Time to Go – The Southern Psychedelic Moment: 1981-86

"[In the early '80s] Flying Nun, just quietly, had a bit of an unexpected problem: success. In fact for a while there, as long as you kept turning over rocks, you'd find more and more great bands making unusual sounds. These were sounds which sometimes seemed to deliberately give the lyrical fingers (always two) to the straight world—or which other times seemed to be designed to totally derange your senses and fuck you up.

"I recall an interview with Hamish Kilgour from the early '80s where he talked about how The Clean were trying to go back to the experiments of the first psychedelic era, 1965-67, and carry them forward in the present. In this he was reflecting his advantage as a slightly older participant in the creative hurricane which was then engulfing the pop music field across the western world. And also in this he was accompanied by members of several other key groups active in the Christchurch scene, such as The Gordons, The Builders, The Pin Group, Playthings and Victor Dimisich Band, as well as that transplanted southerner Chris Knox. All these people were of an age and disposition to make use of the best of the '60s in the brave new world of independent labels, social upheaval, stronger pot and general post-punk license. —Bruce Russell