In which the band forms, writes some songs and records the album Live Again. This part of the band’s history is best described by Derek Jacombs’ article, Spending Time with Redundant Technology, below, from The Weekend Sun in September 2006:

‘When I dropped into the Boatshed Studio a few days back there was some Johnny Walker and a big bottle of Bombay Gin in the garden bar along with several kinds of beer - obviously some serious recording was underway. 

And so it turned out. 

A bunch of reprobates going by the collective name Redundant Technology made it all the way across the Tasman from Sydney, and have spent this week recording an album at the relaxed Whakamarama facility. 

One of them, Stephen Bradley, is actually a globe-trotting Tauranga native. In fact, he first met Boatshed head honcho Nigel Masters at a game of primary school cricket and still remembers Nigel’s fearsome reputation as “the Dennis Lillee of Tauranga under-10 bowling”. Later they both went to Otumoetai College. 

Stephen’s first real adventures in music came in the early eighties when Nigel – who was in the process of dropping out of Victoria University to follow musical dreams and young women - dragged him on-board as “lighting guy” for new wave Wellington outfit The Puppetz. Another member of that band is also here for the week, bass player Howard James. When The Puppetz split Howard went on to form Jungle Mice with a third member of Redundant Technology, guitarist Simon Ward. Stephen did the lights again. 

Jungle Mice performed the remarkable feat of changing from an electro pop band to a psychobilly one, and then they all buggered off and ended up in Australia. 

Stephen actually went to Oz to go to film school, and in 1986 he came back to Wellington and ended up making music videos for the likes of Bill Direen and the Builders, and – amongst others – local Waihi Beach band Ebony Sye. After spending the nineties in Britain, Stephen is now back in Sydney where he is the Art Curator of the Transfield Art Collection, one of the largest private collections in the country, owned by recently-deceased art patron Franco Belgiorno-Nettis.

Throughout this he has popped back here every few years to catch up with friends and family, as well as to make a couple of trips to the Boatshed to record duo albums with Nigel, the latest being Who Are We?, which they did under the name The Masses in 1997.

So, at the start of last year Stephen got together again with Simon in Sydney and they started writing songs. They had about half an album written by the end of the year when Howard came on board and then Chris Crooks, a Scotsman who comes from a family with three drumming brothers and who had known Howard from as far back as the mid- seventies when his parents spent a year in Wellington, joined the mix and – once the band finished off a dozen songs and played one live gig in Sydney - they put their lives and families and jobs and kids on hold for a week or so and came over to The Boatshed for some serious recording and recreation. 

Together they make an interesting sound - it’s hard to classify. 

Stephen has a smooth, melodic voice and cites the likes of Magazine, Television and The Only Ones as influences. 

Simon is a strange guitarist (he’s from Down South in Ashburton and bought his first electric guitar from John Halverson of The Gordons): “I don’t like straight music” he says. “I like things to be emotionally flavoured. I’d never play a straight E minor or E major.” I hear a lot of early Flying Nun sounds in his sound. 

Howard, on the other hand, is kinda funky. When he went to Australia he formed a band called Engine Room with ex Split Enz drummer Malcolm Green but since the mid-90s he has been increasingly involved in the drum/bass/jungle/dub scene, working from his home studio and DJing at gigs live from a laptop. From 1997 to 2004 he went under the name Neuroscape, releasing one album, Metabolism, in 2000. Since 2004 he has gone by the handle Babybooma. 

So throw in a touch of Red Hot Chilli Peppers with a sprinkling of punk, a dash of Flying Nun and a hint of Brit Pop, and along with some alternative nineties rock you have the sound of Redundant Technology. Confused? Well, me too, but despite being unable to describe the music I rather like it. And what a cool way to spend a week or two. Bugger off overseas with some friends and record an album. There are worse ways to pass the time.’ 

Spending Time with Redundant Technology 
by Derek Jacombs 
The Weekend Sun, 15 September, 2006

In which the band releases its second album, finds itself a keyboard player, a new drummer, and (hopefully) a faster way of recording the next album...

As well as playing live, Red Tech spent 2012 working on its second album, which would eventually be called Love, Gravity and Air – a lyric from the song Intuition. Recording began at Gadigal studios in Redfern in September 2011 and was completed at Attic studios in Alexandria. These sessions began the relationship with producer Lachlan Mitchell, who would go on to record the band’s third album.

While work was being done on the album, the band experienced a major change in direction with the arrival, in April 2013, of keyboard player, John Hoey. Without any mucking around, he played live for the first time at The Lowdown at the Gladstone Hotel on 26th May. He also continued his association with his other bands, including Died Pretty, of which he is a founding member, and Cub Calloway and the Revolutionaries. 

The band experienced another major change with the departure of drummer, Chris Crooks in February 2015. As well as drumming on both Live Again and Love, Gravity and Air, Chris had made a major contribution to the writing of the songs on both albums and finding the band gigs. For several months during the autumn of 2015 the band was without a drummer, until Paul Crawford joined in April. Finally, in the summer of 2015, the band released its second album, Love, Gravity and Air.