Welcome to Failsafe Records
We specialise in guitar based acts, ranging from swooning pop and driving powered rock to swirling sonic soundscapes.

Please explore our site and enjoy our stuff. You can purchase directly from our catalogue via Paypal or with a good old-fashioned cheque, or with a credit card from SmokeCDs.

We also maintain a comprehensive and ever-growing New Zealand Musical History section, primarily focused on but not limited to, Christchurch bands.

Latest Releases

INSURGENTS - All The Stupid Smiling Faces
Some much needed intelligent pop youth stuff for the label.
They're from Christchurch and are pretty damn good at the melodic hook sing along indie pop stuff, punching well above their weight for a bunch of 20 year olds.
Click here to order your copy. Click here to hear tracks from the album

THE ALPHA STATE - Lines
Alpha Cast's singer Michael McLeod takes his songwriting to the next level and morphs into The Alpha State, a delicious alt country tinged affair with shimmering melody over slow moods. McLeod has assembled a new team of talents to sparsely shade his deeply melodic songs, the result is 9 tracks of catchy low key wonder.
Click here to order your copy. Click here to hear tracks from the album
Click here to read a review of 'Lines' by Shane Gilchrist

KIMO (FORMERLY ESKIMO) - Surrender
Surrender is the new album from Christchurch band Kimo, 2 years in the making and featuring dark pop and deep textures from the core duo of Rob Mayes (Throw, Dolphin, + guest stints in Children's Hour and Chris Matthew's Robot Monkey Orchestra) and David Mulcahy (JPS Experience, Superette, Mulchzoid).
The band decided to try and make an album in a unified and cohesive style rather than attempt to cover all aspects of the wide world of music and aided (or unaided) by a bizarre luggage accident break to Mayes' fretting hand saw a push for the album toward the less rock spectrum of Kimo's sound, ie all the pretty songs have made it to the one album. That coupled more by accident than design a thematic similarity with most of the songs exploring the various connotations of the word Surrender, many of them positive.
Click here to order your copy. Click here to hear tracks from the album

MULCHZOID - Laptopdancer
Mulchzoid is the electronic extension of David Mulcahy, dark pop luminary of JPS Experience, Superette and Kimo / Eskimo fame. Mulcahy has a long history of providing quality dark pop masterpieces to the unsuspecting public and Laptopdancer is no exception to that rule.
Exploring the premise of one microphone one computer and one bedroom Mulcahy has locked himself away and produced a strong collection of sparkling dark compositions musing on themes of Girls, Drugs, Suicide Bombers, Existence, Celebrity and Fascism over its lucky number of 13 tracks. Stylistically the album touches on the sounds of New Order, Suicide and Snapper, and Cabaret Voltaire, whiles still sounding exactly like an album you'd expect from someone of David's lineage. Sparkling Dark Pop. Enjoy
Click here to order your copy. Click here to hear tracks from the album

EVASIVE ACTION - Imminent Impact
Evasive action rose from the ashes of Desperate Measures and Unauthorised. Merging the street level punk of the measures with the abrasive energy of Unauthorised the band landed in post punk territory, somewhere inbetween. Inspired by the dark edges of the likes of Killing Joke they hit a hard alternative sound that distanced them from straight hedonistic punk. Groove based tracks like "Live for Fun" push the envelope, and the band also revisit harder versions of some of their previous bands classics.
Pulse-poundingly remastered, even Failsafe had forgotten how good some of these songs sound.
Click here to order your copy. Click here to hear tracks from the album

BEAT RHYTHM FASHION - Bring Real Freedom
The long awaited disc of finely-crafted songs from this much respected and greatly sought after Wellington band. Sweepingly beautiful and thought provoking intelligent music, this disc collects all three singles all lovingly restored and remastered, plus 9 tracks from the band's later live set to complete 'The album BRF would have made' if life had played out differently.
Click here to order your copy. Click here to hear tracks from the album

Listen Before You Buy
Just about every artist and compilation release has it's own Myspace page where you can listen to the tracks before purchasing. See the Downloads page for a full list of Myspace links.
Interviews and Profiles
Rob Mayes, Eskimo, Pop Mechanix and YFC, interviewed and profiled by Radio New Zealand.
MP3s available now
Press Coverage / Reviews
Childrens' Hour, Pop Mechanix, and Retrogenic features, plus re-released compilations reviewed.
Read more on the Press page.
Poster Downloads
Promo posters - 16 different A3 posters including Children's Hour, YFC, Dolphin, Springloader, and Throw. Click here for Artwork Downloads.

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