Fishrider Records is based in Dunedin, New Zealand.
We're not music industry. We're music arts & crafts.
Discover Fishrider Records releases on our Bandcamp page.
Subscribe to our (very occasional) new release mailing list here.
We're not music industry. We're music arts & crafts.
Discover Fishrider Records releases on our Bandcamp page.
Subscribe to our (very occasional) new release mailing list here.
DOWNLOADS - we are changing the way we deliver free downloads with LP purchases. As so few DL codes are redeemed (less than 25%) and we would like to keep the cost of LPs down we will not be printing DL cards for future LPs. If you want a DL simply e-mail us via the 'Contact' form on the tab above, let us know what you bought and we will e-mail you a DL code back. Simple.
NEW RELEASES
TIDAL RAVE - Albumette
Pōneke/ Wellington jangle / surf / fuzz-pop sextet Tidal Rave return with an eight song album. "Albumette" was primarily written during the seemingly never-ending 2020 lockdown era, and explores such pertinent topics as "police incompetence, problematic capitalism, disconnection and in-between spaces." The recording sounds darker and heavier on “Albumette”, and the bands song-writing mixes echoes of the kind of hard-edged driving post-punk rock of Vivian Girls with the melodic flair of Dead Famous People, and the jangling energy of Look Blue, Go Purple.
Pōneke/ Wellington jangle / surf / fuzz-pop sextet Tidal Rave return with an eight song album. "Albumette" was primarily written during the seemingly never-ending 2020 lockdown era, and explores such pertinent topics as "police incompetence, problematic capitalism, disconnection and in-between spaces." The recording sounds darker and heavier on “Albumette”, and the bands song-writing mixes echoes of the kind of hard-edged driving post-punk rock of Vivian Girls with the melodic flair of Dead Famous People, and the jangling energy of Look Blue, Go Purple.
NEGATIVE NANCIES - Heatwave [FISH028 LP/ CD/ DL] UK Release via Occultation Recordings
Negative Nancies exist in their own universe. The songs evolve organically through rehearsal room experimentation. Amid the No Wave art-punk chaos an irrepressible undercurrent of pop melodicism and moments of eerie psychedelic calm shine through the noise.
Negative Nancies don’t play by anyone’s rules. Songs unfold in unusual ways through an organic wild-yeast approach to song creation and performance. Sombre glory, impish mischief. Wired anxiety, manic glee. It makes sense until it doesn’t any more. And vice versa. They don’t want to be banned, they just want to play in a band.
The recording brings out all the fizzing unsteady danger and punk energy of the band. HEATWAVE sounds like it was recorded in a concrete basement with power cords running through puddles of water, everything crackling with live arcing electricity and a sense of impending danger.
“Discordant, deconstructed art-punk sound that grinds and crawls in a collision of Suicide, queasy Lynchian discomfort and no wave Sonic Youth yelps and chants.” Doubtful Sounds (AUS)
“a riot, a cavernous and beat-driven practice of experimentalism.... unique in its beautifully chaotic structure..." Hard of Hearing (UK)
"Heatwave" is available in the UK/ Europe etc. from occultation.bandcamp.com [UK retail release end of September/ early October]
Negative Nancies exist in their own universe. The songs evolve organically through rehearsal room experimentation. Amid the No Wave art-punk chaos an irrepressible undercurrent of pop melodicism and moments of eerie psychedelic calm shine through the noise.
Negative Nancies don’t play by anyone’s rules. Songs unfold in unusual ways through an organic wild-yeast approach to song creation and performance. Sombre glory, impish mischief. Wired anxiety, manic glee. It makes sense until it doesn’t any more. And vice versa. They don’t want to be banned, they just want to play in a band.
The recording brings out all the fizzing unsteady danger and punk energy of the band. HEATWAVE sounds like it was recorded in a concrete basement with power cords running through puddles of water, everything crackling with live arcing electricity and a sense of impending danger.
