ANECDATA
Anecdata, noun: “information or evidence that is based on personal experience or observation rather than systematic research or analysis”.
Anecdata, band: pretty much the same thing, but with guitars, drum machines and synthesizers.
Based in West Auckland, New Zealand, Anecdata is the musical output of one guy – writing, recording, mixing and producing everything himself.
Check out Anecdata’s prolific output below – download via Bandcamp (pay what you want) or stream at all the usual outlets.
2025
Vita Brevis, Part 1
ALBUM – Released August 22, 2025
The first half of a concept album about a woman sent hurtling through time after seeing an interstellar comet.
Vita Brevis, Part 1 features the industrial grind of ‘Oumuamua, whose soft piano intro soon gives way to Killing Joke-style guitars and brash Gary Numan synths.
There’s also the Duran Duran and Human League-esque new wave of Timelapse and Timevault, six-minute post-rockish Remember and escalating drama of the dark and dramatic finale, Chronofiction.
2024
Unnatural Immunity
ALBUM – Released December 4, 2024
Unnatural Immunity leans heavily into the post-punk/new wave era, mixing Anecdata’s usual razor-sharp fuzz guitars and satirical lyrics with pulsing basses, vocoders and analogue synths.
The title track sticks the needle into antivaxxers, with lyrics that could be mistaken for prophecy – written entirely before the pandemic. Book of Facts melds ’90s power-chord guitars and a Manics-sized chorus with driving ’80s drums and Ultravox keys.
Light of the Moon takes Pulp’s Disco 2000 back in time 20 years, and forward just as many; while Pepsi Helicopter is the true story of an X-Files era UFO sighting in Hamilton, New Zealand.
Devil You Know
SINGLE – Released June 24, 2024
A cover of the New Zealand classic by Dave Dobbyn.
Obsolete
ALBUM – Released May 24, 2024
Written and mostly recorded in about six weeks, Obsolete is a noisy slab of home-recorded powerpop, alt rock and ’80s indie/new wave.
It has one foot in the past, stomping on a fuzz pedal, and the other in the future, tackling subjects like being human in a world where AI is taking over not drudgery (as we were promised!) – but edging in on creativity.
The title track was the first written for the album and set the template. Obsolete picks up where Cheap Trick left off in 1979, mixing punk guitar and Beatles melodies with retro synths. It discusses a future (or present?) in which we’re ” dead and gone”, just ” bones and meat” and obsolete like “jobs and ashtrays”.
Bomb the Hospital
SINGLE – Released April 12, 2024
A one-off brutal and furious instrumental tune inspired half by Killing Joke, and half by the bombing of a hospital – as per the title.
2023
A Better Plan B
ALBUM – Released December 23, 2023
A Better Plan B is a return to the Anecdata ‘rock’ sound, but bigger and shinier than ever.
The album opens with Dumb Backwards Government in which a buzzing synth lead floats over a repeated, hypnotic and monolithic guitar riff.
The title comes from the lyrics to Amelia Through the Looking Glass, which puts forward the theory the famed aviatrix didn’t crash at all – instead perhaps piloting her Lockheed Model 10 Electra into a rift in spacetime and leaving this cursed planet behind.
‘A Better Plan B’ is Anecdata’s take on what rock should sound like in 2023.
Aucklantis
ALBUM – Released October 6, 2023
Aucklantis is an almost-concept album about the Auckland Anniversary deluge and floods of 2023.
It aims to capture the vibe of the year climate change emerged from the long shadow cast by Covid-19 as the biggest long-term threat.
The title track takes aim at Auckland officials’ response to the disaster, or complete and utter lack of it. Others – such as Summer Rain – deal with the sheer frustration of being stuck inside due to the weather, after years of pandemic controls.
It’s not all doom and gloom though – One Man Bland and its punchy new wave chords find humour in the modern working-from-home alone vibe, while Venus > Earth finds a way to make a mockery of techno-futurists who think we can iterate our way out of this mess.
Prediluvian
EP – Released September 15, 2023
A little preview of the succeeding Anecdata album Aucklantis. Features the title track and four tunes that didn’t make the cut for the album – in another time they would have been called ‘b-sides’, I guess.
Prediluvian – essentially, ‘before the flood’ – well, the title speaks for itself, really.
If I Was PM…
ALBUM – Released June 2, 2023
Anecdata’s album If I Was PM... turns the guitars up to 11 then somehow, further defying the laws of marks out of 10, throws piercing synths on top of that.
It’s 32 minutes and 29.7 seconds of new wave indie grunge (a little bit more if you download the whole album – yes, there are bonus goodies).
I’m A Landlord imagines what it must be like to get money for free just because you’re rich, while The Bike Song and Bellringer use the universal language of powerpop to tell it like it is when you’re a vulnerable cyclist.
2022
Syzygy
ALBUM – Released September 30, 2022
Anecdata’s third album of 2022 is the heaviest, loudest and most polished of the three, combining razor-sharp synths, Siamese Dream-style guitars and drums right out of 1993.
There is a big conspiracy theory vibe on Syzygy, ranging from the raging riffs and anger of Believe in Anything and Ms Inform, to the more playful likes of Planes Want to be in the Air and The Great Filter.
Day Tripper
SINGLE – Released November 18, 2022
A cover of the Beatles tune.
It Won’t Be Long
ALBUM – Released September 8, 2022
A Beatles cover.
