Dead Kid Harvester

Dead Kid Harvester is a solo avant-garde/experimental/noise artist with a complete disregard for any form of music convention such as harmony or tempo. The primary sounds used are vocals, kitchen utensils, and more recently querafansibles (bathroom objects). Grating vocals are delivered over a haphazard collage of recorded samples and segments, with frequent use of pitch shift/time stretch effects and disorienting variations between channels.

Dead Kid Harvester takes influences ranging from industrial and drone to doom metal, rock and punk, and polarises them into a disturbing cacophony of noise. The life of a song typically begins with poetic lyrics, written with no consideration for rhythm or beat. The preferred lyrical themes are insanity, horror, philosophy and the fate of humankind.

Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | SoundCloud | YouTube

Lyrics

Discography

Albums

The First Sign of Madness front cover The First Sign of Madness

22nd May 2018 | CD-R | Digital
Planet Bloopy | BLPY02

  1. Radiation
  2. My Brain Surgeon Has Parkinson's Disease
  3. Chronic Halloween Syndrome
  4. Wormy Justice
  5. White Coats and Strangled Throats
  6. Old Bloopbeard's Tale
  7. Microwave Pop Song
  8. Mind Lost
  9. Psychopathic Influence
  10. Sleep
  11. Harvester Kid Dead
  12. Architecture of Aggression
  13. Scab Made Out of Faeces

Compilations

Primordial Vestiges front cover Primordial Vestiges

18th Dec 2022 | Digital
Planet Bloopy | BLPY03

  1. Hungry Harvey (Cannibal Beat mix)
  2. Mind Lost (2002 version)
  3. White Coats and Strangled Throats (2002 version)
  4. Swinnie at the Operating Table
  5. Hungry Harvey (Crystal Ball mix)
  6. Wormy Justice (2003 version)
  7. Headzilla
  8. Mind Lost (Exorcise mix)
  9. Brain Derailment
  10. Dead Kid's Machine

A collection of songs that served as demos for Dead Kid Harvester albums. Originally recorded and released online as individual tracks between 2000-2004.

* Free download

I Only Liked the Neglected Demos front cover I Only Liked the Neglected Demos

5th Feb 2012 | Digital
Planet Bloopy | BLPY01

  1. They're Melting the Easter Bunny
  2. Proz' for Ma 'Hoes (Prozac Loops mix feat. Jase Cheese Motherfuckers)
  3. Wacko Wonderland
  4. Ode to a Fresh Fruit
  5. Mullet Army

A collection of songs that never made it beyond the demo stage. Originally recorded and released online as individual tracks between 2001-2003.

* Free download

Various Artists

Anniversary front cover Anniversary

25th Feb 2024 | Digital
Bromtol Largesse | BL095

Features song City.

* Bandcamp

Undead Apocalypse front cover Undead Apocalypse

31st Aug 2022 | Digital
Paracelsian Records

Features song Hungry Harvey.

* Bandcamp

No Synth Noise Compilation front cover No Synth Noise Compilation 2017

10th Dec 2017 | Digital
Histamine Tapes | HT001

Features an interpretation of an Into Orbit track.

* Bandcamp

Through the Drift and the Unspoken front cover Through the Drift and the Unspoken

3rd Nov 2016 | Digital

Features song White Coats and Strangled Throats.

* Bandcamp

SIGNALVOID front cover SIGNALVOID

8th Aug 2012 | USB Stick | Digital
SIGNALVOID

Features songs Puberty, Stubborn Cupboard.

* Free download

5DBSSS One - tha ReeMux is front cover 5DBSSS One - tha ReeMux is

5th Sep 2011 | Digital
Itsu Jitsu | 5DBSSSR1

Metal on Utensil is a remix of Metal on Metal by Doug Sharp.

* Free download
* Bandcamp

We'll Leave the Lights On front cover We'll Leave the Lights On

31st Oct 2009 | CD-R
He of the House | HOTHCOMP001

Features song Radiation.

DEMUS Compiled II front cover DEMUS Compiled II

30th Oct 2009 | 2x CD-R | Digital
DEMUS | DEM-002

Features song Radiation.

* Bandcamp

History

In the year 2000, with the lyrics to Hungry Harvey written but no musical ability to back them, an alternative solution was conceived. Kitchen utensil samples were recorded and assembled into a short sound collage, which was looped to accompany the vocals. The song was completed at the beginning of December, and so, in Porirua, New Zealand, Dead Kid Harvester was born. The moniker is a combo of two nicknames acquired at high school, chosen to echo the off-putting sound of the music itself.

After recording only one more song in 2001, the demo phase flourished from 2002, with the project reaching a total of 16 tracks by the dawn of 2004. By now the appeal of standalone tracks had worn off and the idea of recording an album was all-consuming. But also very daunting, and life got too busy anyway.

In mid-2006, joining deviantArt reignited the spark of writing poems and lyrics, even if not initially intended for the project. In 2007 this extended to polishing up old Dead Kid Harvester lyrics. Soon after relocating to Auckland at the beginning of 2008, an album's worth was practically ready to go: five old songs and three new songs, plus instrumental track ideas and the incomplete words to Psychopathic Influence lurking. Three other poems from this period were only seen as fit for the project much later in hindsight, but something's got to go on the sophomore album.

Upon discovering the software Reaper, the impossible became possible, and recording of the debut full-length album began in May 2008. Momentum didn't last too well, with three of the longest tracks taking 2½ - 3 years each to complete. Finally, after nearly ten years of recording/production/procrastination, The First Sign of Madness was released in 2018. Almost everything was done DIY, such as the CD graphics layout, converting artwork and files, and most notably mixing and mastering (badly) to mirror the ineptitude of the music. Meanwhile, six weeks before it was released, recording the next album had already begun.

What began as fooling around with a few silly words and sounds grew into the ideal avenue for expressing the vast, labyrinthine unorthodoxies of my mind. Now instilled with a sense of gravitating towards astronomical concoctions. Watch this cosmos!

In the Media

Rock Royalty (Phoenix New Times, 22 Jan. 2004)
"You can hear some bad stuff, true. I mean, my favorite horrible band is Dead Kid Harvester, a guy out of New Zealand who plays kitchen utensils. It's the worst stuff on the planet."

Reviews

I Only Liked the Neglected Demos

"...all those other projects that were used somehow, I never liked those so much either, ever. Scrap it all, leave it to the garbage, and collect it again some other time to make an album of neglected demos! This is actually some of the goofiest, funniest, and fucked to the bone music heard in my ears in a long time, something in fact never heard in my entire listening experience. This is something entirely other, almost stupid in fact, well, fucking brilliantly stupid! A retarded genius of astral bafoonery! The feeling I get from this music is a kind of sensation in my brain that no other music has ever come close to. Two huge what the fucking middle finger thumbs up..." - Samuel Lilly, WTFMusic