HIGH DEPENDENCY UNIT

High Dependency Unit biography
HIGH DEPENDENCY UNIT are a psychedelic rock band from Dunedin/New Zealand. Tristan Dingemans (guitar, vocals), Neil Phillips (bass) and drummer Constantine Karlis started in 1994 with indie rock roots, evolved into an experimental prog outfit during the following years though. They produced one EP and a single in 1995, quickly followed by the debut album 'Sum Of The Few' one year later. With the new EP 'Higher' in 1997 they moved their sound into new progressive territories, unleashed a little later as the seventy-minute re-configuration 'Higher ++' including some remixes.

In 1998 the band's second full-length album 'Crosschannel Multitap' came out, featuring some free-form extrapolations provided with the approach to offer entertaining varied impressions. Some highly acclaimed live shows followed together with Mogwai and US band Shellac until in 2000 the four track EP 'Memento Mori' saw the light of day. It marked another major step along the band's unique musical path. While gaining airtime and excellent reviews in the States this was leading up to their following US tour. A fortnight at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio recording complex in Chicago laid down the framework for the band's new album 'Fire Works', which was released on Flying Nun Records in 2001.

In 2006 HIGH DEPENDENCY UNIT took fans by surprise when they broke a recording silence of several years and released a new single 'Tungunska' - an epic, psychedelic soundtrack. Two years later they produced the full-fledged album 'Metamathics', a new collection of quite varied sonic textures. Hereby they found themselves starting again nearly from scratch after a hard drive died taking all the album mixes from the recent two years with it. So in the end the result is more experimental, different to the way they were shaping up to be before the computer incident.

HIGH DEPENDENCY UNIT offer a multi-faceted stylistical blend of psychedelic, space, post, shoegaze, garage, ambient and drone. Although it's been a while since they've recorded new material, the band's future is still an open book and they're touring New Zealand from time to time.