Essentially New Zealand's most internationally recognisable dubstep export, this Christchurch based producer/DJ trio have, in member Tristan Roake's words, "been on around forty-five plane flights … and played close to forty shows" over the last eight months.
Dividing this air-mileage and turntable time between appearances in New Zealand, the UK, Europe, and the States, Roake and his partners Andre Fernandez and Julian Van Uden have been hard at work building a genuinely global grassroots buzz for their sound and their recently-released debut album Puppets.
Released internationally via Australian dubstep label Aquatic Lab, and breathtaking in scope, Puppets brings the cinematic side of dubstep (i.e. Burial) and the dancefloor-driven aspect together into splendid unity. And with bass as the common denominator, Puppets delivers on the early promise of Truth's Deep Medi Records-released single 'The Fatman', the tune which put them on the map worldwide thanks to support from Deep Medi's inimitable founder, legendary UK dubstep producer and DJ Mala of Digital Mystikz and DMZ.
As Roake recalls, "Mala was touring New Zealand around four years ago. Our friend Ness brought him around to Andre's house and he played him a bunch of music that was forthcoming on Deep Medi, which was a really full on experience and he got quite inspired by it." Having written music together for several years, Roake, Fernandez and Uden were already all skilled studio producers and DJs and set in a habit of writing music together on a regular basis. Roake and Uden came around to Fernandez's house the next day and he played them a bunch of Deep Medi music. The boys caught a similar vibe, and over the next three days they bashed out five demo recordings.
Fernandez managed to drop the demo disc to Mala before left the country and on Christmas day, while Fernandez was holidaying on a yacht near Mexico, Mala called through, as Roake enthuses, to "give him a Christmas present." The Christmas present was, as you may have guessed, an offer to sign one of the tunes on the demo, 'The Fatman' to Deep Medi. Mala became Truth's de facto mentor, slowly introducing their music to the dubstep world as they worked away in their studio, building, in Roake's words, "a big back catalog of tunes."
Two years after writing 'The Fatman', with Mala and the likes of Skream, Joe Nice, Hatcha, and N-Type supporting their music, Truth's buzz was big enough that they could graduate from local shows to Northern Hemisphere performances. Playing at the much-lionised DMZ sessions in Brixton, London to critical acclaim, Truth went on to perform in other parts of Europe and the UK. This of course led onto their second European/UK tour, dates in Asia, and a recent American tour. And on Saturday 11 September, Truth's efforts will bring them to Dunedin to perform at South Bar for local promotions groups 30HZ and SBK. Soon afterwards, they will once again depart to Europe and the UK for yet another extensive tour, before doing the same across New Zealand in November.
Fernandez, Uden, and Roake are sitting on the precipice of something big. Truth has arrived, and the sound of New Zealand dubstep will never be the same again.
Truth
