Dunedin is a southern New Zealand University Town that spawned "The Dunedin Sound". Similar in many ways to the traditional indie pop sound, the Dunedin Sound uses "jingly jangly" guitaring, minimal bass lines and loose drumming. Seemingly influenced by bands like The Velvet Underground, keyboards are often prevalent. Amateur recording techniques also gave this genre a lo-fi sound that endeared its earnest music, but occasionally hard to understand vocal accompaniment, to university students worldwide. Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, located in coastal Otago. ... The term indie is short for independent and refers to artistic creations outside the commercial mainstream, without the support of a major record label, major movie studio, or other source of a large budget. ... The classical guitar typically has 3 nylon and 3 nickel-wound strings. ... Bass (IPA: [], rhyming with face), when used as an adjective, describes tones of low frequency. ... For other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). ... The Velvet Underground and Nico (from left to right: John Cale, Nico, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker) The Velvet Underground (Affectionately known as The Velvets, or V.U. for short) was an American rock and roll band of the late 1960s. ... A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played with a musical keyboard. ... Lo-fi — from Low Fidelity — describes a sound recording which contains unwanted artifacts, like distortion, or noise, or a recording which has a limited frequency response. ... In music a singer or vocalist is a type of musician who sings, i. ...

New Zealand based Flying Nun Records championed "The Dunedin Sound", starting with their earliest releases (including The Clean's single Tally ho! and the four-band compilation Dunedin Double EP), and many artists gained a dedicated "college music" following in the USA and Europe. The heyday of the movement was in the mid-to-late 1980s, although music in the style is still being recorded and released. Flying Nun Records is probably the most influential independent record label in New Zealand. ... Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...

California's Pavement is but one overseas band that claims the Dunedin sound as a major influence. Pavement was one of the key American indie-rock bands of the 1990s, known for its oblique, original style and — at first anyway — for its influential lo-fi recording quality. ...

Though the bands themselves tend to eschew the genre title, "Dunedin Sound" bands include:

• The Bats
• The Clean
• The Chills
• Look Blue Go Purple
• Sneaky Feelings
• Straitjacket Fits
• The Tall Dwarfs
• The Verlaines

Getting Cleaner. ... Taking a leaf out of the Beatles Help!, the Chills signal COLD in semaphore on the cover of their first studio album. ... Sneaky Feelings were a 1980s New Zealand pop/rock band, led by Matthew Bannister, who recorded on the Flying Nun label. ... Lotsofissues 07:37, 7 May 2005 (UTC) History Since forming in Flying Nuns spiritual home, the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin, in 1986, Straitjacket Fits have established themselves as the labels prime purveyors of rocknroll in its primal, blistering and downright sensual form. ... The Verlaines was a band from Dunedin, New Zealand, signed to Flying Nun Records. ...

External links

• Flying Nun History 1980-1995 (http://flyingnun.co.nz/history.cfm)
• Martin Phillipps & The Chills' Official Homepage (http://www.softbomb.com/)