Anecdata’s ‘Aucklantis‘, an almost-concept album about the Auckland Anniversary deluge and floods of January/February 2023.

‘Aucklantis’ was mostly written in February 2023 under permanently grey skies, which persisted through the dreariest winter the city’s perhaps ever had.

Eschewing the fuzz power chords of the previous album ‘If I Was PM…’, this record instead trades in chorused guitars and echoed everything, aiming to capture the vibe of the year climate change emerged from the long shadow cast by Covid-19 as the biggest long-term threat.

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It’s not just Auckland that’s been fucked by Mother Nature this year though – Napier got it arguably even worse. The majority of the guitars on ‘Aucklantis’ were recorded using a Danelectro ’59M guitar purchased in the Art Deco Capital of the World in late 2022, before it too went underwater in the follow-up punch of Cyclone Gabrielle.

The title track takes direct aim at Auckland city 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; or the wider environmental/political debates around climate change, such as ‘The Control’, ‘Hyper Black Sea’ and ‘The Control’.

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 whilst mashing up Devo synths and Talking Heads guitars.

‘Aucklantis’ is Anecdata in just as angry a mode as ‘If I Was PM…’, just expressed in a different way.

Download the album from Bandcamp and as a bonus, get a second version of each of the songs mastered almost completely without limiting, with more dynamic range (good for audio nerds) and a few original demo recordings.