Andrew Dubber     

April 11, 2007 – 1:58 pm

This is my first solicited mp3 blog post. That is, somebody (in this case, composer Mark Roberts) emailed me, asked me to listen to their music — and if I liked it, to please put it up here on The Wireless.

So that’s what I did — and this is the result.

On their website, The Enright House self-identifies as part indie-pop, one rather large part post-rock and one rather not-so-large part electronica. And I think that’s a fair description of the mix.

Think Death Cab For Cutie meets Mogwai. Sigur Ros meets Pinback. Philip Glass meets a distortion pedal.

I like what they do. I think there’s an audience for it. It’s somewhat more melodic than some of these comparisons suggest — but even though I’m uncomfortable with most “It’s like X meets Y” comparisons, these do give a taste of the underlying aesthetic.

Actually, it kind of reminds me of some of the stuff I’ve been hearing from Type Records.

They’re based in Christchurch, and I think the niche that they occupy is probably too small for them to be a sustainable operation if they stay exclusively in New Zealand. That said, they seem to have the right kind of what my grandfather would have called ‘gumption’ to make it on the international stage.

That’s not to say I think they need to leave New Zealand. They can be domiciled there — and in fact, there’s an advantage to what they do in terms of being surrounded by the South Island’s psychic landscape of isolationism and grandeur, which seems to seep out the very pores of this music.

But I think this is entirely exportable stuff. In fact, it’s the kind of stuff that tends to end up on mp3 blogs. You know, the sort that have lots of readers. I’d be very happy to see that happen.

This track comes from the self-released Broken Hands EP (2005). An album’s due out in June this year, and Darkwave will get a second outing there. Broken Hands was not particularly widely distributed. At all.

I hope they do well, and I hope that there’s a role for this blog in that process. To paraphrase my usual mantra: people hear music, then they like music — and then they arrange international licensing deals for that music.

I also hope that more people take the opportunity to send me their music, in the understanding that a) I probably won’t play it — I’m not your press agent; b) I probably won’t like it — most of the music on this blog is over 20 years old; c) if I do talk about your music, I will give it away for free; and d) it might not turn up until weeks later, if at all.

There’s more Enright House at the website and at their MySpace page.