Our Sound: Is Christchurch the Drum and Bass Capital of NZ?
Apart of NZ music month, Our Sound explores the dominate music scenes in each NZ town and city. In Christchurch, Jordan Collins explains how the Drum and Bass is making a comeback in 2022 and resecuring its bass heavy roots.
Jordan Collins, a MAINZ student studying event technologies, spends most of his free hours of the day and night doing two things, making music, and attending drum and bass events. He believes drum and bass is coming out back out of the shadows in New Zealand, “I feel like Christchurch is definitely the staple city in the South Island [for drum and bass], if not New Zealand”.
Often Christchurch’s DnB community has been kept behind the closed doors of student flats, specific nightclubs and one off events, but recently that’s started to change. “You go to some of the mainstream bars in town, and they’re playing drum and bass”.
Events have become a weekly occurrence, with venues like Hide offering events with big local and international names every weekend. New festivals specifically for the genre have popped up in the region, Rolling Meadows and Hidden Lakes attracted large numbers last year, and even the underground scene in Christchurch has begun hosting their own multiday events.
As the student population at the University of Otago has grown, many have come to say Dunedin is now New Zealand’s drum and bass capital. However, Collins disagrees, “With Dunedin, it’s a bit off and on, at the start and end of the student year, then sure, but with Christchurch there’s always has something going on”
To anyone who grew up listening to electronic music in the late 90’s, this is a debate that’s been going on for decades. Bob’s bar in Auckland is often cited as the birthplace of NZ drum and bass, and Ministry Night club in Christchurch as one of the locations who popularized it. “[Drum and Bass,] it’s been a very big thing here for a long time, people have a genuine interest in the music” Collins explains.
This growth of the genres popularity in Christchurch hasn’t come without challenges however, “there’s not many venues available to hire out and use since covid happened”, “the Slate Room which used to be a staple for events, shut down events due to apartments that were built across the road making noise complaints”.
Despite holdbacks, the scene continues to become more mainstream among the public, which Collins claims has changed its audience,” it’s become less about the music for some people and more about the event and drinking”. But this hasn’t stopped who were around when the scene started from being involved. Long time artists such as AMC, continue to attract diverse crowds, “when I saw him [AMC] there were a lot of 30-40 year olds there, they had been listening to him for years since the scene first started to take off. They were there because they wanted to be there, to support the scene”.
It’s clear that the scene isn’t moving on from Christchurch anytime soon, “There’s a culture of Networking here, just going to gigs and supporting people, watching them play, and getting to know them – it all why the scene has taken off here”.
Read OurSound. on [outlet name], to hear more about Christchurch’s thriving drum and bass scene, and what each town is listening to around NZ.
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