New Zealand Music Features — Flying Nun

Under The Influence (FNCD021) came about through 12 months of loose talk, six months of intensive planning, three changes of date and two final weeks of very late nights. Indeed there were many times we questioned the sanity and feasibility of even attempting to record the Flying Nun 21st Anniversary album in one day... and without the faith of many around us we simply wouldn’t have been able to pull it off! As the Flying Nun label had recently been incorporated, alongside Festival Records and Mushroom Records, into the larger independent company called (deep breath) Festival Mushroom Records incorporating Flying Nun, we had created a strong...

Described by music afficionado Grant Smithies in his 2007 book ‘Soundtrack. 118 Great New Zealand Albums’ as a "brisk, exciting, highly addictive record and a classic of the Nun canon", the 2000 release of the Subliminals debut (and only) album ‘United State’ was the realisation of the musical vision of an unlikely collaboration who bonded as a formidable unit, albeit for a far too brief period of time. The Subliminals were a natural product of Flying Nun in the second half of the 1990's. Three of the band members had been in or were currently in other Flying Nun bands...

More than six years ago, shortly after starting management at Flying Nun Records, I drove out to the Auckland Warner Music NZ warehouse and distribution centre. It was a massive airport hanger style building, on Rosebank Road, near Avondale. The warehouse was filled with towering industrial style shelves of CDs, DVDs and videos. At the time, it was the central distribution centre for all three major record labels, so there was a lot of stock. Because Flying Nun had previously been owned by Warner Music, the master tapes were said to be stored in this labyrinth of a warehouse. I wanted...

The end of the year is nigh, and it is the time where we get all reflective on what has happened.We thought it best to document these reflections, and to start us off we reflected back on the year for our good friends and label buddies - Flying Nun Records.It's like a school report but with great records.