Salmonella Dub & NZ Symphony Orchestra Collaboration

29th September 2008
Virgin/EMI Music New Zealand are proud to announce the release of Feel The Seasons Change – a live album from Salmonella Dub and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

In February this year Salmonella Dub, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and guests collaborated for the Feel The Seasons Change tour of New Zealand. The tour has now been immortalised through the release of a live album of the same name.

The shows combined Salmonella Dub’s contemporary music and production values with elements of te reo Maori, the ancient arts of taonga puoro (traditional Maori instruments) and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s classical tradition.

The collaboration was graced with three special guests: acclaimed te reo singer Whirimako Black, taonga puoro expert Richard Nunns, and leading electronic musician Paddy Free of Pitch Black; all woven together by noted Christchurch arranger and composer Tom Rainey and conductor Hamish Mckeich.

Material for Feel The Seasons Change was largely drawn from Salmonella Dub’s most recent album Heal Me, as well as classics from their extensive back catalogue. It also drew on excerpts of tracks from Paddy Free and Richard Nunn's new album Karekare: Te Reo O Te Whenua, and orchestral arrangements including new works composed by Tom Rainey. Rainey took a ground-up collaborative approach to the arrangements, making the NZSO an integral part of the music to create a unified sound scape, rather than just bolstering the performances as a ‘backing group’.

Feel The Seasons Change is more than just a live album - it is an historic document showcasing the coming of age of a distinctive contemporary Aotearoa musical voice. The album boldly melds together the colonial culture of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with the ancient taonga puoro and te reo through the medium of the dub-rock ethics of Salmonella Dub, the ethereal electronica of Paddy Free, interspersed with the magical vocals of Whirimako Black.

Feel The Seasons Change captures the Auckland and Christchurch performances and is on sale now. It is available as a limited collector’s edition double CD/DVD set with slideshows featuring the tracks For The Love Of It and Tui Dub and is also available as a CD-only version, and as double 12" vinyl.

For further information, bio, interviews, photos etc contact:
Pat Fife: p.fife@xtra.co.nz, 021565433, 09 3601797