A ‘pyramid scheme’ is a fraudulent moneymaking venture, which eventually collapses, leaving those at the bottom with nothing. Wellington band The Pyramid Scheme have been engaging in unsustainable practices of their own, but thankfully those on the bottom (you, the listener), are likely to get a good deal.
IN May last year, The Pyramid Scheme released their debut album, Massive Reminders of a Virile King. They played a few shows to celebrate, and then singer and multi-instrumentalist Osaka Silenzio announced he was off for eight months, to do strange work on cruise ships.
“I deliver seminars to promote the perks of acupuncture, explain to people that it won’t hurt very much, and then heal the holy hell out of them,” he says.
While Silenzio was making his fortune at sea, members of The Pyramid Scheme were able to continue making music – thanks to the wonders of technology.
Bassist Hamish “Bones” Cardwell explains, “Osaka would come up with beats on the ship and send them to us, then we would write melodies and send them back to him. We were all about full embracing of the interweb.”
The use of MPCs, or music production centres, helped. Increasingly popular tools for musicians, an MPC can act either as a live sampling device – playing pre-recorded sounds at the push of a button – or as a compositional tool, recording beats with pre-loaded sounds.
“It’s such an incredible device, you stick a chord in it that goes straight to your computer, and just send it off. For a bunch of analog motherf*!*ers like us, it’s a really big thing,” says Cardwell.
Performing in turbans, make-up and kurta robes (described by Cardwell as “like a muumuu but more svelte”), The Pyramid Scheme are exactly what you never expected.
The styles they reference are old, but the sound is brand new - cultural misappropriation is what they do, “artistically and respectfully”.
What started as a psychedelic jam band, fueled by late nights with bottles of whisky, has become more refined over time.
“You can play that stuff for a while but it gets limiting, and we wanted to incorporate more structure. Nowadays there’s way more singing, and it’s less noisy, more snappy. It was quite an assault before, now we’ve honed it to a polite assault,” says Cardwell.
The Pyramid Scheme have been practicing their ‘polite assault’ with a series of warm-up gigs, all leading up to the final “glorious explosion” this week.
“The best shows have involved hypnosis, telekinesis, astral travel, sexual feelings, and biblical references,” says Silenzio.  
Take that as a warning.
The Pyramid Scheme, with Rhythm Hawks, The Garden Club, April 9.