Following their 2017 collaboration Clear Stones, Berlin-based kiwi producer Fis & taonga pūoro player Rob Thorne are about to play their first shows in Aotearoa.
Fis and Rob Thorne Photo: supplied
The story of the album starts in 2016, when Oliver Perryman (AKA Fis), invited Thorne to Berlin.
Perryman began his musical career as Fis flirting with the drum n bass genre, before carving out a path that’s firmly his own, championed by prestigious labels like Tri-Angle and Loopy.
Thorne, who has a long history of making alternative music, started using traditional Māori instruments in 2001.
They’d never met before, but had struck up an online relationship and wanted to work together. Thorne joined Perryman to perform at CTM Festival, who provided them a space to collaborate and rehearse in the two weeks leading up to the festival, and several days recording time at Red Bull Studios.
They met in person for the first time at the airport, and a few weeks later had the raw material for an album.
Review: Fis and Rob Thorne, Clear Stones
“We were commissioned to do a show, and the recording was kind of a secondary thing” Rob tells me. “That two weeks was about getting it together for the show.”
“We were living and working together in an artistic residential situation. In the studio we recorded the performance set. I was thinking that could have been the album, but [I didn’t fully] understand Oli’s process at the time.”
Perryman’s process turned out to be more time consuming, taking the recordings and working with them for the better part of a year.
“Over the internet we kept in touch, and to and fro’d, and turned those recordings into Clear Stones.”
It is, in Rob’s words, a “phenomenally epic album”, using taonga pūoro as the building blocks for expansive tracks that coalesce into huge slabs of noise.
Fis (Oliver Perryman) and Rob Thorne Photo: supplied
Taking indigenous Māori instruments and pushing their sound into challenging new places is notable enough, but the duo have done it on the world stage (performing a handful of times in Europe). I ask Rob, whose iwi is Ngāti Tumutumu, if that adds a sense of responsibility to the shows.
“My dad brought me to an understanding that [being Māori] is a personal journey.
“It’s the pūoro that’s brought me to a place of daily practice, in regards to who I am as Māori.
“I’m not only a son, I’m also a father. So my responsibility isn’t just to my ancestors. It’s a daily conversation, and a negotiation. I believe it’s our responsibility as New Zealanders to engage in that negotiation on a daily basis.
“Our truest responsibility is to greater humanity. That’s one of the powerful tools that music affords us, the ability to make a difference, and to affect people on a very personal level, in a very quiet way.”
Related: Tony Stamp profiles Fis
This sense of responsibility is clearly shared by Oliver, whose record label Saplings has a fascinating business model. For each album sold, a hundred trees will be planted by an organisation called The Eden Projects, forgoing physical media in favour of putting the cost back into ecology.
While he says he’s valued having his work available on physical media in the past, the decision was “a no-brainer”.
I challenge him on this, telling him I think it’s remarkable, and Rob is quick to agree.
“It is remarkable. It’s that physical artefact [like a CD or record] that remains long after you, and there’s something within my ego that longs for that.
“So I really respect and honour what Oli’s doing in terms of giving that away for the benefit of everybody’s future.”
Listen to Clear Stones:
Fis & Rob Thorne play Wellington's Club 121 on Thursday 7th June and Christchurch City Art Gallery on Wednesday 13th June
