Having at least one band member with a first name beginning with 'D' almost seems like a prerequisite for bands on the great Flying Nun label from NZ, or maybe it's just a 'David' thing. Whatever, there's been a David in The Clean, a David in the Straitjacket Fits, two Davids in JPS Experience... and, before anyone starts looking any further, the Bats are the exception that proves the rule, okay?

And then there's the four people who make up The 3Ds--Dominic Stones (drums, tea), Denise Roughan (bass, vocals), David Mitchell (guitar, vocals), and David Saunders (guitar, vocals). The group formed in Dunedin in May 1988, when Auckland refugees Dom (ex-Bird Nest Roys and Snapper guitarist) and Dave Saunders (a young veteran of forgotten teen garage popsters, the Battling Strings, and Dunedin 'supergroup' Mr Big Nose) joined with Denise (formerly of Look Blue Go Purple) to spend their weekend afternoons in mayhemic noisemaking. Guitarist Dave Mitchell (another former Aucklander, having lent his axe-mangling talents, twisted lyrics and record cover art, and straining vocal chords to Flying Nun's Exploding Budgies and Goblin Mix before moving to Dunedin and playing in Xpressway's leading lights, Plagal Grind) joined soon after.

Since those early days, The 3Ds have maintained an attitude that making music ought to be a time for friends to get together, enjoy themselves onstage and fall over at the night's end. All this despite having toured America in 1992 and Australia in 1994 (with the Lemonheads) and played in New Zealand with all manner of visiting big names--from Nirvana to U2, the Buzzcocks and Pavement--while all along gathering critical plaudits like you wouldn't believe.

The 3Ds are the type of band who'd prefer that their bio listed the four members' occupations as drunken sailors, and then make claims like they all met in port after jumping ship or staging mutinies on the high sea. They'd like to see their influences listed as Herge, Clive Barker, and a New Zealand beer called Mac's Gold washed down with cups of strong tea. But that still wouldn't account from the joyful excesses of melody and noise you'll find on any one of the two great albums, two EPs and two singles they've recorded for Flying Nun over the past five years.

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Their release the Flying Nun album The Venus Trail was hailed by critics and fans in the group's home country as the best rockin' thing since plugged in guitars.

The album was recorded in a disused Masonic Lodge in Dunedin by the group with longtime collaborator Tex Houston setting the controls for the strange eye atop the doorway. It bursts right out the blocks with the sonic pop blast of "Hey Seuss" and careens through lurching metallic pleasures of "Philadelphia Rising" and "Man On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown", the ambrosial "Beautiful Things" and "The Golden Grove", a swag of damaged rockers like the title track, "Jane Air" and "Summer Stone", before the acres of dense feedback of "Ice" dissolve into the acoustic closer, "Spooky".

Although the sub-celtic flights of guitar adventuring provided by both Davids is the most immediate attention grabber on The Venus Trail, the vocal balance and muscle of The 3Ds is provided by Denise, who pulls the wayward free-for-all around into some sort of melodic order. Add in Dominic, who carries the group's spirit by being utterly without agenda, and you're left with something organic, a band with no bosses.

As Dave Mitchell says, "I think we're pretty lucky in that we've all grown up being in bands and hanging around with friends involved in music for the purpose of actually having fun. Even though we might write serious songs, at the heart of it you hear things that are done for pure enjoyment. I think that's lacking in a lot of bands. I love a good gruesome tune, but if that's all there is, gruesome noise and screaming and you never get a breather... oh God...

"We've never really not had fun. And it just gets easier the more you do it. I think the only thing that would stop us would be complete physical illness or someone falling down a lift shaft or something."

3. The 3Ds previous releases have found favour with critics all over the place, catching people offguard with their blast-off take on the traditionally quiet NZ sound.

The group's first two EPs, Fish Tales and Swarthy Songs For Swabs showed the band charting a course not so much for the reinvention of noisy pop as a desire to turn it inside out and upside down. According to influential American college radio magazine, CMJ, The 3Ds were already exhibiting "world-conquering potential", while the two Davids' "twin guitar poetry alternates between passionate melodicism and fractured chaos, with a sound and timbre as immediately identifiable as [Sonic Youth guitarists] Lee and Thurston".

Hellzapoppin, the group's first full-length album was released in 1992. A five- out-of-five review in Select said that "in an ideal world all pop would be as vibrant and inspirational as this" and Melody Maker praised The 3Ds as "masters of melody...whether they're being giddily daft, spookily transcendent or plain raucous". In America, the editors of Spin picked Hellzapoppin as the "#1 album you didn't hear" in '92.

Live reviews from The 3Ds' American tour to support that album were as full as praise as the superlative-laden album notices, with CMJ again among the most enthusiastic -- "New Zealand's 3Ds come from down there and play three faith-renewing shows to near-hysterical, resounding acclaim... a mind-boggling, eye-popping, heartstopping affirmation of twin-guitar hysteria, as visceral and electrifying as any Crazy Horse, Television or Sonic Youth guitar orgy... Pretty damn stunning."

As an interlude between albums in 1993, The 3Ds laid down a seven inch single for Flying Nun and America's Merge Records, the label owned and operated by Mac and Laura of Superchunk. The single features a version of The Venus Trail's "Beautiful Things" sung by Dave Mitchell (Denise sings the song on the album, creating a different kind of sweet tension in the lyrics). This single and the album that follows make a fine statement of The 3Ds' craft, making pop music out of ragged chaos...the result's a beautiful thing sure to brighten up your day!

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