Dean Roberts (Staubgold/Kranky/Mille Plateaux/Ecstatic Peace/Poon Village)
Roberts is one of New Zealand’s leading practitioners in the field of contemporary music and has produced a number of albums to critical acclaim. His releases on Staubgold, Mille Plateaux and Kranky Records are regarded as touchstones of contemporary experimental music. Weaving elements of rock, electro-acoustic, minimalism and free improvisation into unusually affecting song cycles that sound equally avant-futuristic and hauntingly ancient, like ghosts of songs past. He is an artist whose mercurial presence has manifested across the full spectrum of avant-praxis kicking off with his early NZ rock-informed improv/drone group Thela (Ecstatic Peace) and work under the White Winged Moth alias. He performed and recorded regularly as a member of Tower Recordings (with Matt Valentine Erica Elder, Tim Barnes, PG Six and others) during a lengthy stay in NYC. His later group Autistic Daughters (with Werner Dafeldecker, Martin Brandlmayr and Valerio Tricoli producing) are majestic examples of the possibility of detoured song-form.
Featured in the Wire Magazine’s “Seismic Performances: 30 Concerts that Shook the Planet: Jon Dale described his performance as “affecting a complete transformation of both songs and the performance space itself, ritualizing the interaction between guitar and voice and forcing himself through the barriers of his material with an intensity I had previously only witnessed on rare occasions..”