Looking back at the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s house, 2-step/garage and broken beat in Aotearoa

In 1988, a coalition of busy music industry figures based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland came together at the producer Alan Jansson’s Module 8 Studios. Over several evenings, they recorded what was arguably Aotearoa/New Zealand’s first house track. A self-titled, one-off studio project, ‘Jam This Record’ was marketed and released as an obscure white label. Spare and stripped down but oddly sample-heavy, the track’s unmistakably late-‘80s machine beat sound captivated discerning club DJs around the country and further abroad in the Northern Hemisphere, where it spent an unexpected but thrilling two weeks in the UK club chart.

As the final decade of the 20th century dawned, house music, be it of the Chicago, Acid, New York or UK varieties, was becoming a central part of the soundtrack of nightlife across Aotearoa. Amidst this seachange, Jansson teamed up with the then-emerging Tāmaki Makaurau hip-house group Chain Gang to record two aspirational singles for Epic Records, ‘Break The Beat’ (1990) and ‘Jump’ (1991). Accompanied by elaborate music videos, both tracks entered the Top 40 pop charts. Dance music wasn’t a fad. It was here to stay.

By the early-to-mid ‘90s, Tāmaki Makaurau was amid a Polynesian cultural renaissance which helped reshape the look, sound and feel of arts, culture, fashion and music in the city of sails, dance music included. Two local tracks from the era that skew towards the breakbeat end of the house spectrum include Anthony Ioasa’s ‘Baby You Know (Pacific Round House Remix)’ from the Deep In The Pacific Of Bass compilation (1993) and Fuemana’s ‘Fa A Samoa (Coconut Mix)’ off their New Urban Polynesian album (1994). It’s also worth noting that the CD single of the New Zealand pop group OMC’s global hit ‘How Bizarre’ included a sturdy dance mix.

Over the second half of the decade, live house bands like Tāmaki Makaurau’s Mesh and Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington’s Ebb began to show up within the country’s burgeoning countercultural nightlife circuits. Weirdly though, recordings seem to fall away for a spell. That all shifted in 1999, when NZ house productions started popping up on CD compilation albums masterminded by the Tāmaki Makaurau collective/label Kog Transmissions. That same year, Simon Flower ,aka Peak:Shift launched his house-focused Nurture Recordings sub-label, South Exit.

The tide rose in the early 2000s as a wave of promoters, nightclubs, dance-inclined musicians, DJs, producers, independent labels, sympathetic media outlets and radio stations, and some savvy major label A&Rs helped usher in a golden moment for the local scene. Much of this era was buoyed by a flurry of excellent commercially released mix CDs and their scrappier bootleg cousins. There’s also the matter of the influential American and British producer/DJs Matthew “Recloose” Chicoine and Dick Johnson aka Magik J both relocating to Aotearoa in 2001. Thirteen years later, Chicoine returned to the US. On the other hand, Johnson continues to live here. Regardless, they generously shared their skill sets and perspectives with the local music community.

Recently, I recorded a specialist DJ mix of ‘90s/2000s NZ house music for Mouthfull Radio. Looking back with two and a half decades of hindsight, it became salient that the genre’s early aughts boom coincided with a small wave of locally produced broken beat and 2-step/garage records. Given those genres' natural relationship with house music, it felt fitting to play and discuss these beautiful obscurities—some of which hide in plain sight—within the broader context of house music in Aotearoa. Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, here’s a list of ten house, broken beat and garage/2-step tracks and remixes released by New Zealand producers during the first half of the aughts.

In 1998, Calibre, located downstairs off Karangahape Road in St Kevin’s Arcade, was a crucial nightclub spot for house music lovers in Tāmaki Makaurau. In the decades since, countless legends have been spun around late nights and early mornings spent there.

As the new millennium dawned, two journeyman figures in Tāmaki Makaurau nightlife, the producer Joost Langeveld (Nemesis Dub Systems, Unitone Hi-Fi) and Calibre’s former bar manager, the longstanding DJ, producer and remixer Roger Perry, came together as the Reactor Music production duo. Their big moment was paying homage to the club’s heyday with ‘Calibre 98’. Evoking the slowly smouldering atmosphere of a committed after-midnight dancefloor, they used simple, hypnotic melodies and a sturdy, driving rhythm to carry dancers away.

