Editing The Slit Family

Stylistically ''The Slit Family'' combined abrasive, metallic guitar riffs; mechanical, industrial-influenced rhythms; samples and sporadic, seemingly "detached" vocals; and an undercurrent of dark, ambient electronica.  Comparisons have been made to Ministry, Godflesh and others, whilst closer to home, earlier Hamilton bands [[Nihil]], [[Usine]] and [[Department of Corrections]] may provide some point of reference.

''The Slit Family'' is just one of several transitional incarnations of a long-standing collaboration stemming back to about 1998, and which has continued under different names to the present.   Under the name of ''The Slit Family'' (and also sometimes simply [[Slit]]) they were active roughly between 2000 - 2002.  Core members were [[Paul Innes]] a.k.a ''Pauli'' (vocals, guitar, keyboards, programming etc), and [[Evay Judge]] aka ''EvL J'' (programming, drums, percussion, keyboards, production etc).  Prior to Slit, Evay and Paul's collaborations together were as members of [[Diastop]].  For ''The [[Slit]] Family'' a third member [[Rabi Basnet]] (bass, possibly other instruments) was also added.  This was the line-up responsible for their recordings.

References circulating to members known as ''Van Dammen'' and ''Cooper'' are incorrect, no such persons were ever involved with the project.  Former members are aware, however, of a [[Tim Van Dammen]] who may have been the ''Van Dammen'' from another project known as [[Fade]] in 2001; and have clarified that there was a [[Greg Cooper]] whom Innes later collaborated with for a short-lived post-Slit project.

When performing live, other members were added to the Family, including frontperson [[Sarah Richardson]] (pictured) on vocals and possibly also keyboards, samples, percussion and so forth; and ''Alisha '[[leAsh]]' Judge'' (sister of Evay) who played keyboards/samples and a metal-percussion rig, specially designed and constructed by Evay and leAsh, and known to the band as The Metal Beast.  Other members included [[Jon Spark]] (also previously of [[Diastop]]) who played guitar, percussion and various electronics; and [[Ben Burcher]] who was known to take to The Metal Beast with angle grinders. Alisha recalls: <br><br>

- interview with author, Oct 2006

The visual stage presence of one or two individual live members may have been in some way responsible for drawing the "Gothic" label, but in reality the band had diverse (and sometimes incompatable) musical backgrounds and influences.  The extended Slit Family ultimately became unwieldy; conflicts arose among the many personalities involved with regards to the direction and original vision of the project, and the band was eventually dissolved.   

* [[Evay Judge]] and [[Jon Spark]] went to the ''School of Audio Engineering (SAE)'' in Auckland

* Pauli and Evay later formed [[Gods Q]], who in turn became [[Q]], and has subsequently transformed into [[theBeautifulBurn]]

* the writer of the article is not aware of any subsequent musical activities of [[Sarah Richardson]] or [[Rabi Basnet]]

(the current project of Slit's founding members)