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Dave Dobbyn: The Islander

© Anne-Marie de Bruin

Dave Dobbyn is back. Back with a new album, a new attitude and a whole new set of tunes. And forThe Islander, his first new album since the 1994 Neil Finn produced Twist, Dave reckons it's pretty good to be back as well. "I've probably got a better discipline about things now- I actually rented a room and clocked in to work away on songs for like 12, 13 hours a day, so I probably put a bit more work into things these days than I did in the past. And you know, a lot of great things have happened in the last little while- I've got a family and I'm professionally feeling really on top of things so it's good to keep playing ball."

For the album, recorded at Neil Finn's high tech home studio, for 'mate's rates,' Dave feels that a somewhat leisurely approach really helped things along. "The record didn't cost me as much as it could have, had I been in a normal commercial studio, so I wasn't watching the clock as much, so I could invest a lot of time into trying different arrangements for songs."

This does not mean, however, that everything proceeded at a snail's pace. "A lot of the stuff happened fairly spontaneously in the time that we had. I had to the get rhythm sections and stuff down and I got those down really quickly in two sessions. There was one with an Australian rhythm section in September last year and then with Alan Gregg and Ross Burge from the Muttonbirds over the summer. I thought that was fantastic because recording in the summer is a real buzz," he says.

Bearing in mind Dave's current hectic publicity trail, you'd wonder just how he manages to juggle his busy schedule, but somehow he's found time for a variety of other musical activities, including one with an old mate, Ian Morris, from th'Dudes "We've got this thing called Six Billion Satellite Universes and it's just Ian and I mucking about in the studio and we just want to get some of that out on plastic."

Dave says that in addition to the record, he and Ian plan to form a production team for Kiwi music acts, and that part of their joint venture includes a possible radio show. "Producing radio shows is something I want to do using Radio New Zealand stuff to keep it going and get local acts through and promote it and stuff. We want to get live in the studio on to tape and then post-produce it so you can play it on air, but so it's not as scary as a simulcast for the acts involved, but it's as live because the studio is big enough for an audience as well."

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