Released through Langeveld’s house label, Reliable Recordings, ‘Calibre 98’ was also a local radio favourite with Tāmaki Makaurau’s 95bFM and George FM stations. Around the same time, Perry and the engineer Dave Fisher formed the Kingsland Housing production duo. After teaming up with the vocalist Stephanie Tauevihi and Paul Sweetman aka Phully, they scored a substantial radio hit with ‘Nobody But You’ (2001).

These days, Langeveld is the co-director of Bigpop, a music recording, production and marketing service and label based in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Throughout the 2000s, Ōtautahi/Christchurch-based record collector and DJ Tim Baird presented a small but perfectly formed discography of prescient vinyl EPs and CD albums via his independent label, Pinacolada Records.

Equally inspired by the Tāmaki Makaurau label Reliable Recordings and frustrated by the lack of opportunities for electronica artists in Te Waipounamu (the South Island of New Zealand), he decided to kick off Pinacolada Records with a house 12” produced by Peter Wood, aka Rockwood. Driven by a sturdy groove, squelchy synths and digital dub affectations, ‘Kung Fu Philosophy’ and its horn-heavy flipside ‘Chee’ showed that the Ōtautahi house scene had something to say.

In 2002, Pinacolada Records unveiled Rockwood’s debut album, Trippers Guide To House, before spending the rest of the decade releasing records from the cult New Zealand dance-punk, new rave and electro-rock groups Shocking Pinks, Pig Out and Tiger Tones.

Christiaan Ercolano, aka DJ Crispy Fresh, got his start in music through the storied Te Whanganui-a-Tara nightlife scene in the late ‘80s. At the time, he was the beatmaker in Noise N Effect, an early Aotearoa hip-hop group he shared with the late DJ Rocket V and the MC’s K.O.S 163 and Crafty Cockney. A decade later, Ercolano teamed up with the Australia-raised New Zealand house producer/DJ Emerson Todd, forming the House of Downtown duo.

Between 1999 and 2003, House of Downtown released a series of 12” singles and albums through South Exit and State House Records, culminating in their Universal Music New Zealand distributed albums Release (2001) and Mutha Funkin Earth (2003). One of their first big club singles, ‘Feel It’ blended melodramatic soul/R&B sensibilities with vibrant hand drums, glossy synth stabs and a chunky rhythm’n’bass track that just kept on giving. These days, Ercolano and Todd can still be found pursuing a range of individual and collective musical projects.

As the ‘90s came to a close, mainstream New Zealand was enthralled by Popstars, a reality TV show following the formation of a chart-topping five-girl pop group, TrueBliss. After Popstars' success, Cinco Cine Film Productions filmed Manu Tīoriori, a national search for talented rangatahi/youth to help redefine Māori music in the 2000s. The result was Aaria, a quintet that blended te reo Māori with R&B and pop sensibilities. Their first single, 'Kei a Wai Ra te Kupu' peaked at #14 on the New Zealand singles chart before going platinum.

The real gold was one of the remixes featured on the ‘Kei A Wai Ra Te Kupu’ CD single, the ‘Māori 2 Step Garage Mix’. Produced by Sani Sagala aka Dei Hamo and Urban Pacifika Records’ founder, the late Phil Fuemana, it effortlessly relocated Aaria’s melodic and cultural sensibilities inside the skipping rhythmic impulses of UK garage and 2-step. Alongside the 2hard2step2 Garage Remix of the New Zealand pop R&B singer K’Lee’s cover of ‘Broken Wings’ by Mr. Mister, and the ‘2step remix’ of the Polynesian hip-hip/RnB group Nesian Mystik’s chart hit ‘Nesian Style’, it’s one of the first examples of 2-step/garage production from Aotearoa.

Twenty-three years later, the Aotearoa born Afro-Pasifika DJ Lady Shaka sampled ‘Kei A Wai Ra Te Kupu’ for her thunderous debut single ‘E Tu’, released through Nina Las Vegas’ NLV Records.

The production project of Joost Langeveld and Jason "Rockpig" Hall, Subware was the first house act to release an album on Langeveld’s Reliable Recordings. For my money, ‘Into…’ featuring the Ngati Porou singer-songwriter, percussionist, and DJ Sandy Mills, represents one of the more sublime moments on their self-titled debut.

