Peter Gutteridge in the Ureweras

Peter Gutteridge died yesterday morning. When I read the news, I remembered listening to this track bleed out of the tiny speakers of a cheap bopblaster in a cheap car sliding and skidding through the gravel roads of the Ureweras.

Our car's stereo had long since lost its voice, so we'd bought the bopblaster in Wairoa, and loaded it with the first EP by Snapper, the obsessively noisy band Gutteridge formed after tiring of the overly decorous music that had become associated with his native Dunedin.

As the journey through the mountains to Rotorua went on, I became convinced that Snapper's layers of corrugated feedback had become as essential to our progress as the engine and wheels of our little car. I played their cassette over and over.

In this fascinating article Aussie Wes Holland describes a journey to Dunedin in search of Gutteridge.