Group Five is me, Andrew Loughnan. I come from Wellington, New Zealand, though currently live in Auckland. I make sparse scuffy abstract-hip-hop instrumental stuff (music). It's about the texture of sound, the sense of space, the atmosphere. I probably learnt a lot of that from other music, ambient-electronic, electro-acoustic, 20th century "classical", "early" music, country and western, free-jazz or free-anything; but then, I like the idea of music that refers to other musical worlds outside itself.
Or perhaps I just make tepid background music for cafés. I just need to get it into more cafés.
I got into doing my own stuff in earnest about 2001, as (bedroom) studio work. I had one track as "Group Five" anthologised the next year and first played live with this name in 2003. Released In Camera (an EP or a mini-album, depending on your expectations as much as anything) in May 2006, and Distant Stations (same again) in August 2007; both self-released as part of the Angry Rabbit "label". Though I normally play my own music, I've pretended to be a DJ on occasion (the most fun was a last-minute unbilled spot opening for the Govett Brewster's Mediarena gig at Indigo in 2004).
Oh yeah, the name Group Five comes from Dian Fossey's book Gorillas in the Mist, after a family group of mountain gorillas (when first identified, group 5 had two silverbacks and a mature blackback whom Fossey named Beethoven, Bartók and Brahms). I was looking for a name and I thought it sounded good at the time, and not at all like a consulting agency, security firm or engineering practice. Such is life. I was probably also wrong about the need for a name in the first place. As for the apes, these days I'm just as interested in gibbons and siamangs - not as smart but more musical (see 'Decline and Fall' on In Camera).
History! I was in a band called MonkeyShuttle with Michael Upton (Jet Jaguar) and Stuart McDonald (Aquaboogie) back in the mid '90s. We were roughly ambient-electronic-experimental, but if we were avant garde it was only as a result of creative differences. We had one achievement - playing live on Radio Active in August 1995 (we also played live to our friends in Stuart's living room, but that wasn't much of an achievement). The Active gig is available for download from Angry Rabbit, and we've supplied lengthy and cynical write-ups to keep you amused if the music doesn't.
When we split up Michael got his solo arse into gear well before me or Stuart, and has actually made a name for himself. I still occasionally muck around with both of them: that should be obvious, seeing I'm in this "Angry Rabbit" thing with Stuart and Michael. As for proper musical collaboration, the biggest muck so far has been the "Roadworks" set with Stuart (with Mr. J on visuals), a return to all that ambient-electronic stuff, but a bit more directed and assured than in the old days. This was played live in February 2004 at Bar Bodega.