Maxine Funke is a New Zealand singer-songwriter, based in

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

Biography

Growing up in a musical family, her early bands included the Snares, the Hundred Dollar Band (with

Alastair Galbraith Alastair Galbraith (born 1965) is a New Zealand musician and sound artist from Dunedin. Career Galbraith's first band was The Rip, which he formed with Robbie Muir, and Mathew Ransome and later Jeff Harford (of Bored Games). They released two ...

) and the Beaters, before beginning her solo career with the full-length album ''Lace'' in 2008 and ''Felt'' (2014). Her first two releases began to build an audience which led to significant media attention for her third album Silk in 2018 and her fourth, ''Seance'' in 2021. ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' featured ''Seance,'' writing that Funke "has for several years quietly gone about making exquisite, minimal music on a small scale, tucked away in New Zealand – yet has consistently attracted worldwide acclaim."

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...

praised the album, writing, "spare acoustic arrangements make deceptively simple containers for songs charged with memory and mysticism." Within New Zealand, ''Seance'' occasioned a review of her career from ''NZ Musician'', noting forthcoming projects and how the Covid-19 isolation fed into her 2021 album. A compilations of singles and out-takes, ''Pieces of Driftwood'', was released to acclaim in 2022 both within New Zealand and internationally. Her most recent album ''River Said'' came out in April 2023 with UK record label Disciples, who had released her previous compilation.

References

External links

Artist Bandcamp page
featuring all releases Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century New Zealand women singers 21st-century New Zealand songwriters New Zealand women singer-songwriters {{NewZealand-musician-stub