tuhinga mō trace / untrace
The story of your new favourite DIY label from its co-founder Julie Dunn
Just because I’m a fan of something, it doesn’t mean I’m the best person to share its story and I am a huge fan of the people, the music, the ethos and the mahi of ‘trace / untrace' from Dunedin. Featuring many of the musicians I was in awe of during my time in Ōtepoti and producing some of the most exciting music in New Zealand right now, this record label / community is a shining example of collective art in modern times. That kind of story deserves to be told in the voice of those living it, so without any further ado, allow me to introduce you to Julie Dunn, and your new favourite DIY label - trace / untrace
Tēnā rā tātou.
Ko Kapukataumahaka te maunga
Ko Ōwheo te awa
Ko Kāi Tahu Whānui te mana whenua
Ko Ōtepoti te kāinga
Ko trace untrace records tēnei
Ko Julie Dunn tōku ingoa.
What follows is an extremely biased, unashamedly cheesy account of some things I think about the record label that I started with my friend Richard Ley-Hamilton in early 2017. A label is best described by it’s catalogue, so I’ll start by speaking to that.
2017
TUR-1 | mixtape 1 | trace / untrace recs
a1. The Rothmans – Wavelength
a2. asta rangu – asta rangu
b1. Space Bats, Attack! – Schro
b2. Koizilla – Escape Rope
TUR-2 | A.S.L | The Rothmans
TUR-3 | plasticine | asta rangu
TUR-4 | DOOMSURFSURFDOOM | Koizilla
TUR-5 | Clean the Kitchen. end the world | Koizilla
TUR-6 | Yield | Bediquette
Before considering starting a label, I had been (lovingly!) making merch and managing Koizilla’s growing amount of admin/press – lucky for them I wasn’t a musician yet myself so they got my full attention. There were a bunch of releases about to be put out by our friends, and Richard and I wanted to create some sort of dedicated space to share that with the world. Our friends Zac Nicholls, Connor Blackie, and Josh Nicholls had just formed Koizilla the year before, and their fast, riffin-as-hell performances were being devoured by fans who wanted more. They had just released their debut EP Blunder Brother, with another two EPs lined up. Richard had been working on his first project since his previous band Males ended, and was recording a five song EP (with the help of local legend Tex Houston) to be released under the name Asta Rangu. Space Bats, Attack! (Josh and Richard along with pedal-whiz Lee Nicholson) were sitting on an albums worth of new material, and had been working hard to wrangle the jams into song form to record before Richard’s imminent departure to the UK. Our new friends The Rothmans were becoming very prolific; we were devout attendees of their shows, completely drawn in by the raucous intensity of their live set. I knew they had just recorded an EP with Nick Graham, so at a Refuel pint night we asked them if they wanted to release it on tape with us. We bought a Sony dual deck tape recorder off Trade Me, took a bunch of random blue cassettes that Lee had bought for a Space Bats release, and organised a label launch party. We dubbed the tapes the morning of the show, and to this day this has been the template for trace untrace releases. Do as little admin as possible and sort it all out at the last minute.
2018
TUR-7 | mixtape 2 | trace untrace recs
a1. Sheep – The Government Can’t Take My Benny
a2. The Rothmans – Sluicings
b1. Vanessa Worm – Red
b2. Coyote – Dogstar
TUR-8 | Of No Particular Significance | Bye Bye Fishies
TUR-9a | Astra 2000 | The Rothmans
TUR-9b | Lazy Hazy | Koizilla
TUR-10 | Graham Matris vs. The Entire Galactic Chaos Empire | Sheep
TUR-11 | Warped | Koizilla
2019
TUR-12 | That’s How The Light Gets In | Fazed on a Pony
TUR-13 | DOWN | Milpool
TUR-14 | Cosmosis | The Spectre Collective
TUR-15 | She Shanties for Frank | Tiny Pieces of Eight
TUR-16 | BLOOD/TAR | Milpool
TUR-17 | mixtape 3 | trace / untrace recs
a1. Bathysphere – Lung
a2. Milpool – Hamish and Josh Go To Hell
a3. Trapshlee – Garlic Roll / coolsip
a4. Koizilla – I Can’t See Anything
a5. Space Bats, Attack! – 90’s
a6. Adelaide Cara – Weary
b1. King REX – out by buster
b2. Bediquette - Interviews
b3. The Rothmans – Seymour Butts
b4. Max Scott – Drifted
b5. Night Lunch – Maximum Wage
b6. James Lamour – what you think you mean
b7. The Spectre Collective – Pork and Cream
TUR-`18 | Double Trouble! | Night Lunch
TUR-19 | I’m Going to Let You Down | Bediquette
Over the next two years the catalogue grew at a much faster pace. Koizilla had a massive year in 2018, with the release of their debut LP Lazy Hazy, as well an EP covering 5 tracks from the iconic Crash Bandicoot game Warped. Debut EP’s were to be released by Fazed on a Pony, Milpool, and Night Lunch. I had the absolute privilege of making tapes for Tiny Pieces of Eight’s She Shanties for Frank, a life-changing album for me. There was also the first and only release from a non-Ōtepoti band, The Spectre Collective’s Cosmosis. I met those guys at the first Welcome To Nowhere festival that we attended with Koizilla in 2019, and they remain one of my favourite Pōneke bands. The mixtape we put out that year was huge! 13 songs, mostly unreleased at the time. We organised a showcase and flew The Spectre Collective down from Pōneke, as well as Lee so that Space Bats could play, to be joined by Mary Berry and Koizilla.
