Thursday 13 September 2001 was the first ever performance of the group that grew into mr sterile Assembly. Then it was a three piece of guitar, drums and trombone.

22 years, two months and five days later we release the new full length mr sterile Assembly album HELLo. It has taken a bit longer than planned to release this beast but several major life events got in the way, plus broken bones and a global pandemic.

But HELLo is complete and it’s a beauty.

The drums and bass were recorded by Vanya of scumbag college studios, a great documenter of most of the recorded punk music from this neck of the woods for many years. All other recordings, including vocals, were done at home.

We are very honoured to have some wonderful guests appearing on some of the recordings. Indra Menus, from Yogyagkarta, Indonesia, adds electronic to the track Cut Hunter. Indra also appears on the Run Peter Run ep on the track, Buru. Hannah Salmon, guitarist, vocalist and artist from the anarcho-punk group Unsanitary Napkin and Displeasure, adds vocals to the song Catastrophic Engine. And finally Adam Tomàšek, from the legendary Czech group Už Jsme Doma adds trumpet to Catastrophic Engine.

In 2019, whilst on tour, we made friends with Stephen Cole from What Studio, and the band a.P.A.t.T, in Liverpool. We liked him so much we employed his services for mixing and mastering duties, and what a fine and grunty job he has made of it all!

And there it is. We feel this is our finest recorded effort to date.

And on that note we therefore offer the following release Goodbye as the proverbial apostrophe. For this is the end, of this. This is the last offering from the band mr sterile Assembly, this is our full-stop.

Goodbye is a collection of random recording, unreleased items, demos, sonic oddities that have remained with us over the years, since almost the beginning, that find a home in this collage of the Assembly’s adventures.

To make Goodbye, we buddied up with the wonderful Dubbed Tapes from Pātea. Each cassette is hand-recorded onto and over a pre-existing cassette, ala recycling and rehabilitating the old format. It is gorgeous (thank you Indira Neville for the glowy photo) and there’s not many of them. Goodbye will be available from both our bandcamp AND Dubbed Tapes – but we encourage you to check Dubbed Tapes out first, explore the other amazing releases they have and support independent and adventurous music!!

Leaving on a high note is a wonderful thing to aim for. The release of both HELLo and Goodbye is our high note.

Way back when we started it would have seemed unfathomable that we would go on to do the things we have had the immense luck to pull off. For Chrissie and I, it has been nothing short of incredible.

There is a huge list of people to thank for the years of connection, collaboration and inspiration.

Firstly we shout out all those who have signed on as band members over the years; Aaron Lloydd , Cara Conroy-Lau, Chris O’Connor, Dan Beban, Dave Mike, Elisa Kersley, Francesca Mountfort, Jana Te Nahu Owen, Jeff Henderson, Miles Climo, Sarsha Douglas and Vlada Plačkić. Alongside this list of luminaries are those that were involved in one-off music projects, text exchanges, shows, exhibitions, tours, videos, recording, documenting and costume making. Thank you.

Next are the many, many people we’ve had the privilege of meeting in so many capacities and in so many countries. We have been lucky to witness and take part in a diverse range of local projects of creativity and social action, of attempts at making a world better and in projects of connection and hopefulness. Thank you.

We thank our kids who have all grown up alongside the sonic onslaught as this juggernaut has shuddered on. many thanks and love.

And we thank YOU for being interested in this project. And we hope that you may stick around and see what comes next. We both are enthusiastic on where our new musical projects are going, and we are able to see similarities in the past and the whats-next, maybe not so much in sound but in process and intention [and maybe later volume].

There will be ONE last show in the new year in Wellington only – stay tuned.

xx