Peter Jefferies: The Other Side of Reason is a career-spanning biography of the New Zealand indie musician and composer by music historian Andrew Schmidt. It covers Jefferies’ earliest musical projects during the first wave punk heyday, including Dull Emma and Pink Noise on to Nocturnal Projections, This Kind of Punishment, Plagal Grind, Cyclops and much more. The author leaves no stone unturned and weaves Peter Jefferies life story into a gripping saga of innovation, isolation and redemption.
Alongside Jefferies' own timeline is the story of the evolving Flying Nun imprint as well as the creation of Xpressway which served to fill a sorely needed gap in handling and distributing more of the marginal New Zealand lo-fi recordings to the masses during this period.
For a decade between 2002 and 2012 Jefferies didn’t answer the phone or his emails, when old and new fans and friends called. He didn’t want to know about the brilliant run of solo albums and live shows that sparked a major cult following in the United States. Then step by step, note by note, year by year, Jefferies emerged from his Taranaki abode on the edge of his home city, New Plymouth, to see nearly every major work he’d meticulously assembled in the post-punk and alternative rock era between 1980 and 2002 in New Zealand and the US reissued and universally praised. The cultural footprint from his busy and fiercely creative years with Nocturnal Projections, This Kind of Punishment, Xpressway Records, Plagal Grind, Cyclops, Two Foot Flame and solo
was that extensive.
Written with Peter’s cooperation, Peter Jefferies: The Other Side of Reason reveals
the stark beauty, brutal honesty and endearing humanity of his best work. Andrew Schmidt traces the Stratford-born musician’s life through New Zealand’s punk and post-punk hot spots in Auckland, New Plymouth and Dunedin in the 1980s and early 1990s, and then, when the world came calling, Chicago, Vancouver and Austin, Texas, with tours through Europe and Australia from the mid to late 1990s into the new millennium.
HoZac Books, 320pp, 21cm x 16cm, illustrated paperback, first edition, 2025
