That feral release jammed through nine songs in under 20 minutes; it's an odd mix of thwarted greed and relief to learn that their upcoming release on Flying Nun, due out this summer, will be a similar deal.
Hansell and Moore met occupying the same "big, stoner flat" about four years ago. She was recording her double-album, The Radical Bad Attack, in the shed out back, while he was an Auckland-from-Hamilton transplant, playing in discordant Mole Music rockers like The Neverends.
"It was one of those things where we already liked the same movies, went to the same shows, everything like that. So when you've got heaps in common, you think, why not collab?" The Radical Bad Attack was a brilliant schizoid affair - half-hip-hop hedonism, half riot grrrl agitprop.
Moore "came into the shed and we ended up with these two sweet tracks with surf-rock guitar laid down".
In fact, Bad(d) Energy is a bit of a wilful misnomer because, as Moore explains, "the energy between us all is actually really good". Tropic was effectively spur of the moment - "it's totally a document of everything we went through, talked about, or were into over those six weeks in the same flat. We had a flatmate who would blare huge amounts of dubstep at all hours, so that crept in at the bottom end."
It shows in the woozy, blunted dancehall of The Seed, while elsewhere the record splits the difference between Hansell's effortlessly cutting bon mots and the grungier, exploratory interludes Moore lurches out. The first single from the new album, 'Third Eye', with its glitchy breakdown (care of Moore, who tells me he first got into generating this stuff "playing backing for a folky singer-songwriter guy") and whipsmart lyrics, suggests these are set to merge.
"The first record was definitely about figuring out what we were and how we went together," Hansell explains. "Sam will have me doing stuff outside of what I'd usually do on my other records. He might decide that I need to play guitar, or that I'll be playing drums. We're basically swapping instruments around all the time."
As Coco Solid, she's cut a prolific blue streak of good material, not being too concerned with the legacy-building or passive waiting on public funding that staggers so many other New Zealand musicians.
Her "solo" work deflates a lot of the braggadocio and machismo that burdens rap here and abroad, just as outrageous but far less shallow. Parallel Dance Ensemble, her superb partnership with Danish producer Robin Hannibal, matches meticulous '80s r'n'b production to some of her most apt social and self-commentary.
Badd Energy, by comparison, is simply a riot grrrl extravaganza where she gets to let loose with skewering disses of creepy guys and our ruling classes alike. "It feels really good to have these opportunities to bring out different facets of what we do."
So are we seeing the end of the core duo? Hardly - Hansell took her own year off in South Korea last year, and it seems like the whole group are at their best when they keep it casual.
"I remember being in Hamilton and getting in heaps of trouble because I was in an interview because I said my then-band would keep messing around for a year then split up," Moore recalls. "Apparently that wasn't the plan."
A side-project of many side-projects, with no masterplan and a sternly DIY attitude, signing up to Flying Nun? It's hard to think of a better signing to enter the label's fourth decade.
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