David is one of New Zealand’s most versatile and adventurous musicians, composers, and producers. In the 1980s, he was a member of the influential art-music ensemble, Six Volts, and throughout the 90s, he made three albums and toured extensively with Don McGlashan as founding members of the seminal art-rock band, The Mutton Birds.
On returning to New Zealand, he worked on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy with Plan 9 Music and has since scored many works for film (fiction and non-fiction), television, theatre and dance, including the score for Leanne Pooley’s Beyond the Edge released on Rattle in 2013. In 2017 he collaborated with Natalia Mann and Richard Nunns on what would be Richard’s last recording for Rattle, the beautifully delicate Utterance.
He has recorded several solo albums as well as collaborations with Teeth, The Metabolists, and The Labcoats, and has produced many critically acclaimed recordings for a diverse range of artists, including Dave Dobbyn, Barry Saunders, Leila Adu, Lucid 3, and won Producer of the Year Fur Patrol’s Pet at the 2002 New Zealand Music Awards.
In 2020 he won Best Score at the APRA Silver Scroll Awards for his work on the BBC drama series, The Luminaries, and in 2022 released Ash and Bone on Rattle, a gorgeously produced suite of pieces that defy easy generic categorisation, which David describes as a work that makes “a constellation of musical styles but never quite rests in any one of them”.
The same holds true for David’s new album, a recording as texturally rich and sonically expressive as we have come to expect from this bold and inventive composer.
davidlongnz.com
