The old Frederick Street Church in Te Aro is now an experimental music machine.
New lessee Daniel Beban has given the Church a breath of fresh air and encourages DIY music making.
Beban’s band The Orchestra of Spheres was born in the Church, and last week released their debut album Nonagonic Now, for which they not only screen-printed the cover, but also created new instruments that channel the “ancient funk from the universe”.
The band makes experimental dance music with home-made instruments like a bi-sexamouse marimba, gamelan, and electric bass carillon.
Beban also tooled up an old spinning wheel with bicycle Spokey Dokes and LED lights to operate like a manual techno drum machine.
“It’s solidly dance, it has this rhythmic sound that I visualise as shapes and rotating circles in the music.”
Beban is influenced by the rhythmic complexity of African drumming.
“The sound [the drumming] makes is like a Dali painting, when you look at it from different angles another picture opens up.”
The band has been exploring world music for sometime, and Beban says over four days of recording at the Church they found a unique sound.
“It’s uplifting music about looking at the splendour of the world and carrying that into song.”
Beban plays the biscuit tin guitar and sings, alongside band members Mos Iocoss, Zye Soceles, and Jimi Hemi Mandala.
“Everyone brings their own flavour to the group, and bass player Zye Soceles is into Haitian chants that put people into trances,” Beban says.
Epic musical voyages with hypnotic qualities feature on the new record.
“You enter a different state of mind, the layers envelop you, normal songs are linear and go from A to B, but [our songs] are circular so you can view more in-between.”
The track Rotate came about when Beban was reading a sci-fi book by Rudy Rucker about viewing the world in four dimensions
Beban makes his bread and butter as a part time sound technician for Radio New Zealand, and with his friend Mike Gibson mastered Nonagonic Now.