2020
TUR-20 | Moon Life | Neive Strang
TUR-00/TUR-21 | Blunder Brother | Koizilla
TUR-22 | I Don’t Surf I Boogie | Koizilla
TUR-23 | mixtape 4 | trace / untrace recs
a1. Porpoise – Back In My Room (demo)
a2. Yam Hash – Shlee outro (demo)
a3. Koizilla – Take Me to the Shop (concept demo)
a4. Dale Kerrigan – RipGirl101 (live)
a5. Asta Rangu – live @ Radio1 91fm 2.5.2017
a6. Space Bats, Attack! – live @ Radio1 91fm 20.3.2017
b1. The Rothmans – Sae Old Man
b2. Space Bats, Attack! – live @ Dive 9-10-2020
b3. Flesh Bug – Resin Breath (demo)
b4. Mary Berry – Constellation (demo)
b5. Yam Hash – untitled (live)
b6. Yam Hash – Sublime (demo)
b7. Bathysphere – Nude as The News (cover)
b8. Possibly one of the first Mary Berry songs (not 100% sure though, and if it is, it was never played live) 22-10-2017
b9. Mysterious Hooded Man – Helicopters
2020 was a quieter year comparatively. Funny though because now in 2021 we are seeing the fruits of all the work that went on in that strange year. Like most cities in NZ, Ōtepoti is struggling to hold on to it’s practice spaces and venues. In October of 2020 we were unexpectedly evicted from our practice space at The Attic – which we found out about when Bathysphere turned up ready to live track our album. We found ourselves locked out, along with all the other bands who had gigs on that night! The landlord was unreachable by phone or email, so we broke in through an unlocked window and got our shit the fk out of there. The mixtape we released that year was for a fundraiser held at Dive, raising money for a new space. The inner sleeve reads “thank you for buying this tape and supporting Dunedin music <3 this cassette is a tribute to all of the people that make noise despite the shit!! let the jams run free”. Hilariously, we ended up losing money at the fundraiser show cos we couldn’t cover the venue hire fee with door sales. There were maybe 40 people there including the three bands Dale Kerrigan, Bathysphere, and Night Lunch! Was probably a rainy night or something lol.
2021
TUR-23 | Running Race | Porpoise
TUR-24 | Heaven is Other People | Bathysphere
TUR-25 | Table for Two | Night Lunch
TUR-26 | noise bitch | Dale Kerrigan
TUR-28 | Happy to Perform | Kane Strang
TUR-29 | How Does This Sound? | Adelaide Cara
I feel that the 2021 releases can speak for themselves, given the airtime they’ve been getting this year – to my absolute delight! One thing that I’m overjoyed by is that the wom*n of trace untrace are fking dominating at the moment. Adelaide Cara’s debut album How Does This Sound is the most recent release – hauntingly penetrating, stark, full, and beautiful. Before that was noise bitch, Dale Kerrigan’s debut LP. The songs are noisy and expressive in the extreme, a reflection of the depth of creative force that you sense in Shlee’s songwriting and playing. Earlier in the year, the debut Bathysphere album, and Porpoise’s EP Blue Whale were released as well. Four bands fronted by such talented wom*n, it absolutely fills my heart.
It’s kinda difficult to remember back to exactly what we were thinking trace untrace would end up being, so I turned to an early mission statement for some illumination. Four years ago we wrote:
“What do we want to achieve? Empowerment of women and non-binary people. Increase the amount of DIY activity going on in Dunedin, and educate young people about why this is so vital! Foster a healthy and vibrant community in which people are nice to each other and happy. Increase avenues for bands to be financially supported. Foster tuakana-teina relationships with older and younger musicians. Put as much distance as possible between music and the alcohol industry. Protect and nourish authentic creative activity.”
It’s a funny thing to look back on this very aspirational statement with the power of hindsight. It felt like it took an age to release something which wasn’t made only by men. Now I look back at the media from the label launch in 2017 and it feels really odd that it was a fully male lineup, so I know we’ve come a long way already. Initially The Attic was the physical embodiment of these aspirations. It’s where we slaved away over song structures, invited the community in to listen, and carved a little pocket of DIY heaven. I’ve had some emo as fk moments watching my friends play there. To me this is why the venue crisis hits so hard, The spaces where we come together are being erased even as we still inhabit them. It’s hard not to become deeply fatigued by that. The loss of The Attic was a time full of sadness and anger, but also it was the first time I realised we had become so much more than a few bands who practiced under the same roof. The Attic had always felt like another home; it reminded me somewhat of a marae sheltering the community connecting within. You feel a deep connection with the space that is holding you, but the real ngākau is in the relationships that grow within.
To me, Ōtepoti music feels like the grimy, wayward younger sibling of the NZ music whānau. Maybe I’m biased, but I’ve always thought the music that gets made here lacks a certain self-consciousness which I sense in larger cities. Maybe it’s less marketable, given the anti-commodification sentiment implicit in all Noise music. I know that this ethos unifies all of the bands whose music we release. Because of that I’ve become more comfortable now to admit that I’m terrible at promo and admin, simply because that’s not what I’m in it for. I’m in it to bask in the creative output of my community! I can’t wait to hear everything that comes next; to stand in the old and new spaces where we will come together to rock the fk out! So many little things happen when you’re around people you love, little reasons to keep living, keep fighting for papatūānuku, keep making noise. Feels like a pretty sustainable situation really.
Please go and support the label and their artists by heading to their bandcamp page here & trace / untrace would like to give a shout-out to Fraser from dunedinsound.com for their mahi.