Tiny Ruins, the Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) based project led by Hollie Fullbrook, returns this spring with a brand new album on Marathon Artists and Ba da Bing Records. Titled Ceremony, the record is inspired by Fullbrook’s home of Manukau Harbour at the edge of the Waitākere Ranges, the mountains that separate Auckland from the Tasman Sea. It’s an area of juxtaposition, the contaminated waters and treacherous, ship-wrecking tidal flow standing alongside rugged beauty and enduring wildlife, including scores of shorebirds that pick over the vast expanse of mudflats exposed twice a day at low tide. “It’s beautiful but also muddy,” As as Fullbrook puts it. “Dirty and neglected. It’s a real meeting of nature and humanity.”
The songs began to form during long stretches Fullbrook spent exploring the area with her dogs, finding inspiration in its minutiae as illustrated in lead single, ‘The Crab/Waterbaby’. The landscape began to seep in in other ways too, ostensibly small details have large implications, like how the perpetual dramatic motion of the tides evokes those unseen forces far beyond our control that nevertheless push and pull our lives in unexpected directions.
Latest single ‘Dorothy Bay’ is perhaps the best illustration of the record as a whole. The heaviest song on the album (and maybe of the entire Tiny Ruins catalogue), it showcases the rich, complex arrangements that spring from the well of collaboration between Fullbrook and her long-time bandmates—Cass Basil (bass), Alex Freer (drums), and Tom Healy (electric guitar). Watch the psychedelic video, directed by Alexander Gandar and shot on location at Manukau Harbour, below:
Ceremony will be released on 28th April via Marathon Artists and Ba Da Bing Records. You can pre-order it now from the Tiny Ruins Bandcamp page.
Cover photo by Frances Carter, album art by Christiane Shortal