Dimmer was the name under which New Zealand musician Shayne Carter (formerly of Straitjacket Fits, The DoubleHappys, and Bored Games) recorded and played music from 1994. It began as an umbrella name for jam sessions and short-lived band line-ups, then home recordings, then an ensemble with various members and guests. This evolution led to more settled four-piece rock band (especially from 2006 to 2010, when only the bassist changed). At least 41 musicians have been acknowledged as playing a part in Dimmer over 18 years, with Carter the only permanent fixture.
The last Dimmer recordings were made in 2009, with the band playing live shows through 2010. A short farewell tour announced the end of the band in 2012, and Carter began recording under his own name after that. Reformed and reformatted versions of Dimmer have occasionally played live shows, drawing on all four Dimmer albums, since 2018.
All four of Dimmer's albums were admired by critics, and all earned multiple New Zealand Music Award nominations. Non-album singles were released in 1995 and 1996, with debut album I Believe You Are A Star not following until 2001. In 2004 You've Got To Hear The Music was named New Zealand's Best Rock Album for the year, and Dimmer named Best Group. There My Dear saw Carter return to playing and recording with a live rock band in 2006, and return to the national album charts. Final album Degrees of Existence (2009) was recorded by the longest-lasting version of the band.
The 2025 film Life in One Chord, directed by Margaret Gordon, covers the lifespan of Dimmer in the broader story of Shayne Carter's life.
Early years (1994–1996) Dunedin Straitjacket Fits split in 1994, "brought low by the vagaries of the international music industry". Interviewed in 2012, Shayne Carter said that "I was completely over rock. The Dimmer thing was totally anti-rock and I became interested in not only the groove thing but doing quiet music as well."
Carter moved back to Dunedin, later saying that he "dropped out, I suppose" and "wanted to get grounded after all my running around". While there, he began using the name Dimmer as "an umbrella thing...with me as the common denominator". The first Dimmer music came from jam sessions in Dunedin. Carter explained in 2012 that "I used the name Dimmer because I thought using your own name was really uncool."
For a short while, a three-piece version of Dimmer coalesced, with Peter Jefferies (This Kind of Punishment, Nocturnal Projections) on drums and Lou Allison on bass. Carter and Jefferies had collaborated on singles before – "Randolph's Going Home" in 1986, and "Knocked Out Or Thereabouts" in 1992.
I still wanted to rock when I formed Dimmer, because I needed to exorcise myself. I built a new set of songs with Lou and Peter. It's a thing with me to start from scratch with every new band. I have to contradict whatever I've just said and I also need to prove that I have somewhere left to go.
– Shayne Carter, Dead People I Have Known, 2019
On 17 June 1994 this line-up debuted with an "abrasive and deliberately uncommercial" seven-song set at the Empire Hotel. Reviewer Grant McDougall said that "Dimmer's songs are all about dynamics, explosive and meteoric. They starkly show for the first time ever what Carter can actually do by himself without the restrictions of having to complement another guitarist." The band toured New Zealand in August that year.
After August's tour, Allison moved back to the UK and Carter also broke with Peter Jefferies. "Peter was as talented as me...but I didn't want to share the table anymore."
"Crystalator" (b/w "Dawn's Coming In") Dimmer's first official release, the 7" "Crystalator" single was recorded by Carter, Jefferies and Allison in 1994 and released in 1995 by Flying Nun (New Zealand) and Sub Pop (USA).
I put down a song with Lou on the bass and Peter Jefferies on the drums...at Fish Street Studios. [...] Peter's beat was murderous and Lou played a single note. I was exploring a new minimalism, trying to boil music down to a quintessential truth. 'Crytalator' is one of my favourite songs, even if it's an instrumental. In it, I hear anger, lamenting, and a giant "Fuck you" to [Straitjacket Fits record labels] Mushroom, Arista, and anyone else who'd suppressed me."
– Shayne Carter, Dead People I Have Known, 2019
"Crystalator" is an instrumental track. The New Zealand Herald describes it as "mangled noise... that ratcheted up and let rip with a barbed guitar riff". Flying Nun founder Roger Sheppard said that the song "sounds rollickingly amazing in that strident 'here I am, listen to me' way that only an instrumental can communicate. Who needs words when a guitar can spit out these sorts of sounds." The b-side was "Dawn's Coming In", which Carter says is "strong as well, even though with its hushed restraint it was totally the opposite of 'Crystalator'."
Both these tracks were also released on Flying Nun compilations. "Crystalator" appeared on Pop Eyed in 1996, and in 2005 "Dawn's Coming In" was included in Where in the World Is Wendy Broccoli? A collection of out of print Flying Nun singles 1981–1996 (along with "Knocked Out Or Thereabouts").
An early version of the Dimmer song "Seed" appeared on Star Trackers, a cassette that was given away with issue 4 of Australian label Spunk Records' Spunkzine in winter 1995. It was credited to Shayne Carter as a solo artist. ("Seed" would later be rerecorded for I Believe You Are A Star.)
