NZ Musician February/March 2016

VO L . 19

EL NI

NO.5

Fe b r u a r y / M a r c h 2016

NO

FREE

:PLP ;VOB DOPRAH MERMAIDENS GROENI JACKIE BRISTOW NIGHT GAUNTS MUSIC SUCKS PARENTS TUNES OF I TIM MOORE JHAN LINDSAY ZAINE GRIFF 71 SUNSET

NZ MUSICIAN magazine PO Box 99-315, Newmarket 1149 Auckland New Zealand Phone: (09) 373 2572 editorial@nzmusician.co.nz

VO L . 19

N O . 5 Fe b r u a r y / M a r c h 2016

www.nzmusician.co.nz Publisher / Editor: Richard Thorne richard@nzmusician.co.nz

43

22

Assistant Editor: Silke Hartung editorial@nzmusician.co.nz Advertising: Carl McWilliams editorial@nzmusician.co.nz Website Contact: web@nzmusician.co.nz Designer: Silke Hartung Pre-Press & Printing: MHP Print

Contributors Michael Hollywood, David McLaughlin, Cailtin Smith, Amanda Mills, Jack Woodbury, Eliza Beca, Jamie McCaskill, Rob Burns, Kevin Downing, Seamus Maguire, Thomas Goss, Sammy Jay Dawson, Aleisha Ward, Darryl Kirk, James Dansey, Trevor Reekie, Poppy Tohill, Dixon Nacey, Laura Dooney, Martyn Pepperell, Ania Glowacz, JP Carroll, Stu Edwards, Chip Matthews, Sam Carswell, Andrew Smit, David Patterson, Briar Lawry, Daniel Phillips, Adam Burns, Finn McLennan-Elliott

NZ Musician magazine is published six times a year.

Available direct by subscription and free through selected outlets.

For advertising or subscription enquiries please contact: editorial@nzmusician.co.nz or phone (09) 373 2572

Contents and design

18

38

14

FEATURES

REGULARS

LESSONS

Yoko Zuna . . . . . . . . . . . .

2

The Lawful Truth. . . . . .

5

Guitar Cool . . . . . . . . . .

16

Music Sucks . . . . . . . . . .

8

Finding Your Voice . . . .

6

Deep Thinking. . . . . . . .

12

Tim Moore. . . . . . . . . . . .

9

Fresh Talent . . . . . . . . .

10

Tunes Of I . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

Out On The Street . . . . .

20

Jackie Bristow . . . . . . . .

14

Building Blocks . . . . . .

24

Doprah . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

Fresh Cut . . . . . . . . . . .

30

Tutors’ Tutorial . . . . . . .

37

Night Gaunts. . . . . . . . . .

26

Moments Like These. . .

38

Jhan Lindsay . . . . . . . . .

29

Ex-Pat Files. . . . . . . . . .

40

Parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

X-Factory . . . . . . . . . . .

42

Mermaidens . . . . . . . . . .

43

Groeni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45

71 Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

COVER Yoko-Zuna

Photograph by Georgia Schofield

I was running back when I heard him call And as I turned I watched him fall His body froze in disbelief And it fell to the earth like a fallen leaf And I lay my hand upon his brow It felt so cold I wondered how And he stared at me through faded eyes Oh this is how A young man dies Oh one man dies and I survive It leaves me empty To be alive Another number Is all it means To those who watch behind the scenes.

Fallen Youth – Jackie Bristow, p14

remain the property of New Zealand Musician.

All rights reserved.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z &

DIVERSITY AND

COLLABORATION Both individually and collectively the four musicians who make up Yoko-Zuna have earned themselves a great reputation in a fairly short time, and that with a sound and style that is very much their own. Jazz has long lent itself to fusion and integration with other musical forms, and the instrumentals that Yoko-Zuna ebulliently create readily finds enthusiastic lyrical/rap contributors to add that final window dressing that makes their jazz-based style readily enjoyed by a broad swathe of audiences. Michael Hollywood talked with the band and producer/manager Cam Duncan ahead of the release of a new , as yet un-named, EP and a year that could well see them breaking bad.

F

ollowing on from last years’ widely acclaimed debut album, ‘This Place Here’, 2016 is shaping up as a pivotal year for youthful Auckland four-piece Yoko-Zuna. There is currently an EP on the cusp of release, plans for a second album later in the year, and the band’s stock continues to rise on the back of its burgeoning reputation as a compelling live outfit.

None of this has come about by accident.

It’s the culmination of two years’ of hard work together, and the core Yoko-Zuna collective of Frank Eliesa (keys, synth, bass), Swap Gomez (drums, percussion), Kenji IwamitsuHoldaway (guitar, bass), JY Lee (saxophone and flute), plus Cam Duncan (manager/ producer) take nothing for granted. There’s a sense of professionalism about everything they do, something that perhaps belies the band’s youth and relative inexperience. If attention to detail counts for anything in the ongoing quest for musical perfection, Yoko-Zuna won’t be found wanting.

The group formed in 2014 when Gomez and Eliesa ran a regular midweek jam night at the now defunct Rakinos, in High Street, central Auckland. Eliesa fondly remembers how busy his Tuesdays were at that time.

“I remember I’d go to uni during the day practising and studying classical music for hours at a time, then at night I’d go to Rakinos and play whatever I want with a bunch of musicians.”

“I went down a couple of times and one day Swap and Frank had the idea of starting up an originals project which included Kenji and myself,” Lee embellishes. “We went into a practice room at jazz school and had a jam with no preconceptions as to what was going to happen, or what we were going to play.

Afterwards one thing led to another, and thus Yoko-Zuna was born.”

Though he would have seen many great musicians play at those jam nights, Eliesa was particularly curious about JY Lee as a saxophonist.

EV\Z '

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

Photos: Georgia Schofield

Yoko-Zuna

“I remember looking at JY’s pedal board and thinking, ‘What the hell is that and can we jam sometime?’

“Yoko-Zuna was named not long after that when Swap pitched the idea of the name half-jokingly (because he’s a huge WWE wrestling fan). We thought it sounded real cool so the name stuck.”

The name is a homage to Rodney Agatupu Anoa‘I, a Samoan-American pro-wrestler who portrayed a sumo wrestler competing under the Japanese flag. In Japanese, Yokozuna stands for the highest rank in professional sumo wrestling.

Although the band’s intention was to move away from what they call a “jam vibe”, that impromptu, organic, almost free-form jazzy feel remains omnipresent in the music found on ‘This Place Here’.

“The way we write music is really raw,” drummer Gomez explains. “We write and record it on our phones, then later we do the whole computer/ProTools thing, but I guess in its most organic form it comes from all four of us in a room just jamming. It’ll always come from someone different. For example, Frank will come up with a chord progression, Kenji will jump on that straight away, or it might start with JY doing something, and then I might jump on that. It always changes. When we jam we don’t really have any boundaries or set rules.”

Their debut was lauded for its strong hip hop/R&B crossover vibe, and was rich with vocal contributions from the heavyweight likes

of David Dallas, Team Dynamite and Bailey Wiley, to name just some.

As the man charged with keeping things moving forward, production whizz Duncan is an integral part of the crew, and his background as a sound engineer has been helpful in terms of building like-minded contacts.

“Bailey (Wiley), Spycc, Melodownz, and Rodney (Fisher) – they’re all just our mates. The way it worked with David Dallas was that I was a studio engineer at FMG Studios, which Dawn Raid and Dirty [labels] used, so I worked with him all the time. One day I just pushed the track

has the same moral ground’ is what the words I came up with mean to me.”

Yoko-Zuna is not a band readily pigeon-holed into a single genre. Even Duncan has difficulty pinning a label on the band’s sound.

“I’ve been producing Yoko-Zuna for two years and I still can’t put the music into a single genre. We always get asked … ‘What are you?’ but I can’t single out one type of music. It’s everything each band member plays – they bring their own taste and diversity to every track.

“The production is always based on feeling.

“With the last album we said, ‘Let’s just make some music and who cares what happens with it’. With this EP we had everything lined up before we even set foot in the studio.” – Cam Duncan

towards him and said, ‘Hey bro, please’ … and he said, ‘Yes’, so we got that dope-as track.”

It went similarly with More Like You, which is partly former Goodshirt frontman Rodney Fisher’s baby.

“Basically the guys sent me a rough mix of the music. I closed my eyes and the melody jumped out at me. ‘Being true to yourself even though it can be hard, and how we are all searching for acceptance from someone who

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

The fan feels music before they listen to it. When we’re recording I use each instrument or part to create a tone that adds to an overall feel. Often the feel of a track will change as we spend more time on it. Until we all settle on a mix.”

Collaboration was a key feature on ‘This Place Here’ and is again a big part of what we can expect on their upcoming EP, with names like Tom Scott, P Digsss, Heavy, Lukan Rai$ey and LarzRanda, all loaded and locked in to

EV\Z (

feature with the band.

“The working title is just ‘EP’ at this stage. We’re still deciding on a name,” admits Duncan. “We have a potential deal on the table which will be confirmed shortly. Once that’s in place we’ll know the delivery schedule, but it’s looking like the first single will be mid-February, with the EP release in March. It will be a digital release with a short run of CDs. We’d love to do some vinyl, but will look to release a second album later this year on vinyl.

“We’re doing things way differently. With the first album, from the time we started to the time it was released was about a year and a half. We didn’t work on it for that time, we just sat on it for that long. We had a few road bumps getting it out so we ended up just putting it out independently.

The way we’ve approached the EP is that we had everything lined up before we even set foot in the studio, so we had ideas for distribution and a timeframe. Whereas with the last album we said, ‘Let’s just make some music and who cares what happens with it’.”

When we talk it is looking like a five-track EP, recorded at Red Bull’s studio in Auckland. Duncan admits being a bit nervous about working alongside Ben Lawson, who he rates as one of the country’s top engineers, but the benefits were soon obvious.

“What that meant was that I could take step closer to the production side, working with each member of the band more closely. So we’ve been recording and mixing it there, and doing a bit of mixing outside of Red Bull as well. Frank has also been helping out on the mixing quite a bit.”

week-out in front of an increasingly discerning public. I sense that playing gigs and touring its work is something the band wants to do more of.

With their jazz backgrounds evident, the band always look to be having a great time on stage, their sense of excitement readily translating to newly impressed and enthusiastic audiences.

“I guess since the music we create and play is so diverse, our crowd and audiences have been pretty varied and eclectic too,” observes Lee. “People really gravitate towards the big sound we create on stage and the general musicianship,” adds Eliesa.

Manager Duncan reveals their plan about where they want things going for the next six months to a year.

“I think this year we have a few key projects we want to work on, and the whole idea for all of us is just to keep building the band’s name so that it gets to a point where we can start booking some big gigs and some nice size international support spots.

And hopefully one day we’ll be able to get overseas as well.”

“We’re all fulltime musicians, and Yoko-Zuna is our main baby, but we are all involved in other projects,” Gomez adds. “Frank and I play for a couple of hip hop artists, and Kenji and JY individually play for a whole heap of bands like Rewind Fields, Saturnian Noise Collective and Terracotta Cat. But Yoko-Zuna is at the forefront of everything.”

The discussion wraps up with talk about longer-term goals, both collectively and individually, and once again it’s apparent that each of the four band members – along with Duncan – have very mature heads on young shoulders. At no point are they keen to get too far ahead of themselves and the main goal at this stage is to just keep improving.

Doing it fulltime, without the distraction of a pesky day job, means they’re firmly committed to making the absolute most of the current wave of interest in their music. It’s also refreshing, to hear Gomez acknowledge that their cultural and ethnic diversity is a genuine strength. Those qualities, plus a large element of mutual respect, support within and out with the band, and strong networking reach are all things which will stand Yoko-Zuna in good stead as the band’s reach inevitably grows.

“We’re all pretty much still living at home – except for Cam – and we’re all strongly influenced by our families. We all come from different backgrounds, not just in terms of music, but culturally as well. Even socially we come from different scenes. I think that makes us diplomatic with each other, writing the music and listening to each other, hearing each other out.

“In some bands there’s always one person who takes the reins and makes all the decisions but with us there’s a good level of diplomacy going on. Especially with writing, we tend to write stuff fairly quickly, but then when it comes to refining it, we all collaborate and help each other out on parts. Like when I’m recording drums I love having Frank and Cam in the studio because although they’re not drummers they hear stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily hear. We do the same with guitars, and sax, and keys and stuff. We’re always there trying to improve each other all the time.”

He happily admits that their collective musicianship has improved considerably since the making of ‘This Place Here’.

“We’re really proud of this next EP, and it’s been so much easier putting it together because we’ve built up such good chemistry to this point. The goal is just to keep building that and to let the music do the talking rather than making big plans. We keep getting surprised by what our music has been doing for us and that’s always a beautiful thing.”

“Our live set is a combination of work from the album, but because we can’t have all the feature artists with us we sample their voices and we chop up their verses and things like that. ” – Swap Gomez The band recently gained NZ On Air funding, a welcome contribution which was used to make a rather excellent video for One’s Cycle (featuring Bailey Wiley), the final single off ‘This Place Here’. Prior to that Gomez had already shown a deft hand producing visuals for the band’s music.

“I do the majority of the videos. For One’s Cycle we were able to have a proper production company and a director involved, but the other videos are all self-made.”

Self-made, as in, very professionally made. One viewing of an older clip for the album’s title track reveals the full extent of Gomez’s talent. Again, we come back to that attention-to-detail thing. Nothing around this group is done half-heartedly.

And that includes performances, with the band keen to play live as often as possible. One of the issues Yoko-Zuna face is how to translate what is effectively a very studio-centric sound into the traditional live environment. After all, it’s not as though all of the vocalists they work alongside or collaborate with are permanently available to travel with the band.

“Our live set is a combination of work from the album, but because we can’t have all the feature artists with us we sample their voices and we chop up their verses and things like that. We have remix versions of the David Dallas track and the Team Dynamite track that we play live,” acknowledges Gomez.

One benefit of an increased live presence, particularly in and around Auckland’s fertile club and party circuit, is the natural progression or improvement that comes with the added pressure of doing it week-in

EV\Z )

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

nSLSIpjP"Y,"P73"OUY3SO

UIF MBXGVM USVUI with David McLaughlin

Recording Release Agreements

R

ecording Release Agreements are incredibly important documents as they clarify just what rights all the parties involved in making a particular recording are to retain. If some parties are to waive certain rights in relation to the newly created recordings, then to what extent and on what conditions. Despite the significant benefits that these agreements can provide they are unfortunately often one of the most overlooked and misunderstood agreements in the music industry.

Anyone who plays, sings, programmes, DJs or in any other way performs on a recording should be required to sign a Recording Release Agreement. It’s only when everyone involved in making a particular recording is included that these agreements are truly at their most effective.

Recording Release Agreements will put beyond doubt the extent of any one person’s rights in the recordings and related musical compositions included on those recordings.

By setting down precisely what the parties’ intentions are at the earliest stage possible these agreements serve to alert the parties to any honest misconceptions between themselves – which can then hopefully be resolved before progressing any further. People’s memories can get ‘fuzzy’ over time. Having the deal between all parties involved in the recording clearly documented means you don’t have to rely on memory as to what was agreed if any dispute arises later.

The record labels, or digital and physical distributors who you may want to have release your music, will not only require you to guarantee that you control all rights in the recordings, but in some cases will also want you to guarantee that written Recording Release Agreements have actually been executed by all relevant parties. As many people will tell you, it’s much easier to get this kind of documentation sorted upfront, at the time the recordings are made, when everyone is easily contacted and available, rather than – with your planned release date in jeopardy – madly rushing around trying to sort it out later when people may be working on other projects or in other countries.

When it comes to the actual detail of any Recording Release Agreement there are a number of important issues to be aware of.

Firstly make sure the full legal names of the musicians in question are used, and for even greater certainty include current residential addresses.

The recordings that are the subject of the agreement should also be very precisely defined. Although this may once again sound like common sense, unless the recordings are clearly specified by name or reference to the

period of time in which the actual recording occurred, it may become unclear down the line exactly which recordings each of the parties intended the agreement to apply to.

What the musicians are to be paid for their contribution to the recording and for the rights they are giving up, or that will be limited under the Recording Release Agreement, must also be clearly stated. For any agreement to be legally binding there has to be some kind of value going both ways. In other words for the Recording Releases Agreement to be able to be relied upon as truly legally binding there has to be some kind of clear payment to reward the musician for the services and rights they have provided in the recording process.

From a pure legal perspective Recording Release Agreements need to very clearly set out who has copyright ownership and control in relation to the recordings. From a copyright perspective it should also be clarified what the expectation is in respect of any contribution a musician may make as part of the recording process to the copyright of the actual song that is being recorded. After all, if someone helps to rewrite or re-arrange a song in the studio, they may have an arguable claim to being a songwriter in the new song that is created. The danger with this is that as a copyright holder, this person’s approval is required for any use of the song going forward. Consequently if this was never the intention, the Recording Release Agreement can be used to clarify whether any copyright interest will remain with the musician at all or at least the general consents and approvals that the musician will give with regard to use of the song moving forward.

Although dealing with copyright ownership related issues is perhaps the most pressing legal concern in a Recording Release Agreement, there are also other legal issues that should be addressed, such as clearing any necessary ‘performers’ rights’ as well providing for reasonable limits on the ‘moral rights’ that a musician can enforce.

In addition to the legal issues, there may be other practical issues that are also very worthwhile covering in a Recording Release Agreement. For example, getting clear approval to use the musician’s name, image and biography in relation to the future promotion and marketing of the recordings.

David McLaughlin is a specialist music lawyer with Auckland law firm McLaughlin Law (www. mclaughlinlaw.co.nz). He can be contacted by email at david@mclaughlinlaw.co.nz or on 09 282 4599.

Disclaimer: This article is intended to provide a general outline of the law on the subject matter. Further professional advice should be sought before any action is taken in relation to the matters described in the article.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z *

GJOEJOH ZPVS WPJDF with Caitlin Smith

The Paua Of Evaluation – Who Loves Who The Most?

G

ood singers and songwriters are mastercraftspeople and artists – albeit, often sensitive and insecure ones. Therefore, I’m upset when an armchair critic or unqualified non-musician argues that assessing great songs and singers is purely subjective. End of discussion. This column will attempt to clarify and list some criteria we can use to evaluate ourselves and others Being able to evaluate how and why the voice works and doesn’t work (or how and why a song ‘works’ or ‘doesn’t work’) helps us to know when we’re successful. There are many different reasons for liking, and functions for, singing and songs.

The success of a daughter singing a song she wrote at her uncle’s funeral will be evaluated quite differently than the same song judged at an international songwriting competition. A song being a hit is primarily due to the economics of the music industry’s machinery rather than how well written and delivered it is.

Non ice-skaters would never be allowed to judge Olympic ice-skating. Similarly, it takes an experienced architect to assess a building’s merits in terms of construction, relevance to context, environmental impact, etc. Aesthetics are but one criterion when judging what Don McGlashan coined A Thing Well Made. Our decisions are swayed by our tastes in genre, mood, associations and prejudices.

(Vocal coaches are least likely to criticise. We’ll simply assess how much technique is, or isn’t being used… ‘It’s not just what you’re born with, it’s what you do with what you’ve got.’)

Evaluation provokes anxiety for both evaluator and the singer/ songwriter being evaluated.Unless we know what’s desirable, what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, we lose direction and faith in ourselves. Not one singing teacher could decide what constituted a fail, let alone distinction,

EV\Z +

while listening to NCEA singing exemplars at a recent NEWZATS conference.

The death of David Bowie reminds us of our need to look at ourselves ‘as artists’ and learn from the masters. Yes, we can say some singers (and songs) are better than others. But we must explain why.

Sadly, our tall poppy ‘how hard could it be’ - everyone’s an expert - distrust of authority - ‘listener is all’ mentality often silences the

‘commerce’. At the top-end of any discipline there’s consensus; singers’ singers, drummers’ drummers and songwriters’ songwriters etc.

Likewise poets, painters and super yacht engineers. Let’s dive in and swim around in what’s ‘good’ then.

A voice is more significant and valuable when it’s; original, instantly recognisable and without easily detected influences, unique, authentic (either as yourself or a

killer in White Valiant, drug courier, toy factory arsonist and other untrustworthy narrators. Work with different subject matter and concepts from new angles, like Colin Pitts’ Let Her Lie, written from the POV of the Titanic’s iceberg.

Choose to write and sing lyrics that are; insightful, revelatory, helpful, instructional, psychologically aware, emotionally mature, relevant, pertinent to ‘our times’ or timeless, specific to location,

Play with song form, harmony, arrangement, melody (range/intervallic leaps/altered notes) and key centres. Bowie described this as “…music that broke my expectations.” discussion before it begins.

Again and again mediocre songs and artists are lauded, applauded and awarded over and above more worthy, significant and valuable ones. This has danger for various reasons. Firstly, lack of appreciation, acknowledgement, reward and recognition wear away at an artist’s confidence, and can create bitterness and despair.

Secondly, it reveals the evaluating institution or individual as illegitimate or at worst corrupt – especially if they can’t justify their decisions.

There are superfluous reasons for the appeal of a particular artist; appearance, popularity, fashion, genre, video, attitude, catchiness, singability, familiarity, back-story.

None of these criteria should be confused with a song or voice being ‘well made’. We become aware of this when singing great songs, and appreciating what they do to us – from the inside out. At music schools specific criteria for vocalists often get ignored, such as abilities as story-teller, spell-caster, actor, raconteur. Singers aren’t just instrumentalists, we have the paua of ‘the word’.

Europeans helpfully separate definitions of ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’, ‘creativity’ and

constructed character), genuine – having found your essence, amplifying that which defines you and your points of difference.

In terms of delivery, have you or the artist you’re listening to gained control and command over phrasing, tone, rhythm, feel and pitch? I believe we should give extra points (and a chocolate fish) to those artists who intentionally take risks, evolve, experiment and move into uncharted territory, rather than conforming to the indistinguishable sameness that floods the airwaves.

Musically manifest. This means playing with song form, harmony, arrangement, melody (range/intervallic leaps/altered notes) and key centres. Bowie described this as “…music that broke my expectations.” There’s a sound neurological basis to this risk-taking, the brain likes the ‘surprise’ of going to the unexpected, a ‘crunchy’ chord, word or note).

Find interesting, new or fresh lyical perspectives. Play with your point of view. My cousin does Abba’s Dancing Queen from the perspective of a young cross-dressing gay boy. Don McGlashan is forever writing from different perspectives; a serial

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

radical, representative of an underrepresented demographic/ marginalised group, person or tree! It’s great when lyrics can stand up as poetry, monologue or conversation, and that employ metaphor, simile or analogy that can be deepened and developed.

