This interview feature is part of a new Scene Report on Dunedin. Check out the series here.
I’ve spoken with a lot of Ōtepoti Dunedin musicians for our Scene Report series. A lot of outstanding young musicians, in particular, from all different genres.
Looking back over the transcripts, an interesting throughline emerges (in addition to the consistent denouncement of the city’s gloomy weather): the influence of Die! Die! Die! on this new generation.
“Die! Die! Die! is probably the biggest influence on my punk-y songs,” Tane Cotton, the one man behind one-man post-punk band Sivle Talk, said.
Ollie Kemmett of teenage noise rockers Sogg was excited to reveal that he attended the same high school, Logan Park, as members of Die! Die! Die!. Fellow noise-rock band U-NO JUNO also cited them as an inspiration.
When I tell Andrew Wilson, one third of the band and their lead vocalist, this over a phone call, he says “it’s lovely to hear.”
“[T]he younger bands… like Sogg — it’s so inspiring to see like-minded kids,” he says. “It’s a special place. We used to always make sure we try and bring Dunedin bands to Auckland as well, because I do think they have really special stuff.”
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The origins of Die! Die! Die! stretch back to Logan Park High School, where Wilson first met future bandmate Mikey Prain.
Before forming Die! Die! Die! in 2003, the pair won the prestigious Smokefree Rockquest competition in 2001 with their earlier band, Carriage H. “I think we’re the only Dunedin band to ever, ever win,” Wilson insists.
Wilson and Prain didn’t stick around Dunedin in those early days. Building Die! Die! Die! into arguably the best Aotearoa punk rock band of their generation took them to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, then onto Australia, then onto the biggest music market of them all, the US, before bringing them all the way back to their home country again.
It’s a hectic journey that’s seen them work with the late, great Steve Albini, tour with ’90s icons Slint, work with one of Wilson’s favourite bands, High Dependency Unit (HDU), and a whole lot more.
But no matter where they ended up in the world, Wilson says “we’d always come back to Dunedin and stay there.”
It was in the States in particular where he and his bandmates — Wilson and Prain were then joined by bassist Henry Oliver — found themselves pining for home. “[W]e’d sort of start noticing everyone was talking about Dunedin music and how interesting it was,” Wilson recalls,” and it would kind of us get us quite homesick.”
“I mean, it was quite funny being 21 in New York and the jukeboxes [in] the bars which I was hanging out in would have The Clean and The Chills on [them],” he adds.
Those seminal Dunedin bands were far from untouchable to Wilson. As well as supporting Straitjacket Fits on their reunion tour, Die! Die! Die! also toured with Shayne P. Carter’s follow-up project, Dimmer, for the latter’s first album.
Wilson became besotted with Scottish post-rock stalwarts Mogwai in his teenage years, but it was seeing a much more local band that transformed his music tastes.
“[S]eeing HDU was just like — [there] was someone in New Zealand doing music which I liked from overseas, you know? And it just meant that the type of music just totally opened lots of doors to me.” Die! Die! Die were asked to tour with HDU when Wilson was just 17, playing shows “all around the country” with them.
Die! Die! Die! also toured Aotearoa with The Mint Chicks, and Wilson leaves me incredulous when he reveals how much tickets cost for the run. “We only did $5 tickets around the whole country,” he says, pausing to allow me to catch my breath. “I mean, it sounds crazy now!”
No matter how far they travelled, Wilson says he always made sure a Die! Die! Die! tour made it to Dunedin. “[W]e’d even go to Invercargill and Queenstown.”
Were Die! Die! Die! often compared to classic ‘Dunedin Sound’ bands simply because of geography? A little from column A, a little from column B, he says.
“[W]e used to do a [Clean song] ‘Getting Older’ cover, and I remember [ex-Clean member] Bob Scott coming up to the studio and really enjoying it.
“I mean, we toured with The Clean as well, when we were like 17… we were definitely really influenced by The Clean, and I think The Clean were really quite a ferocious band…
“So yeah, I mean there was influences there and obviously Straitjacket Fits too… we were definitely more into Bailterspace, The Gordons, and HDU, which I do think there is a similarity in our music towards [the latter].”
He also names Maxine Funke, the wonderful cult folk artist who just featured in our Dunedin series, as one of his favourite local musicians. “I’ve known Maxine from when she was around when I was in high school and stuff, and how she’s been releasing and executing music I found really inspiring.
It was in Australia rather than America where the Die! Die! Die! boys met like-minded punks like themselves.” [W]hen we went to America, we kind of realised we were really quite different to what the other bands were doing… and then we’d always come home at the end of the year, like after touring.”
One arguably surprising touring mate was Aussie rockers Wolfmother, who experienced a major commercial boom in the early 2000s. Wilson acknowledges that his band “were quite different” from them.
