If you made a list of people who have made a significant impact on Tauranga's music scene in the last 20 years Tim Julian would be close to the top.

He is a keyboard and bass player. But that's not his main contribution to music in the Bay. The thing that has left a lasting musical mark on the area is that Tim runs and owns The Colour Field Studio in Welcome Bay. Over the past 15 years a steady stream of musicians and bands have passed through his doors and he has recorded countless songs and albums in almost every musical style imaginable.

When Tim arrived from Tokoroa in 1998 he set up in a spare bedroom. He had basic gear and the plan was to finish recording an album he had started a decade earlier with a friend back in Tokoroa, to be called Southern Utopia. It's taken a while...

The first person Tim 'officially” recorded was Vicky Loach and her band Moss from Auckland. But his first significant recording came after attending the Bay of Plenty Music Awards (when such things existed) and hearing Marion Arts sing.

'I want to record her”, Tim thought, and that's just how it worked out. A year later Marion was completing her remarkable 'Songs of the Rings” album at Tim's studio.
Since then he has recorded blues for Grant Haua, country for June Armstrong, jazz for Woody Woodhouse, and a string of fantastic rhythm ‘n' blues CDs with Brilleaux, as well as albums for Colleen Gibson, Leilani, Toner, Nine Mile Stone, Jamie Strange, Bonjour Swing, The Remarkables and Liz Robinson. He's even recorded the inimitable Whirimako Black.

And, through the years, Tim kept working on that original album of his.

When I first met him in 2003 he played me a song from it. He was hoping to finish it soon...

It had started back in Tokoroa with a bunch of songs written by Tim and Fred Renata in the late eighties. Fred wrote the words, Tim wrote the music. Tim kept the songs and Fred went on to become many things, most recently the Director of Photography on several New Zealand films, including Mount Zion.

Now it's done. You can find Southern Utopia on iTunes, Spotify and most digital platforms or you can order a CD through www.fragilecolours.com. Or you can win one in our competitions section. Good luck!

watusi@thesun.co.nz

TIM JULIAN – SOUTHERN UTOPIA Fragile Colours Music

To call Southern Utopia a labour of love barely does it justice. A nearly 30 year collaboration between Tim and lyricist Fred Renata, it's an extraordinary piece of work - musically complex, extremely accomplished, and deeply felt. It combines a veritable deluge of musical sounds and styles from the eighties with modern flourishes and a series of lyrics about relocation, finding one's place here, and New Zealand's place in the world.

Musically, the touchstones are fairly obvious – Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons and a bucketload of eighties big-hair bands. There are familiar synthesizer swells, arpeggiators, crunching guitar riffs and catchy tunes. 'I Loved America” could have been a single for Starship or Journey but has grungier guitars.

Renata's lyrics, from the title track on, contemplate what living here means, 'New Southampton” tracing his ancestors' journey and other songs grappling with the trials and temptations of war and consumerism. Tim, not a natural singer, makes a fine fist of the vocals, aided by a lashing of auto-tuning devices which, ironically, make the set sound surprisingly contemporary by giving the vocal the same artefacts as found on every second pop record today.

Across the whole album the musicians are superb, be it early guitar parts from Dan Rubock, Bruce Rolands' energy, or Sean Bodley's explosive virtuosity. Jed Dawkins is huge and solid on some very complicated drum parts and Tim plays bass and does about everything you've ever heard on keyboards, from massed synth parts to the very touching piano instrumental 'Reverie”. And it wouldn't be right not to mention Kamaea Harry, year 13 at Girls' College, who supplies outstanding backing singing throughout.

There's excellent artwork too. All I can say is - Great Stuff!

WW