It may play "ambiguous" music, but the talent of rock band Scrumpy Grinder was anything but for Smokefreerockquest judges on Saturday night.
The three-piece, made up of Logan Park High School year 13 pupils Gabriel Griffin, Rowena Rushton-Green and Sam Richardson, won top honours at the Otago regional final in the Dunedin Town Hall.
It was the second time Gabriel and Rowena have tasted rockquest glory as their band Sewage won the contest in 2009 and came second last year. Despite their track record, he was "pretty surprised" they won again.
"We were not really expecting to, but it was a good thing. We just did not get our hopes up too much," he said.
Rowena said they might have stood out for the judges because they were "quite relaxed and having fun". She described their music as "improvised noise rock" while Gabriel settled for calling it "a bit ambiguous".
"We all improvise the songs, which are an expression of us at that time - we have quite noisy vocals rather than words," she said.
They were among 39 bands to enter the afternoon competition, eight of which were called back for an evening final.
Scrumpy Grinder will be teamed with a mentor band in term three and, along with second place-getters Bowties on My Shoes, have to make an eight-minute video to be eligible for national final selection.
Bowties on My Shoes members Abby Knudsen-Hollebon and Stephanie Patchett, of St Hilda's Collegiate, won the Apra lyric writer's award for their song Red; Abby also won the women's musicianship award. Third place and the best song award went to Nick Henderson, of John McGlashan College, while Outright, of Otago Boys' High School, won the people's choice award.
The Central Otago regional final will be held in Wanaka on Friday.
