diip in the pacific

Rip It Up, Issue 190, 1 May 1993, Page 16

diip in the pacific

The way Kane Massey tells it, the Deep Grooves record label was just a good idea at the time which hung around longer than he intended. In 1991 he was about to start up a reggae label when he was approached by whizz-kid producer Mark Tierney and the Lab's Bill Latimer. Two months later the first compilation of some of Auckland's deepest, sweetest grooves was released on the fledgling Deep Grooves label. Cut to 1993. Kane's now in sole charge of the label and wondering 'where do we go from there?'.

"I've spent the last 18 months building the label, doing all the homework," he tells me over coffee one Saturday. "I held off the [new] compilation for a few months to give us that bit of breathing space, so we're sort of relaunching the label in a way."

Deep Grooves is the latest label to join the swollen ranks of Auckland based independents like Flying Nun, Pagan, Tangata, Wildside and Southside. Crowded though the local label scene is, Deep Grooves has got its own thing going: a loose collection of individuals famous for other projects — including Bevin Sweeney of the Headless Chickens, Angus McNaughton of Incubator studios, Joost Langeveld of Nemesis Dub Systems, Rex Visible and Roland "Bader-Meinhoff" of the Picassos (get the picture?) — who mix and match under different guises to produce dance/ hip-hop/ reggae for a scene which prides itself on its Pacific flavoured multiculturalism. All these people and more appear on the new Deep Grooves compilation Deep In The Pacific of Bass. In his otherTife Kane Massey is editor of Stamp but his record label shrieks Planet magazine. Are you setting out to be a multi-cultural label?

"Fuck no! Definitely not. We're definitely not going to get onto that 'we are the world'

In the first in a continuing series on independent record labels Donna Yuzwalk talks to Auckland's DEEP GROOVES

trip." Why no artist/ group names next to the songs on the back of the CD? Is Deep Grooves more interested in creating a general label sound than promoting individual artists? Aren't you interested in building stars? "I guess we have to be. Everyone is, I guess. It's just that we didn't have any. There was Jules I

I [lssa] and a few other people flying around but no one really committed to the label." Now Kane is busy relaunching six acts he believes could "go the distance" and become the commercial side of Deep Grooves (as opposed to the experimental/ alternative side): Urban Disturbance (formerly Leaders of Style), Three

The Hard Way, Jules Issa, Mighty Asterix, House Party and possibly Grace. These are the acts he wants to be the face of his still relatively faceless label (nice Pacific artwork on the CD cover though). So you mix and match people to create a song for the moment?

"That's pretty much the way it's been and that's resulted in very few releases," says Kane, "In 91 we put out one album, last year we put out Projector Mix and two singles. This year we'll probaly put out five albums. The first compilation, Nemesis Dub System, another Projector Mix. The big one's gonna be Jules which we're working on for the end of the year, and possibly a grunge compilation."

A grunge compilation? On Deep Grooves?

"Sort of the heavier more industrial side of the label. And Free Base as well, a jazz album, which is pretty cool. The way I thought it would work is that Mark would handle all the production and I'd handle all the promotion but it definitely didn't work - Mark sort of realised how much work there was."

And confines himself, now, to the occasional Deep Grooves project. What about Bill Latimer?

"Bill's no longer involved in the label - he saw how much work there was coming up. But he's been very supportive. I don't think the label would have been there without him."

What's the problem Kane - is the label proving too much work? Are too many people coming in and saying "release me!"

"No, quite the reverse. No one comes to us. That's been the whole problem. There's not people fronting up with demo tapes and going 'put this out'. It's like shit, what are we gonna put out? There's basically a big pool of people who cross-polli-nate, there's not real acts as such. Getting people to work

with other people has been a full-time job." And that's as well as taking care of label business. Deep Grooves are now operating an office in Sydney, with plans to open another in Melbourne. Co-ordinating with Festivial Australia, Kane says they've sold three times as many records in Australia as New Zealand. In Australia, they're seen as a "label to watch".

"They like the stuff, but also we're taking a completely different approach to other labels. We want to be the dance label or groove label in Australasia, and license product from America and the UK for release in this region."

Kane's confident that his label will be distributed in America by the end of the year by a reasonably large independent.

"I went to the New York seminar last year. The way we'ft marketing the label in America is basically a reggae label from the Pacific Islands. I think the strength is in the reggae, I think New Zealanders have a really good feel for reggae. The dance stuff - honestly, we can't compete. It's like a big monching machine coming out of American and the UK."

And as if his plate isn't already heavy enough, Kane is launching yet another label, Lost Records, for singer/ songwriters in the Suzanne Vega/ Paul Kelly vein. So far, Greg Fleming and Andrew Thorne are on the books. He'd also like to open yet another Deep Grooves office in Noumea, where reggae does well.

No wonder this man's been working 70 hours weeks for the past two years. So, with a label and a magazine to administer, could we assume Kane has a grand five year plan underway? "Personally," says Kane, "I want to make movies. You've got to have a dream. These aren't my dreams, they're fun things to do."

DONNA YUZWALK