Through the second half of the 1990s "[there was] the odd Dunedin solo gig but, for the most part, Shayne Carter disappeared from the public eye." Carter has called the period from 1995 "a lost weekend that actually lasted for six years".
"Don't Make Me Buy Out Your Silence" After the dissolution of the "Crystalator" line-up, Carter continued jamming with Dunedin musicians. One short-lived line-up included bassist Chris Heazlewood (King Loser) and drummer Matt Middleton, who released what Carter caller "a series of near-genius cassettes" under the name Crude. Middleton soon moved to Melbourne.
A four-piece line-up of Carter, Heazlewood, Cameron Bain (guitar) and Robbie Yeats (drums, The Dead C) began sessions that were intended to result in a debut Dimmer album. Carter called this "the baddest early version of Dimmer", but the sessions ended in what he described as "tears, soap operas, that kinda stuff" and resulted in only a short EP. "Don't Make Me Buy Out Your Silence" was the only official release from this phase of Dimmer.
The song "Don't Make Me Buy Out Your Silence" was "partly inspired by Tricky" and written to capture a sense of paranoia. In 1996 it came out as a 7" vinyl release with "Pacer" as a b-side, and as a three-track CD EP which added "On the Road", a cover of "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat. This was the last Flying Nun release of Dimmer's, and the original releases only credited Carter. These credits changed ten years later when, as There My Dear bonus tracks, "Don't Make Me Buy Out Your Silence" acknowledged Bain and "Pacer" credited all band members.
None of the early Dimmer line-ups lasted long. In Carter's telling, Chris Heazlewood "became a dick. He...wrote 'Ace of Spades' on his scrawny chest when he played at the Big Day Out. He told people it was okay he was in with Carter because he was going to 'fuck it up'. I wondered if he was jealous, or if he resented me... He left Dimmer by rubbishing me on the internet, which hurt because he was showboating at my expense. I didn't speak to him for years, even after he apologised."
A video for "Don't Make Me Buy Out Your Silence" received NZ On Air funding and was directed by Steve Morrison.
No more music was released by Dimmer until 1999's "Evolution" single. In 2007 all five tracks from the "Crystalator" and "Don't Make Me Buy Out Your Silence" singles were included as bonus tracks on an Australian release of 2006 album There My Dear.
Collaborative albums (1997–2006) 1997–2001: I Believe You Are a Star Carter moved to Auckland in 1997 and, inspired by "new music [including] avant-electronica and whatever else was fresh and non-mainstream", switched from playing rock music to producing tracks on Pro Tools. "For the next few years, Shayne Carter would regularly seek the sanctity of my venue for late-night listening sessions of new music. I would set him up with piles of avant-electronica and whatever else was fresh and non-mainstream, and he would invariably go nuts over the most extreme choices: The fidgety hi-res experimental techno of Monolake, the distorted power electronics of Pansonic. Shayne particularly loved the bizarre four-CD set of shortwave "numbers stations" broadcasting coded messages, The Conet Project. In short, he was up for almost anything, clearly looking for an escape from the expectations of the fans of the incredible alt-rock he made with Straitjacket Fits." – Gary Steel
"After I put out the first album, there’s all this 'it doesn't sound like Straitjacket Fits'. Well, no, it doesn't. That's why I quit the band – because I didn't want to be doing that. [...It] actually took me five or six years to put together. That came on the back of the Straitjackets, and I think I was disillusioned with the whole music thing at the time. I wanted to figure out a lot of things in my head." - Shayne Carter, 2009
Most of the writing and recording that eventually became Dimmer's first album ("[the song] "Smoke"...took about four years to write") took place at Carter's homes over a number of years, with drummer Gary Sullivan (JPSE, Chug, The Stereo Bus) the other main participant. At least one song, "Seed", predated Carter's move to Auckland, an early version of it having been one of the tracks recorded in the mainly-abandoned Dunedin sessions of 1995.
Locations for Carter and Sullivan's sessions included the former Ponsonby Road premises of the store Beautiful Music, then later Norfolk Street, where Carter spent an advance from Sony Records to have either a shipping container or Portacom building (depending on which recollection of Carter's you trust) installed in his backyard by crane.
In 1999 the first release from these sessions, "Evolution", came out as a CD single with "Sad Guy" and the Tryhard Remix of "Evolution" as b-sides. The song's video featured Carter's father playing an older version of Shayne. It was directed by Darryl Ward and funded by NZ On Air.
It was two years before Dimmer's debut album, I Believe You Are A Star, which included "Evolution" and a reworked "Seed", was released in 2001. The writing and production of all but one track ("Sad Guy") are solely credited to Carter. Five other musicians (including Bic Runga) appear in what The Listener called "hardly essential cameos".Dimmer, I Believe You Are A Star liner notes, Columbia 5024222000, 2001 The album had a seven-week run in the New Zealand album charts, starting at #17 and getting as high as #13.
Videos were made for "Seed", "I Believe You Are a Star", and "Drop You Off". In 2018, I Believe You Are A Star was released on vinyl for the first time. At the time Carter said he still considered it the best album he'd ever made.
Critical reception