Music Industry News

This is exciting: acclaimed Aotearoa indie musician Sandra Bell today releases a 5-song EP, The Court of Love, exclusively on Bandcamp.

The Court of Love EP was recorded over a number of years, in home studios from Warkworth to Rununga on the West Coast of the South Island. Engineered by Geoff Columbus, Dianne Civil, Matt Gunn, and Florian Bell, and mastered by Nick Roughan (Skeptics), she is joined by long term collaborator Dianne Civil (Vibraslaps), her son Florian Bell (Flat, New Delusion, Prosa), Jeff Henderson (Farewell Spit, Stroma, Audio Foundation), Antonella Coppolino, and members of the Runanga Blues Band including Deb Wright, Barry Benfell and Geoff Columbus (the latter released Bell’s album Net on his IMD label in Dunedin in 1996).

Despite the word love being in the title, none of the songs reference romantic love, and range from rollicking Indie rock songs to experimental soundscapes. The title song was inspired by graffiti in the womens’ toilet at a court and discusses the inadequacies of the justice system.

Other songs on The Court of Love EP discuss the displacement of Bell’s Scottish ancestors in the Highland Clearances to uninhabitable cliff villages, an artist’s studio post their death, and the lives of the Romani in Bucharest.

Newly-returned to live in Otepoti (Dunedin) from Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland), Bell is hoping to perform live more and write new material.

The first single – the title track ‘The Court of Love‘ – was released last week; take a listen here.

“Sandra Bell is essential listening for any NZ underground music fan. As a singer, Bell juggles fervent emotion and characteristic Kiwi reserve; as a guitarist and arranger, she embraces corrosive rock and edgy experimentation. Bell has a true ear for wry, cool vocals, unusual hooks and remarkable imagery, ranging from the personal to the natural world.” – Flying Nun (in the introduction to Bell’s album Net).

Check out all things Sandra Bell below:
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Sandra Bell is an acclaimed Indie musician from New Zealand with a dedicated following both here and overseas. A number of her records have been released, or later reissued, in the USA, Belgium, France, and Italy.

Bell began as a performance poet and singer/songwriter. Her music is sometimes noisy, confronting and direct; at other times lamenting and poetic.

She was part of underground label Xpressway in Dunedin, and was featured on the classic album Shrew’d, a Flying Nun compilation of women’s music; it was released in 1993 to mark 100 years of women’s suffrage in New Zealand.
(Listen to William Dart discuss Shrew’d in 2023, on his RNZ show New Horizons).

Two of Bell’s albums were written and recorded in Berlin: City of Sorrows in 1997 and White Nights in 2008, when she relocated there. Her albums Dreams of Falling and Net have been re-released in the USA on vinyl over last few years, and her poems have been published in New Zealand journals including Landfall.