Mystic frequency mixes together its messages

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

It's the first night of the World Series - the past week's showcase of New Zealand acts for visiting overseas music industry bods - and Nesian Mystik have a tough act to follow. Well, it's not every night you have to go on after the rapper known as MC PM - Helen Clark - who makes up for in rah-rah enthusiasm for New Zealand music what she lacks in flow and rhyme.

But after the Prime Minister's opening, in the words of the band's latest hit, It's On.

Soon, the four Nesian Mystik vocalists are trading lines and criss-crossing the stage in front of the band's musical brain, David Atai (aka "Dmon Finguhz"), who remains seated, playing guitar over the pre-recorded backing.

All sport some reference to their background. Singer Te Awanui Pine Reeder ("aWa") has a tiki design on his T-shirt reminding of his Maori heritage (Te Arawa, Ngaiterangi, Ngati Raukawa); the shirt of afro-ed Donald McNulty (aka "MC Old") carries the moniker "Fobtown" - a reference to "fresh off the boat" island immigrants and his Tongan ancestry; Feleti Strickson-Pua ("Sabre") has a Samoan flag adorning his T-shirt, while Vaevae Rangatira Rikiau Junior's ("Junz") shirt is a vision in palm trees and shares a Cook Island background with Atai.

Reeder sings in a sweet soul tenor, while the other three supply tongue-tripping raps and harmonies, and by the time they play It's On, as the inevitable last song to their short set, the room is basking in the band's sunny glow.

It's a few days earlier and Reeder and McNulty are sitting at the Ponsonby kitchen table of Bounce Records, the label set up by producer Dean Godward for the band, which has a subsequent deal through Universal for the release of its debut album Polysaturated following It's On and last year's first single Nesian Style.

The pair make a good double-act, even without any musical backing. They talk passionately about the group and laugh loudly at memories of their first musical steps.

McNulty: "At first we were all singers. We all sang and we had two guitars but no drum beat, no nothing. Just a straight ... "

Reeder: "Rawness, which was beautiful but it wasn't ... "

McNulty: "Quite what we were going for, eh?"

Reeder: "It was more party tunes. More when the uncles are really pissed and they get out the guitar and they go, 'Aw, let's sing a song'."

The five first got together in the music room of Western Springs College, also the school which helped to breed Supergroove and the subsequent career of Che Fu, who appears on Nesian Mystik's album Polysaturated on the track Operation F.O.B.

The pair can't say enough good things about Fu - who won the Apra Scroll on Tuesday for his track Misty Frequency, effectively beating the band's own nomination for It's On - and his influence on their sound.

McNulty: "He was one of the first brown faces I saw on TV doing music from NZ. Which made me follow him more and that is when I wanted to be like him."

Reeder: "Che is kind of like the Bob Marley of New Zealand. He can play pretty much anywhere he wants, which is good for us because we are coming up behind him.

"We let him do all the hard work. He kicked down the door and we are, like, running through going, 'Cheers, bro'."

The band, whose average age is 19, entered the smokefreerockquest in 1999 and 2000, winning the Pacifika Beats Award on their second try.

In those years, they also played their first public gig at the annual Grey Lynn Park Festival, where they return today, much more famous and much less shy than first time round.

And now they have quickly developed a sound that is a canny mix of hip-hop, R&B and pop sensibilities strained through the experience and sense of humour that comes from growing up in the inner suburbs of the world's biggest Polynesian city.

Reeder: "Obviously hip-hop and R&B are the guiding vehicles, but we love jazz, we love reggae, we love soul, we love everything and depending on what mood we are in, that is the way it will come out."

In the ever-widening local hip-hop spectrum, Nesian Mystik would seem like the sweeter, softer option. Do they get any stick for being so unashamedly pop?

McNulty: "It comes with the territory."

Reeder: "Hip-hop is mainstream and they say it's all underground. The truth is our roots are the only underground thing that there is. We use hip-hop as a mainstream vehicle to push our culture, our identity and our messages.

"We're nice fellas, we're not claiming to be hard. When it comes to our families or people we really care about, we are staunch like anybody."

McNulty: "We're just us being us, pushing what we love."

Reeder: "The fact is you have to make sales because you won't get supported by your record company otherwise. It's different segments of the market - obviously we are trying to target the whole market but we know that our target market are rangitahi and adults to 24 and 25.

"Oh, and a lot of our family, a lot of Polynesian people, too - that is one of our key markets but it's all balanced in the end. You have the underground and you can go right to the light stuff and we are kind of in the middle with Che."

Combine that with the track Lost Visionz, which pays a respectful tribute to the struggles of their parents' generation and the thought occurs: you're young men, shouldn't you be rebelling against something?

"Nah. If we rebel we'd get slapped," laughs Reeder. "I don't think we have anything to rebel against. We're still young, we're trying to find our sound, our style, find our messages - the true messages that we really want to push.

"This album is half and half - sometimes we write music that we want to listen to and dance to and we wish was on the radio. The other half asks questions and gives answers."

Have there ever been cultural clashes within the group?

McNulty: "I don't think we really noticed did we?"

Reeder: "They are very similar but very different. You go south of the Bombays and it's very sad because some of the kids come up and say, 'How do you guys get along?' It's real stink because we are all one people in a way, especially in Aotearoa. It's sad that they think like that.

"It's just taking the time to learn. I don't know much about Samoa, I don't know much about Tonga but that is what we do. We teach each other about, y'know, treaty, dawn raids, how it is to us. It's beautiful, eh bro? It's like National Geographic. For Free."

* Nesian's Mystik's Polysaturated is out now. The group play at the Grey Lynn Park Festival today, at the Rumba Festival next Saturday and support Pink at Wellington's Queen's Wharf Event Centre on Friday.