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50 mintues, Exempt

Xpressway was a Dunedin-based record label that in the words of it’s founder Bruce Russell provided a ”lifeboat” for a collection of local rock and experimental musicians.

Despite being unwanted by other record labels in New Zealand many of the artists on the Xpressway label would later come to be internationally recognised as the defining acts of New Zealand underground music in the 1990s.

Where The Dead C embraced waves of howling atonal guitar amp bleed, Alastair Galbraith created songs of Haiku-like essence and Peter Jefferies sonorous voice drifted and barked over his alternately eerie and pounding electric piano. Although having only 23 releases in it’s short lifetime during the 1990s, Xpressway releases are still sought after in todays underground music circles. Some cassette releases have recently been known to sell online for US $100.00.

X Way Vision was shot at the Studio 13 and Super 8 venues in Dunedin from late 1991 by John Harvey. Just as these groups were - and remain - outside the recognised definition of New Zealand music these performances were shot in warehouse spaces that operated as alternatives to bars and regular venues.

A hallmark of all of the performers on the Xpressway label was the foregrounding of performance over commercial production values, and the film sticks closely to the same formula, using a maximum of two cameras and minimal effects. The camera had previously been used to shoot the TAB photofinish in horse races.

Like the music it portrays, X Way Vision had a higher profile overseas than in New Zealand, where it has rarely screened.

X Way Vision features the following performances:

Gate -  Cropped Silver Hi-Lo
Peter Jefferies  -  Difficult Days
Chug -  Oozing
Sandra Bell  -  Dreams of Falling
Chris Heazlewood & Greg Cairns - Surf Shitty
Cyclops - Steel White Bed
Alastair Galbraith  -  Huxley
Son of a Goblin  -  Travelling Grave
Shayne Carter Big Band  -  Big Fat Elvis
Plagal Grind  -  Screaming E
The Dead C  -  Helen Said This