Complete Studio Recordings

The Jefferies brothers, Peter and Graeme, were both mainstays of the New Zealand musical scene for a long time, working together in This Kind of Punishment, then on their own (Peter as a solo artist, Graeme in the Cakekitchen). They got their start in the early '80s with the post-punk band Nocturnal Projections. Sounding like a scrappy, homemade take on the sounds coming from the U.K., especially Wire, Joy Division, and the Fall, the band only made a few singles in 1982-1983 before moving on to become This Kind of Punishment. Their output has been reissued in bits and bobs, but 2018's collection on Dais Records lives up to the title of Complete Studio Recordings and gives people who missed them the first time around a chance to hear their unsurprisingly -- given their future track record -- excellent work. Graeme's guitar playing is wiry and fiery, Peter's vocals swing from majestically detached to insistently frantic sometimes in the space of a single line, and the rhythm section of bassist Brett Jones and drummer Gordon Rutherford push things along in powerful fashion. It's noisy, brisk, and urgent music played with passion and enthusiasm. That it never caught on with the world at large is mostly down to the band's location; it certainly wasn't because these singles aren't as good as the sounds coming out of the U.K. at the same time. Stack the menacing slow grind of "You'll Never Know" against Wire or the frantic "Nerve Ends in Power Lines" against the Fall, and the Projections don't come up short. It wouldn't be a shock to learn that when bands from the U.K. went to New Zealand to tour and found themselves trying to follow the Projections' opening set, they'd have to put in some extra effort to match the locals. While the world at large may not have been listening, bands around New Zealand certainly were, and many of the songs here (like the skittering "In Darkness" and the darkly poppy "In Purgatory") seem like blueprints for the early Flying Nun sound. This collection unearths and cleans up some absolutely essential New Zealand musical history and is something any self-respecting fan of early-'80s post-punk sounds should track down immediately. ~ Tim Sendra