Opening with a shuffling percussive loop, lush chords and an understated bassline, ‘Into…’ slowly serves up the perfect backdrop for Mills to burst into full flight as she sings about gliding through calm moments and calling on rhythm and melody to get you through the tougher times. In 2003, Shaboom Records (UK) released ‘Into…’ on 12” vinyl. That release was followed by a second 12” of ‘Into…’ remixes produced by Dick Johnson under his Magik J alias.

Sandy Mills has some real skin in this house music thing. In 1991, she teamed up with the production outfit Rhythm & Business to record a hip-house cover of 1960s NZ pop singer Dinah Lee’s chart hit ‘Do The Blue Beat.’ Thirty-four years later, she’s still active as a songwriter, vocalist, producer, DJ, radio host and music mentor

In the early 2000s, Cuffy & Leon D were two of the most hyped players in the Aotearoa house music scene. In Whanganui-a-Tara, where I grew up, you could often find them DJing in legendary, now-shuttered nightclubs like Studionine and its equally infamous lounge, the Ninebar.

After teaming up as producers in 1999, Cuffy & Leon D scored a series of song placements with the Loop, Kog Transmissions, FREq, Reliable, Huh Records and Capital Recordings labels, leading to the release of their Slyboom EP in 2002. Interestingly, the cut that resonated the most was their jazz-funk-fuelled b-side, ‘19c Trumpet’ featuring Toby Laing from Fat Freddy's Drop on brass. Later that year, San Francisco’s Red Melon Records re-released ‘19c Trumpet’ on 12” with accompanying ‘Trumpappella’ and ‘Dano's Melon Dub’ mixes.

Thisinformation was the duo project of the DJ/producer Chris Cox aka Frank Booker, and his multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ counterpart, Isaac Aesili. After up in Ōtautahi with the late ‘90s/early 2000s Nu jazz band Solaa, Cox and Aesili reconnected in Tāmaki Makaurau through the musical community surrounding the influential Khuja Lounge venue.

Inspired by the jazz-funk, electro, afrobeat, house and Latin music-indebted sounds of West London’s then-nascent broken beat scene, the two friends set about crafting their Antipodean version before tapping back into their Ōtautahi roots by releasing a 12” through Pinacolada Records. For the A-Side, ‘Extensions Of Da Mindz (Remix),’ they teamed up with New Zealand’s jazzy broken beat pioneer, Mark de Clive-Lowe, who was finding success in the UK and Europe then. Over on the flip, ‘Galaxy Blues’ shuffling drum machines and a sedate-but-funky bassline dovetail together with swirling synths, lush chords and brass stabs that stretch into infinity.

Alongside OMC and Concord Dawn, Tāmaki Makaurau based DJ, producer and remixer Greg Churchill is part of a rarified set of New Zealand artists who’ve recorded tracks that hit the UK pop charts. Within this context, Churchill’s big moment came in 2004 when Darren Emerson’s Underwater label released his anthemic tech house number ‘Budonkadonk.’

A masterclass in tension, pacing and payoff, it was a high watermark moment in a journey that began in 1984 when Churchill began hosting a hip-hop, electro, funk, soul and disco-oriented show on the RDU student radio station in his hometown of Ōtautahi. Over the next two decades, he helped introduce hip-hop and house music to nightclub audiences down south, before relocating to Tāmaki Makaurau in 1995 to take on a crucial DJ residency at High Street’s influential Box nightclub and finding his way into production via working with the producer-engineers Simon Holloway and Alan Jansson. 21 years on, he remains a crucial figure in New Zealand house music.

For those unfamiliar, it’s worth observing that Box was one half of a nightclub/lounge bar complex, Box/Cause Celebre. At the same time as Greg Churchill was building his reputation as a DJ in Box, the open-eared New Zealand musicians Nathan Haines and Mark de Clive-Lowe were combining jazz with hip-hop and dance music in Cause Celebre. By the early 2000s, they were a central part of the melange of influences nourishing a new generation of club producers, DJs and musicians across Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu.

In his lifetime, the Tongan New Zealander Soane Filitonga was a legendary nightclub doorman, an era-defining house DJ, a friend to many, and a producer who helped open doors for future generations of talent from not just Aotearoa but the South Pacific in general. On return from a stint spent in Sydney, he came into his own as a resident at Tāmaki Makaurau Calibre nightclub in the late ‘90s. During those years, Filitonga connected with several visiting UK house DJs who encouraged him to write and produce his own music and tour overseas through Europe and the UK.