“Discordant, deconstructed art-punk sound that grinds and crawls in a collision of Suicide, queasy Lynchian discomfort and no wave Sonic Youth yelps and chants.” Doubtful Sounds (AUS)
“a riot, a cavernous and beat-driven practice of experimentalism.... unique in its beautifully chaotic structure..." Hard of Hearing (UK)
"Heatwave" is available in the UK/ Europe etc. from occultation.bandcamp.com [UK retail release end of September/ early October]
EMILY FAIRLIGHT - Mother of Gloom [FISH024 LP/CD/DL/iTunes] UK release via Occultation Recordings
Emily Fairlight has a proper folk singer’s background having been, among other things, a teenage runaway adventurer in Australia and India, a circus school student, a barista and a runner turned jack-of-all-trades at a digital visual effects company. "Mother of Gloom" an elusive creature, but the prevalence of acoustic guitar and intimate sharing of lived experience point to what Fairlight self-deprecatingly calls, “doom-folk”. Her vocal style - a stark, haunting tone with a powerful vibrato, teak-hard yet soft as crushed velvet - elicits comparisons to PJ Harvey, Bridget St John, Emmylou Harris and Cat Power, musicians with distinctive voices and the lyrical power to conjure a kind of experiential realism. "Mother of Gloom" can also stand its ground alongside the storytelling of Will Oldham and the soundscapes of Calexico. Each song is a timelessly elegant, albeit at times distressed, vignette, capturing the essence of a place, memory or feeling, framed by a varied palette musical arrangements leaving space for the imagination between the sounds. Fairlight - who currently resides in Dunedin - has been composing and performing for over a decade now. She has played throughout NZ and Australia, and her third trip to the USA saw her record Mother of Gloom with Doug Walseth at The Cat’s Eye Studio in Austin, Texas, aided by local musicians including Cully Symington (Bright Eyes, Okkervil River) and multi-instrumentalist Kullen Fuchs. The recordings were mixed by Ben Edwards’ at his Sitting Room studios near Lyttelton harbour back home in NZ.
"Fairlight is a folk singer with a touch of the weird and wonderful, travelling the same backroads as songwriters such as Will Oldham, PJ Harvey, Karen Dalton, Cat Power, Aldous Harding and Nadia Reid. "Mother of Gloom" a warm and intimate set of songs that highlight her ability to find shadowy moods in her music and most vividly via her exceptional and haunting voice." (Post To Wire)
"I've been waiting for Emily Fairlight's album with bated breath and it hasn't disappointed. Have a listen to "Body Below". It's truly economic songwriting. An emotionally complex idea delivered simply in two minutes, 30 seconds." Marlon Williams
Emily Fairlight has a proper folk singer’s background having been, among other things, a teenage runaway adventurer in Australia and India, a circus school student, a barista and a runner turned jack-of-all-trades at a digital visual effects company. "Mother of Gloom" an elusive creature, but the prevalence of acoustic guitar and intimate sharing of lived experience point to what Fairlight self-deprecatingly calls, “doom-folk”. Her vocal style - a stark, haunting tone with a powerful vibrato, teak-hard yet soft as crushed velvet - elicits comparisons to PJ Harvey, Bridget St John, Emmylou Harris and Cat Power, musicians with distinctive voices and the lyrical power to conjure a kind of experiential realism. "Mother of Gloom" can also stand its ground alongside the storytelling of Will Oldham and the soundscapes of Calexico. Each song is a timelessly elegant, albeit at times distressed, vignette, capturing the essence of a place, memory or feeling, framed by a varied palette musical arrangements leaving space for the imagination between the sounds. Fairlight - who currently resides in Dunedin - has been composing and performing for over a decade now. She has played throughout NZ and Australia, and her third trip to the USA saw her record Mother of Gloom with Doug Walseth at The Cat’s Eye Studio in Austin, Texas, aided by local musicians including Cully Symington (Bright Eyes, Okkervil River) and multi-instrumentalist Kullen Fuchs. The recordings were mixed by Ben Edwards’ at his Sitting Room studios near Lyttelton harbour back home in NZ.
