ALTERNATIVE - INDIE

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"Tonnon's gift is the astute juxtaposition of the personal and the political, where social issues revolve around people up against family, lovers, corporate entities or bureaucracy. But at heart, love is the pivot." - Graham Reid, The Listener  

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Few songwriters have followed a path quite like Anthonie Tonnon. Winner of New Zealand's Taite Music Prize, Tonnon has continually reinvented the way his songs are written, performed and experienced, while pursuing an enduring fascination with human geography and the systems that shape modern life.  

Emerging from Dunedin in the 2010s with rough-edged pop songs, his work gradually embraced synthesizers, sampling and drum machines without ever abandoning its lyrical focus. At the same time, his live performances grew into conceptual works, from immersive concerts in planetariums to Rail Land - a touring show that carried audiences on rail services to historic community halls.

Along the way, Tonnon's work has increasingly spilled into the real world. In 2021 he became the operator of Whanganui's historic Durie Hill Elevator, and has since spent much of his time advocating for a revival of the city's public transport system. His songs uncover filmic worlds within the ordinary structures that shape modern life. "Two Free Hands" explores the dilemma of a careers adviser through the lens of evolution, while "Water Underground" builds an antipodean Chinatown from real civic events.

In recognition of the geographical inquiry in both his songwriting and Rail Land, Tonnon was named New Zealand's Honorary Geographer in 2022, the same year he and longtime producer Jonathan Pearce  won the Taite Music Prize for Leave Love Out of This.

An obsessive world builder, Tonnon now returns with Cinematographer: an immersive live show three years in the making that swaps the guitar for the vocoder, transforms dual Synthstrom Deluge samplers into honorary CDJs, and draws on turn-of-the-millennium dance culture, cinema and the ideas of the Situationists to tell a story stretching from 1960s Europe to turn-of-the-millennium Whanganui.

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⭐ Taite Music Prize Winner 2022

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