Music festival in full flight

A Dunedin experimental music festival has taken off. Matthew Littlewood talks to Lines of Flight co-organiser and performer Peter Porteous about running the event, and why people go to it.

From the other side of the world, people have come to Dunedin to follow the drone, and Lines of Flight music festival has obliged.

Originally an adjunct to the inaugural Dunedin Fringe Festival in 2000, Lines of Flight has brought musical talents and audiences to Dunedin from all over the world.

"It coalesced a community of experimental music makers around New Zealand, Aotearoa — lots of them hadn’t really met each other before, and this was a chance to start making those physical connections. Because a lot of those musicians who played either hadn’t played live before or hardly ever played live because the music didn’t really work in a pub space," Lines of Flight co-organiser Peter Porteous says.

As the festival grew, international artists followed.

Porteous says many of the performers were somehow connected to "drone-based" music, or music that took its time.

"The thing about this kind of music is, often the people who love it really love it.

"So you almost get some obsessive types who will sort of travel anywhere to see it. I mean, we’ve had quite a few international acts perform over the years, and exclusively they’ve just contacted us and asked if they could play"

The audience members come from all over the place too.

"I’ve had performers from Australia, from America, from Europe. And similarly, audience members. At the last Lines of Flight, I think there were about 20 people who flew from around the world just to be an audience member"

There have been obstacles and hurdles along the way, not least Covid-19, and the death of co-curator Peter Stapleton in 2020.

Yet there have always been people willing to help.

"After Peter Stapleton’s death, I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue it kind of emotionally as much as the surrounding Covid-19 stuff.

"But then whenever I would mention that to anybody, the first thing people would say is, no, it has to continue, and then the next thing they’d say was, we can help.

"I realised that, of course, I didn’t need to do it all on my own. So it was just a huge community sort of behind it. I think last time there were about 60 people who helped"

Acts at this year’s festival include an array of styles and approaches, from Slightly Imperfect, which is Greg Malcolm and Jenny Ward performing Ivor Cutler songs, to Microsoft Voices, which use three laptops and make sound using the text edit function of the Microsoft programme. Porteous’ own band Ghost Bells will also play a show.

"There were lots of people asking us to play at the festival," Porteous assures us.

A free noise rock group made up of Porteous, Robbie Yeats and Mick Elborado and formed from the ashes of seminal free noise band Eye and early southern psychedelic pioneers the Terminals, Ghost Bells might be the group that best captures the festival’s aesthetic.

"I just love seeing people exposed to this music. I hope people get inspired by it to go and make their own sounds"

Performances will be held at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Port Chalmers Town Hall, and aside from the official line-up, Porteous promised a "couple of surprises".

He said Dunedin’s place at the bottom of the world leant itself to experimental music.

"I think everybody should play music. It’s so good for the soul. And, you know with improvised music, you don’t necessarily need to be technically gifted.

"It’s more your ear, and people can make sound out of anything.

"So, I hope that people will go along and then go away and get inspired to kind of make sound themselves"

There’s already talk of another Lines of Flight festival in 2027.

"It’s more than likely that there will be another one in two years’ time. I mean, I’ve had musicians already who can’t perform at this one, but have asked if they can play on the next one"