While at Elam, they created the Golden Axe zine (named after an arcade game), which included a CDR of their sonic experiments plus drawings and collages “of the most juvenile shit imaginable”. They briefly formed a live band, with Daif taking up bass and Chris on guitar, along with drummer Peter Smith (the Crabbs) and, later, second guitarist Angel Chirnside. This line-up fizzled out even before they were banned from using Elam’s photocopier to run off copies of the zine.
Then there were two
The crucial turning point for Golden Axe came in 2002, when Cudby realised he was sick of tuning his guitar. “Daif and I shared an art studio downtown with Julien Dyne, which doubled as a practice space. Julien had some lo-tech Yamaha keyboards and I started toying around. I realised that if we took a minimalist approach and leaned into sounding clunky, then it actually felt fresh and liberating. Running the keys through distortion was another eureka moment. We very quickly put down songs like ‘No Food’ and ‘Vacuum The Room’. Some early songs were just me listing things that were in the room.”
Switching to keyboards meant they could jam together over the pre-set beats, often set at an abnormally high tempo. They discovered that they could push their sound towards heavy psychedelia by putting the keyboards through guitar pedals and using the waveform generator that King had built.
Daif’s suggestion that they try busking caused problems at first, says Cudby. “We were immediately cleared away by police, who probably didn’t like our masks, since it wasn’t long after September 11. Luckily there were plenty of empty storefronts around the bottom of Queen Street, so we found a good spot beside Burger King. The keyboards were battery-powered and everything was going into the same battery-powered speaker, plus we used a tiny loud hailer.”
On Queen Street, Golden Axe busked using keyboards, a speaker, and a tiny loud hailer
Their busking led to other performances. “My fourth year Elam tutor was Sean Kerr and I showed him footage of us busking,” says Cudby. “He was curating a sound performance evening at Starkwhite gallery, so we took part and I hung some photos on the walls behind us. The Gladeyes also did a set, so it was probably through them that we were offered a gig supporting The Brunettes at Galatos. That was our first gig inside a music venue.”
They had sat on the ground when busking, but this time they strapped their keyboards to walking frames which Julien Dyne stored in their studio. When they supported The Brunettes at Galatos in November 2003, they set up in the middle of the dancefloor, with the main lights switched off so that the only illumination came from the fairy lights and lamps around them.
Cudby delivered his vocals through a headphone earpiece “mic” taped around his head, which meant he didn’t need a mic stand and it had a cover to avoid creating feedback. The vocals were put through a small overdriven Peavey amp, which made them sound distorted and slightly robotic on their first collection, Golden Shakehands (2004).
They then had a residency at Enjoy Gallery in Wellington, where they constructed a tent-like structure to perform inside. Cudby decided to put his gear on a baby stroller which meant that if the audience was standing back, he could roll towards them.
With each new show, they pushed the visual side of their performances. For one show at the Grey Lynn Library Hall, Cudby felt he had created the perfect costume by putting a world globe over his head and cutting a slit in it for his eyes. However King outdid him by wearing a neoprene diver’s hood and attaching a dead squid to the top.
They performed at parties put on by Fleet FM (they hosted a radio slot, the 2 Dollar Show), as well as shows at Paradise Bar and Eden’s Bar on K Rd, regularly sharing bills with The Coolies and Mint Chicks. On one memorable occasion they got the audience out onto the pavement while they played their music inside a van during a thunder storm. Their antics caught the attention of Ian Jorgensen, which led to them joining multiple A Low Hum national tours, alongside Disasteradio, Cortina and The Fanatics (as well as appearing on the accompanying CDs and DVDs).
During their residency at Enjoy Gallery, they met Dylan Herkes who seemed intrigued by the cassette on display of 90s rave compilation The Brain. They wondered if it might be the Mysterious Tapeman, who they had played an impromptu show with the night before. This chance meeting led to their album Party Alarm Bells (2006) coming out through Herke’s label, Stink Magnetic. Amongst its 23 tracks were new songs such as ‘Dognapped’ and ‘Surf’s Up’ alongside re-recorded versions of live favourites, which meant the album provided a tidy summary of the group’s development. Then they went into hiatus while King relocated to the UK for 18 months.
New Sounds and Phase 2 of Golden Axe
Cudby briefly lived in Wellington, but was offered a gig opportunity back in Auckland. “I got a call from Sjionel [Timu] from The Coolies saying that we’d been asked to play at a party. Duncan Grieve covered my train fare back to Auckland so I could take part, even though my band with Sjionel didn’t actually exist yet. She lived at 155 K Rd and had a room I could move into, so I turned up and we wrote a bunch of songs in one-and-a-half days then played the show as Miami Beach.”
He kept busy with Miami Beach (recording the six-song Don’t Worry Be Happy EP), his new solo project Futuresports (later releasing his FUN + OK collection), and helping set up DJ Stevie Kaye’s Let’s Get Incredible dance parties.