Blam Blam Blam’s classic There Is No Depression In New Zealand does just this and more.

We can even dabble in the mystic arts of assessing the INXSable X-factors like presence, vitality,spirit,soulfulness,stagecraft and demeanour. No, Ian Curtis might not’ve been a ‘Triple Threat’, but he was extremely significant.

Hopefully, these paragraphs may help to unravel ‘why’.

Rather than simply declaring, “I hate…” or “I love…”,dig deeply into your reasons for being repulsed or enamored by an artist, voice or song. Then, we can learn and grow into our most significant selves.

www.caitlinsmith.com bravecaitlin@gmail.com Fb: caitlinsmithjazz and caitlinsmithmusic

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z ,

Music Sucks Music sucks according to Sam Wilkinson, or rather Music Sucks is Sam Wilkinson, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter, probably best known as the drummer in Christchurch’s defunct pseudo-sleazy rock merchants Von Klap. Dunedin music fans will perhaps cite his role alongside Chris Hazlewood and Deidre Newall in their band S.C.U.D., however the start of 2016 sees him release two albums under the his own pseudonym – ‘Periscope Straws’ and ‘Road Cone City’ – two albums with similar-but-different approaches as Amanda Mills reveals.

S

am Wilkinson’s musical career kicked off in 2007, with Von Klap, Christchurch’s notorious funeral-carnival-pop party band. He and bandmate Tim Moore (see the article opposite) have the same story of meeting through a mutual friend, sparking a friendship and enduring collaborative working relationship. Von Klap already had a reputation for being a party band up for fun.

“We just enjoyed playing… everyone loved it… it was a really good time,” Wilkinson explains “We started off a bit carny with banjo and accordion. And that kind of polka feel, but then… it was quite dark underneath it all.”

EV\Z -

Wilkinson concurs that the tagline given to the band, ‘playing drinking music for the drunks’ was correct for their aesthetic, and the live shows were all about spectacle, and confetti canons.

“Me and Tim would go to party accessory stores and buy up all their massive party poppers… and let them off at various stages during the shows,” he reminisces. “It was a bit juvenile, but we’re a bit like that! We’d often play in drag, so we’d put a lot of effort into looking as beautiful as we could,” he laughs.

After recording two EPs and an album, ‘Dog’, with Von Klap, Wilkinson left in 2011, looking for a change of scenery, and new opportunities further south.

“I wanted to move to Dunedin… I just wanted a new scene. It kind of was fortuitous – I left a week or two before the February earthquake.”

In Dunedin Wilkinson found himself in North East Valley, playing with local musicians. He established S.C.U.D. with Chris Heazlewood and Deidre Newall, while also playing in Newall’s other band Tiny Pieces of Eight. Ultimately, he returned to Christchurch at the end of 2014, mainly for study.

“I wanted to come back here... Dunedin was tough to leave, though.”

Back in Christchurch Wilkinson began compiling what would become ‘Periscope Straws’, one of his two newly released recordings. Written between 2010 and 2015, ‘Periscope Straws’ is very much a solo affair, albeit with some assistance.

“I played most of the instruments… Little Sister and Uplift are recorded with Von Klap, they’re recordings we did when we were still together. Pretty much all the songs I produced with Mikey Summerfield.”

Tim Moore sings on Uplift and the pair’s enduring relationship is invaluable for the bouncing of ideas.

“He’d be my primary songwriting person that I’d show songs to, and he’s helped me with the lyrics on a couple of songs.”

Wilkinson drummed extensively on Moore’s 2015 album release, ‘Rough As Guts’, during this time too.

“We just click together. We just get each other, I guess,” Wilkinson says. “We are into a lot of the same music, and if I could get him to play on all my songs, I would… I trust his judgment.”

The album title came to Wilkinson in Dunedin, an idea of periscope straws on the tops

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

of houses, where people would watch other’s properties – a bizarre (and voyeuristic) concept he rather liked.

‘Periscope Straws’ is charming with a lo-fi and melodic aesthetic, though the full sound on Uplift points to what Von Klap may have developed into.

Wilkinson’s second album ‘Road Cone City’ is more polished, with saxophone prevalent on the songs.

“I just like making creepy, haunting saxophone sounds as much as I can… people seem to like it,” he laughs.

‘Road Cone City’ is indelibly about Christchurch – the road cones inescapable and, as Wilkinson argues, “kind of defining” This album has a greater pop sensibility and consistency. “‘Periscope Straws’ is quite all over the place in terms of the instruments involved,” he explains.“I wanted ‘Road Cone City’ to sound more similar, using similar instruments… I think it definitely has more appeal when you’ve got drums and bass.”

o y e B

Von

His Music Sucks pseudonym provides an umbrella for the release of his material.

“I chose it ages ago, I just started using that term,” he laughs. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the attitude you sort of get sometimes, where everything sucks… I can’t come up with a better name!”

Both albums are available on Bandcamp, with an arbitrary release date of February 1st.

“I’m not entirely sure how to release them,” he admits. “Quite a few of my friends are involved in the Melted Icecream label… so I might go through them, it might be good to have them involved.”

He is keen to play his albums live in the near future, and hopefully further afield than Christchurch. For his next move though, he’s continuing to write.

“I’ve always got lots of songs on the go that just need finishing. I’ll keep writing as much as I can, and recording. I kind of like recording songs as I go, just while I’m still passionate about them!”

Oj`J3`j3L`Y,"P73"OUY3SO

In the pre-earthquake moralistic confines of Christchurch, Von Klap enjoyed a mixed reputation for providing bawdy ‘carny prog’, musical entertainment of a quality that won them many fans among fellow musicians. Tim Moore played dan bau, keys and guitar in the band, with occasional vocals for good measure, while also running a bar called Goodbye Blue Monday. If his name sounds naggingly familiar however, it might well be because he is the author of Marlon Williams’ striking Silver Scroll-nominated single Dark Child. Amanda Mills talked with Moore about the Von Klap daze and his own recently released album, ‘Rough As Guts’.

T

im Moore moved from Christchurch to Melbourne four years ago in order to study nursing. He’s since headed way up to Darwin for work, a city which is pretty much, as he terms it, “…opposite from Christchurch.”

Moore met friend and erstwhile bandmate Sam Wilkinson a number of years ago, while he was in Cowboy Machine. Moore gradually became a part of Wilkinson’s band, Von Klap, or The Klap as they were still known at that

ond

Klap pre-2009 stage.

After Moore joined, history has it The Klap changed their name upon realising it was international slang for what are these days safely referred to as STDs. “I’d be keen if you kept that up!” Moore laughs at the reference. “We just got sick of it.

There was another band called The Klap… so that was a reason we wanted to change it. We just said it was because we found out it was another name for gonorrhea!”

Von Klap cultivated their reputation as a party band with infamous stage shows that

Tim Moore

indulged their love of spectacle.

“It got to the point where we were doing some really big shows at the Mexican café in Christchurch… they just let us trash the place… I suppose we liked the idea of it being a distraction from how shit we were sometimes... If there’s confetti exploding constantly, it’s more fun.”

The band also had assistance – performance dancer, Tawdry Trainwreck (Audrey Baldwin).

“She’d be on stage, stripping with us when we were playing. She’d be taking her clothes off, and taking everyone in the band’s clothes off, and putting bras on us, and strapping strap-ons to different parts of us while we were playing. It was distracting, and quite humorous to watch.”

Von Klap came to an amicable end in 2011, with all band members going their own ways. Moore played solo shows with Michael Summerfield (The Undercurrents), and Christchurch’s alt-country darling Marlon Williams at his bar, Goodbye Blue Monday.

“Marlon would play every Monday night, or maybe Tuesday night, we’d just sit in the corner, and just play along, so that was a good buzz. I’d always been playing around, and supporting various bands, and doing my own thing.”

While Moore moved to Melbourne in 2012, ready for a change, he was still playing and writing music, and occasionally performed in his new hometown and back in Christchurch.

Things changed with Marlon Williams’ recording of his song Dark Child, which was subsequently nominated for the 2015 Silver Scroll. Dark Child is deeply personal to Moore.

“It was written after a funeral… I was just thinking about how hard it would be as a parent… just trying to imagine what it would be like having a kid that had depression and addiction issues, and how destructive that would be for the psyche for someone, as a parent,” he explains.

“The song was hanging around for years before [Williams] started singing it, he went to record his

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

album… and I said, ‘You can have any of my songs if you want.’ So, he did!”

Around the time of the 2015 Silver Scroll Awards, Moore was persuaded to put out his own album, ‘Rough As Guts’, which appeared on Christchurch’s Melted Icecream label with little fanfare, though the song Organ Grind got goodstudent radio attention.

‘Rough as Guts’ was recorded at All Plastics Repairs studio in 2010, in pre-earthquake Christchurch.

“Sam played all the drums, and I played all of the other stuff, and we’ve got Michael Summerfield in for a couple of things, and Delaney Davidson… on slide guitar.

“I worked and worked on it, and got it right to the point where it was pretty much finished, and I just spent too long on it... it kind of needed that gap.”

The title reflects the DIY aesthetic of the album, where all sorts of unrelated music was thrown together, a kitchen sink approach as Moore describes it. His decision to release with Melted Icecream was pragmatic as the label’s Brian Feary found the tracks on a hard drive.

“Brian and Sam got in touch and were like, ‘Sort your shit out, we’re going to put this out’,” Moore says. “I really like what Melted Icecream do... so, why not?”

His working relationship with yWilkinson has been significant in their individual solo endeavours.

“I think a big thing is that we make each other get shit done!” Moore admits. “And we have a pretty similar sensibility in terms of what we want to achieve… I think we just compliment each other well.”

As of mid-January Moore moved to Darwin, and with that his musical plans for 2016 revolve around developing his songwriting.

“I kind of like the idea of isolating myself a bit and just working on home recording, and see what comes out of that. I’d really like to record an album that has some kind of unity and flow… that’s probably my aim for this year, just see what comes out of setting up my home recording studio.”

O9Mg97J393_9"OY,"P73"OUY3SOd "M,jOd_SjBGI"`IBjg`

EV\Z .

GSFTI UBMFOU 1ETPI 7]VYT

Photo: Xavier Ellah

W

ellingtonian quartet Maple Syrup all hail from the windy city, and first met at Wellington High School. They originated as a folk duo (then only Vera Williams and Jerry Ramirez), with influences like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, as well as more recent inspiration from ’90s artists Ween, and Beck.

“I think we were really inspired by both of them, because they both don’t require much recording technique,” Ramirez says.

“Before I started playing electric guitar, I was always playing acoustic guitars, always playing folk… it just kind of happened, that was the music we would play,” Williams adds.

Comments from third parties persuaded them to change direction.

“We got the advice that we should get a drummer, because someone felt that we were writing music for a rock band, but playing it with just the two of us,” Williams laughs.

Adding drummer Tarquin Smith and a bassist, Lucas Jury (also from Wellington High), the expanded band morphed into a harder, rockier beast. While not keen to be defined by any one genre, they see their style has become more akin to grunge, or even punk, which is reflected in their brand-spanking new EP ‘Ace and Gab’s Honeymoon’.

O"nU"M`n_jUY,"P73"OUY3SO s !MANDA -ILLS

0-.

h)

love creating, it feels right,” states Elijah Neblett, an assured but cheeky grin on his face, a cap covering his characteristic flat top. Now going by his stage name Lij, the young Kiwi splits his time between full time employment and the beginnings of a career in hip hop. It’s a well worn family path – his jazz musician father, James Gaylyn, has always

been a strong influence in his life.

“Ever since I was young I’ve been down in the studio with him. I started singing when I was two. I got my first album at seven or eight, and began to learn all the words. Then I learnt to say them fast. I’ve been rapping for a long time.”

That generational influence extends to his admiration of things that have come before.

“I am the friend of old school music. Anything… jazz, blues, hip hop. I consider that real music, I consider it the core… I grew up on old school hip hop.”

Sporting influences from classic artists like Biggie, Tupac and Eminem, alongside newer successes such as Kendrick Lamar, Logic and J Cole, Lij is no stranger to the history of American hip hop. A career in music was always just around the corner.

“Last year was the year I really went for music. I had a contact in New York who asked if I had any projects to listen to. And I hadn’t. I knew I needed to make a project but had never really done one before.”

An EP, ‘Attention Metropolitan’, was carefully pieced together over

EV\Z &%

“I think all of those genres come through – even a little bit of pop as well,” Williams muses. “Since we got our bassist and drummer our sound has even developed further, and our songwriting has developed… I feel like we’ve changed genres a few times.”

‘Ace and Gab’s Honeymoon’ was recorded at Tsunami Studios in Levin, and they are very happy with the results.

“Their website had a little entry form, where you could win some recording time,” Ramirez enthuses. “I filled it out, and then a month later I got an email saying we’d won a free day’s recording.”

Williams is just as enthusiastic about the experience.

“The people who run it were so lovely and hospitable… they really took care of us. They were really good at recording and producing, so it went really well for us.”

The band began writing the six-track EP early in 2015, recording it last June. Thematically, it is a mix of personal, and impersonal.

“I think there’s a cross-over – we like to write with characters, and interesting ideas that might not have anything to do with us personally, then other songs we write are very personal,” Williams explains.

The title reflects themes on the EP. “We liked the idea of the feminine and the masculine,” Williams continues. “The EP explores themes, a little bit of drugs, and love, and we felt it kind of ties the themes together.”

Maple Syrup have a national tour, taking in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Palmerston North in March and April, before aiming to head back into the studio to record an album.

As Williams laughs, Wwe’ve got a lot of material – we don’t want to forget it!”

eight months, before releasing in November 2015. The sequence of its creation is surprising and idiosyncratic.

“Before I did anything – the beats, the rapping – I wanted the artwork.”

Lij approached artist and friend Brynn Kettle, to conceptualise a cover.

“I wanted my face. And I wanted to involve the city somehow.”

Soon enough the pair had decided – combining a cartoon image of his body with a miniature city, replacing his flat top hair with highrises. It’s no accident that the cover sees Lij disoriented by the city (and perhaps by society itself ).

“Essentially with the EP I wanted to bring up issues that I felt close to in society. ‘Attention Metropolitan’ is trying to gain everyone’s attention.”

Though supported by lead single Just Another Monday, a playful track about relationships, the EP delves into far more pivotal issues, some founded in the growing Black Lives Matter movement in the US. “Obviously I wasn’t born or raised there, but I feel quite a kinship to America. A lot of things happened last year in the States, Eric Garner and police brutality… all for no reason. The EP is almost like a growing up phase. You’ve got My Escape which talks about childhood, then Just Another Monday where you’re starting to get girlfriends, teenage years.

You get a little bit more emotional. And then suddenly, it’s that I Can’t Breathe, where you’re feeling emotional about other issues in the world as well.”

Taking a laid-back, boom-bap approach to the instrumentation, the EP is akin to early Homebrew, the relaxed production leaving plenty of room for Lij to flex his lyrical muscles, “…gripping on a vodka bottle in the corner of your room hoping you don’t see tomorrow.”

But ‘Attention Metropolitan’ is only the beginning for Lij. The young rapper plans to move to New York later this year, to see if American waters hold more promise for a fast growing musician.

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

`SjP73MSj7Y3SOdMJK>_"P3GJ`9 s *ACK 7OODBURY

&IOEL

F

or someone who dreams of a full time career playing music, the decision to pursue it seemed suprisingly spontaneous for Aucklander Bekah Smith.

“One day I said to my friend, ‘Okay, I’m gonna sing something and you tell me if I can sing.’ She said ‘Yup’, so I’m like,‘Sweet, I’m gonna be a musician,’ and that was that.”

Her friend wasn’t alone in recognising her talent. Upon graduating AUT with a Bachelor of Communications, Bekah was awarded anInterNZ Scholarship to Paramount Studios in Hollywood, where she spent eight weeks as an intern in 2014, then hired as a studio runner for the rest of the year.

“The studio runner is the person who makes sure that everything the client wants is there. If they have a specific kind of chocolate they like, or candles…we’d call it ‘vibing out the room’.”

Working with local producers Aaron Dahl, Rich Reitz and Scott Elgin, culminated in her recording a three-track digital EP, ‘LA Mixtape’, released in November 2014.

“The producers were working at Paramount as well, so we decided to get together out of hours and work on stuff.”

Their contrasting influences on Bekah’s soulful RnB sound are apparent on each of the tracks. Of the three she particularly gelled with LA-based Scott Elgin, who she’s continued to work with over the past year.

“We have quite a lot in common in terms of our ideals around music… we’re trying to develop a more authentic sound, less electronic.”

This is certainly evident in the contrast between ‘LA Mixtape’ and Bekah’s subsequent ‘Relocations’ EP, which she released in October 2015 after working on it with Elgin over Skype during the year. The stripped back beats perfectly compliment Bekah’s distinctive vocal tone, creating space for her narratives to unfold.

She says they have a pretty open approach to collaboration, with the songs on ‘Relocations’ coincidentally being put together in a different way, drawing from the likes of Outkast, De La Soul and Big Boy. “Gifted was originally written on guitar by me, and Oh Hey was a beat he made randomly a couple of years ago that I just picked up. A lot of the time a producer will just send me a beat and I’ll choose one that I feel some sort of vibe or emotion about.”

Returning to NZ, Bekah felt compelled to continue developing the skills she had picked up in LA, enrolling in an electronic music production course at SAE in Auckland.

“I teed it up so that as soon as I got back I had class a couple of days later… I just didn’t wanna get slowed down, I wanted to keep moving.

It’s hard because I’m not a super technical person… It can be frustrating when you can hear a song but you can’t make it, so it was basically just to facilitate my songwriting.”

With Elgin coming out to NZ to work on new material with her in April, she has a busy year planned, hoping to have at least two singles and EPs by the end of the year.

“I just want to build up more content. Make stuff, that’s the aim of the game I guess – making more music, making videos, things to look at, listen to, watch…”

“I want to be able to do music as a career. All of these part time jobs I keep taking aren’t things I want to do as a career, so I’m not really developing any other career for myself. I’m very hopeful and optimistic about this whole thing” she laughs.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

,9L"GOj`J3Y3SO s %LIZA "ECA

EV\Z &&

Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote EFFQ UIJOLJOH Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull

And We

T

with RobQuote Burns Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Could QuoteBe PullHeroes...

Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull

his issue’s Deep Thinking column presented a dilemma. The last couple of years have seen the bass world lose two of its innovators and I provided columns in tribute to both. I was going to do some slap stuff for this issue, so as to avoid making the column into an obituary for great musicians.

Then, Lemmy left us, and the day before I started to write this, David Bowie joined him for the great jam session. I talked over the options with

NZM’s editorial team and, as big a character as Lemmy was, we agreed to feature some Bowie lines.

The new problem was that it’s hard to pick just a few lines from a composer whose output has gone on since the 1960s. While Bowie didn’t play bass on the tracks I’ve transcribed, he always had the pick of the best players to draw from, who in turn created some amazing, yet often simple, lines. I started wanting to do an early one with Bowie’s long–term producer, Tony Visconti, on bass, The Man Who Sold The World from 1972. However, once I got stuck into the vast catalogue of Bowie on Youtube, I decided the answer would be to consult the oracle of Bowie knowledge, my Otago colleague, Dr. Ian Chapman. I wanted some funk, so we chose Let’s Dance (1983) and Fame (1975).

Emir Kassan played bass on Fame (which was written

by Bowie, John Lennon and Carlos Alomar, Bowie’s guitarist) and the song is on the album ‘Young Americans’.

The bass line is in the style that was known as ‘street funk’ in the UK – not sure what they called it in the US. The bass style was reminiscent of Bootsy Collins’ simplicity, with notes accenting the first and third beat of each bar. That might not sound funky, but have a listen!

I have transcribed the introduction. The song is in a very solid 4/4 metre apart from the ‘faded in’ piano F major chord at the beginning and the two 3/4 bars in the intro. These bars are followed by one bar rest for a rhythm guitar part and a pick up of three crotchets on bass in bar four. Bar six has a downward slide (glissando) from a high F on the second 1/16 note of beat four to the low F at the beginning of the following bar.

You will also notice that the notes are played quite short and staccato, emphasising the weight of the bass drum beats. By bar nine, Kassan starts to get a little more syncopated and locks in with the funkier drum pattern.

Once the vocal starts, the rhythm section pattern is simpler, but the emphasis remains on beats one and three with semi-quaver anticipated notes on the last 1/16 note of beat two in most bars.

Carmine Rojas played bass on Let’s Dance, the title track of that album. It was produced by Nile Rodgers (who also played most of the guitar parts) and it has Tony Thompson on drums. It thus has half of the band Chic playing on it. The song also features a stunning guitar solo from Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The bass line is, again, deceptively simple. I have transcribed it from where the vocal comes in. The line switches between crotchets and short and funky two–bar riffs. It has a slightly odd construction in that the line is in three bar phrases, one with crotchets followed by two with the funky phrases. This construction goes on until Bowie reaches the pre-chorus where the bass simplifies into two bar sustained semibreves.

Let’s hope we all stay safe out there and the next issue of NZ Musician can feature some slappy stuff! It seems a dangerous place for musos at the moment.

(Dr. Rob Burns is an Associate Professor in Music at the University of Otago in Dunedin. As a former professional studio bassist in the UK, he performed and recorded with David Gilmour, Pete Townsend, Jerry Donahue, Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, James Burton, Ian Paice and Jon Lord, Eric Burdon and members of Abba. Rob is currently a member of Dunedin bands Subject2change and The Verlaines.) ashdownmusic.com/artists/252/Robert-Burns

EV\Z &'

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

Tunes Of I

392(7 -/)

“I

Wairarapa-origined neo-dub act Tunes Of I were able to raise enough funds through a Kickstarter campaign to record their first album, a follow up to their late 2013 EP titled ‘T.O.I’. Having just listened to ‘Restless’ fresh from the press for the first time the night before, the band met up with NZM’s Jamie McCaskill at one of their regular stomping grounds, The Southern Cross in Wellington.

-;- 911)6

t was perfect, a whole month in the studio felt so right”, reflects guitarist Jules Blewman on the still recent time spent at Surgery Studios, working on the new album of Wellington seven-piece neo-dub band Tunes Of I. It’s nearing the end of 2015 and we are sharing a drink at one of the city’s better known music venues, The Southern Cross, the same pub that they will bring in the new year at.

With producer/artist Barnaby Weir and well-known engineer Lee Prebble at the helm providing their experience and knowledge, ‘Restless’ proves to be an evolution on the sound Tunes Of I have become known for.

“The main difference with the album compared to our EP was having Lee and Barnaby in the room, questioning stuff and keeping us real,” claims Blewman.

A lot has changed in fairly short time for the band since starting as a three-piece in 2011. Back then singer and guitarist Conway Jeune would be leading the charge, jamming in the Wairarapa. Saxophonist Bryn Van Vliet was invited to a practice and immediately added valuable extra flavour.

