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Mike and Hope formed Bad Sav late last year after spending a lot of time hanging out together at Dunedin’s Radio 1 (Hope hosts a show on Monday at 11pm). Originally the duo messed around a bit with just bass and drums, but when Hope’s long time friend and former band mate Lucinda moved back to Dunedin from Wellington things got a bit more serious. Hope says, “She joined the band and shit got louder and more song-like.”
Hope remembers the band’s first gig, “The first time we ever played together was at about 4 or 5 in the morning at a party in the middle of nowhere. I played surf rock beats for what seemed like half an hour and Mike pulled some gnarly shit out of one string really loudly and some guy yelled ‘play more than one note!’.”
The band’s songs have developed a lot since that first gig, shaped into a dark, swampy, earth-like sound, channelling bands like Batrider, The 3D’s and Sonic Youth. They definitely haven’t retired the Flying Nun influences either, holding on to the label’s sense of raw emotion, late-night boredom and musical simplicity.
Their song ‘Ruiners’ released back in May hit number one on Radio 1’s singles chart and Martin Phillips from iconic New Zealand band The Chills called Bad Sav a band with “formidable energy and imagination”, upon seeing them play live supporting Norwegian band Je Suis Animal back in June.
Recording-wise, Hope says, “We did some of that earlier in the year but never really finished it because we wrote more songs and changed the ones that we’d recorded because we were playing quite a few gigs in the first half of this year. We’re planning to just record everything we’ve written when we’re all not too busy in the next few months and just put whatever sounds good on the CD. I pulled the paper out of 50 jewel cases, they’re sitting in my wardrobe waiting.”
Unfortunately Lucinda might be moving back to Wellington at the end of the year, once she has completed the semester at art school in Dunedin. It means the future of Bad Sav is a bit unknown, but Hope says, “We’ll build a bridge when we get to that river.” Hopefully they won’t become a victim of the long-distance relationship syndrome.
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