Jed Town started playing music in the early 70's at the age of 14. He played bass guitar in many bands, including, Optic, Stonehenge, Acid Grease, Forever, 4, Wrecks, The Superettes, The Anaesthetic, The Features.
Early gigs included the Whangarei Pop Festival and various sets at Rasputins, The Windsor Castle, Occidental, Gluepot, Zwines and others. Having left school in  1972 he tried to earn money playing originals mixed with rock n roll covers, mostly in pubs. This process wasn't as fulfilling or rewarding as expected, so he left the band scene in 1978 to find self awareness and enlightenment, as the music didn't touch the heart. After two years of searching, he found a perfect master called Maharah ji. This started a process of awakening of the spirit. It was then he started writing music based on self awareness and reality. ‘What's going on?’ appeared one evening after a meeting with Maharah ji. It was around 1979, just when the Punk scene emerged and Superettes and The Features were formed. After 6 months The Features became ego driven and he decided to leave for Australia with his new love Sarah.
Fetus productions became the new art collaborative, the name based on a poem written in 1979 about the human race being products from a factory for human reproduction. Robotic mindless people for use in wars and the manufacture of consumer products. The elimination of the human spirit.
Mike Brookfield, then an art student, was inspired by images Jed had found at the medical libraries and began frantic works with fluorescent colors on canvases for an exhibition at Auckland University. This was the first audio visual performance art show.
Later in 1983, the band featured a male/female front partnership called 'The Perfect Product', performing live audio visual shows worldwide. Members joined automatically of their free will, they gained their own admission.
After nine releases this project ended in 1989. It had established itself as part of the Industrial scene of the 80's. Members included Sarah Fort, Deberlee, Mike Brookfield, Groove Myers, Phil Punch, Ian Gilroy, Tone Cornaga, Greg McCunn, Duane Yule, Sonya Waters, Bruce Hubbard, Chris and James Pinker, Jamie Jetson, Mark Sullivan, Patrick ‘Dubhead’, Zennor, Geoff Martin, John Kuipers, Karel Van Bergen, to mention a few.
Arriving in London in 1987 the Acid & Techno scenes were emerging. This new energy inspired him to leave the guitar and start learning the computer doing experimental Ambient/Techno/House music. He also became involved with U.K Industrial group Test Dept, doing their visuals with an 'Eagle 2' computer controlling 12 slide projectors. Jed started working with Gus Ferguson from Test Dept with I.C.U and released 2 CDs and 2 vinyl EPs on the newly formed Sawtooth Recordings.
He was employed as a visual artist at a club called Knowledge from 1991-93 with Colin Dale, Colin Favor and Brenda Russell, Djing with many international artists visiting weekly.
After 3 years he returned back to New Zealand in 1995 to play at a quadraphonic party named ''Immersion'' with Mike Weston.
Jedeye evolved into a Dj but after an ear injury during scuba diving, pain, tinnitus and an ear infection forced him to rest for two years without playing loud music. Luckily the ears completely healed.
He performed at The Big Day Out in 2000 in 'The Boiler Room' before The Chemical Brothers and now, in 2007, through his label Sawtooth Recordings', continues to create music for many TV documentaries, feature films and live shows. The visual side also occupies a great part of the creative process. He writes and edits with a Mac G4 laptop using final cut HD, Logic and Ableton Live.
Jed has released several DVDs based on relaxation and turning off the outside world to find inner stillness, a preparation for meditation on the soul, with 2 audio options: Quadraphonic sound FX and music.
''Fish Tank TV'' was released in 2005 thru Magna Pacific, 'Cloudscapes of Aotearoa', his latest DVD is as yet unreleased.