“They took us on tour which just seems crazy now,” he reflects. “Like the crowds probably really hated us, but it was a really awesome show. Watching them kind of go from small clubs to then taking us again touring stadiums was just ridiculous.”
Getting to tour with Slint, though, suited them a little more. It was a career highlight, Wilson says, like “something which was out of a dream.”
“Mikey and I used to listen to [Slint] driving around in his car… That was a band which we never thought we’d ever get to see live, and then sort of six years later, from 16 year olds we were [now] in our early 20s just seeing Slint in Brussels. Weird.”
Before all those career-defining support slots, however, Wilson was in the the exact same position as the exciting current crop of Dunedin bands — simply trying to play as many shows as possible, wherever he could.
His young band put on shows at any venue that would have them, including Knox Church Hall.
“We put on a few gigs in there and there was like a punk scene, [there] was a thing called Rebel High. They used to do some stuff there, like the skater kids. So there was actually quite an active all-ages scene, but I wouldn’t really say it was supported by the council or older people… [It] was more just kind of organic with the younger people…”
His high school bands played at the beloved Crown Hotel, and Wilson admits he doesn’t “actually know how we played at these bars when we underage.”
“[B]ut I mean the Crown [is] still there, which I think is pretty special. [I’ve] had a chance of explaining to my friends from Auckland or around the country, you know, who are not from Dunedin, the experience of what it’s like to go to the Crown and how it used to be before the buildings were kind of knocked down.”
Wilson insists Die! Die! Die! made their way up in those early years “more on our own back” than through support from the city or the council.
“Dunedin will always be kind of ignored… I mean, from that higher up level… I’ve got kind of mixed feelings about it, to be honest.”
“I guess this is one thing which I think I’d probably change about when I was that age, is like trying to be a bit more inclusive of people from doing different genres,” he continues. “But it was a lot more tribal back then…”
Wilson is now based in Auckland, and he’s noticed a subtle change in how people approach his career choice there compared to people in Dunedin.
“[I]f I say I’m in a band [in Auckland], people [are like], ‘How does that pay the bills?’ But I do think there’s an appreciation for art in Dunedin, whether they like it or not, and I do think the fact that the city essentially has two sides, the fucking weirdos and the really conservative fuckheads — and the two don’t really meet but there is this kind of bend between it — but there is a genuine kind of respect for creativity, I think… They do appreciate you kind of giving it a go, I think, whereas here in Auckland they’ll be like, ‘Well, how do you pay for this? That’s got no dollar value.'”
In just over a weeks’ time, Wilson will return to Dunedin for a special all-ages show.
In collaboration with Amped Music Project, he’ll play a set on the afternoon of Sunday, March 22nd, where he’ll be supported by two of the finest young bands to feature in our Dunedin series so far: the Foo Fighters-approved SEEK HELP! and the aforementioned Sivle Talk. Tickets cost just $10 for teenagers — not quite as cheap as Wilson’s tour with The Mint Chicks, but a lot cheaper than most gigs in the 2020s.
Following a performance at Port Noise 2026 with his band (“There’s a real chemistry between the three of us, [when] it comes to the music and the execution,” he says, with Lachlan Anderson now joining them on bass and backing vocals), Wilson is touring the country, including the all-ages Dunedin show, in support of his new solo album, THE NERVE.
The excellent lo-fi record, released under the moniker AW, is basically just Wilson alone, playing bass, guitar, keyboard, and, of course, singing. Stefan Neville helped out on drums and recording, while Wilson’s young son, Awatea Pihema, makes a delightful appearance on album track “WATER THE VAMPIRES”.
How different is THE NERVE to work with Die! Die! Die!?
“[I]t’s completely different in the sense that I’m playing all the instruments except for the drums and I’m working with Stephen Neville, and we just recorded it on an eight-track tape machine at our practice space compared to Die! Die! Die!, which we’ve obviously done in big studios,” he answers.
It is, in subtle shades, amongst Wilson’s best work. As comes across in his recent track-by-track breakdown for Under The Radar, THE NERVE is playful and experimental, with several tracks finding Wilson in vulnerable territory. “‘THIEF OF JOY’ is about ego, comparison, and realising that doing AW (or a music project like this) was lonelier than I expected,” as he told the publication about one track. “My brain is a bit fu*ked at times.”
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Wilson modestly says the positive response to THE NERVE has been “really surprising.”
“It is so lo-fi! I’ve never kind of got the guts to release it, so there’s been a sort of hands-off approach… just put it out and see what it does, you know?
“It’s fucking nerve-racking. It’s crazy. But then also, I wasn’t doing anything and so here’s something I’ve been doing since I was like 14… You know, now I’m 40, so it’s like, I’ve kind of got to keep the wheels moving.”
AW’s THE NERVE is out now. Tickets to his Aotearoa tour can be purchased here.
