Dimmer (band)
| Dimmer | |
|---|---|
_at_The_Step_Inn,_Brisbane,_2008.jpg)
Live at The Step Inn, Brisbane 2008
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| Background information | |
| Origin | New Zealand |
| Genres | Alternative rock |
| Years active | 1994–2012 |
| Labels |
Flying Nun Records Sony Festival Mushroom Records Warner Music NZ |
| Past members |
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Dimmer was the name under which New Zealand musician Shayne Carter (formerly of Straitjacket Fits, The DoubleHappys, and Bored Games) recorded and played music from 1994-2012. It began as an umbrella name for jam sessions and home recordings, with various members and guests, but became a more settled four-piece rock band (especially from 2006–10, when only the bassist changed). 37 musicians played a part in Dimmer's 18 years, with Carter the only permanent fixture.
All four of Dimmer's albums were admired by critics, and all earned multiple New Zealand Music Award nominations. Non-album singles were released in 1995 and 1996, with debut album I Believe You Are A Star not following until 2001. In 2004 You've Got To Hear The Music was named New Zealand's Best Rock Album for the year, and Dimmer named Best Group. There My Dear saw Carter return to playing and recording with a live rock band in 2006. Final album Degrees of Existence (2009) was recorded by the longest-lasting version of the band. Dimmer's final shows were played in 2012.
Straitjacket Fits split in 1994, "brought low by the vagaries of the international music industry". Interviewed in 2012, Shayne Carter said that "I was completely over rock. The Dimmer thing was totally anti-rock and I became interested in not only the groove thing but doing quiet music as well."
Carter moved back to Dunedin, later saying that he "dropped out, I suppose" and "wanted to get grounded after all my running around". While there, he began using the name Dimmer as "an umbrella thing...with me as the common denominator". The first Dimmer music came from jam sessions in Dunedin. Carter explained in 2012 that "I used the name Dimmer because I thought using your own name was really uncool."
Two non-album singles were released by Dimmer in the mid-90s:
Through the second half of the 1990s "[there was] the odd Dunedin solo gig but, for the most part, Shayne Carter disappeared from the public eye." Carter has called the period from 1995 "a lost weekend that actually lasted for six years".
Carter moved to Auckland in 1997 and, inspired by "new music [including] avant-electronica and whatever else was fresh and non-mainstream", switched from playing rock music to producing tracks on Pro Tools.
"After I put out the first album, there’s all this ‘it doesn't sound like Straitjacket Fits’. Well, no, it doesn't. That's why I quit the band - because I didn't want to be doing that. [...It] actually took me five or six years to put together. That came on the back of the Straitjackets, and I think I was disillusioned with the whole music thing at the time. I wanted to figure out a lot of things in my head."
- Shayne Carter, 2009
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