Wellington City Libraries

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Illphonics

Decade(s) active:

On our catalogue:

Music we hold — on our catalogue

The majority of our Wellington CD collection is available from our Te Awe Branch in Brandon St, or able to be reserved for free from our Distribution Centre in Johnsonville.

We say:

The word “supergroup” is bandied around a lot with regards to Wellington’s infamous cough-incestous-cough music scene these days. Mostly, it must be noted, by music writers and TV presenters.
On the other hand, how else could you describe a band comprising members of Fat Freddy’s Drop, Twinset, and Shapeshifter and former members of Trinity Roots and Police Lucifer?

The band known as iLLphonics came about in response to the need for a Sunday night resident combo at Cuba Street’s famed Matterhorn bar & restaurant. To put in rough, almost blatantly incorrect, press-release terms it starts with a (dirty-rotten) core of drummer Otis Chamberlain aka artist/producer Mephisto Jones and his longtime friend and collaborator bassist Tyrone McCarthy, both formerly of the infamous Police Lucifer.

Around their cat-gut & cow-hide centre, coalesced two musicians and a singer with two things in common: a bottomless depth of talent and nothing better to do on a Sunday night… Tehimana Kerr aka Jetlag Johnson of (moderately successful, you-may-have-heard-of-them) Fat Freddy’s Drop on guitar; Chris Yeabsley of Wellington’s hardest working band Twinset on keyboards; and the inimitable Hollie Smith on vocals, a solo star in her own right as well as a former part of Trinity Roots live band and guest singer on the forth-coming Recloose album “Hiatus on the Horizon”.

The group set about recording their debut release at Mike Gibson’s respected Inca Studios in early 2005 with additional musicians from the Welly scene. Now finally the EP is available for public consumption, four tracks of new sound recordings!


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