Biography
Alex Mein Smith is a native New Zealander currently resident in the UK.
He's played with leading figures in the NZ experimental underground (Birchville Cat Motel, Peter Wright, Antony Milton), and has performed often in London (The Tate Modern, The Spitz, Jacks, The Flea Pit, State51, Area 10, The Hoxton Bar, The Foundry...), at SXSW in Austin Texas USA, and in New Zealand.
The album - Necessity's Flame - deals mainly with high contrast. Opposing elements are combined - heavy beats with lethargic textures, positive energy with pensive moods. This suggests dualities such as right/wrong, violence/peace, repression/release, physicality/mentality, reality/fantasy.... and points at something between, beyond. The sum is greater than the parts.
"It's not dance music per se, but the groove is as infectious as it is strange, and manages a kind of rare dark euphoria. While the aural textures Smith explores on "Necessity's Flame" are as out there as anything fans of the NZ underground would expect, a tight knit structure holds the record together, flavoring it with an accessibility it might not otherwise have."
- Jon Pitt, Foxy Digitalis
"Alex Mein Smith debuts with a sound that seems to come from the intuitive pluripercussion of Daniel Menche, drawing "pulp and smash" that looks like drones passed inside an ambient-isolationist washing machine.
A fascinating and obsessive music as well as quite diverse and original (apart from the few moments when it stresses techno) that makes us think of something actually 'new'."
- Stefano I. Bianchi, Blow Up Magazine (Italy)
"The CD has a solemn caste, but the overall effect is powerful and intriguing."
- Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector
"His music is always built around driving rhythms, fast, fat, mechanical, but more rock than techno. Below, just above the surface, he puts a carpet of electronics, creepy, haunting and sometimes uplifting. Quite a nice move I think...." - Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly
"There's something about these tracks that brings back distant memories. It's not the ambient qualities necessarily, although that"s part of it, but it"s certainly something about the sounds selected, and the quality of the sound... It gives me a lot of emotional feelings about something a long time ago, but I can't figure out what it is." - Shane Cooper
"Wednesday Addams with a Moog." - Murdoch Stephens