Diamond Field - This City feat. Matthew Ruys

As L.P. Hartley wrote "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there", Auckland in the '80s was a very different place to the city it has become. At night it was often quite empty except around the many night clubs that sprouted around the edge of the CBD. It was so much quieter, and less the partly Asian city it has become (I'm not saying that is a good thing). Music had emerged from the Australasian pub rock sound w/ splashes of disco, there were surges of punk, ska and post-punk, then with the emergence of synth-pop and the New Romantic movement (which somehow seemed to sit side-by-side w/ soul and RnB) we had a sound that for me, this track evokes, probably heightened by the Radio with Pictures' Peter Blake (oldies will know that name) "cinema" video effects. Just standing around in videos was also a classic "cool" device. May I stress production standards were pretty poor back then, and "This City" does not suffer from that problem. Great vocals from Matthew Ruys, and a stunning electronic back-drop driven by classic DX7 samples, such as the synth bass and electronic piano, layered up against a chorused slap bass. The overall sound of this outstanding "blue-eyed soul" track places somewhere between 1984 and 1987. The track would not have been out of place in long-disappeared nightclubs such as Quays, Zanzibar and the Six Month Club. Diamond Field is NYC-based Kiwi Andrew White. He and Matthew put the video together on the smell of an old oily rag, using an iPhone 6 Plus and Final Cut Pro. Impressive considering that. The single is available through Luca Discs/Future City Records. You can buy it and various remixes at the Bandcamp link below.

https://diamondfield.bandcamp.com/album/this-city-feat-matthew-ruys-special-maxi-single

Diamond Field feat. Matthew Ruys 'This City' Official Music Video