Today’s In the Mix stays close to home. New Zealand isn’t a country anyone associates with prog rock — no stadium tours, no Mellotron-stacked arena shows — but for a brief window in the early-to-mid 1970s, a handful of bands here were chasing the same ambitions as Yes, Genesis and King Crimson, usually on a fraction of the budget and often with only one Mellotron between the lot of them (allegedly). Most of these records sold in the hundreds, not thousands, when they came out. Decades on, original pressings of albums like Think’s We’ll Give You a Buzz or Ragnarok’s self-titled debut change hands for hundreds of dollars among collectors — a strange kind of vindication for records nobody bought the first time round.
This set runs roughly chronological, from Tom Thumb’s 1970 Ludgate Hill — arguably the record that started all this — through to Farmyard, Living Force, and the rest of the class of ‘76-‘77, right as punk and disco were making this kind of thing thoroughly unfashionable. It’s not a complete history — there’s no room tonight for Dragon’s early symphonic material, or The Cleves, or a dozen others worth a whole episode of their own — but it’s a decent cross-section of just how seriously a small scene, a long way from anywhere, took the whole prog project. We close out back in 1970 with Farmyard.
Recommended further reading from Audioculture:
Prog Rock in NZ: a short history
Ten Moments in New Zealand prog
Tracklist
- Tom Thumb — Ludgate Hill
- Lutha — Sun Song (Anaximander Rambling) — Lutha
- Split Enz — Walking Down a Road — Mental Notes
- Ragnarok — Five New Years — Nooks
- Think — Our Children (Think About) — We'll Give You A Buzz
- Schtung — Au Revoir — Schtung
- AIRLORD — Earthborn Pilgrim — Clockwork Revenge
- Living Force — Matter Monster — Living Force
- Farmyard — Which Way Confusion (Part 2) — Farmyard
