FEEEEEEED ME

CINEMATIC JAZZSCAPES: The musicians might be pictured here in squares but the Carnivorous Plant Society’s exciting, atmospheric music is well outside the box. Picture supplied

“I use the words ‘world psychedelic’ — but I change that quite a lot,” says Carnivorous Plant Society frontman Finn Scholes of the genre-eating band’s sound.

“We have a lot of material and these (the band’s musicians) aren’t the original members so our music can take different directions.

“It’s exciting.”

The filmic soundscapes and lush orchestral pop Carnivorous Plant Society (CPS) produces from an arsenal of instruments that includes marimba, vibraphone, congas and brass, lends itself not only to “world psychedelic” but invokes something of 1950s and 60s movie soundtrack jazz. Or cinematic jazzscapes, as one reviewer has described the band’s sound.

Certainly a song like The Baby, which opens with vibraphone cadences and nostalgic vocal harmonies, an ironic pedestrian rhythm with pizzicato before it changes direction again invokes the frothiness and fast-talking flippancy of a 1960s rom-com set in Rome, say. El Perro no Puede Entrar on the other hand could be a nightclub version of Mexican music played by highly polished musicians.

In fact, CPS is all about highly polished musicians.

“I feel like we’re the best in the country,” says Scholes.

Scholes has played trumpet, keyboards and vibraphone professionally for the past 15 years and has performed with acts such as Tiny Ruins, Hopetoun Brown, Lawrence Arabia, Neil Finn, The Rodger Fox Big Band and the Auckland Chamber Orchestra.

Guitarist Brett Adams started his music career with pop sensations The Mockers. His co-created, UK-based band The Julie Dolphin was chosen as Radiohead’s opening act in The Bends tour. Back in New Zealand and with The Bads and Brett, he performed with artists such as Tim Finn, Rodriguez, The Exponents and Tami Neilson.

Top session drummer and percussionist for much of his professional career in Melbourne; now drummer, congas, vibraphone and marimba player for CPS, Michael Barker played with top artists Tim Finn, Neil Finn and the John Butler Trio. On return to New Zealand he formed Swamp Thing.

Multi-instrumentalist Sean Martin-Buss, who has performed with groups such as Scuba Diva, The Beths, Hans Pucket, Dead Little Penny, Blackbird Ensemble, and Creme Jean, specialises in improvisational/experimental music as well as jazz and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, but owes it all to his roots in classical piano and AC/DC guitar solos.

CPS’s Tour Of Oblivion, which brings the band to Gisborne this month, is a celebration of the launch of The Plants, an EP dedicated to the continent of South America.

Stories told in live performance are echoed visually by Scholes’ hand-drawn, naive-styled, surrealist cartoons with a whiff of cartoonist Leunig’s existentialism. Along with the band’s distinctive sound they promise “dystopian futures, alien empires and trans-dimensional travel will unfold and your mind is guaranteed to melt”.