Desperately seeking Eru

Riki Gooch. Photo / Supplied

Eru Dangerspiel is not a band. It's not really even an alias for founder and leader of the group, Riki Gooch. If Eru is anyone, reckons Gooch, it's his uncle Pat. That's Patrick Pihama from Wanaka.

"I look at Uncle Pat as the band leader. He's Eru Dangerspiel," he laughs as he strokes his fluffy beard that looks in dire need of a trim.

"He's a really good musician, and I based the character of Eru on him, and my dad's generation, that sort of hard-case type cabaret singer. You know, from that era when music had that character in there. So he's the life and soul of the project."

And the other reason for the pseudonym is that he never intended Eru to be "the Riki Gooch show".

Gooch, best known as the drummer in trippy roots rockers TrinityRoots, got the first incarnation of the Eru band together to play at Wanaka's Rippon Festival in February 2008 and later that year released debut album, Great News For The Modern Man.

The band has now grown into a 16-piece group made up of singers and players including Laughton Kora (Kora), Anna Coddington, Mike Fabulous (Black Seeds), and Toby Laing (Fat Freddy's Drop), who play the Auckland Town Hall on August 8.

Yet Gooch says the bigger the band has got the more simple the music has become. "We're refining the parts down to be very simple, but better realised parts. Maybe it can come across superfluous having so many people on stage, like, 'Why would you bother?', but it's about the energy of it.

"I like to think of it as an orchestra, with everyone in their different sections, and everyone's got their different parts, but it's a band in the sense that there is a bond between everyone and that's important. There's no hierarchy thing and I keep it all evenly balanced."

While Gooch is the band leader, it's not a role he's entirely comfortable with and admits he conforms to the drummer stereotype of preferring to blend into the background. "I thought I would just lose it with nerves having all these people here. But I surprised myself actually and a huge part of it is about the cats in the band, they are all so seasoned and they enjoy it because it's a chance to do something where you're given freedom to do whatever really."

TrinityRoots disbanded in early 2005 - it's hard to put an exact date on it because they performed a number of final shows, an indication it was an amicable split - to pursue other musical challenges.

"It really hasn't come to an end at all," is what Gooch told TimeOut at the 2005 Big Day Out. "It's kind of evolving into other things. We've had six years of really good learning and experiences. Things change, and things move on," he said.

Since then he has played with some of New Zealand's best musicians, including Bic Runga and Neil Finn, but the futuristic and ambitious soul of Eru Dangerspiel is his true calling.

"It's very challenging playing with cats like [Runga and Finn] because established songwriters have been there and done that so you've really got to deliver the goods. So I find all those experiences have got me to the point where I feel confident enough to go and do my own thing."

While TrinityRoots was intense, Eru Dangerspiel's Great News For the Modern Man is a challenging collection of songs with difficult beats, odd grooves, and an array of different instruments.

"What I was doing was constantly asking myself, 'What will happen if I just keep going down this path and throw things against a wall and shake the cage a bit?'," he says. "I also wanted to establish the palette and have a good launching pad on to the next album."

And the live show should be an experience. To make it more of an event Gooch is also assembling a choir "of angelic voices" to accompany the band.

"They will be younger voices and I like the idea of having a lot of voices together to bring out the fullness of the sound."

There are already five singers in the band alone, with Kora, Coddington, Mara TK (most recently heard in Fly My Pretties), Parks (Ladi6), and Maori diva Whirimako Black, adding their distinct vocal styles to the mix.

"It's a really good range because dynamically you've got Laughton who can belt it out and soar, Anna takes on quite a different persona with the band, and Parks as well has that Ne-Yo soul thing going on.

"I just want to shape the set so it's really dynamic, with drama and everything in there, and the choir will be great for that and we can utilise the Town Hall."

LOWDOWN

Who: Eru Dangerspiel

What: The band founded by former TrinityRoots drummer Riki Gooch

Where & when: Auckland Town Hall, August 8

Album: Great News For The Modern Man, out now