Hamish Kilgour, a founding member of the New Zealand band the Clear, who was celebrated amongst followers of underground music for his propulsive drumming and his countercultural lifestyle, has died. He was 65.
He was discovered lifeless in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Monday, 10 days after being reported lacking, the police there stated. His loss of life was referred to the coroner’s workplace.
A central determine within the crop of freewheeling New Zealand musicians on the impartial label Flying Nun that got here to be referred to as the “Dunedin sound,” Mr. Kilgour spent 4 a long time as a musician, singing and enjoying percussion and later the guitar.
He finally performed with greater than 100 bands, together with the Nice Unwashed, the Sundae Painters and Monsterland, and lived for nearly 30 years in New York, the place he fashioned the band the Mad Scene.
He additionally had a secondary ardour for portray: He produced a whole bunch if not 1000’s of frank, idiosyncratic photos, lots of which have been repurposed as album cowl artwork.
A deceptively highly effective drummer, Mr. Kilgour would possibly begin a music in ramshackle vogue, then construct to a thunderous conclusion. He had early on been impressed by Moe Tucker’s single snare on stay recordings by the Velvet Underground. “I assumed, that’s type of magical and that’s doable — I might try this,” he stated in 2012. Ms. Tucker’s minimalist, driving model and her enthusiasm for the facility of the tambourine, later coloured his personal enjoying.
Not each drummer, nonetheless proficient, is straight away recognizable, stated Mac McCaughan, the proprietor of the label Merge Information, which final yr reissued the Clear’s first two releases. “However with Hamish — he had a voice on the drums,” he stated in an interview. “He had his personal model and his personal character.”
In 1981, Roger Shepherd, a neighborhood document retailer supervisor who was within the technique of founding Flying Nun Information, noticed the Clear carry out on the Gladstone Lodge in Christchurch. “They have been fairly clearly one of the best band on the planet,” Mr. Shepherd recalled.
Nearly earlier than the set had completed, he requested them to document with him. The primary recording session produced “Tally Ho!,” a frenetic, surf-rock-adjacent single — made for 50 New Zealand {dollars} — that scraped into the High 20 in New Zealand, buoyed by its reputation on scholar radio stations.
Flying Nun’s fortunes had been remodeled. The following EP “Boodle Boodle Boodle,” recorded that yr on an identical funds, spent 26 weeks on the New Zealand charts. American indie bands, together with Pavement, Yo La Tengo and Superchunk, would cite it as an inspiration.
For listeners outdoors New Zealand, the musicians on the Flying Nun label had a type of legendary standing, stated the American filmmaker Michael Galinsky, who turned a pal of Mr. Kilgour’s.
“It simply opened up all these worlds,” he stated of “Tuatara,” a 1988 Flying Nun compilation on which Mr. Kilgour appeared. “It’s so far-off — you don’t see photos of those folks, there’s no writing about them, there’s no web. In order that they’re mythic, and unimaginable.”
Impressed by the Enemy, a punk group began by pals of theirs, members of the Clear had begun rehearsing collectively in 1978 — Mr. Kilgour taught himself the drums, whereas his brother, David, performed guitar and Peter Gutteridge performed bass. (Mr. Gutteridge was later changed by Robert Scott.)
After its first flash of success, the members of the band made an early resolution to separate up simply 4 years into their profession. However because the Clear’s affect on do-it-yourself underground rock turned extra obvious, they reunited in 1988. Over the subsequent 30 years, interrupted by lengthy spells aside, the Clear continued to carry out in america and elsewhere around the globe, releasing a number of albums.
As a member of the Mad Scene, Mr. Kilgour recorded a number of albums and EPs, in addition to two solo albums, “All of It and Nothing” and “Finkelstein,” and made myriad different visitor appearances on different artists’ data.
Hamish Robert Kilgour was born in Christchurch on March 17, 1957, the older of two sons of MacGregor and Helen Stewart (Auld) Kilgour. He was reared principally in Cheviot and Ranfurly, small communities in New Zealand’s rural South Island.
In 1972, the household moved to the coastal metropolis of Dunedin, additionally within the South Island, the place Mr. Kilgour’s father took a job as a pub supervisor whereas his mom ran the institution’s kitchen. Hamish obtained a bachelor’s diploma in English and historical past from the College of Otago in Dunedin in 1977.
After his father was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, the place he died in 1982, his mom labored as a nurse to help the household. She later supported her sons’ band, serving to to fund each a van and a P.A. system as they carried out across the nation with the Clear.
Mr. Kilgour moved to New York within the late Eighties after the breakup of his first marriage, to Jenny Halliday. There he met Lisa Siegel, who would develop into his second spouse and a bandmate once they fashioned the Mad Scene. The couple had a son, Taran.
However life in New York, the place he labored as an artwork handler, home painter and carpenter in between music gigs, was at instances precarious, particularly after he and Ms. Siegel broke up in 2013.
He moved again to New Zealand through the coronavirus pandemic and performed music there every time he might, whereas eking out an existence that strained his psychological and bodily well being, folks near him stated.
He’s survived by his brother and bandmate, David, and his son.
For his contemporaries in New Zealand, Mr. Kilgour was a testomony to the notion that being from a far-off nation of some million folks with no established rock custom didn’t preclude folks from making nice music.
“Simply because it comes from right here, and never London or New York, it doesn’t imply that it’s not legitimate,” stated Mr. Shepherd of Flying Nun. “That was a startling factor that we type of knew was true anyway, however that hadn’t been articulated for us.”
Richard Langston, a music journalist and longtime pal, stated Mr. Kilgour had “modified the best way you would document indie rock.”
“He was that necessary,” he added, “and he lived a loopy, courageous, solo life.”
