 20 albums, 36 stand-alone singles, five EPs and seven songs on Kiwi Hit Discs sent to radio.

McLennan has teased out the Gordian Knot of stories and often charismatic characters, although the music remains unavailable.

Which means the label, that folded in 1998 after almost a decade, is barely known to anyone not there at the time because very little of the music – including albums or artists who won awards – is available.

The Deepgrooves story is one of promising young artists, vibrant cross-cultural and cross-genre collaborations, early hip-hop culture, innovative producers working with limited equipment and even less money, central Auckland clubs, long lost recording studios, print in the years before the internet and music which has evaporated into the ether but lives on in the memory.

Through recent interviews, reviews and interviews in numerous publications (courageously wading through the New Zealand Herald on microfiche) and his own experiences (notably in Hallelujah Picassos), McLennan gives us back the music of Deepgrooves and beyond, and a tangible sense of place and time in an alphabet of clubs to prompt memories: Blue Tile Lounge, Bob Bar, The Box, Cause Celebre, Calibre, De Bretts . . .

If it sometimes bogs down in studio technology – “the E64 which is an EMU sampler” says Andy Morton aka Submariner – at least it's now on the record.

It's also a story of dodgy management, a cavalier attitude to money and invoicing, and maybe even worse.

This is a complex but compelling story of a small independent label which championed dance music, hip-hop and urban music when no one else did.

Founded by producer/engineer Bill Latimer who owned The Lab studio, engineer Mark Tierney (later co-founding Strawpeople with Paul Casserly) and promoter Kane Massey (who also ran Stamp magazine), Deepgrooves was mostly Massey's project when Latimer and Tierney left after 18 months.

Important characters move through these pages and offer their versions of sometimes chaotic or dodgy events: Teremoana Rapley (Upper Hutt Posse, Moana and the Moahunters), Darryl Thompson (DLT), Mike Hodgson (later of Pitch Black), Mark de Clive-Lowe, Jules Issa and Mighty Asterix (Paul Buchanan) of the 12 Tribes of Israel (great story of him getting stoned and never quite getting to the song to be recorded), Stinky Jim, Sulata, Christina Fuemana . . .

Although some were involved with Deepgrooves briefly or tangentially, McLennan has them tell their digressive stories of Deepgrooves and subsequent careers, making this book a valuable resource of biographical information as much as being about the label.

It was a time when social and cultural barriers fell as much as musical ones.

Hodgson: “Coming from the South Island, my awareness of Pacifika as a whole, as a kid, just didn’t exist. So, landing in Auckland in 1988 and being suddenly immersed in this massive Polynesian cultural town, that was pretty amazing.”

Behind it all however is Massey, only one photo in this well-illustrated book. It's alleged he gamed the NZ on Air grants system, withheld or redirected money and didn't ensure samples were cleared. There were also unusual, possibly unenforceable, contracts.

Gavin Downie of Colony: “They said they owned anything you'd ever written in the past and any melody you might release in the future, they owned it. It pretty much locked you down into being completely screwed.”

Some signed because they just wanted to get their record out.

In 1994 Massey told New Zealand Musician, “I'm an ideas person . . . In the past I've had very little regard for financial consequences”.

Others suggest he was more canny than that admission.

DLT: “He wanted everything, publishing and all that. And he got it all, in the end, cos we were too rock’n’roll to chase our shit up. That’s why I called one of my mixes DLT Meets Kane Massey In A Dark Alley. That got back to him too, and I never heard from him again!”

Few have a good word to say about him, but many concede without him (“an infectious personality” says engineer/producer Chris Sinclair) none of this would have happened, the first rung on the ladder for so many artists.

All that is in McLennan's substantial book, except for the current voice of Massey who is quoted from the deleted deepgrooves.co.nz website or media interviews.

Massey – who may be living in Australia writes McLennan – has posted excellent photos of Deepgroove artists on Facebook and has sometimes hinted at reissuing this valuable archive. But nothing.

If the Flying Nun record label could be likened to a club, Auckland-based Deepgrooves of the 1990s was more akin to a collective of constantly moving parts where diverse musicians shifted between genres and loose affiliations with other like minds.

It was an exciting time which delivered some terrific music . . . but you had to be there.

As Simon Grigg says in his foreword to Peter McLennan's exhaustive and penetrating book, Deepgrooves has one of this country's most important catalogues of music “yet it doesn't exist in any tangible, coherent form.

“Until it does this long overdue and fascinating history, addictively compulsive in its detail, will have to suffice and tease.

“Kane, where are you?”

.

Deepgrooves; A Record Label Deep in the Pacific of Bass and the People Who Gave It a Voice by Peter McLennan. Pub. Dunbar Noon.  $59