House of Ghouls
ALBUM – Released July 22, 2022
A one-off powerpop punk tune.
Sierra Leone
SINGLE – Released July 18, 2022
A cover of the New Zealand classic by Coconur Rough (originally recorded 2022, remixed 2024).
Miscast
ALBUM – Released July 1, 2022
Anecdata’s second album of 2022, Miscast, couldn’t be more different to April’s Team of Just One. Almost all the buzzsaw guitars are gone, replaced by hazy synths, drum machines and layered, echoing vocals at funereal paces.
The collection of nine songs (plus bonus tracks and demos if you grab the whole album) was a long time in the works – some of the final mixes using material recorded nearly a decade earlier. A few of the songs date back to the early 2000s, while others were literally recorded in the space of a couple of days in May 2022.
I Am the Walrus
SINGLE – Released May 12, 2022
A grunged-up version of the Beatles tune – yes, with the radio play included!
Things We Said Today
SINGLE – Released April 26, 2022
My first go at covering the Beatles… and not the last.
Team of Just One
ALBUM – Released April 18, 2022
The first Anecdata album of 2022 was Team of Just One – a lockdown/Ukraine War-inspired indie/powerpop record featuring the songs Rent-Free, Voices for Freedumb and the Zelensky-quoting Ammunition.
2021
A Year in The Life (2021 Singles Collection)
COMPILATION – songs released during 2021
A compilation of songs recorded and released one at a time through 2021.
The original plan was to do an entire year’s worth, but that was derailed by the lengthy Auckland Covid-19 lockdown in the second half of that year.
While the songs are individually available on streaming, the compilation version only exists on Bandcamp.
The cover is a collage of each single’s art, which was made with primitive generative AI.
Undelete
DOUBLE ALBUM – Released May 29, 2021
Undelete is a 2021 double album, featuring the songs 198X, The Effing News, Agenda 21 and The Best Move’s Not to Play.
A video for The Effing News (below) featured amusing and nonsensical headlines generated by an early form of generative AI (GPT-2), trained on a database of real-life New Zealand news reports.
2020
Does Anyone Remember Helen Clark, Bobby Fischer or 911?
SINGLE – Released December 17, 2020
A one-off power pop tune with perhaps the strangest title I’ve ever come up with. Oh, and a b-side.
Perhaps notable as the first Anecdata release that used a real guitar amplifier with a mic, as opposed to just a digital amp simulation.
Queenmaker
SINGLE – Released October 16, 2020
A song inspired by the bizarre situation we have had in NZ politics for decades – the country votes, then an old man called Winston gets to choose who forms the government regardless of what people wanted.
There was an earlier version of this song released in 2017, but this one is much better.
Star-Off Machine / Awake as the Sun
SINGLES – Released September/October 2020
A pair of one-off indie rock singles recorded and released in September/October 2020.
Bunkerland
ALBUM – Released August 5, 2020
Anecdata’s sixth album, Bunkerland, was originally released in 2020 and newly remixed and remastered in 2024.
Thirteen tracks of fuzz guitars and blazing synths, plus a few bonus songs if you download the whole album.
Nu-Metal
EP – Released June 9, 2020
Three new-wave/grungy covers of three Gary Numan songs – Metal, I Die You Die and We Are Glass.
Battle Thru Time
ALBUM – Released March 12, 2020
Released as Covid-19 was starting to spread, Battle Thru Time was an experimental electronic/indie album full of off-kilter synths and strange melodies.
Richard III was a highlight, inspired by the discovery of the late king’s bones under an English carpark.
Tokyo Regret was written from the perspective of until almost then, never having been overseas (lyric video below).
2018
Albuquerque/Arecibo
EP – Released May 17, 2018
Two new wave indie pop tunes, with a bonus demo track.
Short Sharp Shocks
ALBUM – Released April 1, 2018
A short and not-so-sweet batch of indie powerpop tunes – some of which dated back nearly two decades!
2017
You Do Not Do
ALBUM – Released December 10, 2017
A synthy indie-dance record first released in 2017.
Remixed in 2021 to improve the sound.
But Her Emails…
ALBUM – Released June 26, 2017
A rough and quickly written/recorded album about the early weeks of the first Trump administration.
Some of the tunes were remixed a few years later for better sound – listen below.
This album, being basically demo quality, was not released on streaming. It is only available on Bandcamp.
A-Z
EP – Released October 17, 2017
The original idea for this was to record every song I had ever written, in alphabetical order. That way I wouldn’t have to decide which tune to do next.
I got two songs in and realised it was a terrible idea.
Both are on streaming too, but as singles – not this ‘EP’ of AA Plus and A Letter.
2016
Howard Loeb’s Acid Fish Experiment
SINGLE – Released August 26, 2016
A strange little indie/1960s grunge tune inspired by a weird story I read in, I think it was The Fortean Times.
Is God Also a Lizard? / You Could be David Bowie
SINGLE – Released August 19, 2016
Early Anecdata songs were weird. This photo was taken the day I met David Icke (I’m just out of shot).
Exploding Head Syndrome
EP – Released June 10, 2016
An EP showing off early Anecdata’s New Order side.
Girl U Want
SINGLE – Released August 11, 2016
A cover of the excellent Devo song.
By Choice or Design
ALBUM – Released May 1, 2016
Anecdata’s rough and raw debut album.