“People would lose their shit at Bryn,” enthuses Jeune.

Now there are seven in the band with Michael Costeleo on trumpet, Kaito Walley on trombone, Makura Tomoana (Ngati Kahungunu) on bass, Blewman on guitar and Luther Hunt, the latest addition to the band, drumming.

This group of mates and students from the NZ School of Music are trying to push their sound, which is distinctively Wellington.

“Some people have even described it as old school,” Costeleo comments to nods of approval

from the rest of the band. “Our influences are definitely Kora, Fat Freddys Drop and The Black Seeds, and some of us have a metal influence as well that we like to bring to the table.”

“Anybody can bring in a song or idea and we’ll workshop it as a band”, Blewman elaborates. “Everyone is very respectful of each other, we have a very open platform.”

Following the December release Tunes Of I headed out on an album release tour, their third summer tour and one they were really excited about. Over a busy December, January and February that took them as far north as Whangarei’s Old Stone Butter Factory, as far south as Dunedin and west via Fox Glacier’s Cook Saddle to play in Haast, as well as Hokitika’s famed Wild Foods Festival.

“We’re playing some festivals which has always been a goal of ours,” Jeune remarks. “I remember sitting in the van and talking to the group saying, we gotta play at one of those big festivals, now we are and now our goal is to get one of the dope spots.”

One of the things they are focused on for the tour is sustainability, says manager Loz Wootton.

“They are a good bunch of guys who are very professional and know when to go to bed early and look after themselves.”

One of the highlights for this tour is that they get to play alongside other influencers of their sound, the Kora brothers and Brad Kora’s new project LAB. “All the brothers are going to be playing this gig and it’s something I’m really looking forward to. I’ve been listening to Kora since they came out”, says Conway. “And we get to go to awesome places and play music.”

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

It’s been three years since the band released their EP and they’re clearly pumped about getting their new album out there.

“We haven’t really been playing much of the EP live lately - more of the album,” Conway acknowledges.

While in the studio, they were able to work on some little things Barnaby provided help with, which the band says makes the main difference between ‘Restless’ and the earlier EP. “It was the little dynamics which affect the whole music that makes a difference. Barnaby felt he needed this specific sound for one of our songs. He came into the kitchen area where we were all playing darts, and started hitting the pots, then he was like, this is the one and went and recorded it. It’s those little things.”

Looking to the future, Tunes Of I say they want to continue setting achievable goals, being professional and playing well.

“Maybe we could arrange a set with a big band. Other bands have done the orchestra thing so that would be something different,” ponders Costeleo. “The Wellington music scene is in safe hands with all the bands coming through, and we are the most dub band on the scene at the moment.”

“We’re paying homage to the Wellington bands of old,” adds, Tomoana, referring to the dub/roots boom of Trinity Roots, FFD, Kora and The Black Seeds back in the early to 2000’s.

“And we just want to say thank you to all the people who have supported us on our journey.”

gjP9`S>JY,"P73"OUY3SO

EV\Z &(

Jackie Bristow

Shooting For Gold

Meet her in person or watch her perform on stage and you can’t help sensing that Jackie Bristow is a happy person. She has an honest, ready smile and the kind of genuine and delightful laugh that you could probably make money from if you could just bottle it. It’s a surprise then that

EV\Z &) EV\Z &)

her just-released album ‘Shot Of Gold’ starts and ends in such a rather melancholy frame of mind – with the middle hardly challenging the sombre mood. Richard Thorne caught up with a tired but happy Jackie ahead of her NZ tour supporting the album’s arrival.

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

L

ast time she talked to NZM, six years ago, Jackie Bristow was living in Austin, the home of SXSW and both the capital and music capital of Texas. She’d moved there from LA, following her ‘musical journey and dream’ as she wrote in the liner notes of her 2010 album.

Austin did seem an odd choice, as a place to live, why not Nashville for example? Among the positives cited she was singing and playing five nights a week, which she certainly couldn’t do in LA. Another very good result from her time in Austin was her then new album ‘Freedom’, the title of which certainly indicated she was probably very happy with where she found herself. Indeed the liner notes further talked about the city ‘healing and inspiring’ and giving her the energy to make the album.

Produced by herself and her long time musical bestie, Australian guitarist Mark Punch, it was recorded mostly in Austin and featured the full sound of a rockin’ band, most notably drummer J.J Johnson.

Six years on Jackie is back with a follow up, her fourth album, released first here in NZ in early February, and supported with a 16-date tour. For someone who has lately been playing 2000-seat theatre support slots in the States for another legendary Aussie guitarist, Tommy Emmanuel, the venue list is really quite unusual – mainly provincial towns and holiday spots.

There are a couple of good reasons. Firstly that she booked it herself from the States, and secondly that she has brought her American boyfriend with her, and shaped the tour to show him the tourist sights of her homeland, on a kind of musician’s working holiday.

Although she only flew into Auckland late last night and is clearly tired from travelling, her enchanting laughter is as present as ever, and kicking off her sandals Jackie comfortably tucks herself into her chair to talk. She’s been living back in LA for a few years and is very happy there. Her new album was recorded 18 months ago and, she says, the melancholy mood reflects more the coming down stage of her Austin experiment. The live music scene was great for her, but around the time ‘Freedom’ was released she started really missing California and the ocean, as well as her LA-based friends.

“I went to Austin 100% for the music and I met so many nice people, but I felt a little bit isolated there. I don’t know if it was being land locked, or just being in Texas…”

Needing to move on, in 2012 Jackie took a road trip from Austin to northern California, playing a run of small shows that went so well they became a blueprint she still follows. The trip’s success gave her the confidence to return to LA where she now lives on the fringes of Hollywood.

That blueprint for continuing life as a working musician revolves increasingly around playing house concerts, typically at US$20 a head.

“It’s easier now. I don’t do that [five nights a week] kind of work now, I do tours. I play a lot of house concerts and love them – that’s how I make a living. Or I play venues, like a winery or like the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. I go out for a month or six weeks, or maybe

a weekend in Arizona and play four shows. I did some opening slots for Tommy Emmanuel just recently. In May I play the Norfolk Island Country Music Festival and then in June/July I am touring California.”

Playing house concerts her audience sizes mostly range from 40 to about double that – 120 people is these days a big crowd for her.

Jackie books all her gigs herself, saying she would love to have a label behind her but it’s hard to get one without an agent. It does have some distinct lifestyle advantages though.

“I like it too because you are in control.

You’re not anxious thinking, ‘Oh I need work’, you just go and book it. But to get into the festival circuit, that next level, you need an agent – so hopefully one will come along.”

Clearly that’s not high on her priority (or expectation) list though, and she admits she hasn’t been looking for label support.

“I‘ve been thinking about shopping around again, for the release of this record in the States.

I have some people in Europe, who came to me, but I just forget about labels because no one was signing for so long. I just started doing my own thing and haven’t gone back to that route since. But yeah, it would be nice, with the right people.”

Hailing from Gore, where her career got its start playing with her little sister Katrina, Jackie remains very much a people person, warm and friendly. Outside of family, no one has been more important in her musical journey than her regular producer and playing partner Mark Punch.

The two have a very evident musical connection that has lasted 15 years and regularly play together in America. Punch – has himself moved to LA in the last year and more recently purchased a home in Nashville. He is a regular touring duo partner for Jackie and in her LA band, which also includes Nick Gaffaney on percussion.

“Nick’s an incredible percussion player.

We rock out a bit more than the album,” she explains with laughter to my expression of surprise.

She clearly relishes the support and comraderie of fellow Australasian ex-pats and connections. Mark Tierney, another LA-based Kiwi, is responsible for the two simple but visually rich videos produced for the album to date, as well as the album artwork drawn from their I Don’t Want To Come Down video shoot.

Mark Punch is omni present on ‘Shot Of Gold’, which completely eschews the full band sound of her previous album in favour of a very simple, largely acoustic sound. He engineered, produced and mixed the album, and features on mandolin, Irish bouzouki, acoustic and electric guitars as well as adding bvs.

“We did this album completely the opposite way around. Me playing solo performances which Mark recorded with this new microphone he was excited about, and then added the music to it. So they are just live performances. I sang the songs three times then we chose the best take and then built the tracks around that.

“It’s the complete opposite to all my other albums, but the thing is that’s how I perform.

I play live with my guitar, so I think it sounds

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+ COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

more natural, and you hear the voice more than singing on top of the track.”

The recording was done in Sydney in Punch’s own home studio just before he moved to the States. Sydney-based Kiwi, Jonathan Zwartz, played double bass, friend Mark Collins played banjo and Mauricio Lewack, who plays with Jackson Browne, added some percussion.

“The I did a Pledge Music campaign to raise the money to master it, and do the artwork and the videos – it’s a process!”

She seems still a little surprised her crowd funding was successful, indeed it exceeded her target, raising nearly US$20,000.

“I was nervous about it. I’d watched a lot of my friends in the States do it and then I procrastinated. It’s confronting putting yourself out there like that! But it ended up being quite fun. People were checking in and a couple of major people waited until the end then asked how much more I needed to get to the target.

It’s a great thing to do ’cos now everything has been paid for.”

She admits frankly to frustration that things haven’t progressed to deliver her a more established audience.

“But then at the same time, at a certain point I just came to terms with it. Because that’s where I used to get disappointed and depressed. A couple of years ago I just became more accepting and appreciative that I can just travel around, playing my own music, and have people listen – and continue to be creative and be more contented with it. Because who knows? You don’t know what’s around the corner. I am still doing music and I have a very healthy community of friends around me, really talented people, so that’s really nice.”

As much as her new album’s lyrical tone is largely reflective, it is far from a depressing listen. Her purity of voice, heartfelt lyrics and sense of hope lifts it well out of that territory, aided by Mark Punch’s lightness of touch on various stringed instruments. You’d have to label it country, but really, the album doesn’t help define exactly just what music it is that Jackie Bristow makes. Now into her 40s, she struggles with a definition of genre herself.

“I’ve always found it really hard trying to work out if I fit into something,” she says with sincerity and perhaps a hint of anguish. “I don’t think my music’s changed over the years really, just the production. I love country music, I love folk music, I love pop music, RnB and soul…

I don’t just listen to one. I fit into that folk, alt country, Americana scene.”

She accepts that that genre-indifference has perhaps put hurdles in her way.

“I think so, yeah, but some of the greatest people don’t fit into one category either. I’ve stopped worrying about that as well. I’ve just been doing shows, this record, and I’m going to make another record later this year.

“I guess I’m just living life as a musician. I play, I do my shows, I write songs and record.

When I first went to America I was trying to get the record deal, trying to do this and do that.

I’ve forgotten about all that now – it’s just my life, it’s what I do. Does that make sense?”

lllYK"3LJ9,_J`gSlY3SO

EV\Z &* EV\Z &*

HVJUBS DPPM HVJUBS DPPM with Kevin Downing

Do Your Solos Sound Like Scales?

A

common grumble among guitar players is that their solos sound like they’re playing scales. Have you complained of this before? Read on, I have the cure.

Many new students say they thought they needed to practice scales as part of their daily routine, and were under the impression that scales are the life blood of soloing and improvising. They’re not completely wrong, but only partially correct.

You definitely need to know your scales as they form a large part of knowing your guitar neck, building technique, and getting confident playing all over the neck, etc. But you are what you practice. If you start to practice soloing using scales only, you are always going to sound like you are playing scales. You can solo while playing scales, but it is a lot more advanced to make it not sound like scales – and this is where many go wrong.

How the top players solo is by learning the language of the music they are playing – they

don’t play scales as such. For example, if you’re a blues player you would learn some of the licks in the solos of your favourite blues artists. It is in the learning of the licks that you begin to develop the language of that particular genre of music.

Of course I am not just talking about soloing here, but there is another language of rhythm and back up guitar playing as well in all the different genres, which is a forgotten skill among many players.

Learning to play licks and solos is very similar to learning the English language. You learn a few phrases like, ‘Good morning Bill’ and ‘How is your day going?’ Then you put the two phrases together, and after a while develop your own speaking style. Solos are built the same way.

By learning the licks of your favourite players you only have to know how to play the lick concerned and what chord it goes over. The beauty about this method is that you

don’t have to know any complicated theory, although having a knowledge of theory does help you. So you can get started right away as it doesn’t matter what level you are at now.

If you listen to the solos of Jimi Hendrix you can hear him play the licks of Buddy Guy, and if you listen to Buddy Guy you can hear the licks of the players before him, and so on. It goes right back to Robert Johnson. It’s similar in every other genre, including classical music.

Exercise 1 shows the minor pentatonic scale at the fifth position, which is the scale of choice for many players in the key of A. Be aware that many players get stuck on this scale however.

Exercise 2 shows a scale sounding solo played over the last four bars of a blues progression. This is how many players sound when they say they sound ‘too scale-y’.

In Exercise 3 the lick is quite complicated theory-wise, but is relatively easy to play, and sounds professional. It definitely does not sound like you are playing scales. All you have to know is that it goes over the last four bars of a blues progression and you are in business.

You can also see it is not difficult to play well, and you can hear the chords change.

Many argue that copying licks is not a good idea, that you will just sound like someone else.

The truth is everyone from Bach and Beethoven, through to Clapton, Slash, Page, etc., have been copying each other for hundreds of years and it is not about to change. The trick is you have to make the licks your own by changing them slightly or putting a different feel on them.

So how do you learn the language of the music you want to play? You spend quality time learning the licks and riffs on your favourite recordings just like the all those legends before have done. If you have any trouble with learning licks it would pay to consult a great guitar teacher.

To hear a recording of the above examples go to http://www.guitar.co.nz/free-lessons/ Kevin Downing is a professional guitarist, teacher, and author. His contact details, along with many freebies, are on his website at www. guitar.co.nz

EV\Z &+

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z &,

Industry

Modular Synthesizers

H

idden away in basements and bedroom studios exists an ever growing musical addiction; one that leads to new musical possibilities, previously unheard sounds, and an empty wallet. This is the world of modular synthesis, where a musician’s instrument looks more suited to scientific lab than to a music studio, and the music it creates can vary from conventional sounds to avant-garde noise and screaming atonal sirens.

This means of making music is slowly emerging in New Zealand. Right now, apart from the occasional performance at the Audio Foundation and the notable performance

by Westley Holdsworth at Auckland’s Psych Fest, modular synths remain little regarded by local musicians. However the tables are slowly turning. People who are interested in electronic music, and even audial experimentation, are coming to realise the freedom and possibilities that modular systems can provide.

For those unsure about what exactly a modular synthesizer, or even what a synthesizer is, here is a run down. There are several kinds of synthesis but we will look at the one that arguably started it all, and is currently still the most commonly used – subtractive synthesis.

We start our sound with a circuit called an oscillator that creates a tone at a stable pitch in a certain wave shape. Which wave shape is used determines how harmonically rich the tone is. A perfect sine wave contains only one harmonic i.e. the root note, while a true square wave (imagine a signal that is switching between 100% on and 100% off per cycle) contains several audible harmonics that are both mathematically and musically interesting.

Waves rich in harmonics (the other common wave is a saw wave, a signal starting at 100% and moving down to 0% per cycle) are good starting points as they offer a lot of harmonic possibilities for a musician to

it could be described as sounding too harsh and piercing on its own.

To resolve this, the oscillating tone is passed through a filter that can filter out certain harmonics. A filter starting from the highest harmonics and moving down is known as a low-pass filter (LPF), while doing so from the lowest harmonics and moving up is know as a high-pass filter (HPF). Both create very different sounds, however the LPF is the most commonly used and the most distinct.

When this filter is opened or closed it can have a little bump known as the peak, or resonance, that boosts the level of harmonics before quieting them, creating a the distinct ‘quacky’ sound that is associated with a synthesizer. The easiest way to demonstrate this is with your own mouth. With your mouth closed, make a humming sound and slowly open your mouth as widely as you can and then close it again.

You’ll notice that as you open your mouth you’ll hear the sound become brighter in tone and that you can hear certain harmonics resonating in your mouth. Filter resonance works in the same way.

So we have oscillators and filters. As well as these circuits a synth would also have amplifiers to amplify the sounds, envelopes that control the shape of the sound, LFOs (low frequency oscillators) that are used to create vibrato, tremolo, or filter sweeps (like the ‘wub-wub’ sound of dubstep bass), noise sources for creating sound effects, externalinputs, feedback generators that can overdrive the filters, sequencers… the list can go on.

Each circuit can create new sonic possibilities,

Photo: Sheree Brown Photography

so that is can be heard when plugged into an amp or a mixer. One of the oscillators can also be used as an LFO by slowing it down to a very slow rate and set to modulate both the pitch of the oscillators and the filter sweep. While the Minimoog sounds fantastic and offers a lot of sounds, compared to a modular synth the layout is limiting. With a modular synth each of those circuits are individual modules that are not hardwired together in a predetermined order as is the case with the Minimoog but instead have the necessary inputs and outputs for sounds and modulation sources. These are plugged into each other using cables by the musician, which allows the user to wire the instrument in any way they desire.

The appeal of both ‘normal’ and modular synths quickly becomes apparent. A ‘normal’ synth is accompanied with a keyboard, it is easy to program sounds, can usually save different sounds to be recalled later on, and is usually much easier to take to a gig or studio. A modular synth on the other hand, while bigger and heavier, can have significantly more sonic possibilities and its size is only limited by a financial budget – and while a keyboard is not always necessary it isn’t hard to have one accompany a modular synth. Scott Brown, who uses a modular system in his project Fake Empire, enjoys his modular synth because of the fact that there are no presets.

“It forces you to exist in the moment without over-thinking what you’re doing. Every patch you make will never sound quite the same as it does in that moment.”

Similarly, James Noble of Wellington modular duo Selective Yellow thinks that modulars synths “…feel more like an instrument than a computer.”

While it can’t be argued that the technology offered by a computer is cheaper and easier to access, the modular industry still continues to grow. work with. Harmonics are important as they make different timbres and create distinctions between instruments and sounds. A human voice and a trumpet sound distinctly different, even when they are both holding the same note at the same volume. This is because of the harmonic content found in each sound.

Having a lot of harmonics gives the potential to create a lot of sounds, and this the reason why a pure sine wave is often left out of subtractive synths – they have no harmonics and are too sonically boring. While a square wave may have a lot of harmonics,

EV\Z &-

depending on how they are used. This is where the distinction between a modular synth and a ‘normal’ synth can be found. A ‘normal’ synth, such as one of the first commercial synths, the Minimoog Model D (note: Moog is not pronounced like ‘mood’ but rather like ‘vogue’), has the layout of these different circuits predetermined. Three oscillators with pitch control and wave shape options, along with a noise source and the option of an external input go through a filter that is controlled with an envelope.

This is then amplified to a line level that

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

By Seamus Maguire

So where do modular synths sit in the NZ musical community?

As of now, not really anywhere.

While those passionate about modular synths in other countries like Australia and the US have developed a hub and a community, NZ is too small and too far away in its own world, and modular synths remain too unfamiliar, too expensive and too cumbersome to get a hold of. Beyond the local modular Facebook group, NZmodular, which currently sits at 100 members, there isn’t much more of a local modular community.

This is especially true when compared to a synthesizer hub like those found in Portland that sees successful module retailers and big synthesizer community events. It is a dilemma for modular enthusiasts in NZ; retailers may be enthusiastic about modular synths, but are weary of importing modules because there is such a small market here and so many different manufacturers to choose from. This in turn makes it difficult for people to get into modular synthesis.

Those who do choose to delve into modular synthesis either tend to buy them second hand via TradeMe or through the modular Facebook page.

SAE tutor and regular NZM columnist David Chechelashvili is currently writing his PhD on modular synthesis. He started out with second hand gear bought both locally and overseas before determining exactly what modules he wanted. But that can quickly become expensive.

Modules range from $40 to well over a $1000, and a modular synth could contain anything from two or three modules to 30 or 40, or more.

A passionate modular synthesis enthusiast who has carefully selected the modules they want for their system has to pay not just the price of the module but also the difference in exchange rate and associated bank fees, expensive shipping for a one-off package to an unusual place (for the module Photo: Tim Prebble manufacturer) like

Historically, modular synths came first, with a wide range of companies emerging in the late 1960s – Moog, Buchla, EMS, E-MU and ARP to name a few. These synths offered big studios and top musicians such as The Beatles an expensive but exciting new way to make sounds. As time went on these businesses began to fill the market with smaller and cheaper ‘normal’ synthesis options for (more average) musicians.

Modular synths soon became a rarity and not necessary to make interesting synthesized sounds.

But as time passed from the late ’60s to the mid ’90s, electronics had become cheap enough that manufacturers like the German company Doepfer could begin selling new modules and modular systems at a reasonable price.

This, along with the controversial belief some people held that the digital synths of the ’80s and ’90s were not all they had set out to be, created a new demand for modular systems. Since then the modular market has grown exponentially from a handful of manufacturers to several hundred, each offering their own version of classic circuits while also offering original modules that create new sounds, expanding modular synthesis beyond analogue subtractive synthesis to include a huge variety of other forms of synthesis, both analogue and digital.

While it can’t be argued that the technology offered by a computer is cheaper and easier to access, the modular industry still continues to grow. Its physicality and ability to mix and match any module from any company still provides something that working through a computer can’t.

Photo: David Chechelashvili

NZ, and then tariff charges and customs fees.

Fellow enthusiast, Tauranga-based Scott Brown agrees that because of the small local demand for modules it is not always simple, or cheap, to get the system you are after, but says the times are changing. “We’re seeing somewhat of a modular revolution now that major companies like Roland and Moog have entered the market.

It’s still difficult here in NZ as no one sells modules, so you still need to import everything from overseas. Luckily there are some very reliable retailers in the US and Japan so it is possible to get hold of everything that is available globally.�

One of the attractions of a modular synth is that you can start out very small, but it can quickly become an expensive hobby. Nevertheless there are Kiwi residents who are still passionate about modular systems, and those who have not taken the plunge into a manufactured modular system have found creative outlets through DIY projects varying from small noise boxes to full modular systems.

James Noble, professor at the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University in Wellington, thinks that electronic music will eventually ‘subsume all other forms of music,’ and this attitude is definitely reflected in the global market. The huge rise in popularity of modular systems globally has seen not only hundreds of boutique companies emerge but also the larger synthesizer and keyboard players who are more conservative in their ventures delve into modular systems and analogue equipment.

Moog reissued their original modular synths (with price-tags

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

varying from US$10,000 to US$150,000) along with new smaller semi-modular systems, Roland recently collaborated with a boutique company to re-issue their old line of modules, as well as issuing a new digital modular system. Korg re-issued their semi-modular MS20 synth, and even some guitar pedal companies have expanded their product lines to include effects in a modular format.

