Dunedin creative art/music/comic stalwart Glen Ross has been lying low over the past couple of years, but with new outfit Evil Kid starting to grow, he's hoping to be a bit more active in the coming months.
‘‘I just want to get out of town and play some more shows,'' Ross says, with a laugh. ‘‘I want to finally do some things.''
Ross rose to prominence in the early 2000s with Onanon before starting to play his own songs under the loose banner of Bad Horsey with Look Blue Go Purple's Lesley Paris. The pairing eventually mutated into Kilmog, a project with guitarist Richard Ley-Hamilton that sadly never released any true studio material.
Now he's found himself performing under the moniker Evil Kid, joined by high pedigree friends Antz Anema, of Onanon, on drums, David Ager, of Idiot Prayer, on bass, and Adam Falconer, of Operation Rolling Thunder, on guitar.
The line-up has just released the first fruits from the new crop, Geoffrey and North Road, on a double A-side single available now on Bandcamp.
Geoffrey is a take on the tale of American serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, a song topic that feels almost quintessentially Ross, indulging his personal fascinations with all that is weird.
Over an A-frame piece of chaotic, spastic, and melodic Pixies-esque rock, Ross delivers lines ‘‘I saw pieces of meat between your teeth, Geoffrey'' and ‘‘please don't take this the wrong way, but you could really use a shower'' with a dark malevolence that still finds space for morbid humour.
Like much of Ross' artistic output, musical and otherwise, it takes on the grotesque, the dead, and the everyday.
The song is backed by the more psychedelic and jammy North Road, a winding tribute to the shady side of Dunedin's Northeast Valley.
Both tracks were recorded alongside 10 others in a burst of activity with Dunedin engineer Nick Graham (Opposite Sex, Astro Children), with Ross' friend and former Onanon bandmate Donald Ferns adding some extra spidery guitar work to Geoffrey from his Wellington base.
‘‘A lot of these songs have been around for ages since the Kilmog days,'' Ross says, reflecting on the recording sessions.
‘‘But Nick was really great to record with, he was in, out, and had some cool old gear. We just set the drums up in the lounge and did it in bugger-all time.
‘‘We still don't really know what we're going to do with it, to be honest.
‘‘Originally it was just going to be some demos, but I've been speaking to Joe [Sampson] at [Christchurch cassette label] Melted Ice Cream and he seems keen to do some stuff. He's quite into it. Maybe a cassingle thing with North Road and Geoffrey and he's also re-releasing Onanon's Hang On, I'm Still Mutating."
Anything could happen
The end is nigh for Chick's Hotel. This weekend the Dunedin venue will close its doors after three and a-half years as a music scene bastion.
While the venue's closure will leave an odd gothic-shaped hole in the Dunedin soundscape, the team behind the venue's rebirth are giving us all one more night to enjoy everything they've helped facilitate and nurture over the past few years.
And what a line-up to go out on! Hamish Kilgour direct from New York means New Zealand music legends The Clean will headline the final night in what venue co-owner Michael McCloud calls ‘‘a very fitting end to our era at Chick's''.
The band hasn't played in Dunedin in more than two years, since another Chick's appearance, a glorious two-night stint back in 2014.
In support, The Shifting Sands, the group of musicians who together purchased the venue back in 2012, will perform one last time and also debut a new fourth member, guitarist Steven John Marr, of Doprah fame.
See it, hear it
Download Evil Kid's double A-side single from Bandcamp now for $2, evilkidband.bandcamp.com
The Clean with support from The Shifting Sands, Sunday, March 20, Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers. Tickets $35 plus booking fee from undertheradar.co.nz, 8.30pm doors.
The Chick's Hotel Magic Bus leaves Countdown Central at 8.30pm, the University of Otago library at 8.35pm, returning to town after the show.
