The Moth has flown: the life of musical adventurer Dean Roberts 

Dean Roberts, aka The Moth, was an experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist who lived in Auckland, New York, Bologna and Berlin. A student of the sound artist Phil Dadson, he went on to lecture at Elam School of Fine Arts and Berlin's dbs music school.

He was also a total crack-up and spinner of excellent yarns.

In August, he died in his sleep in Lisbon, Portugal at the age of 49.

I met Roberts a decade ago when we were living in the wild west of Auckland, and working for the Oscar-winning filmmaker Vincent Ward at a time when he was focusing on painting and video art.

"Dean was cherubic faced, incredibly good-natured, always with a smile and a roll-your-own hanging out of his mouth, got on with everybody and lived everywhere," says Ward. "I called him a troubadour."

Roberts was not one to toot his own horn, and I had no clue that by then, he had already recorded 10 critically celebrated albums.

Ward describes his music as only a filmmaker would: "He sort of reminds me of Badalamenti who did some soundtracks for David Lynch, although Dean uses darker tones.

"He just followed his own calling, and he was an enigma in that he was so personable but also spent long periods on his own. The person you know is often not who they really are inside. There are often darker currents inside and when they come to express themselves you see those currents at work."

As a child, Roberts lived on Kawau Island, where his Dad was the ranger. Known as Snowie because of his white hair, he spent his time smoking pretend ciggies and listening to his parents' epic record collection.

Jenny Lange, who later became his bandmate and girlfriend, recalls him mentioning he had a pet seagull that would follow him up and down the beach. "All of his stories seemed like fairy tales."

Roberts learned guitar from Daniel Mañetto-Gonzales, who had played cello on Straitjacket Fits tracks and taught lessons on a two-string guitar.

As a teenager, Roberts was obsessed with indie bands Fugazi, Pavement and Sonic Youth, and formed the punky noise rock outfit Thela with his schoolmates Rosy Parlane and Dion Workman.

Thela came to the attention of Dean's idol, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and soon The Moth was taking wing to New York to record the first of two albums on Moore's label, Ecstatic Peace, which online music magazine Pitchfork called "a landmark of rock minimalism".

Not bad for a bunch of teenagers, says US music producer Jon Abbey.

"It's insane for a high school trio from New York City, let alone New Zealand, to do that. It's mind-boggling."

After Thela broke up, Roberts stayed in New York, recording solo as White Winged Moth, his sound becoming slower and sparser. When his visa expired he relocated to Italy. He spent his 27th birthday at a party in Venice, where guests included Lou Reed, Grace Jones and a Catholic priest - a story that ended up on high rotation.

While on an artist residency in Berlin, he met the Viennese percussionist Martin Brandlmayer and, together with Berliner Werner Dafeldecker, they formed the trio Autistic Daughters. He also returned to New York to make the mesmerising solo album, And the Dark Moths Play the Grand Cinema.

Roberts had previously claimed that writing songs felt "stupid" but by the early 2000s, he was changing his tune. He'd even started singing.

University of Melbourne lecturer and writer Jon Dale is an expert on underground music from Aotearoa. He says there's a "thread of improv" underpinning Roberts' musical trajectory of post-rock minimalism, free noise, electro-acoustic experiments and more traditional songs. Yet "it's not the usual way we think about improv as a genre, but more about an openness to possibility".

Seeing Roberts live, Dale says, could be "astonishing". He recalls a show at the Exeter Hotel in Adelaide (after which Roberts named a song) where "people's jaws dropped".

By the late 2000s, Roberts had travelled the globe multiple times, which had taken a toll on his physical and mental health. He came home to Auckland, where he played gigs, taught at art school and composed music for independent films. He also started dating the singer Jenny Lange. They played music together as The Vianolas "because we went 'via Nola's' Orchard to pick up supplies on the way to Piha".

Their first track as a duo was for a Michael Jackson tribute album: a "slow and droney" version of 'Rock With You'.

"He had an amazing way of getting music out of you because he would be so excited. He never made me feel like what I'd done wasn't very musical, because his idea of music was maybe not standard pop music.

