The Phoenix Foundation Photo: supplied
The Phoenix Foundation are celebrating 20 years since the release of their first album 'Horse Power' with a nationwide tour.
They will tour New Zealand this month, performing their album in its glorious entirety for the first time ever.
To coincide, the album will also be released on vinyl - another first for The Phoenix Foundation.
The Phoenix Foundation performed four songs - 'Sister Risk'; 'This Charming Van'; 'Going Fishing' and 'Celebrate' - live on Music 101.
Sam Flynn Scott told Music 101 that the album was influenced by an array of New Zealand's more underground musicians, like rock band Bressa Creeting Cake.
"Someone had to tell you about them. They weren't in the newspaper or on Juice TV or whatever. You had to kind of seek these things out," he says.
"In New Zealand, it was things like Cassette, which I remember Sam and I going to see them and just feeling like, 'woah this band is not doing a macho-ey rock thing at all'," said fellow band member Luke Buda.
"Because, before then, I pretty much remember seeing Head Like a Hole and Shihad and that was sort of the vibe... But then Cassette came out and they were playing this really mellow, heartbroken, I guess what you call alt-country."
Buda said at the time Horse Power was first released, there was no one else in Wellington making that sort of music.
"It was rock, dub or drum and bass," says Sam.
Sam says he even worked in the "cool cafe" Fidels, where Luke says Sam was teased for playing guitar by the DJs there.
"Things were more genre-defined at that point. People had their cliques of what they thought music should be."
Over the years, The Phoenix Foundation have performed some songs from the album, but they have never played the album in its entirety, yet.
"It's quite a trip, going back," says Sam.
Tour Dates:
- November 22 - Loons, Lyttelton NEW SHOW
- November 23 - Loons, Lyttelton SOLD OUT
- November 24 - Hollywood Avondale, Auckland
- November 25 - Opera House, Wellington*
Tickets from Banished Music