After co-creating the UK Club hit ‘Le Saucier’ (2000) alongside Shaboom Records’ Ben Davis and Dick Johnson in the Troffman production trio, Filitonga went on to release a series of 12” singles through Paper Recordings, including collaborations with Reset and Johnson aka Magik J. All of these contain killer cuts. Still, for me, the song that stands out the most is ‘Where Do We Go’, his collaboration with fellow Tāmaki Makaurau singer-songwriter and producer Anthony Ioasa, aka Anthony Gold (of Grace). To illustrate how interconnected the Aotearoa music scene was at the time, several years earlier, Ioasa was tasked with writing and producing the majority of TrueBliss’ debut album Dream (1999). Underground dance music or chart pop, he was the man for the job.

Opening with a flickering, disco-funk-fuelled loop, the ‘Where Do You Go’ quickly expands into a percussive vocal house number about love at the crossroads. Although it was never released as a 12” single, the track features on Filitonga’s first and only album, Tongan Chic, released in 2004 by In Music. You can also find it on the Soane production compilation Big Daddy, released by Paper Recordings in 2021.

Here’s some trivia for you: If you’ve ever heard the New Zealand pop group OMC’s global hit ‘How Bizarre’, you might remember the lyric “Brother Pele's in the back, sweet Sina's in the front.” Brother Pele was a direct reference to Filitonga, who OMC frontman Pauly Fuemana would have met in the early ‘90s through Tāmaki Makaurau’s nightlife scene.

By the time he released his debut album Phullyosophy Vol.1 through his own Lovefunk Records label, Tāmaki Makaurau producer/DJ Paul Sweetman aka Phully had spent seventeen years getting his head around drum machines, synthesisers, turntables, and the conventions of house and techno music. ‘Beautiful Woman’ featuring the influential creative multi hyphenate Teremoana Rapley, was one of the standout moments on Phullyosophy Vol.1. Fittingly, Sweetman also released it through Lovefunk as a 12” single.

Driven by Sweetman’s squelchy synths, driving machine beats and a stellar vocal calling for brighter days from Rapley, ‘Beautiful Woman’ captures the complex mixture of optimism and reflective melancholy that can be found on the dancefloor during the early hours. Four years earlier, Rapley sang on another early NZ garage/2-step single, ‘U Say’ (2001) by Del Rey System. If you look in the tracklisting, you’ll see Sweetman contributed two Phully remixes to that single as well.

When the Māori singer Toni Huata passed away in February, I spent several days reacquainting myself with her eclectic discography. Two early highlights were her G-funk slanted single ‘Oho Mai Koe’ and the neon-lit pop house aspirations of ‘The Millennium (Dance Mix)’. Both sung in te reo Māori, they’ reveal Huata as an artist who—much like Dame Hinewehi Mohi and Jaz Coleman’s Oceania duo—was deeply invested in blending her native tongue and cultural traditions with the revelatory possibilities of samplers, drum machines and synthesisers operating at an uptempo groove.

Having come up in the ‘90s while working as a hairdresser, she was well-accustomed to the pleasures of club culture. On her debut album, Te Māori E, Huata and her collaborators also turned their hands to jazzy jungle, downbeat and lounge music. Over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, she released six more albums in collaboration with a broad range of musicians and producers, including the respected electronica artist Paddy Free (one half of Pitch Black).

Del Rey System, ‘Self-Titled’

House Of Downtown, ‘Release’

Magik Johnson, ‘Cardboard Journey’

Nathan Haines, ‘Sound Travels (A Restless Souls Production)’

Phully, ‘Phullyosophy Vol. 1’

Soane, ‘Tongan Chic’

Subware, ‘Self-Titled’

Various Artists, ‘Algorhythm 2’

Various Artists, ‘Sun Valley Sound’

Various Artists, ‘Various – Welcome To…’

Audio Culture: Ten house hits of the early 2000s

Stuff: A treasure trove of Kiwi dance music is available to a new generation for the first time

Radio New Zealand: Box and Cause Celebre: two clubs that changed Auckland nightlife

22 Kog Doco

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Martyn Pepperell is a freelance journalist, copywriter, broadcaster, photographer and DJ. Find him on Instagram.