The concept of a modular synth is forever changing. Modular subtractive synths that were the ‘60s vision of the future, are now just one of many options for a modular set-up. There are dozens of different ways sound and even video can be synthesised and they can all be mixed up and criss-crossed with ease. Digital and analogue technology has become intertwined and musicians now have the ability to choose the best of both worlds for whatever sonic possibilities they desire to create.

It is only a matter of time before they become common place in a NZ electronic musician’s musical arsenal, as Scott Brown notes. “Modular synths will change the way you make music and appreciate sound, but the learning curve is steep and requires a lot of patience and experimentation.

With big companies entering the market it will be easier than ever to get your hands on an entry level setup.� "kJ7e G93G9M"`GkJMJe e "L9_5e`SjP73MSj7Y 3SOd7"kJ7I3G93G9M"`GI kJMJ 3Sgge _SlPe"L"e "L9e OUJ_95e`3Sgg,_SlPY 3SYPp "O9`e S,M9e e 9M93gJk9e 9MMSl5e `9M93gJk9n9MMSlYe ,"P73"OUY3SO

EV\Z &.

OUT ON THE STREET Gratefully farewelling David Bowie along with some local industry news, gossip, rumours and guesswork We can be heroes UÊHolly ArrowsmithÊ­ÃiiÊ < Ê Õ}É-i«ÌÊÓä£x®ÊÜ Ê Ì iÊÓä£ÈÊ iÃÌÊ Ê LÕ Ê/Õ ÊÜ Ì Ê iÀÊ> LÕ Ê¼ ÀÊ/ iÊ 7i>ÀÞÊ/À>Ûi iÀ½]Ê>ÌÊÌ iÊ ÕV > `Ê Ê iÃÌ Û> Ê i `Ê Ê Õ iÕÊ ÛiÀÊÌ iÊv ÀÃÌÊÜii i `Ê Ê iLÀÕ>ÀÞ°Ê ÊÜ >ÌÊÜ>ÃÊ > ÊÕ ÕÃÕ> Ê> à Êvi > iÊv > ]ÊÌ iÊ+Õii ÃÌ Ü À> Ãi`Ê Ã }ÜÀ ÌiÀ½ÃÊ `iLÕÌÊ Ü>ÃÊ Õ«Ê >}> ÃÌÊ > LÕ ÃÊ LÞÊ ÌÜ Ê Ì iÀÊ - ÕÌ Ê Ã > `iÀÃ]Ê À >Ê Ài i Êv Àʼ ÕÌÕ ½Ê> `Ê

Õ i` ÌiÊ >` >Ê,i `Êv ÀÊ iÀÊ> LÕ Ê¼ ÃÌi Ê/ Ê À >Ì ]Ê Ê ÀÊ/ iÊ- } ý°Ê " Ê Ì iÊ `>ÞÊ v Ü }Ê iÀÊ /Õ Ê Ü Ê ÀÀ ÜÃ Ì ÊÃ> `Ê Ê>Ê >ViL Ê« ÃÌ]ʺ vÌiÀÊ Ì ÃÊ vÊ >À`ÊÜ À Ê LÞÊÃ Ê > ÞÊ> >â }Ê «i « i]ÊÌ ÃÊ ÃÊ>Ê Õ}iÊ i V ÕÀ>}i i Ì°»Ê - iÊ ÃÊ « > }Ê v ÀÊ > Ê Õ«V }Ê Ì ÕÀÊ Ê Ì iÊ1-°Ê vÌiÀÊ>Ê« i i > ÊÞi>ÀÊÌ >ÌÊ V Õ`i`Ê>Êvi>ÌÕÀiÊÀiÛ iÜÊ Ê Ê> `ÊÀ>ÛiÊÀiÛ iÜÃÊ Ê Õ Ì « iÊ Ì iÀÊ ÌiÀ >Ì > Ê Õà VÊ «ÀiÃÃ]Ê >` >Ê ,i `Ê ­ < Ê iVÉ > Ê Óä£x®Ê >ÃÊ Lii Ê ÜÀ Ì }Ê v ÀÊ >Ê iÜÊ > LÕ ]Ê ÀiVi Ì ÞÊ > Õ V }Ê Ã i½ Ê LiÊ Ì ÕÀ }Ê Ì iÊ 1 Ê > `Ê ÕÀ «iÊ ÛiÀÊ Ì iÊ V }Ê Ì Ã°Ê iÀÊ 7 À `Ê / ÕÀÊ Óä£ÈÊ Ì> iÃÊ Ê iÌ iÀ > `Ã]Ê iÀ > ÞÊ À> Vi]Ê i } Õ ]Ê Ì> Þ]Ê-Ü ÌâiÀ > `]Ê ÀÜ>Þ]Ê 1 Ê> `Ê ÕÃÌÀ> >Ê ÛiÀÊ >ÞÉ Õ i° UÊ />ÕÀ> }>½ÃÊ Megan SidwellÊ ­ÃiiÊ < Ê iVÉ > Ê Óä£{®]ÊÜ ÊÊ >ÃÊLii Ê Û }Ê Ê i L ÕÀ iÊv ÀÊÌ iÊ >ÃÌÊ Þi>À]Ê«Õ i`Ê vvÊµÕ ÌiÊ>ÊV Õ«Ê ÊÜ }ÊÌ iÊ >ÌÌ iÊ"vÊ/ iÊ > `ÃÊV «Ê>ÌÊÌ ÃÊ > Õ>ÀÞ½ÃÊ/> Ü ÀÌ Ê Õ ÌÀÞÊ Õà VÊ iÃÌ Û> °Ê/ iÊ£ä `>ÞÊ }Ê -7ÊviÃÌ Û> Ê ÃÊv>ÀÊ> `Ê>Ü>ÞÊ Ì iÊ >À}iÃÌÊ Ê V Õ ÌÀÞÊ Õà V >`Ê ÕÃÌÀ> >]Ê Ü Ì Ê ÇääÊ >ÀÌ ÃÌÃÊ> `Ê ÀiÊÌ > ÊÓnääÊiÛi ÌÃ°Ê vÌiÀÊÌ ÀiiÊ`>ÞÃÊ vÊ i>ÌÃÊ> `ÊLi>Ì }ÊÌÜ Ê Ì iÀÊ>VÌÃÊ ÊÌ iÊv > ]Ê- `Üi Ê > `Ê iÀÊL> `Ê­ ÕÃà iÃÊ Õ iÊ ÕÀ« Þ]Ê i vvÊ7À } ÌÊ> `Ê -ÌiÛiÊ ÃLiÀÃ®Ê } ÌÊ Ì iÊ «« ÀÌÕ ÌÞÊ Ì Ê « >ÞÊ Ê Ì iÊ viÃÌ Û> ½ÃÊ > ÊÃÌ>}iÊ ÊÌ iÊV à }ÊViÀi ÞÊ­Li Ü®°Ê / iÞÊ > Ã Ê Ü Ê >Ê V>Ã Ê «À âiÊ vÊ f£äää]Ê V ÛiÀ>}iÊ Ê Û>À ÕÃÊ ÕÃÌÀ> > Ê «ÕL V>Ì ÃÊ > `Ê }Õ>À> Ìii`Ê Ã ÜÃÊ >ÌÊ/> Ü ÀÌ Ê iÝÌÊÞi>À°Ê Ê Õ i]Ê- `Üi ÊÜ>ÃÊÌ iÊV ÛiÀÊ

EV\Z '%

vi>ÌÕÀiÊ>ÀÌ ÃÌÊ vÊ+Õii à > `½ÃÊ â vi >}]Êà ÊÌ }ÃÊ>ÀiÊ }Ê«ÀiÌÌÞÊ} `Êv ÀÊ iÀÊ>VÀ ÃÃÊÌ iÊ` ÌV °

Planet Earth is blue UÊ ÌÊ >ÃÊ vÊ V ÕÀÃiÊ Lii Ê >Ê ÌÀ>} VÊ «iÀ `Ê v ÀÊ Ì iÊ } L> Ê Õà VÊ `ÕÃÌÀÞÊ Ê ÌiÀ ÃÊ vÊ Ì iÊ `i>Ì ÃÊ vÊ Ã iÊ vÊ Ì iÊ }Ài>ÌiÃÌÊ i}i `ÃÊ vÊ « «Ê > `Ê À V ]Ê ÃÌÊ ÀiVi Ì ÞÊ > `Ê Ì>L ÞÊ >Û `Ê Ü iÊ> `Ê i ÞÊ­ ÃÌiÀ®°Ê7iÊ >ÛiÊ > Ã Ê ÀiVi Ì ÞÊ ÃÌÊ >Ê V Õ« iÊ vÊ « iiÀ }Ê V> Ê Õà VÊ `ÕÃÌÀÞÊ « >ÞiÀÃ°Ê `Ê > É«À `ÕViÀÉ Õà VÊ /6Ê `À ÛiÀÊ Dale WrightsonÊ` i`Ê Ê >ÌiÊ > Õ>ÀÞ]Ê>}i`ÊÇä]Ê>vÌiÀÊ>Ê ÌÜ Þi>ÀÊL>ÌÌ iÊÜ Ì Ê iÃÃ°Ê Ê ÃÊi>À iÀÊ`>ÞÃÊ7À } ÌÃ Ê «À `ÕVi`Ê - >Ê > }½ÃÊ >Ü>À`Ê Ü }Ê ¼7 ëiÀ }Ê vÀ> `½Ê > LÕ °Ê iÊ Ü>ÃÊ > Ã Ê i « Þi`Ê LÞÊ * }À> Ê > `Ê -]Ê Liv ÀiÊ v ÀÃÌÊ iÃÌ>L à }Ê Ì iÊ Ã ÀÌ Ûi`Ê >ÝÊ /6Ê> `ÊÌ i Ê Õ ViÊ/6Ê Ê£ {°Ê > iÊ7À } Ìà Ê> `Ê ÃÊ v> ÞÊ«À Û `i`Ê> Êi À ÕÃÊÀ> }iÊ vÊ «« ÀÌÕ Ì iÃÊ> `Ê iÝ« ÃÕÀiÊv ÀÊ > ÞÊÜ Ì ÊÌ iÊ V> Ê Õà VÊÃiVÌ À° UÊ À iÀÊ *, Ê Ê Bernie DarbyÊ «>ÃÃi`Ê >Ü>ÞÊ Ê 7i }Ì Ê Ê iLÀÕ>ÀÞÊ Ç°Ê >ÀLÞÊ > >}i`Ê *, ½ÃÊ <Ê «iÀ>Ì Ê`ÕÀ }ÊÌ iÊ£ nä½ÃÊ> `Êi>À Þʽ äÃ]ÊÕ Ì ÊÌ iÊ À}> Ã>Ì ½ÃÊ vv ViÊÜ>ÃÊ Ûi`ÊÌ Ê ÕV > `°Ê Ê >ÜÞiÀÊ LÞÊ«À viÃà ]Ê iÊÜ>ÃÊ Ìi}À> ÞÊ Û Ûi`Ê ÊiÃÌ>L à }Ê Ì iÊ i}>VÞÊ vÊÌ iÊ *, Ê- ÛiÀÊ-VÀ Ê Ü>À`ÃÊqÊ ÃÌ }Ê Ì iÊv ÀÃÌÊViÀi ÞÊ> `ÊVÀi>Ì }ÊÌ iÊÌÀ « ÞÊÌ >ÌÊ ÃÊÃÌ Ê «>ÃÃi`ÊvÀ ÊÜ iÀÊÌ ÊÜ iÀ° UÊ ÕV > ` L>Ãi`Ê Õ `iÀ}À Õ `Ê }Õ Ì>À ÃÌÊ Roddy Pain ­ ÃÌ> ÌÊ*> ]Ê- >««iÀ]Ê-Õ«iÀV>À]Ê Û ]Ê À Ì iÀÊ Ûi®Ê Ã>` ÞÊ «>ÃÃi`Ê >Ü>ÞÊ Ê i>À ÞÊ iLÀÕ>ÀÞ]Ê ÃÊ `i>Ì Ê v Üi`ÊLÞÊÌ iÊ` } Ì> ÊÀi i>ÃiÊ vÊ>Ê«ÀiÛ Õà ÞÊÕ Ài i>Ãi`Ê

ÃÌ> ÌÊ*> Ê> LÕ ÊÛ >Ê- Õ `V Õ`° UÊ ÊVÀ Ü`ÊvÕ ` }ÊV> «> } Ê ÃÊÕ `iÀÜ>ÞÊv ÀÊÌ iÊÀi i>ÃiÊ vÊ> ÊÕ v à i`Ê> LÕ ÊLÞÊv À iÀÊ i Ê-> ÀÊvÀ Ì > Ê Graham Brazier°Ê À>â iÀÊ Ü>ÃÊ Ü À }Ê Ê Ì iÊ > LÕ Ê v ÀÊ ÌÜ Ê Þi>ÀÃÊ Liv ÀiÊ iÊ ivÌÊ ÕÃÊ >ÃÌÊ -i«Ìi LiÀ°Ê / Ì i`Ê ¼ ivÌÊ /ÕÀ Ê ÌÊ ` } ̽]Ê À>â iÀÊ >`Ê > `Ê ` Ü Ê Ì iÊ > LÕ ÊÌÀ>V ÃÊÜ Ì Ê > Ê > Ãà Ê>ÌÊ ÃÊ1«Ì Ü Ê-ÌÕ` ÃÊ Ê ÕV > `]ÊLÕÌÊfÓä]äääÊ ÃÊLi }Êà Õ} ÌÊÌ ÊV « iÌiÊ Ì iÊÀiV À` }]Ê Ý]Ê >ÃÌiÀÊ> `Ê > Õv>VÌÕÀiÊÌ iÊ> LÕ ]Ê > `Ê> à ʫÀ `ÕViÊ>ÊÛ `i ÊvÀ Ê>ÀV Û> Êv Ì>}i°Ê Þ iÊ Ü> Ì }Ê Ì Ê V ÌÀ LÕÌiÊ V> Ê v `Ê Ì iÊ vÕ ` }Ê «>}iÊ >ÌÊÊ ÜÜÜ° ` i} } °V É«À iVÌÃÉ}À> > LÀ>â iÀ ivÌ ÌÕÀ >Ì ` } Ì > LÕ ÉÊ UÊ 7 iÊ Þ ÕÊ >ÀiÊ ÃÌ V }Ê Þ ÕÀÊ > `ÃÊ Ê Ì ÃiÊ `ii«Ê « V iÌÃ]Êë>ÀiÊ>ÊÌ Õ} ÌÊv ÀÊ« ÀÊ ½ÊKanye West,ÊÜ Ê >ÃÊ Lii Ê v ÀVi`Ê Ì Ê } Ê V>«Ê Ê iÊ > `Ê Ì Ê >ViL Ê v Õ `iÀÊ >À Ê<ÕV iÀLiÀ}Ê> `ÊÌ iÊiµÕ> ÞÊÃÌÀ>««i`Ê } iÊ V v Õ `iÀÊ >ÀÀÞÊ *>}iÊ v ÀÊ v > V > Ê i «]Ê >vÌiÀÊ ÀiÛi> }Ê iÊ ÃÊ ÀiÊfÈäÊ Ê Ê`iLÌ°Ê iÛiÀÊ `ÊÃ>Û }Ê ÕÀÊ Li>V iÃ]Ê>ÃÊ Õà V > ÃÊ i̽ÃÊ> Ê}iÌÊLi `Ê > ÞiÊÜ Ê Ã]Ê >vÌiÀÊ> ]ÊÜ Ì ÕÌÊ` ÕLÌÊºÌ ÃÊ}i iÀ>Ì ½ÃÊ Ã iÞ»ÊLÕÌ]Ê>ÃÊ iÊ >ÃÊLii Êv ÀVi`ÊÌ Ê>` Ì]Ê ÕÃÌÊ` ià ½ÌÊ >ÛiÊi Õ} Ê Àià ÕÀViÃÊÌ ÊVÀi>ÌiÊÜ >ÌÊ iÊÀi> ÞÊV> o

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

UÊ >ÃÌiÀÌ Ê Ûi ÕiÊ King Street LiveÊ >ÃÊ LiV iÊ > Ì iÀÊÀiVi ÌÊV>ÃÕ> ÌÞÊ vÊÌ iÃiÊÌ Õ} ÊiV VÊÌ iÃ]Ê > Õ V }Ê ÌÃÊ ` ÀÃÊ Ü Ê V ÃiÊ v ÀÊ Ì iÊ v > Ê Ì iÊ Ê iLÀÕ>ÀÞÊ ÓÇ°Ê }Ê -ÌÀiiÌÊ ÛiÊ ÃÊ «>ÀÌ Ü i`Ê LÞÊ V> Ê Õà V> Ê iÀ Ê 7>ÀÀi Ê >ÝÜi ]Ê > `Ê µÕ V ÞÊ LiV> iÊ >Ê « «Õ >ÀÊ«iÀv À > ViÊ «Ì Ê ÊÌ iÊ7> À>À>«>ÊÀi} °ÊÊ Ê ÃÌ>Ìi i ÌÊ ÊÌ iÊÛi Õi½ÃÊ >ViL Ê«>}iÊÌ > i`ÊÌ iÊ V Õ ÌÞÊv ÀÊ ÌÃÊÃÕ«« ÀÌÊ ÛiÀÊÌ iÊ >ÃÌÊÌ ÀiiÊÞi>ÀÃ]ÊLÕÌÊ Ã> `Ê Ì iÊ LÕà iÃÃÊ >`Ê LiV iÊ v > V > ÞÊÕ ÃÕÃÌ> >L i°Ê UÊ ÌÊ Ãii ÃÊ Ì }ÃÊ >ÀiÊ Ê iÃÃÊ L i> Ê ÊÌ iÊ ÛiÊvÀ ÌÊvÕÀÌ iÀÊÕ«Ê Ì iÊ V Õ ÌÀÞ°Ê ÕV > `Ê ÃÊ ÃiÌÊ Ì Ê ÃiÊ iÊ ÌÃÊ viÜÊ V ÌÞ Vi ÌÀiÊ ÛiÊ «iÀv À > ViÊ «Ì ÃÊ Ü Ì Ê iÜ >À i̽ÃÊ Lucha Lounge > Õ V }Ê ÌÊÜ ÊV ÃiÊ Ê >Þ°Ê UÊ-«i> }Ê vÊ ÃÃ]Ê iLÀÕ>ÀÞÊÓ Ê >ÃÊv ÀÊà iÊ Ì ÃÊ ÜÊLii Êv >}}i`Ê>ÃÊÌ iÊ >ÃÌÊ`>ÞÊ ÊÌ iÊ vv ViÊv ÀÊ <Ê" Ê À½ÃÊ }ÊÃiÀÛ }Ê <Ê Õà VÊ > >}iÀÊBrendan Smyth°Ê Ê vÊÕÃÊ Û Ûi`ÊÜ Ì Ê <Ê Õà V > Ê ÛiÀÊ ÃÊÌ iÊ ÊÌ >ÌÊ À iÊÜ Õ `Ê iÊÌ ÊÌ> iÊÌ ÃÊ >ÃÌÊ «« ÀÌÕ ÌÞÊÌ ÊÌ > Ê> `Ê L `Êv>ÀiÜi ÊÌ Ê Ài `> °Ê >Û `Ê, ` iÀÊÜ ÊÌ> iÊÌ iÊ i Ê vÀ ÊÌ iÊLi} }Ê vÊ >ÀV ° UÊ / iÊ <Ê Õà VÊ ÃÃ Ê > Ã Ê ÃÌÊ ÌÃÊ } Ì iÊ

ÌiÀ >Ì > Ê > >}iÀÊ Ü Ì Ê Ì iÊ Àià } >Ì Ê vÊ Gary FortuneÊ Ê iLÀÕ>ÀÞ°Ê ÀÌÕ iÊ >`Ê i`ÊÌ iÊ < ½ÃÊ ÌiÀ >Ì > Ê Õà VÊ >À iÌÊ `iÛi « i ÌÊ ÃV i iÊ "ÕÌÜ>À`Ê - Õ `Ê Ã ViÊ ÌÃÊ Vi«Ì Ê >Ê `iV>`iÊ >} ]Ê V Õ` }Ê V À` >Ì Ê vÊ <Ê`i i}>Ì ÃÊ>ÌÊ> ÊÌ iÊÜ À `¼ÃÊ > ÀÊ Õà VÊÌÀ>`iÊà ÜÃÊ V Õ` }Ê ]Ê-8-7]Ê ]Ê/ iÊ Ài>ÌÊ ÃV>«iÊ ÊÌ iÊ1 ]Ê> `ÊÜ À `Ê Õà VÊiÛi ÌÃÊÃÕV Ê>ÃÊ 7" 8Ê Ê ÕÀ «iÊ> `Ê ÕÃÌÀ> >½ÃÊ 7 °Ê ÃÊ>V iÛi i ÌÃÊ Ê Ì iÃiÊ >Ài>ÃÊ ÜiÀiÊ ÀiV } Ãi`Ê Ü i Ê "ÕÌÜ>À`Ê - Õ `ÊÜ Ê iÃÌÊ Ý« ÀÌÊ"vv ViÊ>ÌÊÌ iÊ À Ì Ã Ê9i>À ÞÊ Õà VÊ

viÀi ViÊ Ü>À`ÃÊ ÊÓä£{°Ê º Ê >ÛiÊ iÌÊ Ã iÊ > >â }Ê «i « i]Ê Ü À i`Ê Ü Ì Ê Ã iÊ vÊ iÜÊ <i> > `½ÃÊ ÃÌÊ Ì> i Ìi`Ê >ÀÌ ÃÌÃÊ > `Ê > >}iÀÃ°Ê ½ÛiÊ i`Ê >vÌiÀÊ Ì iÊ "ÕÌÜ>À`Ê

Sound program like it was my own and have seen it through many changes, growth and challenges. But, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to move on,â&#x20AC;? Fortune said. Alan Holt, who was formerly the Export Co-ordinator has been announced as the NZMCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new International Manager.

UĂ&#x160;Emma Smith has announced that she is leaving Radio NZ National, after seven years with the broadcaster.

After getting a start behind the desk at Dunedinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Radio One, Smith has most recently been a producer and presenter of RNZâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Music 101 show.

That werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t no DJ UĂ&#x160; *>Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;VÂ&#x2C6;ÂŤ>Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; Â&#x2026;>Ă&#x203A;iĂ&#x160; LiiÂ&#x2DC;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x2DC;Â&#x2DC;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;Vi`Ă&#x160; vÂ&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160; SongHubs AucklandĂ&#x160;Ă&#x201C;ä£Ă&#x2C6;]Ă&#x160;LiÂ&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;}Ă&#x160;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x152;>}i`Ă&#x160;LĂ&#x17E;Ă&#x160; *, Ă&#x160; "-Ă&#x160;>Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160; <Ă&#x160; On Air, in association with Auckland Council, Recorded Music NZ, the NZMC and the Federal Government of Australia. The broadly backed SongHubs initiative will bring three leading songwriters to Auckland and team them up with some of our own home-grown talent for five days of intensive songwriting. The NZ and Australian songwriter participants were hand-picked by curator and now Auckland domiciled ex-pat Welsh producer Greg Haver. Local songwriters included are Anna Coddington, Campbell, Ciaran McMeeken, Louis >Â&#x17D;iĂ&#x20AC;]Ă&#x160; >>Â?>]Ă&#x160; >Ă&#x152;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x153;Ă&#x160; 9Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;}]Ă&#x160; iÂ?Ă&#x160; *>Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x192;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160; Sahara Skye. The visiting songwriters are: MoZella (Madonna, Miley Cirus, One Direction, Ellie Goulding, Rihanna); Sacha Skarbeck (Miley Cyrus, Adele, James Blunt, Lana Del Rey, Backstreet Boys); and Lindy Robbins (Jason Derulo, David Guetta, Selena Gomez, Westlife). SongHubs will take place at Roundhead Studios between February 22 - 26.

UĂ&#x160; Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160; Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x17E;Ă&#x160; ÂŤĂ&#x20AC;Â&#x153;viĂ&#x192;Ă&#x192;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;>Â?Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; Ă&#x153;Â&#x2C6;Â?Â?Ă&#x160; VÂ&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x203A;iĂ&#x20AC;}iĂ&#x160; Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160; Wanaka May 14-15 to share their experiences and advice on how to make it in the industry, both financially and musically. YAMI, which stands for Youth and Adults in the Music Industry, is a weekend of workshops, seminars and showcases. The 2015 summit attracted over 100 participants, aged 10 to 68 years and Summit founder / director Lynne Christie says they are ecstatic with the calibre of tutors already confirmed for the May event. They include Laughton Kora, Jon Toogood, Anika Moa, Julia Deans, Barnaby Weir, Devin Abrams, Ruby Frost, MC Tali, and Sam Flynn Scott, with more tutors and speakers to be announced.

UĂ&#x160;+Ă&#x2022;iiÂ&#x2DC;½Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;`>Ă&#x17E;Ă&#x160;7iiÂ&#x17D;iÂ&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160;Ă&#x153;Â&#x2C6;Â?Â?Ă&#x160;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x20AC;>Â?`Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;>Ă&#x2022;}Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x20AC;>Â?Ă&#x160; Mercury Bay Music Festival, a mix of musical genres and styles including the likes of Caitlin Smith, Don McGlashan, Hamilton County Blue Grass Band and Brass Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;*Â&#x153;VÂ&#x17D;iĂ&#x152;°Ă&#x160;Ă&#x201C;xĂ&#x160;>VĂ&#x152;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160;Â&#x2026;>Ă&#x203A;iĂ&#x160;LiiÂ&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;VÂ&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x20AC;>VĂ&#x152;i`Ă&#x160;vÂ&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160;iĂ&#x203A;iÂ&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160; in Whitianga with up to 10 workshops planned over the weekend, including a guitar masterclass with Richard Gilewitz and a ukulele class with The Nukes.

UĂ&#x160; /Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160; Audio Foundation have announced that their 2016 artists in residence will be prolific recording artist Campbell Kneale, and Fantasing, a collective of iÂ&#x201C;Â&#x201C;>Ă&#x160; -Ă&#x17E;Â&#x201C;i]Ă&#x160; iÂ&#x17D;Ă&#x160; Â&#x153;Â&#x153;}>Â&#x2DC;]Ă&#x160; ->Ă&#x20AC;>Â&#x2026;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x2DC;iĂ&#x160; *>Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160; Claire Harris.

Take a look at the lawmanâ&#x20AC;Ś UĂ&#x160;7Â&#x2C6;`iÂ?Ă&#x17E;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x20AC;iVÂ&#x153;}Â&#x2DC;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x192;i`Ă&#x160;vÂ&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;Â&#x2026;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;ÂŤĂ&#x20AC;i`Â&#x2C6;VĂ&#x152;>LÂ?iĂ&#x160;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x152;>}iĂ&#x160;>Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;VĂ&#x192;]Ă&#x160; Kody Nielson (aka Silicon), was kicked off the remaining Australian Laneway tour following an incident on stage in Adelaide, where he reportedly kissed a ÂŤÂ&#x153;Â?Â&#x2C6;ViÂ&#x201C;>Â&#x2DC;½Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160;}Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;°Ă&#x160;*Â&#x153;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;}Ă&#x160;>LÂ&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;VÂ&#x2C6;`iÂ&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;/Ă&#x153;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x152;iĂ&#x20AC;]Ă&#x160; Nielson says he was (as he regularly does) performing part of the set from the audience, and began dancing with six armed police officers. It was then that he kissed an officerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gun. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I just got kicked out of Laneway and fined for kissing a copâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s gun during our set. Your guns >Ă&#x20AC;iĂ&#x160;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x192;iÂ?iĂ&#x192;Ă&#x192;°Ă&#x160;*i>VitÂťĂ&#x160; Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160;}iĂ&#x152;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x153;Â&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x192;iĂ&#x160;>Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; Â&#x2C6;iÂ?Ă&#x192;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x153;>Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160;vÂ&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;i`Ă&#x160; A$560 by the police. He had plenty to say online about the Laneway organisersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; reluctance to have his back at the time, or indeed, have him talk publicly about the incident.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

UĂ&#x160; /Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160; Ă&#x201C;ä£Ă&#x2C6;Ă&#x160; i`Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160; of the NZ Music Services Directory is now available. The annual print/online directory includes categories from artist management to record mastering, instrument repair and music i`Ă&#x2022;V>Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;°Ă&#x160; *Ă&#x2022;LÂ?Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x192;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x20AC;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x160; Southern Exposure say the helpful directoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest edition has been further embellished with the addition of new sections covering music photographers, published books about NZ music and a very handy guide of how to get in touch with the independent student-based radio stations nationwide.

EV\Z '&

Doprah

Psychedelic enclave

Doprah first appeared on the radar in early 2013, when then-Christchurch resident Stephen John Marr, previously known for indie rock, shoegaze outfit Ipswich, released single, Love That I Need, in collaboration with west Auckland vocalist and songwriter Indira Force. Student radio instantly got on board with their brand of psychedelic trip hop and the following year was a great one for the band. Doprah showcased their sound at the 2014 CMJ Music Festival in New York, finding plenty of interest in a trip cut short due to financial shortfalls. Billboard’s Next Big Sound column introduced them as one of the “fastest accelerating artist across all major social music sites during the previous week, statistically predicted to achieve future success.” Nice. In mid-February 2016, one chapter of their story thus far concluded with the digital and vinyl release of the debut Doprah album ‘Wasting’. Indi talked with Silke Hartung about the challenges of releasing an album with international expectations.

O

ver the notoriously quiet NZ summer break Dopra’s Indi (Indira Force), had a bit of a freak out moment.

“I realised everyone was on holiday and not working. We’re going to release our album soon, we need to get our shit together!”

Doprah is Indi on vocals and synths, Stephen Marr (engineer, producer, vocals), Hunter Jackson on guitar, Symon Palmer on bass, drummer Ryan Chin and Matt Gunn as the band’s ‘everything man’ – meaning samplers, drums, percussion and voice manipulation.

The foundation for the band’s sound was set by Marr with their 2014 self-titled debut EP. With the band attuned to his vision, Dopra has since become more of a band where everybody can try out their own ideas.

The more they played live, Indi says, the more of a feeling each got for the music they were creating.

“It used to be just Stephen, but we all contributed a lot to the album,” says Indi. “Now it’s almost like, ‘I can write something the way Stephen would write it.’”

Mostly though it is Marr and Indi coming up with the initial ideas.

Being a songwrtiter/composer in her own right, she finds being in a band helpful to fill in for her own weak points in the process.

“Usually I’ve got the chord progression, I’ve got the vocals for it and the

EV\Z '' EV\Z ''

arrangement, but I’m not really sure about the drums. Ryan and Stephen are really good at collaborating on the drums now,” she smiles.

“There’s so much music with minimalist electronica with a crooning voice over it. It’s trending right now and it’s so boring! Stephen’s production is not what I’m hearing in all of that stuff. At the end of one of the songs, Subaeruginusa, I kept pushing him for the drums to be even more crazy. I wanted it to sound really randomised, I didn’t want anything to be the same in that particular part, and he wrote something intricate and dense, so delicious to listen to! I just want a sound that’s quantised but organic. Something that sounds like it was written by a human, programmed on a computer, if that makes sense. That is what most music is, but unfortunately I feel like computerised sound is so deeply ingrained now that everything sounds too clean.”

For parts of the recording they had drummer Ryan Chin play along to the electronic drums, combining human and machine sounds for a more organic result.

“A lot of people who have listened to it before the release have said that it’s very different from what they’ve heard that’s out at the moment.

They seem so taken by surprise by it. It does things sonically that haven’t been done for a long time.”

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

Recorded between bedrooms and The Sitting Room in Lyttelton, ‘Wasting’ ticks boxes that place it well within the realm of trip hop, with its breakbeats and prominent bass lines, its shimmering samples and synths, its melancholic darkness – and with Indi’s voice emulating the range and vulnerability of Bjork or the Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser, more than the hypnotically seductive voices of Beth Gibbons or Alison Goldfrapp.

“The songs on the EP were actually meant to be songs on an album we were going to release, but we were told it would be wise to release an EP first. Stephen already had the idea in his mind that he was going to do an album – it was going to be called ‘Wasting’ – and that it was going to be half electronic and half live instruments.”

It’s really only been a few years together, but things have moved quickly for Doprah,especially in terms of their international aspirations.

Playing at New York’s CMJ in late 2014 led to various international label discussions and nearly-signings in the following year. Delayed decisions built on other delays, and as the ‘band’ developed and it wasn’t just Marr writing things got more convoluted, complicated by the arrival of new songs.

“A lot of the songs are dark – not like we were ever a light bubbly band,” Indi cracks up.

“The whole feeling of it has actually become quite dark because we ended up writing a lot during that waiting period and we were feeling… there was a lot of suspense and a lot of waiting for people to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a lot of things. It doesn’t even feel like a first album, because the first album would have been the songs we wrote in that first year.”

On one occasion the band was asked to write mainstream up-tempo radio hits. Indi turns from bubbly to slightly sarcastic in a beat, explaining they would have loved to oblige, but simply aren’t that kind of band that do radio hits. They’re not a pop band. They did try, though, she admits, laughing as she recalls.

“We did an experiment to at least try to write something of a certain tempo. One of those songs was Zi that came out as a b-side, but we’ve both not been feeling good about it. It was at a point where we just exhausted everything, we just wanted to release the album, and not write.”

Two songs from their self-titled 2014 EP appear on the album, though Indi stresses that the remixed songs didn’t end up on ‘Wasting’ for any reason other than the band wanting them on it – not, say, giving in to any kind of pressure from above. She says prefers albums that are unpredictable with different tones to the songs, and that’s what those older songs bring.

“We’re now in our early 20s, but I was 19 when I joined the band. We all grew a lot over the last few years and the album reflects that. I’m really attached to San Pedro. A lot of us weren’t sure about adding Stranger People,

because it has already been quite overplayed here in NZ, but internationally not many people have heard the EP. It felt like the album needed the songs to embrace the eclectic nature of the songs and show a growth that happened. I also think they work really well with the overall tone. “ Each band member ended up choosing a dozen out of 20 songs they had, sending the choices to their New York-based manager Michael (Mikey) Sherman.

“We could have easily argued about the track list for ever and ever, but this was an easy way to have a perfect balance of what everyone wants. I’m really pleased with it!”

Sherman, who owns This Charming

what we do. We don’t want to compromise that, and refuse to do backing tracks. The hardest part was being told that maybe, possibly all these amazing things could happen for you, and then it not happening. Being let down repeatedly, and not because of our skill, or because of how great we are as band, but more about circumstantial things, really small things.”

“You know it’s not about whether or not you’re good, [but] it’s still a blow and everyone in the band reacts differently to that kind of rejection.You all have to navigate how everyone else is feeling. For me, when we receive that kind of feedback, I’ll just go, ‘Okay, we just have to work so hard that no one can refuse us and

“The funny thing is, I realised that you don’t really necessarily need a label to validate whether or not you’re good.“ – Indi

Management, seems as much a well-connected friend and mentor as manager. He helped organise their CMJ trip, introducing them to numerous contacts while there, and is evidently prepared to take a punt with this quirky group from down under. Indi says that a lot of people working with them at the moment know the band don’t have the money to pay.

“They have the faith that we will do really well in the future so they are sticking with us, which I think is really amazing, and we’re so glad to have them on board. We don’t actually have a manager in NZ. We do a lot of those duties, which is not too bad because NZ is pretty small.

Stephen is really great at organising tours, I do a lot of the interviews.”

Finishing the album clearly was a difficult process, with a lot of second guessing and revision.

“The biggest difficulty was that we weren’t where all the people that are interested in us were. A lot of those people were in the US, and we weren’t able to communicate with them on a daily basis about certain things – I think that was a really big problem, because there was a lot of interest in us after we did CMJ. We simply weren’t able to be there and be around and have those meetings.”

Skype meetings were had but it was difficult, leaving the band feeling isolated, any negotiations with overseas labels further complicated by the cost of taking a six-piece band out of NZ to the rest of the world.

“The live band is just such a strong part of

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+ COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

that we are so super awesome!’, but some of the others can be really down about it.

“The funny thing is, I realised that you don’t really necessarily need a label to validate whether or not you’re good.“ ‘Wasting’ won’t be released on CD, only online and on vinyl, and once it’s out the plan is to head overseas. The scale of any album touring will somewhat rely on a pending Outward Sound grant application. Best case scenario, the band will tour the west coast of the States, as well as Europe and the UK. “We saw our statistics on Spotify, and most of the people who are streaming our music are from the UK, which is interesting. Our kind of music seems to appeal to people in England most. We can do a DIY tour easily, so we’ll definitely do Australia, no matter what. It’s music, it shouldn’t be about the money, but unfortunately it is.”

The album will be distributed in the UK and US by Secretly Canadian, who look after a lot of labels including Jag Jaguwar.

“They’re great indie people who we’ve been talking to for a while. I want this to be big, because I just spent three years of my life with it. I did make that clear in my emails, that this is a lot of work. It’s been a very massive fight that we’ve had to do, and I’m really happy what we have here, the product, and we’ve got some amazing videos coming.”

7SU_"GY,"P73"OUY3SO

EV\Z '( EV\Z '(

CVJMEJOH CMPDLT with Thomas Goss

Status in the Scene Part 3: Touring Bands

I

t all started very casually for Band X. They got well-established in the local scene, and before long got to play other towns and cities in the region.

When some big acts came to town, Band X opened for them – and that was tough, because the audiences for those acts weren’t always kind or patient. As popular as Band X was for a certain local crowd, there was a whole other mass audience for whom they’d never played.

To survive for 45 minutes, they had to up their game considerably, learning lessons in professionalism and stage presence by watching the main acts finish off the evening.

Maybe Band X won the crowd over on one or two nights. Maybe on one of those nights, a touring agent was watching, and saw the potential of these local heroes. Maybe the band reached out to the right people due to their building list of contacts. One way or another, a call was made, a contract was signed, and they found themselves on a national tour opening for a top act.

The price of success That tour changed everything. One member quit, realising he wouldn’t survive long on any future tours. (He went on to form his own band, and stayed popular locally for quite a while.)

Band X found a replacement and carried on, but the local scene wasn’t the same for them.

They could no longer play fortnightly at their old haunts.

The members of Band X were pretty wise and humble people. They’d witnessed the experience of another local act, Band Y, that had started to hit it big. Band Y’s lead singer had taken their burgeoning success and played it to the hilt, acting like the big man around town and generally making a complete ass of himself at every opportunity. Band Y had ended up going nowhere.

Band X didn’t want to finish their careers the same way. But what were their choices at that point? Hopefully, they’d been thinking about this realistically for some time – and so should you if your band is becoming established in your own local scene. There are some good resources for touring bands, like A Low Hum, which address the unique situation here in NZ. I won’t even try to match anything they offer in this article. Instead, I’ll keep the focus on this Building Blocks miniseries theme: Status in the Scene. How does touring change a band’s status in their local scene, and what are some challenges that they may face?

Leadership Having had a taste of the big leagues, Band X was humble enough to know that despite their local fame they were still very small fish in a big ocean. The experience also gave them a unique

EV\Z ')

perspective back in their home town. They realised the difference between petty concerns and professionalism. The simple act of putting that knowledge to work automatically elevated them in everyone’s eyes, all reputation aside.

While others might waste endless amount of time during soundcheck, Band X took very little time once their gear was set up and miked.

Once their set started the audience would get completely swept up by their music. They’d make that well-worn old club into a magical place for an hour or two.

Payback time That leadership came at a price – people tried to make a bigger deal over them than was really appropriate or comfortable.Remembering the lessons of Band Y’s failure, Band X avoided buying into their image. They still had to deal with very careful choices when gigging locally.

It wasn’t like the old days, when they could play frequently at different venues. The stakes were too high, whatever decision they made could affect everything else in the scene.

If it wasn’t ego-stroking on the one hand, it was politics on the other. Everyone wanted a piece of their success. The band had to make some hard choices about how to structure their local activities, including where to appear, who to have as openers, and what dates to gig.

When they could manage it, they would pay back favours to those who’d helped them make it to their current level of success – making an appearance on a radio show, passing along a recommendation, or even playing an exclusive gig at a small club where they’d got an early break.

These gestures were also payback to the scene itself, and all the fans who’d supported them.

Breakout band in the global scene Band X thought that things would start to make sense once they were a touring band. Instead, it was like starting over in their hometown scene, where every new town was like breaking into a new club. The word-of-mouth that had helped them at home now became internet chat and user groups.

The careful cultivation of different groups of local fans was elevated to finding a place for their style within different national and then international audiences.

Back in the old days, which band they opened for made a huge difference in winning new listeners – and that still was true. They even turned down an offer to tour as openers for a major act, because their style was just too different – and they didn’t want to deal with night after night of boos. Winning their way to the top of this new global scene would take every bit of the smarts they’d developed as a breakout band long ago, plus learning a whole new set of survival strategies. And

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

even if they did finally make it to the status of ‘internationally established act’ there were no guarantees that they’d be able to hold onto that success for longer than a few years.

Holding on to your roots Band X wanted to keep their home town as a base, and tour from there. Their local gigs became fewer and larger. Pubs and clubs became too small to hold the capacity audience, but they still missed the intimacy of those club gigs, when they could really feel in close touch with their audience. Sometimes, they’d show up unannounced at a gig and really light the place up. One time they gigged incognito at a folk club, playing acoustic comedy-folk spoofs of their biggest hits. But they couldn’t pull these jokes very often, because they were just too damn busy all the time.

Eventually they reached a compromise.

Every summer they hosted a free all-day concert at the big soundshell in the park, and invited friends to open for them. It was a great gig – families with small children could come and picnic, and the band members could just hang out with everyone. Their set could be as long as they needed it to be, and they could really get in touch personally with all the people they knew out there. Someday, when that big global scene no longer had a place for them, this little miniature world would still be listening, ready to welcome them back.

Defining success Band X is a compilation of different acts I’ve worked with or followed over the years.

But a little bit of their story resonates in every act that’s eventually reached an international audience. The major lesson to take away here is that whatever your status in the scene, music remains one of the most difficult professions.

‘Success’ means different things to different people, and those who achieve one definition of success may be working just as hard as those who haven’t – and feel just as uncertain about their future. But one definition of success can’t be taken away from you, if you’re just willing to honour it – the satisfaction of playing a good gig for an appreciative audience. If you can focus on that one sense of accomplishment, any status you have within any gig in any scene will have meaning.

Thomas Goss is a producer, band coach, and composer/orchestrator with an international clientele that includes Billy Ocean, Melanie C, and Canadian jazz star Nikki Yanofsky. He is Education Composer-In-Residence for Orchestra Wellington, and his online orchestration course is available from macProVideo.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z '*

Night Gaunts

With their flaming, high energy cocktail of sing-a-long punk, pop, ska, reggae and hip hop, Night Gaunts might just be Auckland’s best-kept secret. The five-piece have just self-released a gloriously pink-sleeved album called ‘Conversations With Creation’. Sammy Jay Dawson caught up with frontman/producer/ chief dreamer Paul Jonassen.

So Not Afraid N

o doubt with energy to burn themselves, fans of Night Gaunts will have been hanging out for an album follow up to the band’s statement 2012 EP, ‘Love, Life & The Devil’.

Three years in the making, ‘Conversations With Creation’ does come after a split EP with Texan folk punk band Days N’ Daze, with whom Night Gaunts completed a gruelling eight week, 42-date, second tour of the United States late last year.

“It was overwhelming man!” admits frontman Paul Jonassen of their U.S. tour.

“We sold out pretty much every venue we played. I think the biggest venue we played was 800 people, and to see half the crowd singing along to our songs was just incredible. Every show

EV\Z '+ EV\Z '+

was just packed rooms. We were incredibly lucky to be able to do it – it’s been our dream since we first formed this band.”

Originally taking shape as a side project to Jonassen and bassist Hayden Pye’s band Timesplitters, the first Night Gaunts’ recording ‘Full Body Tourettes [Pt 1]’ started its life as a demo he recorded for kicks on his home computer. After being championed by various bloggers the two track recording, released June 2010, found a wide audience – most surprisingly to Jonassen and Pye themselves.

“At that point we weren’t even a band,” Jonassen laughs. “We were just two dudes and a laptop. We just programmed some drums and recorded it. I guess it was an attempt to combine the kind of ska, reggae, rap and skate

punk that we grew up with as teenagers.”

After watching a live performance DVD of Florida ska punk act Less Than Jake the decision was made to form a live band – with the dream to some day tour the world. Jonassen’s brother Simon was bought in on drums, while he moved to guitar and vocals.

The Night Gaunts’ line up would be completed with John Faulding on keys and Jacob O’Brien on sax.

A year and a half after their first installment, the band’s first album, ‘Full Body Tourettes [Pt II]’ was released.

“The sounds just hugely developed once we started playing live, I wish that we could re-do the album as we play it now. It’s so much more fun to have the songs and tempos developed more by our live

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

energy. When you’re writing alone in your room you might have the tempo a bit slower, or a bit faster than it should be, but won’t realise it until you’re in the practice space.

Jamming with the band changed the songs massively, even the instrumentation of having a horn section and a lead guitar player and having different lines on different instruments really changes things.