Eventually, King returned from the UK with a Yamaha synth that he’d found in a dumpster. The pair further evolved their sound by introducing a 707 drum machine that allowed them to program beats, plus a more versatile Juno 6 synth. Cudby also changed his vocal effects so the lyrics were more discernible, and the pair began using a computer to record.
For a short period, they also added a drummer, Ryan Bennett (Cartoon, Wywy Brix, Black Licorice). This later led to King’s side project, Dorkwind, with King on bass and drumming from Bennett.
When Golden Axe were given a daytime performance slot at Artspace in 2008, they improvised over an hour of instrumental music which showcased a new side to their sound – extending from B-movie sci-fi soundscapes through to warped synth-pop (later released as Peaceful Planet live collection).
All these experiments led up to their breakthrough album, Fantasy Footwork (2010). The album release show was at High Seas Gallery and the pair created a large igloo-shaped structure wearing a giant top hat to play inside. On one side, a tube extended outwards and smoke poured out from inside, like a “pipe” illuminated by a light from within.
The album was released by Crystal Magic Records. Cudby explains: “The initial idea was to bring friends together under one label. With Fantasy Footwork, we actually did most of the promo work ourselves, but we put the Crystal Magic logo on the cover and that aligned us with other like-minded acts, like Frase, Thought Creature, P.H.F, SoundCanvas Ultra, Lttle Phnx and Eyeliner. I later talked to overseas musicians who were totally aware of what the label was putting out, mainly through the Rose Quartz blog, which was aggregated in Pitchfork’s Altered Zones section [focused on adventurous music]. An eventual flaw was having the label only run by one person. It fell on Fraser Austin to do 99.9% of the work and that wasn’t sustainable.”
“We built a big head with a moustache and sunglasses, then played inside his brain”
Fantasy Footwork was preceded by the single ‘Free Time’ which they wrote while on a residency in Christchurch in 2007. “We performed in an empty shop space hosted by High Street Project,” says Cudby. “We spent a week building a big head with a moustache and sunglasses, then played inside his brain. We also wrote some new tracks to play. When ‘Free Time’ came out, people asked me whether it was an aspirational song about wanting to have more free time, but actually I did have a lot of free time in those days. It was just like how ‘No Food’ was written about having no food, because I was perpetually broke.”
A music video was created by rising director and digital artist Simon Ward. He enlisted Don Brooker to sing and dance against increasingly fantastical backdrops. It became a calling card for Golden Axe and led to interest from an overseas record label, as Cudby explains:
“AMDISCS label was tightly affiliated with Creepy Teepee festival in the Czech Republic, which apparently had drawn inspiration from Camp A Low Hum. Disasteradio played at Creepy Teepee in 2009. We put out ‘Free Time’ and then we got a message from a guy in the Czech Republic and we were like, ‘is this some kind of scam?’ Fortunately AMDISCS turned out to be an incredible label, with lots of artists that we liked.”
Golden Axe released their next album, Liquid Bacon (2011), through AMDISCS and Cudby says it is his favourite of their works. “We were really in the zone for that one. I still don’t think there’s another Aotearoa release like it.”
Golden Axe joined an extensive European showcase tour, alongside with other acts from AMDISCS (including Horse Head from LA, later of GothBoiClique). The performances included a fashion show at an art gallery in Milan, a Berlin warehouse club party, house parties in Belgium and France, and a riverside festival in Portugal. Their itinerary included Fusion Festival in Germany and finally the Creepy Teepee festival in the Czech Republic.
When Ian Jorgensen asked them to again be involved in Camp A Low Hum, they took a new approach. “We made a big blobby head and inside of that was a miniature universe,” says Cudby. “We had our track ‘Bees To Meet You’ playing on loop. The blob wore a cap and at one point someone took it and crowd-surfed over the crowd watching acts play in the emptied-out swimming pool, but they returned it to the installation afterwards. The installation meant that people could just go inside and experience it. We didn’t have to be there. We’d finally worked out how to remove ourselves from being part of the installation.”
Golden Axe also played at Jorgensen’s Squarewave Festival (2013) and in the final run of shows that he put on to mark the closing of his Wellington venue Puppies in 2014.
Audio Foundation years
One of Golden Axe’s most impressive installations was constructed for the Liquid Bacon album launch. Seeking to be less removed from the audience, they made a large gazebo so that attendees could come inside it and be alongside the band. They moulded it in the shape of a large duck head, with a haircut and backwards cap modelled off young John Connor from Terminator 2.
This event was held at a new Auckland experimental music venue/hub, Audio Foundation, which Cudby assisted the organisation’s director Zoe Drayton to set up as a physical space in 2011.
