This is the website of noctuary, or rather, the artist formerly known as noctuary until I discovered the existence of a black metal band from the States who named themselves thus in 1996. (should have done the google search *before* releasing the record, dammit...)

The total output of this noctuary is one humble 8-inch, released on headshy records, which features 8 tracks of acoustic instruments and found sound, more or less manipulated by technology in varying states of dodginess. It's out of print now, but an MP3 or two may appear here once I find the master, which could be anywhere so don't hold your breath.

I made this record (well, the music on it) when I was living in Melbourne in 1997, spending a lot of time flying kites in Royal Park and listening to the sounds around me - birds, traffic, trams, crowd roar from nearby footy games, and helicopters bearing stricken kiddies landing at the Royal Children's Hospital. They all blended into a kind of urban aural collage which was quite unfamiliar and fascinating to someone from Palmerston North (a New Zealand town with a population around 70,000), and I guess I was trying to recreate that in a way that blurred the lines between music and environmental noise. Looked at another way, I was getting really stoned and messing around with dodgy shareware and a walkman. Either way, it was fun.

the name thing

In the throes of my shock and dismay on hearing of the existence of The Other Noctuary, it was politely mentioned to me that the name 'noctuary' does have an undeniable air of gothy/metalness about it. Objectively I guess, well, maybe ('noct' as in night, 'uary' as in sanctuary, obituary ... hmmm ...) but to me it's always seemed like a very gentle, introspective kind of word. Which I like.

The reason I chose 'noctuary' for a name is that I'd been attempting to keep a dream diary for a while, and on rereading it was totally amazed by the surreal images and concepts that I scribbled down most mornings and promptly completely forgot about. One thing I noticed was the amount of music-making in my dreams that involved highly unconventional instruments. Various people in various situations of varying degrees of oddness made music with the aid of dead tree stumps, recycled beds, gardening implements and helicopters, among other things (my personal favourite was the one where I joined a Velvet Underground tribute band and sailed around the world playing VU songs on giant inflatable bath toys, until we ran aground on a treacherous stretch of giant mushrooms).

I could never remember more than a vague impression of what the music sounded like, but it always left me with the urge to try and recreate that vague impression in some other medium. I don't think I've managed to do that at all (except maybe kind of with the helicopter), but it seemed like a worthy ideal, and hence 'noctuary' ('a record of events taking place at night') an appropriate name.

But, attached as I may be to the concept, I'm not going to share it with a black metal band, so any further musical endeavours from me will be under a different name.