On a trip to Italy to chase a foreign love, Jonassen instead ended up discovering and falling for the music of experimental hip hop group, Mad Conductor. Their fusion of reggae beats and rap vocals proved to be one of the main inspirations for the group.

“From the ride to the airport to her place it changed my life and it kind of cemented all these genres

that I loved, and showed me they could co-exist.

I don’t rate myself as a very good singer, so I decided to embrace the more rap kind of vocal as my style. Mad Conductor then led me on to Beastie Boys and a lot of other great artists that I previously hadn’t given the time of day.”

A year and a half after their first official album, Night Gaunts released ‘Love, Life And The Devil’, a six-track EP produced, mixed and mastered

by Jonassen. A definite step up terms of audio production, the band had begun to write with their live presence in mind. Tracks like Crowned

By The Devil and Mosquitoes, became live favourites cementing their reputation as one of Auckland’s most promising young bands.

After solidly touring to promote the EP, their attention was once again drawn across the Pacific.

“We decided to just go and do a self-funded tour of the states, and it really was the best time ever. We arrived July-August 2015 and ended up staying for eight weeks. It’s a nightmare of preparation and band breakdowns, a lot of stress! We played on the road for seven weeks, playing 42 show, flew into LA then to Houston.

“Our first show was in Houston with Days N’ Daze. Whitney the lead singer booked and organised the entire tour so we met up with them in Houston and played an amazing show.

We kind of just didn’t stop for eight weeks!”

Their circuit took the bands west from Texas towards California, through Arizona, New Mexico and up California to Seattle. Down through Utah to Colorado, across Nebraska up into Minnesota, then Detroit, Chicago and New York before heading back down to Florida then all the way back up to New Orleans and Tennessee.

“Eventually we finished back in Houston, so we pretty much did the entire American circuit. It really shows you though, the country is so big

we didn’t even hit half the spots we could have.

We could have easily doubled the dates. Even some of the cities we played at had dozens more spots we didn’t get to play.”

The idea/dream had developed from watching that DVD. “We thought,‘We can actually do this’, so Hayden and I sent hundreds of emails out and Whitney from Days N’ Daze replied saying she was keen to book a tour with us. We just thought it was the greatest thing ever.

“To afford to go over we all worked day jobs for a year or two. The band covered our visas and everything most of the expenses like petrol, so essentially the band funded the tour. We did need to invest the money ourselves to get it back however. We got proper musician visas for the States, but it took like six months of full on work to get them. We didn’t get our visas until 24 hours before flying out of the country…

“We had invested almost $20,000 and we didn’t even know if we could go. It was horrifying.

I was up for like a week, all night calling the

to write and record everything themselves, with Jonassen again taking on the bulk of the production duties.

“It nearly killed me making it,” he admits. “I’d be so down some days thinking,‘I just can’t get this chorus right’. If my girlfriend wasn’t here to help me through I would have abandoned it a long time ago – you can be so hard on yourself when you’re doing this kind of thing.”

With essentially an unlimited amount of time and the resources to record at any time, he says he put pressure on himself to make things prefect. On the Night Gaunts’ website he admits the three years it took to make was filled with wild ups and downs, self doubt and ‘…the always fun total loss of perspective every few months’ making it difficult to stay positive.

“It ended up being a really good lesson in being able to say, ‘You know what? That’s actually sweet, move on.’ To me the songs were done in the demo stage two years before they were finished, it was just about capturing that sound I heard in my head. In the end though, I’m really

“Maybe there’s a little bit of luck, but really it’s just hard work. Nothing happens just because it happens, you’ve got to really try. If any other bands want to do it, they can, you’ve just got to go and do it!” – Paul Jonassen embassy, calling the consulate, calling the embassy – it was really, really intense. But in the end everything worked out. Getting our visas in so late, it doubles the price, and makes it harder to get them, yada, yada, yada. It was a nightmare, but you’ve got to do it. From now on we know the process, so we’ll be able to get it done easier next time.”

After completing their US tour the band continued work on their new album ‘Conversations With Creation’. Three years in the making, the band had decided once again

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+ COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

happy with the record.”

“People ask us all the time, ‘How do you do this, how do you do that? Oh man you guys are so lucky.’ Maybe there’s a little bit of luck, but really it’s just hard work. Nothing happens just because it happens, you’ve got to really try. If any other bands want to do it, they can, you’ve just got to go and do it!”

PJBGgB"jPg`Y,"P73"OUY3SO

EV\Z ', EV\Z ',

Industry

NAMM Show 2016 – A Quick Glance Around The Halls

T

he annual mega-upload of new musical instruments/products releases and marketing for the year ahead, that is NAMM, took place in LA’s Anaheim Convention Centre over four days, from Thursday January 21.

Organisers were claiming a record number of exhibiting companies in 2016, with growth most evident in the areas of technology and handcrafted instruments. Lots of new smaller players, offering fresh ideas and competition to the long established and familiar names.

Leaping forward into the brave new (very now) world of virtual reality, Aerodrums exhibited a set up for drummers that could be the ultimate in neighbourhood relations – now you can play the drums with no actual physical kit in front of you. Just two sticks in your hands, the Aerodrums VR headset and headphones on and you ‘see’ the drum kit in front of you. When you hit the cymbals, snare and bass drum, you feel it, see it and sense it.

One trend evident was in regard to size consciousness, with lots of compact and mini versions becoming available.Another was towards quirky analogue synths. (See Seamus Maguire’s timely article on the very subject on p18.).

The Arturia MatrixBrute for example, a programmable mono/ duophonic analogue synthesizer that Arturia reckon will challenge for the title of the ‘most powerful analogue synth ever’. With three oscillators, five different all-analogue effects, as well as 256 memory presets, making it good for the stage as well as the studio.

Korg’s Minilogue, a polyphonic analogue synth looks likely to be a popular addition to their range of conveniently sizedand priced- units.

Flexible four-voice routing, 16-step sequencer and 200 preset locations…

Shure have a very cool new vocal microphone dubbed the KSM8 Dualdyne, the world’s first dual-diaphragm handheld dynamic mic. After seven years in development Shure claim the KSM8 has the purest cardioid polar pattern they have ever developed.

Sadly, just the day after NAMM 2016 Shure Inc. announced the passing of their chairman, Rose L. Shure, who had served the company excellently for more than 60 years.

EV\Z '-

Yamaha had over 40 new products on display, not least among them the impressive new Montage in 61-, 76- and 88-key models.

Combining two sound engines, Advanced Wave Memory 2 and the FM-X, makes the Montage way more powerful than its flagship predecessor the Motif XF. Zoom were talking large in the promotion of their wacky new ARQ Aero RhythmTrak, which lets users create drum patterns, sequences, synth sounds and loops, launch clips and control MIDI. The zany steering wheel-shaped controller can be detached from its base station and used as a standalone instrument, communicating wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Likewise Boss seemed pretty fizzy about their new guitar amp/cabinet they’ve badged Waza – apparently a Japanese term regarding the highest level of technique and achievement.

The 150W head provides four channels with custom voicing options.

With so many models, finishes and re-issues on show it can be hard to tell what is actually new among main brand electric guitar manufac turers.

Yamaha unveiled their new RevStar range of solid-body electric guitars just before Christmas. The seven models are crafted to give a hip look, intended to reflect the high-performance aesthetic of vintage street-racing motorbikes.

Californian manufacturer Willcox Guitars make the oddly named but neatly detailed HexFX guitars and basses. Features include computer and synth access, polyphonic string processing, pitch to MIDI conversion and 13-pin individual string outputs. Willcox have their own optical pickup system, using infrared to sense s t r i n g vibration, ideal for individual s t r i n g processing and synth access.

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

The rather clever StompLight was first talked about towards the end of last year on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Versatile enough for use by musicians, DJs and theatrical performers, the lighting effects pedal can produce dozens of stage lighting effects including colour wheel, colour organ and strobe. A built-in mic even allows the lighting to sync to your music.

HK Audio used NAMM to premiere the Lucas Nano 608i, the first high-end, all-in-one portable PA system with an iPad-enabled wireless mixer and Bluetooth streaming built-in. The eight-channel digital mixer integrated into the subwoofer can be controlled directly on the 608i itself using conventional knobs, or wirelessly via a dedicated iPad app.

Who’d have thought?

LD Systems were showing a portable PA array system, the Curv500, complete with 4-channel mixer with DFX and Bluetooth that has already won them the German Design Award 2016 for its concept.

Inspired by Fat Freddy’s Drop’s legendary producer… nah, just kidding… but the Manley Labs’ Nu Mu is a hybrid compressor combining front-end tube design with solid state side-chain and output stage, resulting in a full bodied tube sound.

Italy’s IK Multimedia were showing the iRig Acoustic, the first mobile microphone/interface for acoustic guitar players. The soundhole clip installs in seconds and you can use it to record on an iPhone, etc. or Android. Quality sound, easy installation and the flexibility to record anywhere you play.

And finally, it all looks a bit back-to-the-future with 660 Guitar’s all-aluminium bodied guitars, like this Patriot made in the USA from one piece of aircraft grade aluminium. Wonder if they’re looking to sponsor, say, a Kiwi roots band…

Household Essentials Wellington-based multi-instrumentalist and music teacher Jhan Lindsay saw the release of her debut album ‘Jhan Lindsay and the Chattelaines’ late last year. The album’s creation was a 17-year journey that also spanned many different musical influences and genres. Aleisha Ward met with Lindsay to discuss those musical pathways and her creative process.

H

ailing originally from Auckland, Jhan Lindsay moved down to Wellington to attend jazz school in the late 1990s, and has been at home there since. The long generative process of her recently released debut, ‘Jhan Lindsay and the Chattelaines’ dates back to her arrival in the capital.

“In the winter of 1999, which was my first Wellington winter, I wrote Emerald and that was a longing to see the green come back on the trees. So I started writing some of the songs that are included on the album way back in 1999, and started performing them at open mic nights or acoustic nights in Wellington at Indigo or Treehouse… There was place called The Space in Newtown and they had a night called Girls In Space, I think, which was showcasing female songwriters, which is probably where I first got a foot in the door to do this.”

Lindsay’s musical influences come from all over the place.

“It depends what I’m doing.

If I’m singing jazz it’s going to be Johnny Hartman, Billie Holiday.

If I’m playing saxophone it’s got to be John Coltrane and Stephan Grapelli. Jimmy Garrison [on] double bass – my favourite!

“But, when it comes to writing original music, particularly the music and the sound related to the album, definitely Portishead.

Portishead’s a massive influence.

Bic Runga as a Kiwi is definitely an influence as is John Psathas.

People who I like listening to currently would be Saali Marks and Tyson Smith in Wellington.”

The concept of the album is live takes, only one of the songs includes a vocal overdub.

“The only things that were recorded separately at all were the backing vocals. Everyone was in the same room – the strings, the guitar, mandolin, me singing, and

[drummer] Reuben Bradley was in the Vault, with a glass door so we could communicate, so we’re actually together in the same space. If one person got it wrong we had to stop and start again.”

Indeed the recording and the album itself was started and stopped several times.

“I’ve got boxes of audio files and raw studio sessions, I’ve got tapes and reel-to-reels strewn through storage and still on file at different studios, but I finished it this time [with help from] a Creative New Zealand grant. I had quite an urgency to get it done last year, because it’s recorded at Munki Studios [the studio’s Taranaki Street building was demolished in November 2015].

Munki Studios is run by Mike Gibson who’s the dude, he’s such a guru of sound, and capturing sound, so I really wanted to do it at Munki with Mike.”

The item that her backing band is named after – a chatelaine – is central to the album’s aesthetic. A personalised chatelaine, created

by Wellington jeweller Odette Anscombe-Smith, graces the cover of her album.

“A chatelaine is the woman that runs the house, or the device that the woman wears with all the essentials to run the house – the keys, the thimbles, and so on,” Lindsay explains.

The chatelaine on the album cover features items that are very personal, some of them gifts, and hold a lot of meaning to Lindsay.

Her backing band is a similarly eclectic collection featuring Hannah Fraser on violin, Ruby Solly (cello), Mike Hogan (guitar/ mandolin), Terry Masters (guitar), Tom Callwood, Sage Kamaru and Pania Simmonds all adding bass, Reuben Bradley and Darren Sigley on drums with Victoria Ferry, Lisa Tomlins, Keely Turuwhenua, Eliza Benge and Nicole Andrews

providing backing vocals.

It was Lindsay’s mother who named the backing band The Chattelaines.

“You can never name a band – someone else has got to do it for you! Everyone’s got their own sound, their own style.

Their instruments have different voices, different timbres, different strengths. I have three bassists on the album, that’s an example of having a plethora of people to work with, but that’s the chattelaine.

Every person has a different voice to bring to the album.”

During the working day Lindsay teaches music and voice at a number schools in Wellington and Wairarapa. She regularly plays and sings as a soloist and with trios and quartets around Wellington

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

Jhan Lindsay

doing originals and jazz standards.

Her old dub-reggae band Project has recently had a reunion and she hopes to keep playing with them.

“I’m playing at Tora Tora Tora Festival in March and I’ve a few little tours planned to deliver the music to the nation.”

While her album is very strings-based, she is looking to expand the palette to incorporate brass and reeds in the arrangements for a second album – that she says already in the works. It will include compositions that did not make the cut for this album and is also likely to be more instrumental compositions rather than straight ahead songs.

“By the end of 2017, it’ll definitely be done by then. It’s not going to take another 17 years! I give it 17 months!”

KG"PMJP7`"nY3SO

EV\Z '.

send esh-Cut, please for review in Fr EP or -315, m 99 bu x al ician, PO Bo To submit your f bio to NZ Mus ie br a only th d wi an g on lable for sale TWO copies al CD must be avai e Th mos). . de nd la no ck e. for review (i.

Newmarket, Au are forwarded k or tw ar ed et CDs with compl

GOLDEN CURTAIN: Hell Is Other People Album number three for Hawke’s Bay’s Golden Curtain, the super tight three-piece of guitarist Andrew Mckenzie, bass player Brad Gamble and former Garageland stickman Andrew Gladstone on drums. Short in its duration, with just eight tracks clocking in a few ticks under 25 minutes, ‘Hell Is Other People’ takes us on a whirlwind journey into the world of alt-country Bay-style, with ’60s passages (Toys), boy-girl excursions (Penelope Blue, Lucille), and an occasional venture into rockier climes (Like An Island). All supplemented with a pop twist, colourful textures, and subtle hints of psychedelia. Produced by the band, mixed and mastered by Brett Stanton, one of the album’s real strengths is the strong vocal harmonies throughout – something that seems to hint, inadvertently perhaps, at a certain togetherness or unity, or of a collective selfassurance. At the very least, there’s a sense that this band is perfectly comfortable in its own skin. Or it might just be as simple as Golden Curtain being right at the very peak of its powers. Despite the relative brevity it’s a solid album, with the musical package suitably complemented by the rather fetching pop-art album cover artwork by local music identity, >ÀÌ ÃÌ]Ê> `Ê> À Õ `Ê > v > iÀ]Ê > iÊ >ÜðÊUÊMichael Hollywood

GREG JOHNSON: Swing The Lantern It astounds that even a musician with the back catalogue and talent of Greg Johnson has to crowd fund a new album. Just as well he has though, because it’s a pearler. To explain the title... “Telling sea stories. Referring to lamps slung from the deckhead which swing while at sea. Often used to indicate that the storyteller is exaggerating...” No evidence of such here, Johnson has come up with another beautiful, new but familiar, set of stories that are instantly likeable and engaging.

He’s a fine songwriter, consistent, relatable, dateless. Gentle piano-led tracks with universal themes and recognisable cultural references, such as The Beatles for example. The opening track is called No Need For Invitations, except maybe there is, because this is almost like the ultimate intimate dinner party. Everyday emotions and feelings put simply but beautifully, managing to swerve the cliché factor – which is an achievement in itself. Having a distinct voice also helps. Recorded mid-2015 in LA, where he lives, with fellow Kiwi Wayne Bell producing and drumming, Mark Hughes on bass, Alex Troup on guitar and Ted Brown adding backing vocals, this is the most natural sounding album I’ve heard in eons. A great ÀiÜ>À`Êv ÀÊÌ ÃiÊÜ Ê«À Û `i`ÊÌ iÊ iViÃÃ>ÀÞÊvÕ `ðÊUÊAnia Glowacz

TABLEFOX: Objects

It’s not often that a band seriously reinvents themselves between an initial EP and their debut album, but Auckland alt-rockers Tablefox have done just that. Since 2013’s EP, ‘Passenger’, they have expanded from a trio into a quintet, and widened their soundscape, becoming more adventurous in the event. Recorded at Tsunami Studios, their debut album is a smart record with intended radio appeal.

‘Objects’ is weighted towards the start with energetic, fast guitar-driven songs, and it isn’t until the pretty Cigarette Glow (track seven) that there is any let up in the tempo. The music is interesting in its influences. Singer Clinton Bell is a spot-on vocal double for Ryan Adams, especially on Don’t Look Now and Modern Times, while the slow-building New World and Something Better could have come from many a trans-Atlantic alt-rock band of the last 10 years. The band’s own production is also worth noting. The sound is crisp and smooth, with vocals and guitar at the front – it’s rare that a debut album sounds this perfect and ‘international’. ‘Objects’ is lean at 10 tracks, with little filler, but it would be interesting in Ì iÊvÕÌÕÀiÊÌ Ê i>ÀÊ/>L iv ÝÊÛiiÀÊ>Ü>ÞÊvÀ ÊÌ i ÀÊÌi « >Ìi`ÊÃÌÀÕVÌÕÀiðÊUÊAmanda Mills

EV\Z (%

EKKO PARK: Know Hope Auckland rock four-piece Ekko Park’s sophomore album follows up the impressive success of their debut ‘Tomorrow Tomorrow Today’. With the help of an internationally renowned production team in Greg Haver and Adrian Hall, ‘Know Hope’ more than aspires to eclipse the previous release, delivering in every aspect.

Surface Breaks initiates the record in style, the signature vocal tones of front man Joe Walsh penetrating the mix with aplomb, while the thumping, organic rhythm section of Nick Douch and Callum Tong lays the groundwork for the melodic guitar lines of Joel Halstead.

Catchy choruses and crafted songwriting give way to roaring guitars at the finish. Radio track Probable Cause provides sizzling lead melodies, along with dynamic and building arrangements and undeniable energy, and sees the rhythm section transform into an engine room as the song unrelentingly pounds out its intent. Whistleblower sees Ekko Park stretch their wings compositionally with a chorus that simultaneously builds and delivers, before a bridge section swerves melodies together in a beautiful crash. Faking Shadows pulls back in arrangement, showing another side to the band. Wake Up makes the perfect closing track. Memorable and catchy, driving and deliberate, it is the summary of all that is good about this record. ‘Know Hope’ encapsulates the sounds and energy of a rock band that is achieving what it is has set out to do; deliver sculpted rock tracks with vital performances, packaged and presented to full effect. There is a polish that readily lends itself to markets beyond our shores; but that in no way excludes Kiwi rock fans from enjoying this top shelf V> Êivv ÀÌ°ÊUÊJP Carroll

HUMANKINDNESS: Humankindness

Nelson bluesy-soul artist Steve Mitchell presents this 12-track album as a self-titled debut release from his rocking live band Humankindness, though the musicians used in the recording are, but for him, all different. Indeed three of the tracks here were recorded in Leicester, England, the balance in Nelson where all instruments were played/programmed/recorded and produced by Mitchell. The live band’s four piece male line up is notably augmented here by Hannah Gibson’s striking vocals on several tracks. With touches of blues, folk, soul and a pop sensibility throughout this is a band of broad enough appeal that they performed at a run of jazz festivals throughout 2015. Early instrumental track Heart-Shaped Mirror is a showcase of the quality guitar playing on offer, with great interplay between acoustic parts and melodic slide guitar lines.

While the apologetic Heading North and single Your Words Not Mine fall on the contemplative side, they are accompanied by enough spark in tracks like Sold In Heaven and Calendar Blues to engage on first listen. The variation of approaches to the songs and tidy slide guitar « >Þ }Ê>ÀiÊÀi>à Êi Õ} ÊÌ Ê} Ûiʼ Õ > ` iÃýÊ>Ê} °ÊUÊStu Edwards

CTRL/FREAK: In Retrospect

Ctrl/Freak is Richie Bennett, but thanks to the wonders of technology this stunning release sounds like a full-on band, and comes straight for the jugular. As an indication of the sound, vocally and sonically, I’d suggest a hardcore Linkin Park – with no pop elements included. There’s certainly no disrespect in that description.

LP are a huge band, and this release sounds big. It’s metal but comes with elements of electronica, prog, wall of sound, a bit of Lamb Of God – nothing naff. While relentless it’s not at all painful – particularly for metal fans. Through Broken Eyes is a co-write with Kurt Hughes, a guitar solo on Run is credited to Tim Gainsford, and the one on Breaking In to Sharnie Scarborough. Extremely limited production (my copy is 15 of 50), unfortunately there are no recording details provided, but this is the kind of independent music-making Ì >̽ÃÊÌ ÊLiÊi V ÕÀ>}i`°ÊUÊAnia Glowacz

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

FAT FREDDY’S DROP: Bays

BBQ’s! Reggae! One can immediately anticipate the naysayers with an oversimplified derision to two things that Kiwis actually bloody like. Almost as disingenuous as the previously and incorrectly used ‘Wellie-dub’ term. Independently released, ‘Bays’ the fourth and latest release from Wellington stalwarts, Fat Freddy’s Drop. For sure, there are reggae-laced tunes here, the excellent Slings And Arrows and, a personal fave, 10 Feet Tall. The album kicks off with a lovely revisit to an old tune, Wairunga Blues, a lovely shuffle-based groove, with the easily-recognisable Dallas Tamaira laying down some more beautiful vocals. Wheels delivers just a touch of afro over a four on the floor beat, another constant element of the album, either on the tune Razor or the storming Cortina Motors – surely a favourite of Cortina appreciator Julien Dyne. There are touches of the more downbeat angle with Makkan and Fish In The Sea, with the almost blues of Novak providing a closer. Recorded at FFD general headquarters in Wellington, overseen by the master, Mu, this album is a suitably fine follow on from all their previous releases. And as always, to this listener, there is a sense of momentum in the production, interspersed with live instrumentation from the band and select guests. Breaking new }À Õ `¶Ê* Ãà L ÞÊ Ì°Ê ÊL `ÞÊ} `Ê> LÕ ¶Ê Là ÕÌi Þ°ÊUÊChip Matthews

JENNY WOLLERMAN & MICHAEL HOUSTOUN: Between Darkness and Light

Pianist Michael Houstoun and soprano Jenny Wollerman first performed this recital at the Wanaka Festival of Colour in 2013.

