Smeared and Scratchy

Shayne Carter doesn’t make polite music. From the angular rush of Straitjacket Fits to the slow-burn tension of Dimmer, his sound has always been about instinct over polish — messy, charged, and entirely his own. So the idea of him scoring a new work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet might feel unexpected. It isn’t. Home, Land and Sea, choreographed by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, is as much a weather system as performance — and Carter’s score is what drives it.

Built from layers of ambient noise, distorted texture and unresolved tension, the music is less composed than conjured. It moves like a front rolling in: dark, shifting, and heavy with meaning. Patterson calls it heartbeat music — and it shows. There’s a physicality to it, a kind of internal rhythm that the dancers lean into and pull against. The whole thing feels uncomfortably close, in the best possible way.

This isn’t a work built to reassure. It’s about identity, dislocation, whakapapa — the unseen currents that connect and unsettle. Carter’s contribution doesn’t soften that. It holds the space open, lets it stay unresolved. You don’t leave humming a melody. You leave with a feeling.

Home, Land and Sea is touring now with RNZB. Go for the dance, stay for the noise.

https://rnzb.org.nz/