'What’s going on?'
"This is a question I often ask myself and a song which was inspired by pure happiness and a need to discover inner fulfillment".
This version was recorded in Sydney at the Groovex Studio between 1981/82.
Groove Myers featured as keyboardist extraordinaire and Phil Punch as engineer/technical whiz.
Jed mixed the track in about 6 hours, but the recording process took nearly 2 years.
Recorded in downtime mostly. ''After a while you lose perspective on the original theme and this happened. Only weeks before the studio closed I realised that the siren at the beginning was missing. It had been deleted. Once it had been re recorded with a Pearl Syncussion drum machine, the track came back to life and is as you now know it''.
Although Fetus Productions had been established in 1980, the idea of different offshoots to the main company was appealing.
‘We all had different energy preferences so to avoid disagreements on style, this was appropriate. The first audio visual shows at Bondi Beach were spectacular. The stage caught fire with a boat flare used as a effect, and chaos followed. Organiser, Arthur Baysting was horrified.
A show at The Windsor Castle in Parnell, Auckland, established the act successfully in 1983.
The cutting edge performance attracted label Flying Nun to release the 'Fetalmania' EP.
The radio stations picked up on 'What's going on?', and the weird Fetus Productions company became common knowledge.
The touring started and the band visited Japan, the USA and Europe, before ending in London in 1987. Recently, the song featured in Brad McGann’s feature film, 'In My Father’s Den'.
The song still sounds fresh as ever 20 years on. Luckily Phil Punch managed to transfer all the original 2'' master tracks onto 24 bit audio files, so Jed was able to remix the track adding a louder lead guitar and vocal. The message remains the same. Listen to your heart, find the hidden treasure.

www/digitalwallpaper.net
http://www.myspace.com/jedtown

Also see FETUS PRODUCTIONS
http://www.clubbizarre.co.nz/display.php?band=1101&sec=13

An Interview with Jed Town from The Lumière Reader 12.11.07   http://www.lumiere.net.nz 

Opening for John Cale this week, local legend Jed Town remains at the forefront of experimental music. He talks to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about the Features, Fetus Productions, and Bound for Pleasure.
JED TOWN has been at the cutting edge of music for decades now, that it’s probably not surprising that he’s landed the opening slot for John Cale’s upcoming show in Auckland. The softly spoken Aucklander has flitted between punk, video-art, ambient electronic and film scores, and has maintained an experimental and exploratory outlook that few artists can match. He’s put together a pretty sweet band for the Cale show too, and the concert will be a good chance to see one of New Zealand’s most experimental figures alongside one of the most well-known musical provocateurs.

It was a quartet of 60s icons that indelibly stick in Town’s mind when it comes to early musical memories. "Probably the first sounds I remember hearing was The Beatles for me. I remember that very clearly, ‘Please Please Me’, the harmonies in that, ‘Twist and Shout’. He started a band at the age of fifteen called the Optics, which instantly led to him writing music. "When punk came along in ‘78 I started a band based on what I’d been through personally, personal ideas – the punk scene being perfect for that. I started a band called the Superettes which lasted for about six months, and then formed the Features."

The New Zealand punk scene was extremely busy, and was the early forerunners of the more famous DIY sounds that were to emerge from New Zealand a few years later. "There was a party every weekend. Everybody was going around meeting at the parties. Windsor Castle was a great venue. We were pretty young and full of energy. We all kept the scene going by playing. It was a very vibrant scene. Town admits though that "the scene then was very violent – it was vibrant, but there were a few wankers who ruined it for everyone by having a fight." A turning point for Town however was seeing some of the world scene’s biggest bands – Wire and the Ramones overseas. "I remember seeing the Ramones in Los Angeles, it was like watching a cartoon. They were just so together and the sound was fantastic, just that immediacy of that overall sound like a wave of noise as opposed to a wimpy little thing. It wasn’t a sound you could think about, you had to dance to it."

Town then formed Fetus Productions which lasted for about nine years. It’d be fair to say they caused a bit of stir in their performances, with a Situationist-esque propensity to shock their audiences. Fetus Productions incorporated film into their performance – one of the early Kiwi bands to do so, and they weren’t afraid to show some rather disturbing footage. "We had a lot of Super-8 film that we used to use live, and some of the shoots that we did were from medical libraries. I don’t think people realised mostly what it was because it was shot in Super-8, and it was quite blurred. But then people might see a head coming off. One of the things we were about was dynamics, we might have had a shock, and then a beautiful shot of nature – the shock was there to enhance the sense of beauty." It all came from an interest "in discovering new aspects of the human race", and Fetus Productions was part of a movement in some circles of New Zealand music towards the avant-garde. Though Town confesses "you couldn’t really call it avant-garde now with so many medical shows on television." Like most avant-garde art, it was also the conformist, idealised representations of modern life that Fetus Productions were reacting against, and Town mentions that there were bands like SPK in Australia and the Plague, who were doing similar things.
Town states that Fetus Productions used multiple forms of media because "you had to kinda stand out. It’s the same today, so many different groups out there, you had to get your own niche. That was one of the ways we did it." They were also trying to mess with a few minds. "We were shooting for TV, so you can see the pixels really big. It was quite psychedelic."

