The Strays by Harbour Board

Harbour Board are based in Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand.
With a sound that nods toward the crooners of the 1950s or perhaps the softer ballads of Nick Cave, Harbour Board brings us a cautionary tale set on a lonely mountainside. With chiming bell-like guitars and sparse airy piano, Mathew Sunderland tells us a story of a man haunted by destruction backed by Heather Mansfield’s ghostly vocals.
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“The Stray began as a demo I knocked out in a single take in a blind guitarist mate’s living room a few sheets to the wind. When Jeffrey and I reworked it, I realised it was about an old friend Tania who had lost her life under horrific circumstances in a Grey Lynn halfway house. I had first met her sitting at Verona in the early noughties. It was very late and I was sitting in a booth by myself singing to no one in particular and suddenly this girl’s voice drifted across the room, singing along with me, like a call and response. Suddenly she appeared, this force of nature charisma machine and before you knew it we were thick as thieves, inseparable. We formed a band called The Strays and did our first and only gig at the W H Tongue funeral parlour on the corner of Symonds Street and Mt Eden Road. Then I moved to Sydney and we lost touch, and then, one terrible afternoon, she was gone”. - Matthew Sunderland.

Harbour Board is an Auckland-based band blending ambient, folk, experimental pop, and cinematic sound design. Formed by Matthew Sunderland, Jeffrey Holdaway, Marc Chesterman, and Nicolas Tillon, the group combines analog synths, field recordings, brass, and spoken word in layered, narrative-driven tracks and textured compositions exploring place, memory, and atmosphere.

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