Bound

C_h_r_i_s M_a_t_t_h_e_w_s  &  R_o_b_o_t M_o_n_k_e_y O_r_c_h_e_s_t_r_a

Former founding member of seminal New Zealand early ‘80s Flying Nun alt-rock bands Children’s Hour and This Kind Of Punishment in the early ‘80s, Chris is best known as singer, guitarist and songwriter with Headless Chickens during their 15 year career from critically acclaimed cult act in the mid ‘80s to chart-topping Australasian hitmakers in the mid ‘90s.  The Chickens released a clutch of critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums and singles – their Body Blow album in ’93 achieved Platinum sales and spawned 5 Top 10 singles including Cruise Control, Donde Esta, and Mr Moon (for which Chris was nominated for an Apra Silver Scroll Award in ’94); and their George single in ’95 remains the only release by a Flying Nun band to go at Number 1 in New Zealand - and they won numerous N.Z. Music Awards and toured N.Z. and Australia (and the rest of the world) many times before calling it quits in 2000. 

After the Headless Chickens demise in the new millennium, Chris moved from Auckland to Dunedin in 2002, where he started new band Robot Monkey Orchestra not long afterwards. His 1st solo album ‘The Map Of Love’  was first conceived in 2005 after he got funding from the Dunedin City Council Creative Communities Scheme to perform a show of songs he’d written at the Dunedin Fringe Festival, and a second Creative Communities Grant in 2007 enabled him to perform the show at other cities around New Zealand and also record the songs for a CD. The Map Of Love album was self-released in 2008 on Chris’s own Robot Monkey Records label: 

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-map-of-love/id313549998
http://chrismatthewsrobotmonkeyorchestra.bandcamp.com/

Chris is currently recording a 2nd R.M.O. album with Dunedin sound magician, Dale Cotton; playing drums in new Dunedin band Death By Silo; doing a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Dunedin Art School majoring in Electronic Arts; and recently reformed Children’s Hour for a show in February at Laneway in Auckland.

Robot Monkey Orchestra are currently Brett Lupton, Heath Te Au and Vaughan Watson of Christchurch/Dunedin indie guitar outfit Squirm, who are also on the bill at the Kings Arms on May 12th for their first Auckland gig in far too many years.





From
Christchurch, New Zealand

Members
Byron Crowhurst &amp; the Tinmouth Orchestra is an on-going side project of Virgil Reality of Christchurch/Dunedin band, Squirm, and Virgil Reality is in turn an on-going side project of Brett Lupton who is in turn an on-going side project of Milton's Satan...

Description
Psychedelic-electro-world-experimental-post-punk-art-glam music for elevators that will kill you without mechanically malfunctioning. All downloads are in mp3 format so that your loss in sound quality is your gain in quality sounds...

Biography
Our parents had unprotected sex, we were born, got viola lessons to avoid woodwork class at school, developed a nagging sense of otherness which evolved over time into full-blown misanthropy, began channelling that into writing music, got a dead-end job to buy a computer to record said songs and upload them into that modern Tower of Babel you call the internet, and so, thus, thusly, here we are today, spying on you right now through your own webcam that we hack every time you navigate to this page – well, you wanted to find out about us and it only seems fair we should know a few things about you, I mean, you could be stalking the orchestra (not a euphemism) for all we know...

Current Location
Blunt side of the moon

Booking agent
Ivanna Bightette for Glow in the Dork Promotions

Press contact
Um, if we have to...

Artists we also like
Goya, Blake, Bosch...oh, did you mean musicians?

Influences
Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, Brian Eno, Can, Neu, 50's Exotica, Shostakovich, The Shaggs, Capt. Beefheart, Devo, et al...

Band interests
Being willfully obscure and/or pretentiously unpretentious.