By around 1987, Town also got into the burgeoning electronic scene. It started when Town was "in England, and I bought a keyboard with a sequencer on it and that enabled me to tour with a lot of keyboard sounds in Germany and England." That led onto a computer, and allowed Town to shift his musical trajectory in a totally different direction to his punk days, moving into ambient. "I think Eno had a big influence, I love a lot of Eno’s work. It’s always quite a powerful medium if you can get the right sounds together. I’m also very open-minded. Sometimes musicians don’t like moving into new areas because it’s difficult, I see it as more of a challenge." He earned a reputation in Europe, and continued until in the electronic scene until 1997. It was from there, he moved into doing TV work and film soundtracks.

Town has always been interested in film from the Fetus days of incorporating film into the live shows, and it was stuff like the avant-garde work of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou and David Lynch’s Eraserhead that stand out for Town. Eadweard Muybridge’s "early animation was really mindboggling" too. New Zealander David Blyth was doing similar film work from the late 70s onwards (and earned plaudits from the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky) – his 1978 film Angel Mine was a rather controversial outing in Muldoonist New Zealand – and Town maintained his love of film by collaborating with Blyth later on in both their careers. The two had a similar love of surrealism and film noir, and he mentions to me how the opening scene of Angel Mine was "almost like a Dali painting".

They worked together on Bound for Pleasure – Blyth was wanting some "classical sounding music, and someone put him onto me". A mutual love of horror films helped, and Town reckons that "these days with low budgets you can do all the instruments yourself with a computer or multi-track. I’ve got a lot of live instruments – violins, cellos, saxes, trombones, which I end up playing myself or inviting other people to play. It’s quite, not easy, but it’s within my grasp to create this eerie music." They collaborated on Fish Tank Telly, a result of wanting to do a series of ambient DVDs. Still cameras, unobtrusive filmmaking, and subtle imagery seemed to perfectly fit with a man who has made ambient and punk music.

It also continued a fascination that Town has with the sea, and its inhabitants, and he has plans to do an "underwater" film. It also helps captures an essence of life for Town. "I love diving, because it really puts you in the moment. I love being in the moment when you’re not thinking and experiencing things. The power to focus your mind on one thing is very difficult, I’m always trying to improve that ability. Because I know it is possible. You always try and see things for what they are, not what your mind is telling you." Another notable achievement for Town was editing the soundtrack for vinyl release of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the unsettling low-budget thriller that caused a stir worldwide following its 1986 (and earning notoriety in NZ for being banned for some time.)

For the Cale show, Town has been coaxed out and plans to just play music without machines. "It’s quite refreshing to do that". He’s not sure if he’ll incorporate film into the mix, but he’s also got his show planned, with the help of a few guests (such as former bandmates, and another rather wellknown Kiwi band) "I was quite keen to do a Western soundtrack, so that theme kind of stayed with me. We played with a theme called Ghost Town, a modern atmospheric soundtrack and then sliding back into the past with a few quiet campfire songs, and then moving into the punk era with a few songs from the Features and the Superettes." One of the ideas is "to have musicians who can play different instruments – you can go from ambient to classical and from there to rock". Town and co plan to "treat it as though the show is a soundtrack".

It’s also quite exciting playing with Cale. Though he wasn’t a huge influence on Town, he admits that "it’s great that someone like him is still working and able to recreate his music live." After this, depending on how the show goes, Town is planning to tour around the country next year, recreating some of his legendary underground punk days for New Zealand audiences. He’s challenged audiences the world over, and pushed musical boundaries. I ask him if it’s been difficult being an avant-garde artist. "It’s a funny word difficult. Yeah, I’ll pass on that one, because life is difficult in itself. Just learning how to survive doing art, you rely a lot on the grace of God to keep you going. I don’t know how it works, there must be a bit of help coming from people who’ve seen your shows or your work. That’s the only way it’ll spread is word of mouth. I don’t have an agent, I’m very much self-employed, hoping the phone rings when I get home. Luckily it’s kept me focused on music and video."