MNZ Interview: Kurt Williams / Over The Hill Records

Over The Hill Records is both an independent record label and a physical record store, selling vinyl, band shirts and even boutique guitar pedals. It caters for and celebrates the underground, specialising in heavier music such as metal/hardcore/punk. But all genres of music can be found here – just good music. The taste of the store is curated by Kurt Williams who plays guitar and sings in local heavy-shoegaze/dreampop act, Libbianski.

OTH Records can be found at 208 Leftbank Arcade, Cuba Street, Wellington.

What makes Wellington’s music scene so unique?

Wellington’s got a big student culture. Eyegum have done a lot of things for the scene for the last 10 years. It’s a good gateway for bands to get noticed and stuff like that, whereas Auckland is like more focused on bFM, where you’ve got to be like one of the top popular bands releasing stuff to get on bFM, whereas Eyegum creates more of a culture in Welly because it’s like any band can go play, which creates a bigger community.

Most bands would know right now that it’s very hard to book a show. We’ve got a lack of venues, to be honest, but, venues have got to pay the bills, bro, at the end of the day. Do you have a local band that’s going to draw 25 people? Or do you have like an international act that’s going to sell out and buy loads of piss, you know?

What made you want to get into a brick and mortar store?

Ages ago I had the idea of starting up a DIY record label, and then my back stuffed out, because I’m a construction manager. I’ve had spine surgery and the surgeon said to me, well, I’m not here to really fix you, I’m here to relieve your pain. So, I’m having to find a whole new life. Like, really turned my life upside down. You know, here I was getting to a cushy part of construction management, and then all of a sudden, the rug is pulled underneath your feet and you got to redesign your life, man. So, I’ve always wanted to start a record store for years and years. Paul, rest in peace, from Rough Peel Records, he used to say to me, “I’m not lasting much longer, Kurt, would you like to buy my space?” And I was like, yeah, I’d love to own a record store, but I never really had the courage to do it, so to speak. It was just the wrong time. So, yeah, when this popped up, man I was like, let’s go. But yeah, that’s what sparked this brick and mortar idea was hearing mates constantly say we’re sick of shipping costs. I wanted to buy an album last year and it was $78 bucks, and then I went to the checkout and it was $148. I remember that, like, fucking no way. Yeah, the shipping is insane. So, I just stopped buying records altogether. I thought, well, if I can get the right contacts, maybe I could open a store and then buy them on bulk.

There’s a saying I heard you requote in another interview: “the more floors you sleep on, the better your band gets” from Andrew Wilson from Die!Die!Die!

Yeah, bro. Just so true. Just living it rough. Well, Die!Die!Die! have done it, man. They’re probably one of the most notorious D.I.Y. bands New Zealand’s ever seen, I learned off that lad, man. You know, he was “you have to gig gig gig”, outside of your hometown, you got to start expanding. I would self-book all of our shows, bro. Still do. First time we went to Europe, we made our own CDs. We were there the last night before we’re flying out of my house and we’re cutting that all out and gluing it all together, chucking CDs and we took 50 self-made CDs over to Europe. That’s DIY till we die, man! People like to hold something. Physical media is the way. I love it.

And New Zealand is catching up to it, which is great. All those tours that we did overseas, you need merch, man. Long sleeve t-shirts, CDs, vinyl. Me and Joe used to have no merch seller so we would finish a gig and just drop our shit on stage and run to the merch table. But now what I’ve heard in the commercial places overseas is that they’re taking cuts off bands for their merch now. They’re not happy with the beer sales or whatever and they’ve started taking money from the bands because they’re playing their venue. They’re like, “well, we’re going to take money from your merch as well”. So a lot of bands that I’ve seen overseas, DIY bands, they just say “our shit’s being sold out in a car park. You can come to the car park after the show, mate. Come grab your CDs or your records”. The working class always get fucked, bro. You know, it’s like importing these records, because I’m not saying where I’m getting them from because that’s just giving the secret away, but what happens is I buy the records and they come here and then they want to take an import tax.

Now you got to pay a GST when you sell it. It’s like, well, how many times do you need to tax one particular product that I’m bringing into the country that is a physical thing for Kiwis to have? How much cream do you guys need? And I can’t exactly just go out and pump the prices up because then it’s unfair on the people who want to buy this product. So, I keep it fair because I’m a bit of a unionist dude. I actually curate the music in here. Crazy taste in here. I’m curating the music for everyone. That’s the point of difference is that metal and hardcore are visible. You know, in JB Hi-Fi, you’d have to go digging.

How important is it that a lineup for an event has similar genres?

Oh, it’s not that important, bro. Who wants to hear the same drumbeat all night? You might want to hear a bit of doom, you’d want to hear a bit of blasting, you’d want to hear a bit of tech. If you have five technical death metal bands, you’re kind of, well, we’ve heard it, man, the opening band kind of said it all.