"We weren’t really planning to do it — it just kind of happened," he said this week of new nine-song long-player Figment.
The Alpaca Brothers were part of Dunedin’s pulsing ’80s band scene, playing alongside the likes of The Great Unwashed, The DoubleHappys and Look Blue Go Purple. Typical of the learn-by-doing approach of the time, they played their first gig, at the Empire, after no more than a few days’ rehearsal, using borrowed gear.
As Matthew Goody recently recorded in his book on those times, the band’s style was variously described as "controlled mayhem"and an "onslaught". On the back of that live reputation they recorded the EP Legless, released by Flying Nun in 1986, which was well received, surprising many for the contrast to the live sound, and regarded by some as among the year’s best music. But the Alpacas burned brightly and briefly, splitting up shortly thereafter, following a support gig for The Cramps in Auckland.
The catalyst for the new recording was news in 2020 that Flying Nun had digitised Legless, and lodged it with the Alexander Turnbull Library. Blucher and drummer Steve Cournane got chatting, and in a manner reminiscent of the impromptu formation of the band back in 1984, it was spontaneously decided to record again.
Cournane was visiting south from his Auckland base and they thought at first they might re-release the EP, Blucher says.
"We were just sitting around and went ‘while you’re here we might as well record a couple of songs’."
Original bassist Nick Wilkinson was unavailable due to ill health, so Robert Scott, of The Clean and The Bats fame, was roped in.
Soon enough they were in a friend’s home studio.
"Lo and behold, after three days we had 10 or so songs. So we went, ‘well, we might as well release them’, because they weren’t too bad."
The songs are all new, though some had been kicking around Blucher’s phone for while.
Blucher’s early starts as a groundsman at the University of Otago gives him time to think, he says.
"At times I was just writing songs in my head, singing them into my phone as I went along. That’s where the majority of those songs came from. There’s a slightly Covidy, sci-fi feel about them."
Cournane also has a couple of writing credits. In between Alpaca Brothers incarnations, he studied jazz and won the 2002 New Zealand jazz album of the year with CLBob, among other things.
While Blucher has played in various bands in the years since the Alpaca Brothers’ initial iteration, he says he’s been relatively inactive in the past 10 years, notwithstanding his other current band project, Bruce Harold Blucher’s Seething Mass — which also has recording plans.
"It’s sort of all or nothing really."
The main difference between the music on the EP and the new album is down to the absence of their original bass player, Wilkinson, Blucher says.
"He was quite a phenomenal sound and energy in himself, so it has changed in that way."
On the other hand, the content of the songs is not very different, he says.
"I am still singing about the same things. I think probably my songwriting has got a little bit better, or, I kind of know what I want to do now. When we were first playing it was whatever came out."
Figment will probably get a couple of gig outings in the South in coming months, Blucher says, Dunedin definitely part of those plans. The album is out on vinyl and as a Bandcamp download.