"Fairlight is a folk singer with a touch of the weird and wonderful, travelling the same backroads as songwriters such as Will Oldham, PJ Harvey, Karen Dalton, Cat Power, Aldous Harding and Nadia Reid. "Mother of Gloom" a warm and intimate set of songs that highlight her ability to find shadowy moods in her music and most vividly via her exceptional and haunting voice." (Post To Wire)
"I've been waiting for Emily Fairlight's album with bated breath and it hasn't disappointed. Have a listen to "Body Below". It's truly economic songwriting. An emotionally complex idea delivered simply in two minutes, 30 seconds." Marlon Williams
Emily Fairlight has released a new single – “Lips Lasso” – with a video, and hints at a new album in 2020.
“This song was written in three different houses, in three very different states of mind about the same shit situation. The video represents this internal conflict.” Fairlight explains.
“Lips Lasso” was recorded in the hills above Dunedin. In addition to Fairlight on guitar and vocals, the song features bassist Rob Collins along with Michael McLeod (The Shifting Sands, Bad Sav), violinist Alex Vaatstra and guitarist David Kilgour (The Clean).
“This song was written in three different houses, in three very different states of mind about the same shit situation. The video represents this internal conflict.” Fairlight explains.
“Lips Lasso” was recorded in the hills above Dunedin. In addition to Fairlight on guitar and vocals, the song features bassist Rob Collins along with Michael McLeod (The Shifting Sands, Bad Sav), violinist Alex Vaatstra and guitarist David Kilgour (The Clean).
TIDAL RAVE - Heart Screams [FISH027 CD/DL/iTunes]
Wellington based six-piece band Tidal Rave continues a New Zealand (and Australasian) tradition of dark, compelling guitar and keyboard lead garage rock. There’s something slightly claustrophobic and unsettling at times about the churning dense weave of the three guitars and bass backed by ghostly organ and insistent drum pulse. Add the character provided by the interchange between three songwriter-guitarist-vocalists, one with distinctive vibrato reminiscent of The Terminals’ ominous baritone proclamations, and it’s possible at times to imagine their debut album "Heart Screams" as the product of another era.
Wellington based six-piece band Tidal Rave continues a New Zealand (and Australasian) tradition of dark, compelling guitar and keyboard lead garage rock. There’s something slightly claustrophobic and unsettling at times about the churning dense weave of the three guitars and bass backed by ghostly organ and insistent drum pulse. Add the character provided by the interchange between three songwriter-guitarist-vocalists, one with distinctive vibrato reminiscent of The Terminals’ ominous baritone proclamations, and it’s possible at times to imagine their debut album "Heart Screams" as the product of another era.
BAD SAV - bad sav [FISH024 LP/CD/DL/iTunes] UK release out now via Occultation Recordings
If guitar rock is dead, no-one told Bad Sav. The latest blast of Analogue Dunedin comes from the band that refused to be left behind. Although featuring Death And The Maiden guitarist/vocalist Hope Robertson and bassist/vocalist Lucinda King, plus Shifting Sands guitarist Mike McLeod (on drums here), Bad Sav are the primary strain from which both of those bands sprang.
When asked to describe her band’s sound in a 2010 interview, Hope suggested “...a missed punch and a grazed fist. Sad, heavy, unpredictable loud pop". Indeed, Bad Sav offer a far more guitar-oriented hard attack than DATM; their distinctive filtering and reassembly of influences from shoegaze, psychedelic noise-rock - and goodness knows where else - are combined using a uniquely electrified Dunedin sonic alchemy, bursting with colossal, majestic, melodic noise. Order now via Bandcamp.
"They conjure epic maelstroms of distorted guitars, pounding drums, reverbed vocals and squalling noisescapes to teleport listeners into their bruised sonic universe. The carefully balanced ten track collection is sure to be a local highlight of the year for many..." UTR
If guitar rock is dead, no-one told Bad Sav. The latest blast of Analogue Dunedin comes from the band that refused to be left behind. Although featuring Death And The Maiden guitarist/vocalist Hope Robertson and bassist/vocalist Lucinda King, plus Shifting Sands guitarist Mike McLeod (on drums here), Bad Sav are the primary strain from which both of those bands sprang.