“When I finished my postgraduate degrees in Fine Arts, I gained an internship via Artstation. I’d done volunteering at The High Seas gallery previously and I had some experience in running a space like that. I managed to get this internship role for 20 hours a week helping set Audio Foundation up as a physical venue. I was there for approximately four and a half years. Audio Foundation was 100% Zoe’s project. I didn’t have a lot of creative agency in my role, but I was able to use my experience to help get the exhibition programme going – I curated multiple exhibitions – and encouraged younger artists to perform there. Maybe my other big contribution was helping to reshape the Altmusic program as an Altmusic board member, to host higher profile overseas artists like Merzbow, Matmos and Laurel Halo. We put on a ridiculous number of events. My favourite times were working on Saturdays, when Kraus would be there working on the Musical Electronics Library.”
The birth of Power Nap
Just after Audio Foundation opened as a space, Cudby released his first solo single as Power Nap – ‘No Worries’. The whispered vocals were supplied by his long-term partner Caroline Sturgess and Cudby was later happily surprised to find it credited by music historian Michael Brown as New Zealand’s first “vaporwave” release. Certainly the music video’s references to VR techno-futurism support this. There were also elements of this hypnagogic sound in the music that his Golden Axe partner was releasing as “Daif” during the same period, which introduced aspects of new age music, as captured on his Later Dood cassette EP.
The first Power Nap performance came through encouragement from Zoe Drayton, who was curating a live series at Audio Foundation. Power Nap’s 2012 release ‘Just Do It’ b/w ‘Kiwi Blue’ was even more sample-heavy and vaporwave in aesthetic. Cudby was happy to mainly focus on Golden Axe, however King moved to Wellington following the European tour and it became difficult to work together. Their recordings faded to a trickle and they had no funds for touring abroad. Cudby’s mother also passed away around this time: “I realise now I was burnt out,” he says. Golden Axe did a final performance at A Low Hum New Year’s party that was held on a boat in Wellington Harbour, then the group went into hibernation.
Editor, music maker, broadcaster
In 2017, Cudby officially became the editor of the website UnderTheRadar. The site was created in 2004 by Daryl Fincham as an online store where bands could sell vinyl and other merch, though it also included a gig guide. Fincham was a member of indie band Meterman which led to him helping out at Midium – a sublabel of Kog Transmissions, which released Meterman.
Fincham then worked with Angela Windust to introduce more news and feature articles to the site. They added a ticketing service in 2008 which went so well that Windust began working fulltime at UTR in 2011. By the time Cudby joined, UTR was a stalwart of the local scene – allowing rising acts/promoters to sell their own tickets easily, while also providing music news.
Cudby had to hit the ground running when he took over as editor in 2017, taking the baton from Danielle Street. “It was an insane learning curve, but also very fun and exciting. We were really lucky when Annabel Kean (Sports Team) joined as assistant editor. She was rock solid. I didn’t know that her parents were The Bats or that she was a video maker when she first joined. We did a series where we filmed live shows in venues, but after a few of them we realised – we never want to do that again! Then we decided to do something in a more controlled environment and that led to the Trash Recital series, produced by Sports Team.”
Each Trash Recital saw a music group recreate one of their songs using only a random assortment of “trash”, while also taking part in an interview about their work. In 2022, Cudby and Kean were nominated for The Taite Prize’s Outstanding Journalism Award. Cudby lists Trash Recital as being a highlight of his time at UTR, along with the comics journalism series that he commissioned by Daniel Vernon (DARTZ).
Cudby’s new songs remain esoteric. He aimed to create some distance from Golden Axe
Cudby’s musical focus returned to Power Nap with the single ‘Being Cool Is E.Z.’ in 2018. His main drive was playing “mutant dance” live gigs. He had already created occasional tracks for different projects in the preceding years – including co-editing and publishing the Sonic Comic music and comics project in 2017. He drew together all these previous tracks on the 2019 compilation Shaped Canvas which included some he’d recorded as Golden Axe and as Airwalk (released on cassette through AMDISCS). Power Nap then signed to Auckland label, Sunreturn, and Cudby was pleased to once again feel as if he was within a community of high-quality artists.
Cudby’s new songs remain esoteric. The song ‘Club Dinos’ was accompanied by a comic strip he drew showing dinosaurs playing in a jazz club. At first, he aimed to create some distance from the synth-punk sound of Golden Axe, but he gradually decided he wanted to have some tracks with similarly fast tempos and in-your-face basslines (e.g. 2021’s Student Radio Network chart-topping ‘Out Of The Pit’). Golden Axe reformed in August 2025 to play support for Princess Chelsea’s Midwinter Ball.
In January 2025 Cudby became a host of bFM’s Freak The Sheep show, alternating weeks with Taylor McGregor. Power Nap is a regular presence on the Auckland live scene – Cudby continues to have a playful attitude towards doing live shows, whether it involves dressing as a wizard, projecting animations by Simon Ward or inviting Annabel Kean in a power suit to play saxophone on stage. This aligns well with the approach that Golden Axe took from the start.
“We were always trying to create shows that we would want to see and hear,” says Cudby. “The visuals were there to support and speak to the sounds we’d developed. We just wanted to think a bit laterally about our approach and see what new ideas we could come up with.”
