Blindsided by Espionage

It’s dangerously easy to feel like you’ve heard it all, especially in a town the size of Dunedin, where there’s plenty of good stuff, but not as much diversity as a bigger city.

Which is why I’m so grateful for discovering Introversy, by Espionage.

Introversy was released a few weeks ago on Bandcamp and Soundcloud to pretty much zero fanfare. If it wasn’t for a tip from a friend, I’d have never found it.

It’s truly a hidden gem. Whimsical and bouncy, it pulses and undulates with polyrhythms and converging melodies. It’s complex, but not pretentiously so. Darker moments pop out from the shadows like a cartoon villain, and it has the confidence to just go.

What really surprised me was just how polished it sounds. Subtle production touches such as the modulated hiss in the background on Clusters and the attention to balancing the stereo image throughout betray some serious musical and production skills, yet I’d never heard of Espionage until now.

Luckily, Dunedin’s small and in pretty much no time I was talking to Peter Claman, aka Espionage, over a pint at Albar.

"Previously my only understanding of how to publicise music was via DJs," explained Claman over his pint of 1812.

"That’s the rut that I’m sort of stuck in. I need some sort of performative thing to actually have people see what I’m doing because, otherwise, how do you publicise music?"

Claman has been making music under the Espionage label for around seven years. Originally, it was dubstep, banging mixes which were picked up by the likes of Optimus Gryme. The sort of thing you could throw on at a party in 2012 or at Bath Street and it would go off.

Introversy, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of any sort of danceable club release. You wouldn’t put it on at a party unless it was a super-cool party where everyone was willing to shut up and listen. It’s autobiographical, an individual artistic expression without any intended purpose other than being an artistic expression.

"It’s this sort of progression of making music and trying to figure out how to DJ a set and market it to people, and then sort of just being, like, I can’t be bothered doing that anymore and just making music to experiment, I suppose," Claman explained.

"I started wanting to branch out from dubstep because you sort of end up in this sort of cookie-cutter thing when you’re making electronic music from a dance music perspective.

"I’ve always played trombone in jazz bands, orchestras, that sort of thing. I guess I’ve always been sort of trying to push those two things together into something."

Possibly most incredible of all is the fact that Claman released his work completely free under the creative commons licence, meaning people are encouraged to share and remix it as much as they want. It seems like a bad move from a business perspective, but music isn’t a business for Claman.

"I don’t really see there being much money in album sales from the perspective of the music industry going forward.

"I mean, traditionally it’s made a lot of money because there was something physical to sell, but now music is just information which is shared like all other information. As it is, it’s just electronic information that I pulled out of thin air.

"And there’s not such a cost to me as it is beneficial to me because I enjoy the process."

It’s not often that music surprises me in the way Introversy did. Claman also shared with me tentative ideas for a live translation of his music, which I’m sure he can make into a reality and surprise me with all over again.