Lil' Chief Records

The dawning of the new millennium was a bad time to be an indie pop musician in New Zealand.

Ten years earlier, Flying Nun Records was arguably hitting its stride. However aided by its demise in the late 90s - dance music in its cheesiest forms had taken hold of what possibly could have been a live gig-going music scene. Perhaps in backlash to this, a healthy uprising of primitive guitar based rock bands had surfaced in New Zealand (a scene which would eventually produce bands like the D4 and the Datsuns).

However if you were a musician whose stylings were neither techno or rock, the chances of you finding a healthy audience were slim at best, and the chances of you finding a local label were Kate Moss. This left Jonathan Bree and Scott Mannion (both sitting on what would be the first Brunettes and Tokey Tones albums respectively) feeling a bit disenfranchised. After a chance meeting at Marbecks Record Store in downtown Auckland where Jonathan was working as a slave, Jonathan and Scott found they had much more in common than an appreciation for the new Lee Hazlewood reissues.

A mutual @#$!ing session about their predicaments as bedroom recording artists (a far greater feat back when Windows 98 was the standard operating system, and Pro Tools was largely unobtainable) led to a brave and somewhat stupid idea. They would form their own record label.