The format was to be, as Wollerman details in the liner notes of another beautifully constructed Rattle CD casing, “a semi-staged song recital with solo piano interludes,” which explored the idea of movement between the darkness and light. While Tony Rabbit’s visuals at the live performance of the programme would have been a great watch, the grainy and distorted renderings of them that litter the booklet set the mood for private listening far better than any light show could. Wollerman and Houstoun sound relaxed. The piano playing seems effortless and the vocals come

across clearly and naturally. As the tracklist moves thematically from romantic to philosophical, it remains meditative and reflective – always deep in thought. It’s as if you can feel the pair contemplating the confounding theme through their playing. As the music broods, the listener is drawn into thought along with it and while concurrent thoughts begin, develop and fade – just as the theme dictates – the album manages to fly through 20 tracks. In timbre, Wollerman’s bright soprano is contrasted by a piano sound erring to the darker side, allowing the voice and piano to play off each other and move through sections light and dark – full then sparse. This excellent sequencing of pieces, combined with Steve Garden’s recording in a way that contributes to the focus of the album, allows the listener to feel the effects of the concept, even if they understand nothing about the music being played. And >ÃÊÃÕV ]ÊÌ iÊ> LÕ Ê ÃÊ>ÊÃÕVViÃðÊUÊSam Carswell

KONG FOOEY: Final Destination

‘Final Destination’ is the soul-infused hip hop debut album from Kong Fooey; the collective work of ex-Pumpkinhead beatmaker Jason Peters, guitarist David Haslett, rap artists Maitreya (Jamie Greenslade) and Topaz (Alice Egan), plus guest co-conspirators, vocalists Ella Rose and Katerina Theo. It’s an album that positively oozes the good vibes and raw energy of old-school style funk, and a cursory glance at titles like Time To Move, The Mahina Shuffle and Get In The Flow only serves to confirm that Kong Fooey's sole intention is to make us dance. Awash with brass, heavy bass, vintage keys, and lashings of funky guitar, it’s also an album dripping with ubiquitous Stax and Motown reference points. That formula lays down a foundation for the vocal collaborators to do their thing, and when they do the message is almost always one of genuine positivity: “Life is too short to be wearin’ a frown” (on early single Let Go) being just one upbeat lyrical refrain on an album crammed full of them. There’s a strong element of humour across the generous 15-track release, and if that cover looks familiar, it’s because it apes the Elvis debut, and The Clash’s ‘London Calling’, with its distinctive pink and green lettering and font set against a black and white photo image. Something that only adds to the retro-feel of the Ü iÊÌ }°Ê/ ÃÊ iÊ ÃÊ>ÃÊÃ >À«Ê> `Ê«Õ V ÞÊ>ÃÊÌ iÞÊV i°ÊUÊMichael Hollywood

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z (&

PLASTICINE HEROES: Let It Go Christchurch quartet Plasticine Heroes deliver a two-pronged guitar attack, backed by a muscular bass and drums partnership. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Let It Goâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opens with the doomy confection of So Still, a song of quiet menace and laconic chord progressions. Guitarists Gavin Loader and Richard Grist create a complimentary landscape for their vocals to inhabit. Bassist Darren Tatom (The Lucky Lost) and drummer Jack Cameron take a nononsense approach. Vocals are a standout feature, with Loader, Grist and Tatom all contributing different styles. Several sonic touchstones come to mind. Fits Like A Glove has a loping groove, driven from below by the bass in the style of Midnight Oilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Peter Gifford. Magic is an urgent slice of pure Kiwi indie, in the vein of The Bats. Across the 12 tracks the band that keeps coming to mind (in sonic approach at least) is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Blowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; era Straitjacket Fits, especially in the interplay of guitars. Self-produced by Loader and Grist, the album clocks in around 55 Â&#x201C;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x152;iĂ&#x192;]Ă&#x160;Ă&#x153;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;Ă&#x160;iÂ&#x2DC;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;}Â&#x2026;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x192;Â&#x2026;>`iĂ&#x160;>Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160;Â?Â&#x2C6;}Â&#x2026;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Ă&#x160;Â&#x17D;iiÂŤĂ&#x160;Ă&#x17E;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x160;iÂ&#x2DC;}>}i`Ă&#x160;>Â?Â?Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160;Ă&#x153;>Ă&#x17E;°Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;Darryl Kirk

SUPERHERO SECOND LINE: Better Second Line

Chances are, if you live in Auckland and have been in the CBD late afternoon/evening on certain days of the week over the past few years, that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve witnessed the Superhero Second Line.

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the New Orleans-style band that parade around in daggy superhero outfits, playing traditional/non-traditional and original funky grooves. This is their first album and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great to hear the excitement of their live performances captured on a disc. Recorded in mid-2015 and mixed and mastered by Olly Harmer of The Lab, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Better Second Lineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is a mix of mostly original Superhero works, traditional second line jams (Down By The Riverside), and non-traditional jams like Hendrixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fire. Opening track Funkinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; In Da Batcave, by trombonist Hamish Jellyman, really sets the tone. The album blends the excitement of traditional New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; second line bands with a laid-back and not-taking-themselves-too-seriously attitude, making for an incredibly fun listen. The brass/wind-drums/percussion interplay is tight with some great contrapuntal work going on. Vocals reflect the raw, joyful quality of New Orleans call and response style well, without going over into â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;museum pieceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; territory. Perfect for any time you want to }iĂ&#x152;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x2022;ÂŤ]Ă&#x160;}iĂ&#x152;Ă&#x160;`Â&#x153;Ă&#x153;Â&#x2DC;]Ă&#x160;>Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160;Â&#x2026;>Ă&#x203A;iĂ&#x160;Ă&#x192;Â&#x153;Â&#x201C;iĂ&#x160;Â&#x201C;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x192;Â&#x2C6;V>Â?Ă&#x160;vĂ&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;°Ă&#x160;U Aleisha Ward

MOJO CROW: Fly By Night EP

A very nice debut indeed from this Auckland three-piece who earlier in 2015 reached the national final of the Battle of the Bands. The recording of these five upbeat country folk/rock songs is crisp, matched by quality song arrangements and strong vocal work. All songs were written by singer and guitarist Chris Jones who also produced the album, with brother Nick Jones providing bass, keys, violin and bvs, and Ryan Oustan on drums and bvs. The EP was recorded at Roundhead Studios by Jordan Stone and mastered by Leon Zervos at Sydneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Studio 301. Some of the tunes have a slower folk country feel while others are more pop rock â&#x20AC;&#x201C; think Green Day. Each tune has an upbeat feel, with clean guitar, smooth vocals and fine harmonies. Satellite is a great song with a dynamic melody enriched by soaring vocals from Jones, and Set Me Free is a cool psychedelic trip of guitar combined with sitar! Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be fooled by the country references, these guys would not last long at Bobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Country Bunker as they lean more towards >Â?Ă&#x152;iĂ&#x20AC;Â&#x2DC;>Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x203A;iĂ&#x160;Ă&#x20AC;Â&#x153;VÂ&#x17D;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;>Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;VÂ&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x17E;Ă&#x160;Â&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x153;iĂ&#x192;Ă&#x152;iĂ&#x20AC;Â&#x2DC;°Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;Andrew Smit

THE FURYS: Anthology 1979-1999

Named after early â&#x20AC;&#x2122;60s rocker Billy Fury and the classic â&#x20AC;&#x2122;50s Plymouth model, The Furys formed in late 1979, and through the â&#x20AC;&#x2122;80s were a regular fixture on the Aucklandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s live circuit, playing legendary venues like The Windsor Castle, Gluepot, Rumba Bar and Mainstreet on a regular basis. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Never perfect, but better for it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; as the sleeve notes observe. This anthology re-release is 21 tracks drawn from studio and live recordings. The core of the band was the personality of guitarist and vocalist Dave McLean and rockabilly guitarist Mike Cooney. McLeanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stage presence and their live ability in a competitive environment put them on the map. They played classics, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;50s rockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;roll obscurities, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;60s soul, and a sprinkling of McLean originals â&#x20AC;&#x201C; typical of pub bands of the time, forced to play covers to get gigs and an audience. But really this is a musical journey

EV\Z ('

through the â&#x20AC;&#x2122;80s. They recorded a 4-track EP titled â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Rare Recordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. It had McLeanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s originals Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Gotta Gun, Keep It In and Auckland Fun, plus Wilson Pickett number Danger Zone, all recorded at Harlequin Studios, mostly produced by Ian Morris. Those plus six other studio tracks are backed here with a further 11 live ones, mostly from the Gluepot and a 1981 Auckland Town Hall gig. The recordings have been digitally remastered by Tim Julian at his Colourfield Studio in Tauranga. The comprehensive booklet included charts a fascinating story of ambition, reality (both positive and negative, but erring on the former), and The Furysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ÂŤÂ?>ViĂ&#x160;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;Â&#x201C;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x192;Â&#x2C6;VĂ&#x160;Â&#x2026;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x192;Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x17E;]Ă&#x160;iĂ&#x192;ÂŤiVÂ&#x2C6;>Â?Â?Ă&#x17E;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160;Â?Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x203A;iĂ&#x160; Ă&#x2022;VÂ&#x17D;Â?>Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160;Ă&#x192;ViÂ&#x2DC;i°Ă&#x160; i}iÂ&#x2DC;`°Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;Ania Glowacz

JAMES KOHLER: Somewhere Else EP

Late in 2015, James Kohler released this fascinating EP of mostly well-written modern alt-pop songs. Formerly releasing material under the name Paste The Sky, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Somewhere Elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is Kohlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut under his own name, and he calls the recording â&#x20AC;&#x153;an ongoing love affair with songwriting.â&#x20AC;? Created with assistance from Jason Smith, Darryn Harkness and Edmund Cake, the clear, bright production treats the interesting touches in Kohlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s songs well. This is most evident in the fuzzy treatments on the riff of the title track, the â&#x20AC;&#x2122;60s-esque Hammond organ of Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Be A Stranger, and the cooing backing vocals of Alien Sunburn. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Be A Stranger in particular requires more attention, the song is more swampy blues-rock than alt-pop, and has a great vocal riff and rhythmic swagger that elevates it above the rest of the EP. Kohler has a few alt-pop touchstones here, but vocally (and melodically) he brings to mind Bob Scott of The Bats, with a straightforward simplicity to the delivery of his songs. At seven tracks this is more a lean mini-album than an EP, and serves well as a taster for what Kohler might do as a Ă&#x192;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;}Ă&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x152;iĂ&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;>Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x160;ÂŤiĂ&#x20AC;vÂ&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Â&#x201C;iĂ&#x20AC;°Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;Amanda Mills

MAS HUNT: The Critic and The Visionary EP

Melbourne-based Kiwi hip hop artist Mas Hunt (real name, no gimmicks), brings his perspective to bear on entities every artist knows, the internal critic and the internal visionary, running the gamut from vulnerability and honesty about his insecurities as an artist and musician. Hunt explores issues of being a skinny, white boy would-be rapper on At Last, with plentiful imagery. On In The Making, he talks about the reality of being a working musician; doing a show, staying up writing, and following that, at 5am, starting work on no sleep. Take Me High uses guitars as instrumentation, which makes for an interesting difference. The fight he speaks of is potentially his will to win over mental health challenges, critics, and to achieve his dreams. On King Of My Empire Hunt raps over a slow tappy, vibey beat, creating an atmospheric production that adds nicely to the variety of the EP. Overall this a very honest and insightful offering by someone highly driven, with a rap style thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s deliberate rather than flowing, steady rather than emotive. Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x20AC;>LÂ?iĂ&#x160;Â&#x201C;iÂ&#x2DC;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x153;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Ă&#x160;ÂŤĂ&#x20AC;Â&#x153;`Ă&#x2022;ViĂ&#x20AC;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x201C;iĂ&#x192;Ă&#x160; >Â&#x201C;Â?iĂ&#x17E;Ă&#x160;vÂ&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;iĂ&#x160;Ă&#x192;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;`Ă&#x192;V>ÂŤiĂ&#x192;°Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;David Patterson

OPPOSITE SEX: Hamlet

Dunedin outfit Opposite Sex had lofty ambitions with this new record, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hamletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is the kind of title that makes you pay attention. Their sound is attention-grabbing too â&#x20AC;&#x201C; dark, discordant and sometimes creepy. Things kick off with a new version of the familiar Supermarket, in which vocalist and bassist Lucy Hunterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unashamedly Aotearoan vowels and consonants resonate against relatively simple instrumentation with just the right amount of guitar distortion. Bang on two minutes, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one of the shorter songs on the record, several others swinging well over five. From track two, She Said, onwards, there is some seriously decadent soundscape action in places â&#x20AC;&#x201C; carefully layered, mixed and distorted tracks make for an interesting listen. Certainly not noise for noiseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake, it has been carefully crafted by the trio and producer Nick Graham. Complicity is a marked change in sound, with sombre piano and strings. Afterwards, though, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re shaken out of any reverie and back into big Mars Volta-esque guitars and insistent drums on Shakespearean Regicide. Tasmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Puke has a bit of a Fall feel about its delivery, ending with the excellent line â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a great big relief to breathe againâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, spoken deadpan against silence. And then the album spins back into spindly piano territory â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with instrumentals and vocals that swell to an intense conclusion. Listening to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hamletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is something of an emotional rollercoaster. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re willing to get white-knuckled every now and then, when Ă&#x192;Â&#x153;Â&#x201C;iĂ&#x152;Â&#x2026;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;}Ă&#x160;Ă&#x2022;Â&#x2DC;iĂ?ÂŤiVĂ&#x152;i`Ă&#x160;Â?Ă&#x2022;Â&#x201C;ÂŤĂ&#x192;Ă&#x160;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160;>Ă&#x152;Ă&#x160;Ă&#x17E;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;]Ă&#x160;Ă&#x17E;Â&#x153;Ă&#x2022;½Ă&#x20AC;iĂ&#x160;Â&#x2C6;Â&#x2DC;Ă&#x160;vÂ&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Ă&#x160;>Ă&#x160;Ă&#x152;Ă&#x20AC;i>Ă&#x152;°Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;Briar Lawry

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

JHAN LINDSAY AND THE CHATTELAINES: Jhan Lindsay and the Chattelaines Seventeen years in the making (according to her press), the debut album of Wellington-based musician/composer Jhan Lindsay is a meditative, laid back affair. While most of the album was recorded

by Mike Gibson at Munki Studios, two of the tracks date from much earlier sessions (one in 2003 – recorded by Andrew MacMillian and one recorded by James Coyle on location in Rarotonga in 2010), both of which fit into the shape of the album remarkably well. Lindsay is backed here by a fantastic mix of very fine musicians including Reuben Bradley (drums), Hannah Fraser (violin), Ruby Solly (cello), Tom Callwood (bass), Mike Hogan (guitar) and several others. The Chattelaines perform in various combinations behind Lindsay on guitar and vocals, providing a warmly embracing support. And this album really does feel like an embrace. Lindsay’s voice is warm and powerful, well matched to the string-based backing she has chosen. The violin and cello in particular add a plaintive, almost melancholy, feel, that interestingly only adds to the sense of warmth. This is definitely an > LÕ Êv ÀÊ ÃÌi iÀÃÊÜ> Ì }ÊÌ ÊV Ê ÕÌÊ> `ÊÀi >Ý°ÊUÊAleisha Ward

BEKAH: Relocation EP

Oh man, this is so cool. Rebekah Smith, aka Bekah, began writing music as a teen. Following study at SAE and AUT, she was awarded the AUT InterNZ scholarship, which took her to the States and into Paramount Studios. Meeting and working with different producers led to a Soundcloud release, ‘L.A. Mixtape’, but the tracks on this new three song EP ‘Relocation’ really grab my attention. What I Do kicks the EP off with momentum. The production from L.A.-based producer Scott Elgin builds beautifully, just as you think the beat has reached a zenith a new element appears.

It matches a phrasing and melody combination that urges your attention, with a storytelling quality in the vocals that further engages the listener. Oh Hey continues the theme laid out. More fantastic production from Elgin; the beat more straight ahead than the first tune.

It allows the listener to be brought into the story line, more of an awakening than a love lost song. Bekah has an interesting tonality in her voice that continually draws you in as it shifts. The EP closes with Gifted, a tune which is more aligned with the singer/songwriter tag, but serves as a release from the first two tunes. The interweaving saxophone line sits beautifully within a musical bed of guitar/bass/piano and lovely backing vocals. This really i Þ>L iÊÀi i>ÃiÊÜ Ê ÞÊ i>ÛiÊÞ ÕÊÜ> Ì }Ê Ài°ÊUÊChip Matthews

ANNA HAWKINS: Divine

Anna Hawkins crosses the great divides of pop, classical, opera and Celtic – and does so beautifully, with stunning voice and evident talent. This album is based on its title’s theme – and covers it all within that. From the universal Amazing Grace, to other reverential material like Praise To The Lord, Hallelujah and You Raise Me Up, to some really lovely Christmas compositions such as What Child Is This and O Holy Night, among several other bonus tracks. Given that she has performed at the RWC and at Christmas In The Park among other large events, some may scream ‘cheese’, but they’d be in the wrong. This album was recorded in Poland (as was her first album ‘Journey On’) and Israel, and according to Hawkins is a collection of songs people have been requesting her to record. A haunting song sung in Hebrew called Avinu Malkeinu, as well as opera ‘classics’ Panis Angelicus and The Prayer. The ultimate Christmas album, not only because it covers all L>ÃiÃ]Êv> Ì Ü Ãi]ÊLÕÌÊ> Ã Ê>ÃÊ ÌÊÃ Õ `ÃÊÃ Ê i>Ûi Þ°ÊUÊAnia Glowacz

ZAINE GRIFF: Mood Swings

Once a member of The Human Instinct, Zaine Griff returns with a diverse collection of songs, perhaps some of his strongest yet.

After two decades of musical silence Griff returned with a strong album, ‘The Visitor’, five years ago, and ‘Mood Swings’ marks the latest chapter from this bright, enigmatic light of the British New Wave scene of the late ’70s/early ’80s. This is a unique collection of songs exuding a cinematic, often timeless quality. Thematically and musically it reflects his time in London, and those halcyon days when Griff collaborated with Bowie, Tony Visconti, Hans Zimmer, Gary Numan, The Kinks, Kate Bush and many others. On this new album he is reunited with

original drummer Clive Edwards (UFO/John Cale), the two year recording process including studios in Tokyo and Surrey and Wellington. Co-produced by Griff with guitar and production wizard Hugh Nettar, it also features several Japanese musicians including Miori Kuniyoshi on keyboards and bass player Masami Nishhijima. The album opens with some searing guitar from Nettar on powerful and nostalgic palate cleanser Decadence. Throughout, a rich tapestry of musical colours flourish and ebb and flow from the epic and slightly foreboding Empires Falling, the upbeat and catchy dance of Devil In The Flesh, through to closing ballad Make Believe. The anthemic title track impresses, as does standout track No Man On This Earth. The gorgeous harmonies of Tenement Hideaway contrast with its intense, yearning lyrics. Lushly packaged and musically rich with a contemporary feel, but with more than a nod to the past (the album is dedicated to fellow new romantic pioneer, the late Steve Strange), ‘Mood Swings’ promises to thoroughly reward those familiar with Griff’s prior Ü À ]Ê> `ÊÜ Ê> Ã Ê `Ê>««i> ÊÌ Ê iÜV iÀðÊUÊDaniel Phillips

TOMORROW PEOPLE: Bass & Bassinets

It‘s hard to be dismissive of a band like Tomorrow People.

Especially when you grew up around your parents’ musical diet which consisted of the likes of Herbs, Ardijah, etc. Those bands tapped into a very clear-cut Kiwi sensibility with the anthems to boot, and much of ‘Bass & Bassinets’ mines a pretty inoffensive brand of parochial reggae/R&B. This Wellington ensemble have been trekking the local live circuit for the past few years. Can their stuff hold up to be something more than dispensable BBQ bread-n-butter in the studio? To be honest, not much of it stays with you after initial sittings, but that is not to say there isn‘t an audience to lap this up, especially as NZ continues to have a love affair with boilerplate rootsy sentimentality. However you‘re not going to source much from the first half of this record that wasn‘t nailed soundly on Cornerstone Roots’ ‘Soul Revolution’. Opener No Rush benefits from the steel drums backing providing a sonic flourish, but really deserved more production attention to make it truly memorable.

Train To Nowhere sounds like the sort of zeal that could transfer into a live favourite and with the odd ragga vocal sweep late in the piece. Mid-album cut Even Though trades in that futuristic motor-charged funk that Kora tucked into four years ago – maybe there is some ÌÊ vÊv > ÀÊÞiÌÊÌ ÊV iÊvÀ ÊÌ ÃÊ ÕÌv Ì°ÊU Adam Burns

SIMON HIRST: Shining In Silver EP

This debut EP from Hamilton singer/songwriter Simon Hirst mines the familiar sound of light guitar-based pop that has prevailed in popular music for some time now. Self-engineered and produced, Hirst exhibits admirable skills in all areas, but as an introduction to his artistry it paradoxically seems a bit of a disservice, presenting four tracks that are too similar to show what his range and potential really might be. The best is Everybody Knows, which veers away from the unobtrusive acoustic rock/pop of the other tracks with moody tones, and a less uniform rhythm pattern. Thematically, the lyrics stick to tried and true imagery (weather, light, night, seasons, etc) that often sounds very similar to that used (very well) by songwriters like Neil Finn and Dave Dobbyn. Pleasant, uncomplicated, and reliant on clean, airy production techniques, ‘Shining In Silver’ suffers for lack of something that stands out. Instead the songs and production are too unchallenging, seeking to replicate what others have done before, and have done better. An instance where, despite his evident ability, the result would likely have benefitted from some outside ÌiÀviÀi Vi°ÊUÊAmanda Mills

EARL OF SEACLIFF’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND: Livin’ ina Aucklan’

‘Livin’ ina Aucklan’ but primarily recorded (by Ross McDermott at Audiosuite) in Paraparaumu. And just the sort of thing you could imagine playing on Radio NZ on a lazy Sunday afternoon – easy to listen to, determinedly local sounding, poetic and wellproduced. Earl of Seacliff’s Lonely Hearts Club Band consists of a variety of creative folk – with this album’s concept and words created by poet/writer/publisher Michael O’Leary.

