The Dead C’s Clyma Est Mort

The Dead C's Clyma est mort (1993) is the record of a live gig for one person. Tom Lax was running the Siltbreeze label in Philadelphia and had come to New Zealand to meet the artists he was releasing. He heard The Dead C at their noisy, improvised best, turning rock music on its head with a free-form style of blaring, loosely organised sound. Leading a second wave of music from Dunedin, New Zealand, The Dead C were an assault against the kind of jangly pop that had made the Dunedin Sound famous during the 1980s. This book uses The Dead C and in particular their album Clyma est mort (1993) to offer insights into the way the best of rock music plays vertigo with our senses, illustrating a sonic picture of freedom and energy. It places the album into the history of independent music in New Zealand, and into an international context of independent labels posting, faxing and phoning each other.

Captures the distinct place of the 1990s in the history of music technologies as The Dead C opportunistically released albums on cassette, vinyl and compact disc, all within the space of a few years.

AcknowledgementsAn American visits New Zealand only to find that nobody wants to playYou wouldn't play like that if you didn't know what you were doingIn which the band find themselves in front of the whole countryAn Englishman does not share the droll humour of the local peopleThe natural born gifts of the drummerOn the poetics of the Bible, and the day jobs of the artistsLooking the Horse in the MouthIn which a correspondence is established, and an exchange of like viewsThe Port Chalmers SoundThe cells of the body return to their unliving stateReferencesIndex