Place was the very first 4-track album that I made. Up until this point I'd used various techniques for a prosaic form of multitracking but with Place I was trying to take things to a whole new level.
More importantly however this was an album I'd been wanting to make for years- its an 'album' proper- a collection- a suite of songs on a particular theme.
It was recorded during a stone fruit season in Central Otago. This was significant because I'd lived in the area and felt an almost mystical attachment to it until my parents decided to move to Auckland when I was 16. I'd left home a couple of years later and gotten back down south as soon as I could and happily it seemed I was still able to connect with the big Central Otago skies and the tussock and I think I actually wept when I saw Leaning Rock- the summit of the Rock and Pillar range that stands sentinel over the plain- again for the first time.
Anyway on this trip I was determined to capture my feeling for the place in a 'proper' album.
The tracks range from finished composed songs through sound collages created on rainy (non working) days from sticks and stones and other objects I'd collected on my evening walks. 'Breathe' was recorded using a length of copper pipe I found amongst some historic gold working ruins. I decided it needed a traditional style folk song and so I wrote the proto-Swagger Jack song 'Dead Miner'.
'Leaning Rock #1' was a serious attempt at using the profile and textures of - the view- of said rock as a graphic score of sorts. The 4 separate tracks climb through deep earth and tussock and schist rock to an ecstatic pinnacle. (Or at least that was the idea).
Some of my favourites are the spontaneous improvised songs like 'Kiss Me' and 'Flat Down Rising' and I was inspired by these to go straight into the recordings for the EP 'Sirens' (that were reissued on the Last Visible Dog CD in 2005) .
I made 20 or 30 copies of 'Place'- with an admittedly awful cover - and put them in shops in Christchurch and Dunedin. This seemed a lot to me at the time and I was excited when they all disappeared though whether they sold or were excised from the shelves I will never know. I was always too shy back then to go and ask for any money from sales.

Its a deeply personal record and some of the sentiments make me squirm a little today but overall I remain proud of it.