Biography
Since 1989 the Renderers have dwelled at the gloomier edges of New Zealand’s independent music world, delivering distortion-soaked psychedelic space rock steeped in brooding country and blues. Their material stretches from spare, shadowy elegies to brisker yet still anxious and threatening pop tunes. The sole unchanging personnel have been the husband-and-wife pair Maryrose Crook and Brian Crook, both veterans of numerous New Zealand outfits including Flies Inside the Sun, the Terminals, and Scorched Earth Policy, while players drawn from the 3Ds, the Verlaines, Pumice, and many other groups have augmented the lineup. Formed in Christchurch—also home to the Bats and Bailter Space—late in the 1980s, the band issued its countrified debut album Trail of Tears on Flying Nun in 1991. The single “Touch of Evil” arrived in 1993, the same year Merge Records introduced the group to American listeners with the “Million Lights” 7". Their second album, That Dog’s Head in the Gutter Gives Off Vibrations, came out on Chicago-based Ajax Records in 1994 and was followed by The Surface of Jupiter in 1996. A Dream of the Sea, released by Siltbreeze in 1998, served as their final recording of the decade and became one of their most widely praised works.
Although the constantly rotating membership kept performing and tracking new material, the next Renderers album did not appear until 2006. Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives, credited to Maryrose Crook with the Renderers, was issued jointly by 3 Beads of Sweat and Tinsel Ears. The band then joined forces with members of Sandoz Lab Technicians on the more experimental Renderizors project, whose debut album Submarine surfaced on Last Visible Dog in 2007. The same label released the subsequent Renderers full-length, Monsters and Miasmas, in 2009. The group signed with Ba Da Bing for the 2011 album A Rocket into Nothing, which was recorded amid a series of earthquakes that struck New Zealand and ultimately led Maryrose and Brian to relocate to California. In 2013 Exiled Records brought out the Renderers compilation Measured Strychnine Invitations, while Grapefruit Records issued the second Renderizors album, Vivid Cloud/Lucky Din. Ba Da Bing released the Renderers’ eighth album, In the Sodium Light, in 2016.
Although the constantly rotating membership kept performing and tracking new material, the next Renderers album did not appear until 2006. Ghosts of Our Vegas Lives, credited to Maryrose Crook with the Renderers, was issued jointly by 3 Beads of Sweat and Tinsel Ears. The band then joined forces with members of Sandoz Lab Technicians on the more experimental Renderizors project, whose debut album Submarine surfaced on Last Visible Dog in 2007. The same label released the subsequent Renderers full-length, Monsters and Miasmas, in 2009. The group signed with Ba Da Bing for the 2011 album A Rocket into Nothing, which was recorded amid a series of earthquakes that struck New Zealand and ultimately led Maryrose and Brian to relocate to California. In 2013 Exiled Records brought out the Renderers compilation Measured Strychnine Invitations, while Grapefruit Records issued the second Renderizors album, Vivid Cloud/Lucky Din. Ba Da Bing released the Renderers’ eighth album, In the Sodium Light, in 2016.
Albums
