Photo: Supplied
Just prior to the turn of the century, NZ bass music was having a real moment. Local artists had embraced merging new technology with a dub sensibility, and the results refracted out across multiple subgenres. A yearly celebration called The Gathering brought many of these acts together, and a regular on the roster was a producer called The Nomad.
A new compilation called Infinity has been released, gathering tracks from his many years of output, and as the nom de plume suggests, it finds him wandering through genres as he goes.
Daimon Schwalger’s first release under the name The Nomad was 1998’s Movement, one of Aotearoa’s first drum and bass albums. Composed on a sampler, it took 72 floppy discs to make, and featured Pearl Runga, (sister to Bic and Boh), on the title track.
Schwalger drifted away from jungle, but his debut opened a lot of doors, and on 1999’s Second Selection he enlisted Farda P, MC for the UK outfit Rocker’s Hi Fi, to add vocals to ‘141’.
That album was heavily dub-focussed, and Level 3, which came next, incorporated some rougher, hip hop-infused beats.
Liner notes for Step 4th mention an expansion in production skills and newly purchased equipment, and it’s audible. Schwalger had spent 2002 running an audio engineering course, and live instruments are featured throughout.
On ‘Destinations’ you can hear layers of guitar helping propel the groove. Twenty years after its release, the track still sounds fresh.
Going back through Schwalger’s back catalogue you notice he moved around geographically as well as musically, and in 2008 he relocated to Melbourne. His 2011 album Perilous Times featured plenty of local collaborators, including MC Jornick, who appears on the track ‘Deeper’.
The liner notes mention taking inspiration from dubstep, but tracks like ‘Deeper’ retain reggae touches like guitar and melodica skank.
The Nomad’s earliest releases had Tiki Taane on mix duties, and over his career he worked with a fearsome roster of collaborators, including Salmonella Dub, Tehimana Kerr from Fat Freddy’s Drop, Myele Manzanza, Julia Deans, King Kapisi and many more.
That speaks to his place in Aotearoa music history as a pioneer of new forms, and Infinite is a great catalogue of that restless spirit. His last album came out around ten years ago, and saw him taking an interest in new genres like trap.
Work-and-life-wise, he branched out into audiovisual spaces, and settled down in Westport; his days of wandering over for the meantime.