"He used to pace around in Piha smoking a cigarette. His hands would flutter when he talked. He'd be like, 'We're going to be famous!'"

When the choreographer Lemi Ponifasio asked Roberts to create a soundtrack for his dance company Mau, he returned to Europe. For the past decade, he was based in Berlin, where he could reliably be found stationed at his favourite bar in Neukölln.

Glasgow-based, Texan pedal steel guitar player and singer Heather Leigh says she could always count on Roberts to turn up to her shows if he was in the vicinity. On her 2014 record, I Abused Animal, Heather credits Roberts as her spiritual adviser.

When Leigh told him she'd been struggling to record some new music, he suggested a spell at his friend's house and studio in the countryside in Sussex. While there, Roberts cooked, made tea and encouraged her to keep going. "It was such a special, remarkable time and my life really changed after that."

Leigh admits she still expects to see him at her next gig. "You have to accept it but I can't believe he's gone, such was his energy and vibrancy and support."

In 2019 Roberts wrote about how hard it was to make money at a time when digital downloads were replacing physical media. He described a disastrous publishing deal with Rough Trade which left him broke, and said he'd given up recording as a way to make money.

But, after a 12-year break, Jon Abbey of Erstwhile Records sweet-talked him into making a sequel to And the Dark Moths Play the Grand Cinema, which would become his final album, Not Fire. To Abbey, it is an assured work, reflecting someone in his 40s "who'd had a lot of time to put it together and live life".

"It hurts a lot to not have him around and know I won't talk to him again, but I'm so glad we did that record. It could have not happened for a million reasons. I'm glad he got to express himself."

Roberts' passing was reported in the influential music magazines The Wire and Pitchfork. Weirdly, he also got a write-up in the UK's Daily Mail.

I never got to ask him why people called him The Moth, though the day I heard he was gone, I found a white-winged one squashed on my welcome mat.

I asked one of his collaborators, the pianist Hermione Johnson, to help solve the mystery.

"I suppose they don't live very long," she says. "They're fragile. They're attracted to things that kill them. But they're also very beautiful, special creatures so I think it's the perfect description for Dean."

Jon Dale says Roberts might not have had time to do everything he wanted "but what he did do was incredible and opened possibilities up for a lot of people, which I think is still not recognised.

"But he should be remembered because he was a beautiful, wonderful person, whether he made great art or not."

Music featured in Culture 101 audio feature:

• Say After Me (by Bic Runga), Dean Roberts, Not Fire, Erstwhile Records
• Scratch(ed) Music - dedicated to Philip Dadson, Flying Saucer Attack/Main/White Winged Moth, Mort Aux Vaches, Momentum Music
• You Really Got Me, The Kinks, You Really Got Me, Reprise Records
• Untitled 2, Thela, Thela, Ecstatic Peace
• Radio Utopia, Dean Roberts, Moth Park/Soundtracks to Utopia, Formacentric Disk
• A Boxful of Birds, Autistic Daughters, Jealousy and Diamond, Kranky
• Cindy Tells Me (by Brian Eno), Dean Roberts, And the Black Moth Plays the Grand Cinema, Staubgold
• Letter to Monday, White Winged Moth, Be Mine Tonight, Kranky
• Counterglow, Flying Saucer Attack/Main/White Winged Moth, Mort Aux Vaches, Momentum Music
• Loyal, Vianolas, Vianolas Album Demo, a playlist by formacentric on #SoundCloud
• Rock with you (by Michael Jackson), Vianolas, Cheese on Toast compilation
• The Fake and Detached, Dean Roberts, And the Black Moth Plays the Grand Cinema, Staubgold
• I Abused Animal, Heather Leigh, I Abused Animal, Ideologic Organ
• Caroline, Dean Roberts, Not Fire, Erstwhile Records
• My Diviner, Dean Roberts, Not Fire, Erstwhile Records
• Kids, Vianolas, Vianolas Album Demo, a playlist by formacentric on #SoundCloud