In Adelaide you can’t throw a stone without hitting someone who’s either a drum and bass MC or DJ. So it was a strange one of the most innovative dnb groups in the world, Shapeshifter, didn’t tour on the Adelaide leg of the Big Day Out, particularly when they rocked here so well a few years ago. “We did some shows in New Zealand but we would have much rather have done them in Adelaide and Perth,” says Sam Trevethick, they keyboardist, guitarist and percussionist of the New Zealand five piece. “It just didn’t happen and I don’t really know why, but it’s a shame because we were really looking forward to it.”
New Zealand’s drum and bass scene is a little younger than Adelaide’s, but like us, their reputation, and in particular Christchurch’s reputation as a party place has spread amongst the international dnb community. It was from this Shapeshifter were born. “When we started 8 years ago no one was really doing it like us,” Trevethick explains. “There was Roni Size and Rapresent, but not much else. The reason we wanted to do it was to get our energy out. We wanted to play some really heavy music with really interesting sounds and high energy, and that was drum and bass for us at that time. There were lots of dnb DJs coming through Christchurch at the time – Bailey, Brian G, Grooverider, Ed Rush & Optical and it was a really healthy scene back then with big gigs and we were quite influenced by that to start off with.”
The dnb scene is New Zealand is still going strong, but because of Shapeshifter’s heavy touring schedule Trevethick admits he’s no longer really considered part of the scene. “I’m not in New Zealand as much and although I DJ drum and bass, I wouldn’t really say we’re part of the scene,” he says.
“But it is a really healthy scene,” he continues. “It’s been diluted by other scenes, but that’s a good thing, and you hear about all these different artists being signed to international record labels and it’s a really good thing because 5 or 10 years ago it just wasn’t happening. The first New Zealand signing was Concord Dawn or Bulletproof (a few years ago) and was massive. There’s now a lot more people doing the music and getting signed which is really good because it pushes people to progress their sound. The whole music scene in New Zealand is pretty friendly towards each other. There’s collaborations left right and centre and it’s all one big family. It’s not hard to get involved with other people.”
Like the Hilltop Hoods, Shapeshifter recently collaborated with the Auckland Philharmonic orchestra. “It all really started at the beginning of 2005 when a radio station in New Zealand asked us to play at a festival they have in the park, and someone suggested we do a few with the Auckland Philharmonic orchestra. Arranger Victoria Kelly was imported in to do the arrangement of our tracks,” he explains. “We had one hours practice before the gig and we played and it was just an amazing experience. It was raining and everything was going to shit,” he laughs “but there were 3000 people, us and an orchestra and it was amazing.”
They wanted to repeat that with better production, and not outside where it’s raining and toured with more shows featuring not only the Auckland Philharmonic but also the Wellington Vector Symphonia and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra “We lead the orchestra by using our music as the basis, but we didn’t want it to be the band on stage, we wanted it to be 30 musicians on stage making one sound.”
“It was very tricky because we’re a live band and we’re very loud,” Trevethick explains of some of the difficulties. “We all tend to get loud on stage and vibe off of that. The very first show we did in Auckland town hall we tried to turn the band down a bit but the crowd was so incredibly loud you couldn’t hear any of it. But we learned from that.”
Like the Hard Road Restrung, their orchestral album will be made into an album and made available before the end of the year. Their latest album ‘Soulstice’ has won them critical acclaim in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and Trevethick is looking forward to playing it in Adelaide. “We’ll be playing lots of stuff off the new album which we didn’t even play on the big day out tour, plus a few new versions of interpretations we’ve made. I doubt that we’ll be playing any songs that we played last time. I think we’ve always been guilty of throwing away more songs than we actually make,” he laughs.