When asked to describe her band’s sound in a 2010 interview, Hope suggested “...a missed punch and a grazed fist. Sad, heavy, unpredictable loud pop". Indeed, Bad Sav offer a far more guitar-oriented hard attack than DATM; their distinctive filtering and reassembly of influences from shoegaze, psychedelic noise-rock - and goodness knows where else - are combined using a uniquely electrified Dunedin sonic alchemy, bursting with colossal, majestic, melodic noise. Order now via Bandcamp.
"They conjure epic maelstroms of distorted guitars, pounding drums, reverbed vocals and squalling noisescapes to teleport listeners into their bruised sonic universe. The carefully balanced ten track collection is sure to be a local highlight of the year for many..." UTR
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN - Wisteria [FISH022 LP/CD/DL] iTunes UK release out now via Occultation Recordings
The second album from Port Chalmers, Dunedin band Death and the Maiden creates a shadowy world within a world; populated by melancholy melodic synth waves, dreamy reverb washed guitars and vocals that celebrate the excruciating beauty and crushing weight of everyday life.
The band - Lucinda King (vocals, Bass), Hope Robertson (guitar, drums, vocals) and Danny Brady (synths, programming) - create a beautiful depth of sound, nestled between the programmed beats, synth arpeggios, hypnotic guitars and a pulsing bass.
Continuing from their eponymous debut, "Wisteria" conjures dreams of love, decay. Sounding at times wispy and ethereal, "Wisteria" also has passages of driving, pulsing cacophony; breathing life into the dreams of the dead.
"This is the perfect soundtrack for the enveloping heat of a new season. Beautiful, scary and endlessly evocative." The Quietus (UK)
Read the full review in The Quietus here.
"a euphoric urgent post-punk sound that taps straight into a visceral need to nod and sway... "Wisteria" is more gutsy, more beat driven than their 2015 eponymous debut, and an enveloping, whole body experience." Album of the Week, The Listener (NZ)
The second album from Port Chalmers, Dunedin band Death and the Maiden creates a shadowy world within a world; populated by melancholy melodic synth waves, dreamy reverb washed guitars and vocals that celebrate the excruciating beauty and crushing weight of everyday life.
The band - Lucinda King (vocals, Bass), Hope Robertson (guitar, drums, vocals) and Danny Brady (synths, programming) - create a beautiful depth of sound, nestled between the programmed beats, synth arpeggios, hypnotic guitars and a pulsing bass.
Continuing from their eponymous debut, "Wisteria" conjures dreams of love, decay. Sounding at times wispy and ethereal, "Wisteria" also has passages of driving, pulsing cacophony; breathing life into the dreams of the dead.
"This is the perfect soundtrack for the enveloping heat of a new season. Beautiful, scary and endlessly evocative." The Quietus (UK)
Read the full review in The Quietus here.
"a euphoric urgent post-punk sound that taps straight into a visceral need to nod and sway... "Wisteria" is more gutsy, more beat driven than their 2015 eponymous debut, and an enveloping, whole body experience." Album of the Week, The Listener (NZ)
For more releases going back to 2006 check our Bandcamp or check the releases or artist tabs above.
FINDING FISHRIDER RECORDS RELEASES WORLDWIDE
Easiest way to find a release is our Bandcamp page or e-mail us via the contacts form and we will give you the best local options for your country. If you are in the UK, Europe or North America - Fishrider releases are available directly from Occultation Recordings.
If your local record store doesn't stock the Fishrider release you are looking for tell them about us please! Our NZ/ Australia distributor is Rhythmethod NZ and our UK/ North America distributor is Cargo Records and in Europe it is Cargo Records (Germany).
Our releases can also be obtained by mail-order from Jigsaw Records in Seattle and Forced Exposure and a few older titles are available on CD from CDBaby there too.
Easiest way to find a release is our Bandcamp page or e-mail us via the contacts form and we will give you the best local options for your country. If you are in the UK, Europe or North America - Fishrider releases are available directly from Occultation Recordings.
If your local record store doesn't stock the Fishrider release you are looking for tell them about us please! Our NZ/ Australia distributor is Rhythmethod NZ and our UK/ North America distributor is Cargo Records and in Europe it is Cargo Records (Germany).
Our releases can also be obtained by mail-order from Jigsaw Records in Seattle and Forced Exposure and a few older titles are available on CD from CDBaby there too.
