Dudley Benson is a self-described 'avant-pop artist' based in Dunedin. He has released three critically acclaimed albums - 2008's The Awakening, 2010's Forest, and now Zealandia.
Dudley Benson Photo: supplied
Zealandia took eight years to produce and features over 160 contributors, including the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, the NZ Youth Choir, taonga puoro and beats made with GNS Science geologists from rocks and minerals within the Zealandia continent.
The starting point for the album was the recent discovery that Aotearoa is in fact not part of the Australasian continent, but its own sunken land mass known as Zealandia.
Benson sees this as an opportunity to reconfigure our national identity - to acknowledge our history, and to think about who we want to be as a nation in the 21st century.
He talks to Kim Hill
