New Zealand Music Month 2024 Showcase: Back To The Hillside

From The Bedroom

It's that time of year again - Happy New Zealand Music Month! We're showcasing a series of artists from the underground all the way up to icon status in Tiki Taane. First up is 3 piece ban,d Back To The Hillside. They wowed the judges so much at the inaugural BurgerFuel Battle of the Bands that they walked away with a cool $5K. We caught up with Neo Aiono-Fukushima (vocals/guitar) and Hamish Ross (bass). Mark, who's currently on drums for them, sat quietly and nodded.

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RBF: So, take us back to the beginning of Back To The Hillside. When did it all start for you?

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Neo: We first got together as Back To The Hillside in 2021, but I've known the bassist Hamish since high school. We did a Smoke-Free rock quest together in our high school band called Minutes To Monday. In the first year, we got to the semifinals; in the next year, we did not do so well!

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After we started Back To The Hillside, our original drummer moved to Australia, so we’ve been going in and out of members. We've tried to get a four-piece going with a girl called Rocielli, who does the keys for a few of our live shows to get that sort of synthy sound. And also a bit of switching between Sam who’s also in Slow Rage, and Mark who’s our drummer right now.

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RBF: There are a few tracks online now – kind of that indie/alternative vibe. But listening to you live, you’ve got a heavier sound. Where would you say you sit?

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Neo: I've just been messing around a couple of years, and now we're actually getting some pretty happy with the kind of music that we're trying to produce right now.

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The first few songs released on Spotify were more indie pop indie rock, but now we're switching more into heavier territory like shoegaze, and taking the alternative route.

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Hamish: Our music kind of follows what we listen to. Fortunately, with me and Neo, our music tastes typically change at the same time, so we always write music around the same kind of stuff we like to listen to. And what we like performing live the most!

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RBF: The first time I heard you at our Battle of the Bands, you had a Smashing Pumpkins tee on Neo, and I thought it just sounded like you've picked something out of the 90s and shoved it into today by putting your own spin on it. It just worked! What were you jamming on your headphones to get to that sound?

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Neo: Before we crossed over into the heavy stuff, I was listening to like The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure. All those 80s new wave, post-punk kind of stuff.

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Hamish: Yeah, and after that initial more poppy/rock sounds, both of our music changed to listening to bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, and a lot of 90s stuff. Neo got into more shoegaze, and now the heavier stuff is like Deftones.

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RBF: And I see you’ve been teasing your next release on your socials. That’s just about out, right?

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Neo: Yeah, released on Friday 10th. It’s a shoegaze track called ‘I’ll Take You There’ recorded in my bedroom.

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Hamish: We've only got one song for which we went to a producer. That’s ‘I'm Alone’, which is written by Scott Seabright who produced it down in Pokeno. But this new track will be our third song released that was all done in Neo's bedroom, almost completely, solely produced. And everyone should know that.

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RBF: And assume there’s more music and shows on the way, too?

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Hamish: For sure. We've got tonnes of songs. It's just it's kind of the bottleneck right now because Neo has to get a lot of time in order to do a lot of stuff. Fortunately, because we happen to have come into some good cashflow recently (thanks to BurgerFuel!) and we've met a few nice producers around here, we might be able to get another song out pretty quickly as well. yeah.

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Neo: We've just done a bunch of gigs, going to Hamilton quite a bit and playing with Frog Mouth. And we played with Flaxxies. That was a big one in Whitianga. It was crazy.

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But we’ve got our next gig just around the corner. It’s on Sunday 26th of May at Big Fan. There’s also Albert St, The Boondocks, and Retroville on the bill.

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Back To The Hillside's next track, 'I'll Take You There', is on all good streaming platforms today (May 10). You can catch up with all the comings and goings on Instagram. And if you're in Auckland, check out NZ Music Month by checking them out live at Roll The Bones at Big Fan (an all-ages gig) on 26 May.

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