ELEPHUNKIN’: PHIL BOWERING

Rip It Up, Issue 84, 1 July 1984, Page 6

ELEPHUNKIN’: PHIL BOWERING

Russell Brown

When Phil Bowering moved from Wellington to Auckland a year ago he was a frustrated man. With all his savings having gone into his Quiet Streets album the accompanying video for 'The Glass Cage', a chronic shortage of money was strangling any musical project he might plan. And this in a city notoriously hard on its musicians at the best of times.

Money's still a problem but things are looking up for Bowering. The first recording from Low Profile, his collaboration with Steve Garden, an EP called Elephunk In My Soup, has just been released and the pair have a few other schemes in mind. The three-song

EP was recorded over a long period at Garden’s own Basement Studios, with the help of various other habitues of the studio, including Mike Farrell and Tom Ludvigson. Whether the wacky title track or the more exploratory 'Stripes’, the music is busy and complex and Garden admits it stretched the eight-track studio to its limits. But it was the nature of the studio that allowed them the time to conceive and put together Elephunk. experimenting as they went along. “With a place like Basement we could still turn out listenable recordings even though we had to work under such compromises,’’

Garden says. "It’s enabling us to make some kind of start without it costing a fortune."

Basement has since pooled resources with, Progressive Studios, where Garden is now first engineer. The main aim of the merger is to make it possible to buy 16-track recording gear, which will still be "very affordable,’ in keeping with the "Basement philosophy.” With Low Profile coming to fruition recording wise, the idea of live performances has to be considered but Bowering's in no great hurry. "I’d really like to play again but it comes back down to the fact that the most interesting gigs are usually the least well paid." When a Low Profile live performance does come, the music will be quite different from that on the record. Both say it would be difficult if not impossible to take the EP songs and play them live. "It’s composed quite spontaneously, the bulk of it," says Garden. "It’s been put together in the studio and it’s not the sort of thing we could really learn. I don’t know if we’d want to." In addition to Low Profile, Bowering has a concept for more ambient music he calls Moving Lines, blending in layers of independent feels to create the music's texture. They're also keen on the idea of combining music and visuals. "There’s a German director called Seiberberg who produces films with no narrative at all. He likens his films to pieces of music and that’s what I'm interested in. He's trying to do with them what composers do with music. It's like the difference between composers and songwriters,” Garden explains. Phil Bowering came up to the RIU office a week or two ago, excited about a new plan for an African journey. Listen and observe, pick up new influences and bring them back here, trace mankind's development in the continent... "Now, if I can only get the money...”