Roy Montgomery writes:
When Nick Guy and I began our collaboration in 2004 we both lived in the same town, Lyttelton, New Zealand, which sits comfortably above sea level most of the time on the inside wall of a drowned volcano. No one who lives there can ignore the geology of the area (and since late 2010 no one has been able to ignore the seismology of the area although we are constantly reassured that the recent earthquake and aftershocks cannot reactivate an extinct volcano). The same is true for the South Island as a whole. If you are not staring at the coastline in some way you are pointed towards the hills or mountain ranges and rarely is the land close to where most people live cloaked in native plants or forest. The substrate is, therefore, never far from the surface on the 'mainland' as South Islanders are wont to call it. With a surfeit of soil and space and water and sky it is no accident that many of us refer to place and landscape in sound more often than sentiment. Try serenading a dead tree or disinterested sheep. As it happens Nick and I share many map reference points for parts of our growing up and sense of place so being sonically grounded for the purpose of recording seems to have been relatively straightforward so far. It was only logical that we should index a major geological form that makes up the South Island of New Zealand when choosing a name for our collaborations. Of course we also wanted to be a part of rock history.
Rebis