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Voom

© Anne-Marie de Bruin

Recently I spoke to Buzz from Voom to get the low-down on the band's latest release, Now I Am Me

While Now I Am Me was only released recently, Buzz tells me that the record was several years in the making.

He says that he and Mac, (the band's other main songwriter), first met in 1982 while students living at Auckland University hostel, O'Rorke Hall. (Which incidentally is also where Phil Judd and Tim Finn formed Split Enz!)

He says they played one of their first gigs at Sweetwaters and mucked round in various bands.

A few years passed and Mac went overseas and Buzz stayed in New Zealand, hosting the higly successful Buzz's Kiddies Show on bFM

It was around this time that Buzz says that he took to writing songs by singing into a tape recorder and just singing whatever came into his head.

He eventually had hours of tapes, so when Mac came back to New Zealand, interesting events would soon transpire.

One drunken night, Buzz and Mac were messing round with a tape recorder and a guitar, and somehow they came up with the song "Relax." Buzz says the approach was simple- Mac played guitar, and Buzz just sang anything that sounded good.

The duo came up with "Relax", but forgot they had even written the song...that is, of course, till they played the tape back and found it there!

By the time it came to making "the proper recording" of the song, the band also included their friend Danny, whose biggest claim to fame was playing the cello on Straitjacket Fits' "She Speeds."

The guys then put together a band and played various gigs round Auckland, with varying results and line-ups.

Fast forward then a couple of years later, and Voom are now signed to Trevor Reekie's Antenna label and are instructed to put together enough songs for an album.

The result is the awesone Now I Am Me which is made up of tracks recorded over the past few years.

Voom have been successful on the New Zealand scene, particularly through airplay on the student radio network, and their star just continues to shine brighter. Look out for the album, Now I Am Me and for a Voom gig in a place near you sometime soon.

Scroll down the page for a Voom review at the Press

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