There are several different (and talented) vocalists on the album, but rather than using multiple voices on a track, there is only one primary singer per song. Since the album is all about exploring different corners of Auckland it makes sense – each song feels like its own little standalone pocket, with a different feel and sound from what came before. There’s a

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z ((

folk element underpinning each, some going to greater extremes than others. Morningside Railway Station is much more country, with Al Witham’s music and vocals providing a nice swagger and worthy riffing on the poem/lyrics that the liner notes provide. Meg Prasad’s vocals have some gorgeous rich jazz tones, while Sir Jon Trimmer’s spoken word conclusion to the record (Auckland Revisited) with the piano accompaniment of Gilbert Haisman pins together the poetic aspect of the album’s inception in a satisfying way. Occasionally the translation from poetry to lyric feels stilted, but for the most part, the words and music L i `ÊÌ }iÌ iÀÊ i>Ì Þ°ÊUÊBriar Lawry

MELLIS: Puppet Generation

Mellis is Marc Ellis (no, not that one) and electronica with a difference. Hailing from Christchurch, this is all Ellis, apart from some guest vocals from Becky Jordan on two tracks – You Still Care (Ellie Goulding-ish) and Pop Shake – and Mark McKenzie on ’90s sounding opener After Life. It’s a curious mix of cyber, pop and retro. With a couple of cheesier moments when the whole thing loses its way a little on Pop Shake and Broken Fridge, saved by the gothic instrumental closer Desolation. I’ve never been a fan of vocodered vocals, and likewise ‘baby-ish’ female vocals – in any genre (sorry Grimes and numerous current others). Aside from that there are some interesting experiments here. Some of it (Ole Sparky), sounds ’80s a la Visage, or ’90s like Erasure/ Underworld instrumental Russia. I suspect there's some vintage synths involved in all this, and the experiments are quirky at the least, if not wholly successful in final execution. At best it’s a mix of moods and moments. Some refinement (and vocals on more tracks) and >Ê}Ài>ÌiÀÊ iÛi Ê vÊÃ « ÃÌ V>Ì ÊV Õ `Ê >ÛiÊ >`iÊÌ ÃÊÀi> ÞÊÃÌ> `Ê ÕÌ°ÊUÊAnia Glowacz

THE BROKEN HEARTBREAKERS: How We Got To Now

With their first album in five years, mostly Dunedin-based fourpiece The Broken Heartbreakers continue their beautifully melancholic brand of folk-pop. Their third album expands on 2010’s ‘Wintersun’ foray into wider arrangements and instrumentation.

Tracks like Somebody Please walk the fine line between contemporary and the great American songbook, calling to mind Alison Krauss and Crowded House simultaneously. Featuring John Guy Howell (vocas, guitar, piano, 12-string, vibes), Rachel Bailey (vocals, guitar), Jeff Harford’s drums and Richard Pickard on bass (plus some guest appearances), it’s the interplay of vocal harmonies that prove a highlight. Revolution Of The Wolves sees the band in full flight, utilising the many strengths of the wider ensemble, whilst I’m Not Dead plays like a long lost Belle & Sebastian cut. Closer Melody in H is a tribute to the late Sam Prebble. Recorded in Jeff Hartford’s Dunedin living room by Mike Stoodley, very little of this sounds like any kind of home recording. Filling out the arrangements with horns, strings, vibes and a selection of old timey instruments, the record plays with an organic, natural feel, bringing the listener into the world it creates. Although The Broken Heartbreakers are entering their second decade, the wells of musical depth present hold more promise for their next outing. Serving as a reminder to the power of sweetly sung melodies of deeply personal lyrics over minor key arrangements, it’s the bittersweet >ÌÕÀiÊ>ÌÊÌ iÊ i>ÀÌÊ vÊÌ ÃÊ> LÕ ÊÌ >ÌÊ«À ÛiÃÊ ÌÃÊL }}iÃÌÊÃÌÀi }Ì °ÊUÊSammy Jay Dawson

ICEBERG: Provenance

Nostalgic Kiwi bands recording new albums make important additions to the country’s musical canon and this first album from Auckland’s Iceberg (a follow up to their 2014 EP ‘CCU7’ proves no exception. Iceberg’s sound meshes the glam mood of The Sweet and the quasi-punk feel of The Police’s early recordings with an unmistakeable Kiwi sound. Recorded by Jesse Wilde, it is far from overproduced with a definite live feel to the performances – the sleeve notes verifying that recording was done and dusted in just a few hours. Have A Nice Day opens proceedings with a punk (‘noice daye’) feel. A Shot In The Dark swaggers along with a ’70s rock groove while What’s Happening brings the guitar riffing to the forefront. There are moments of Dunedin’s ’80s sound creeping into the harmony with The Next Biggest Thing delivering energy and disregarding songwriting conventions. The raw nature of the album is complimented with the distinct feeling of authenticity the band delivers with each performance. Fans from their heydays (likely by now also in their 50s) now have a hard copy to document the band’s V>Ì> }Õi°ÊUÊStu Edwards

EV\Z ()

THE FRANK BURKITT BAND: Fools & Kings

Singer/guitarist Frank Burkitt only relocated from his native Edinburgh to Wellington in 2014, and ‘Fools & Kings’ is his first album as The Frank Burkitt Band, bringing together a group of spectacular young musicians. Heavily influenced by blues, country, bluegrass and Scottish folk, it is driven by refrains, a touch of comedy and some delightful imagery. Bringing Burkitt’s songs to life are James Geluk on double bass, Cameron ‘Dusty’ Burnell (Federal String Band) on mandolin, Krissy Jackson (Hot Diggity) on violin. Oscar Laven adds some beautiful clarinet and trumpet, Kara Filbey on bvs, with Graeme Woller (Into the East) adding bvs on one plus assisting with the production and mixing. ‘Fools & Kings’ was recorded at King Street Creative Studios in New Plymouth with Dave Carnahan engineering. Big Val is a song that really begs for more explanation and Burkitt is sure to explain if pressed at a concert. In the meantime you can laugh and dance along to the upbeat tune. From the first track Waste of Space, a song written about a poor foolish British man, the band make it clear what they mean to do with tight vocal harmonies and a catchy bass line, before the song breaks into a hard hitting sing-along. Catch Burkitt’s new band live, these musicians sound like they’re itching Ì Ê iÌÊ ÃiÊÜ i Ê} Ûi ÊÌ iÊV > Vi°ÊUÊFinn McLennan-Elliott

MACKA: Mumbo Jumbo

Kicking off their colourful debut album in style, Rotorua’s Macka (named for bandleader Lindsay ‘Macka’ Mackenzie) uniquely blend Latin, fusion, pop and funk. It features Robbie Paterson (bass, slide, keys and vocals – plus recording engineer), Ernie Semu (keys), Mickey Ututaonga (drums, percussion), Vicky-Mae (vocals), Grant Haua (slide) and Macka on vocals, guitar and harmonica. Some major names there. Opener Jealousy and Kahawian Pea Baby show off their fusion chops and penchant for nu-jazz, while the more down-tempo outings Wondering and Honestly reveal a love of early ’70s folk-rock. But it’s southern stompers Seeking The Truth and Pride Is A Bitch that see Macka take flight. Calling to mind southern American legends Little Feat and Dr. John, as well as America, ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ misses out on the aural enhancements of a big studio sound, but is still an easy, rewarding listen, with something new to discover on each spin. Macka’s harp playing is a highlight, bringing to life the blues soul at the heart of most of these arrangements. In a rich tradition of blues/funk rock, Macka would fit in nicely with > ÞÊ vÊÌ iÊV Õ ÌÀÞ½ÃÊ ÀiÊiÃÌii i`Ê>ÀÌ ÃÌðÊ*À à }Ê `ii`°ÊUÊSammy Jay Dawson

LISA CRAWLEY: Up In The Air EP

This should have been an album. Lisa Crawley has a beautiful, vulnerable and versatile voice, and an evident talent for songwriting, with her back catalogue including two albums and two previous EPs. For anyone new to her music this would serve as an ideal taster of a variety of styles and ideas, with a cohesiveness at the same time across most tracks. Breathy, beaty opener Up In The Air provides an ideal intro, an enticingly down tempo groove with her voice emoting the aching-for-love chorus over a rich orchestral backing. Piano and voice is Crawley’s stock in trade, the following two tracks similarly slow-paced and vocally rich. Showgirl reveals a complete history within one mid-tempo song, a typical Lisa Crawley number with sadly plaintive verses leading into a more upbeat chorus. “I’m not picking up the pieces scattered at my feet, I’ve been working nights since I was barely 17. With a fake ID, they all pay to believe. This is me.” And the chorus. “Just a showgirl with nothing to show, girl.” Recorded in Melbourne, her new home town, and produced by Aussie Ryan Ritchie, the EP closes with the more electronica Safe And Sound. The odd one out and a co-write, it may perhaps point towards a new musical >««À >V ]Ê vÊÌ }ÃÊÀi> ÞÊ>ÀiÊVÕÀÀi Ì ÞÊ¼Õ«Ê ÊÌ iÊ> À½Êv ÀÊ À>Ü iÞ°ÊUÊAnia Glowacz

RICHARD NUNNS & MARK LOCKETT: Redaction

The birth of ‘Redaction’ – a daring new collaboration between Richard Nunns’ taonga pūoro and Mark Lockett on drums, assisted and produced by Jeff Henderson – is excellently detailed in the booklet accompanying. Surrounded by Veronica Hodgkinson’s gorgeous artwork, we learn that the album came into being following the teaming of the two to provide soundscapes for her 2013 exhibition. Henderson was then called in to flesh the recordings of these performances out into

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

the album we have today, hence the name. Title track and opener displays Lockett’s sense of groove fantastically, which features again on Two Minds. Routine Inspection is stereo imaging at its best, complementing some great interplay between Nunns, Henderson and Lockett. Engineer Steve Garden worked wonders on this. Material Instinct begins a distorted wildness that develops through Revival (one incredible musical experience) before dying out to give way to the ever-growing drone of La Morte. Hodgkinson’s visuals are inseparable from the music, illustrating the complexity of the feelings conveyed through each piece.

There’s a sense of instinct that seems in touch with the constants of human nature. The works, both audio and visual, connect the past, present and future in a way that speaks universally, unhinged by constraints of time or place. There’s something in both that gets beneath the surface, that connects with things deeper, or more visceral, than a lot of music ` iÃ]Ê> `ÊqÊ Êà ÀÌÊqÊ Ì½ÃÊiÝ >À>Ì }°ÊUÊSam Carswell

CHRIS PRIESTLEY & THE UNSUNG HEROES: Rogue

This is a fascinating musical document, based on actual people and events that occurred in our colonial history. You won’t believe your ears – or the incredible stories contained herein.

The escaping Dunedin prisoner (1875), the pirate of the South Seas ‘Bully Hayes’, the teenage highwayman in Taranaki (1893)... they’re all here. Not to mention Dunedin's William Larnach, west Auckland’s notorious Don Buck and Hine O Te Rangi (Jean Batten). Also Richard Pearse, “inventor, cellist, recluse”, and Amy Bock, “male impersonator, fraudster, adventuress.” So it’s rogues, rebels and folk heroes, and a truly valuable exercise, bringing all this history together in music. Complete with its own booklet, with original newspaper clippings etc. It’s macabre but engaging, not to mention educational. So much work would have gone into researching this and bringing it back to life, and we should be grateful to folk musician Chris Priestley. He is aided on this recording by the high calibre likes of Nigel Gavin, Jess Hindin, Brendan Power, Claire Robertson, Chris O’Connor and others.

Recorded at The Lab with Olly Harmer, this really deserves to be enjoyed by more than v ÊV ÕLÊÀi}Õ >ÀðÊUÊAnia Glowacz

SETTING FIRE TO STACEY: Love and War EP Setting Fire To Stacey have set about tearing up local venues and radiowaves since their conception in 2012, with multiple tours, radio singles, and most recently this debut EP entitled ‘Love and War’. Produced by veteran Kiwi rocker Paul Matthews (Stylus, I Am Giant), this EP is as good a first up offering from a band as you’re likely to find. Opening track Damn Word sets the tone with crisp production, a compelling groove and soaring vocals. Adept songwriting and soaring vocal melody lines highlight this track from a compositional perspective, the parts building toward an anthemic chorus before giving way to an expansive, building bridge section. No Way Out provided the Christchurch five-piece hard rock act’s first nugget of radio success, and the thumping rhythms and complex guitar arrangements underpinning clinically executed vocal melodies make it evident why. Vital Signs unveils a more introspective side of the band, featuring a chorus that feels like the result of a key change but still goes down smooth, complete with vocal lines you can sink your teeth into, and emotionally charged lyrics. Love and War charges along with catapulting rhythms and another big chorus before Final Bullet slams home what this band is all about – huge production, lingering melodies, destructive guitar lines and an unrelenting rhythm section – delivered with the precision of a surgeon and the v ÀViÊ vÊ>Ê£äÊÌ iÊÌÀÕV °ÊUÊDerek Neutz

To submit your album or EP for review in Fresh-Cut, please send TWO copies along with a brief bio to NZ Musician, PO Box 99-315, Newmarket, Auckland 1149. It must be available for sale and only CDs provided with completed artwork are forwarded for review.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

EV\Z (*

Parents

Nature vs Nurture The band name alone should be enough to tell you Parents do a fine line in ironic – all the more apparent when in a darkened beer- and sweat-stained venue you sustain the withering assault of their oldie-frightening hardcore punk.

In contrast with the title of their 2014 EP ‘Low Life’, but sticking with the irony, the Auckland band’s new album is called ‘Great Reward’.

Darryl Kirk talked with the errm, young adults.

P

arents have the intent and purpose of a real, getting on with it, smash-you-overthe-head punk unit. Around since 2009, the Auckland four-piece have built a reputation for their compelling brand of punk.

The vocals are handled by Simon Oswald (ex-Malenky Robot), who appears to have a chainsaw somewhere in his family tree. He’s backed by the hard fast and brutal trio of Jono Glenday on guitar, Brent Hewitt (also a former Malenky Robot) playing bass, and Will Wood (perversely an alt-country singer/songwriter in his own right) on drums.

Formed in 2009 the band spent a couple of years writing and honing their sound, taking some time to figure out where they fitted in the local punk scene. The band's approach to the craft of songwriting centres on Glenday at the outset.

“Our drummer Will has his own project and spends a lot of time overseas playing, so we have set window of time where we know we've got to write a record,” he explains. “I will write a bunch of riffs and create some structure for the songs, and we figure it out from there. For about 80% of the songs that's they way we work, the remainder comes from straight jams.”

Their sonic approach is based on the idea that more is better in terms of their tools of trade. Jono goes as far as putting his Telecaster

EV\Z (+

through both Ampeg and Sovtek tube amps so that you get the message, they aren't fooling around.

Having previously released a self-titled debut album in 2013 and follow-up EP ‘Low Life’ in 2014, the band’s new album ‘Great Reward’ is a remorseless slice of hardcore precision and power. Released on 10-inch vinyl and digital formats, it has the feel of something complete in concept and execution. While an extension of the band’s previous offerings it has an immediacy and a kind of focused fury.

“We've found our own sound. Early on we were into bands like Swing Kids and Orchid. I guess straight up ’80s hardcore as well, which has got that energy we are looking for, bands like Black Flag, Bad Brians, Minor Threat, you know, the classics. Along with bands that do things a little differently like Fugazi. Fugazi are crucial for us,” explains Glenday.

The proactive example of many of these bands has rubbed off on the way Parents go about recording and touring.

“Well, no one is going to do it for you. I've seen other bands stagnate, never record or tour. In the end you don't need a record label, they don't offer you that much help. Why pay someone to do something I can do myself?" asks Wood.

“We approach other bands and say, ‘We’re coming to Sydney, can you book us a venue and play with us?’ I do the same thing for other bands that are touring, they’ll ask me if they can stay at my house. ‘Yeah, you can stay at my house, eat my food, fill up my entire living room,” Glenday laughs.

As with their ‘Low Life’ EP, the album was recorded at the 80-person capacity Wine Cellar venue in central Auckland, with Tim Shann behind the controls.

“He is from Wellington originally,” explains Wood. “He is a member of the Eversons. They’re cool, really popular and quiet catchy. But before

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

that he was involved with the punk and thrash metal scene, and he engineered and mastered a lot of bands we liked. He did records with Razorwyre, Entrails and Numbskull bands like that.”

“We wanted to work with him because he has the best handle on recording aggressive music,” says Glenday. “Tim has a mobile recording set up and with various members of the band having worked there, we’re allowed to use the back room at the Wine Cellar.

“The room has a great drum sound, it's quite DIY, but we always get what we want because Tim is very good. It’s heavy, but things aren’t lost, you can hear what the drums are doing and how the bass works. We have a live approach when we record – some tracks were all instruments in one take,” Wood adds.

“Regarding recording this album we did something a little different this time,” elaborates Glenday. “Tim did the tracking, but we had Jack Shirley at the Atomic Garden Recording Studio in San Francisco mix and master it. That was done on analogue tape which gives it a distinct sound. That was also part of that punk ethos, we just asked him and he checked us out and liked it, and that was it.”

Their album is set to drop in early February with the band hitting the road in support soon after.

“We have dates lined up for NZ in February.

Then in March we are going to Australia, I've always wanted to go to Tasmania so were going to make it happen this time,” lead singer Oswald chips in.

The band also have their first European tour scheduled for June, they playing the Kiel Explode and Cry Me A River festivals in Germany, with other shows around that country, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. ‘Having fun on tour with the Parents…’

U"_9Pg`PpY,"P73"OUY3SO

UIF UVUPSTµ UVUPSJBMT Hunting for Noise

Y

ou’re a guitarist, and you’ve been carefully crafting a new tone for weeks for your next show. The day arrives, you plug in on the stage only to find your amp buzzing and humming like a swarm of bees chasing some mongolian throat singers.

Everyone stares in horror and you are forced to run from the venue in a shame that is dark and absolute. Your band don’t get paid and go back to their day jobs, their musical dreams dashed. And all because you didn’t properly protect your guitar from noise. Shame on you.

Guitarists are strange birds – slaves to a decades old technology that has changed little since its invention way back in the middle of last century. One thing that has notably changed since then is the ever increasing amount of powered appliances and audio gear that we use around us. All of these items spew out electromagnetic radiation which our poor old guitars readily take on board to be amplified as noise. Cold, systematic hunting and eliminating these pesky noises is our goal here. Let’s stalk.

We’ll start with the simplest electric guitar rig – a guitar, a cable and amplifier. Any tracking begins at the end – the amplifier. Turn it on without anything attached, and if it’s really noisy you’ve found your culprit – easy! Well, also not easy, because your amp should be relatively quiet on its own, and so you might want to take it to a qualified repair merchant to have it looked at. Bummer.

Assuming your amp is pretty quiet, next plug in your guitar and turn the volume down to eliminate that from the equation. If there is suddenly new noise added to your signal the culprit is your cable, which you should promptly replace with a quality shielded one.

If it’s not that either then there is the guitar itself. Turn the guitar volume all the way up. If the amp is at a reasonable volume we’ll more than likely be hearing a combo noise of both hum and buzz.

‘Hum’ is low frequency noise and is induced into your signal by any nearby mains transformer – power supplies for example.

The way to combat hum is simply getting physical distance between you and and that transformer’s electrical field. You can easily find the culprits by turning nearby transformers off and on, one by one, until you find the main perpetrators, then move them further away.

The next culprit is ‘buzz’, which is higher frequency content noise, the noise which disappears on some guitars when you touch the strings, and the noise radiated by computer monitors and dimmer switches. The way to reduce buzz is by what those in the biz (the science biz – or ‘science’) call a Faraday cage – more commonly known as a shield. A shield is a conductive copper sheet installed inside your pickup cavity, surrounding everything within the cavity. It is electrically continuous, connected to the guitar’s common ground point, and works by capturing radiation before it reaches the components and wires, corralling the errant signals to your ground connection away from your signal wire. Boom – buzz be gone!

It can be very inexpensive to shield a guitar using household products, a process covered

by NZM before (Short URL: bit.ly/1K8Mswy), so you may be surprised to find some rather expensive guitars (eg: American Stratocasters) not coming properly shielded, while other cheaper models (Danos for example) are, and have always been shielded well. (The metal

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

by James Dansey

outer of lipstick pickups forms a shield around the coil.)

‘Ah ha’, you may be thinking, what about the pickups? Don’t they jut out of the cavity? Aren’t these outside of the shield and thus prone to the radiation we are trying to hide from? An astute observation, and the answer is, ‘Yes’, yes they will. The shielded innards mean there will be a lot less noise induced, but some will still get in through the pickups, especially single coil pickups.

Shielding the pickups is possible, but more delicate and best left to a tech while the old ‘rotate your body to the point of least noise’ tactic seen in many home studios and old venues is what to use in lieu. An old trick, not so very good, but a working last resort if needed.

Using these tips, lovely loud amplified guitar clangs can now be yours, noise free(ish)! You need never run ashamed from a gig again.

Well…

James Dansey is the Head Studio Supervisor at SAE Institute and when not touring the world mixing live music and obsessing over guitar tone, he can be contacted at j.dansey@sae.edu.

EV\Z (,

NPNFOUT MJLF UIFTF Curated by Trevor Reekie Since the time he joined The Human Instinct (one of Aotearoa’s most distinguished ‘underground’ bands) Zaine Griff has been on an amazing musical journey that saw him recording and touring in the UK and Europe as well as building relationships with some of the biggest names in the business.

Born in Auckland (and back then known as Glenn Mikkelson), Zaine was in London at the height of New Romantic era and had the distinction of recording with an incredible array of pedigree artists, including the late David Bowie on updated versions of Space Oddity and Panic in Detroit (included on the RYKO edition of ‘Scary Monsters’). After 10 years abroad Zaine returned to NZ, maintaining a career that continues to endure.

He has recently released his sixth solo album, titled ‘Mood Swings’.

Zaine Griff Left to right: Mark Wardel, Zaine Griff, the late Steve Strange. (Kiwi ex-pat Richard Burgess is in the background.)

Photo courtesy of Mark Wardel.

What can you remember about this photo being taken?

When I released my second album ‘Figvres’ in London, my record company helped me organise an art exhibition of my paintings because my storyboard for the video of Figvres had paintings and pencil visions – frame-by-frame images of the album. Without realising what I had done, I simply believed that if I was to direct a video I needed to see the imagery in my head. And that is how the exhibition got off the ground. I insisted that the proceeds went to the Music Therapy Charity, which it did. I raised 3000 pounds and donated it to autistic children who could learn music through vibration. The photo was taken by Mick Karn of the band Japan, who then handed the camera back to Mark Wardel. Mark also exhibited paintings in the exhibition of his visions of ‘Figvres’.

Were there childhood indicators that pointed to your adult passion for music and songwriting?

Yes, my mother was always singing along to Frank Sinatra, Sergio Mendes, and just forever singing. She bought me my first guitars. My cousin Max Thomson was in a band called The Pleasers and was on TV on Saturday nights. On Sundays Dad would take me around to his house.

Max loaned me all his Dylan collection. My parents couldn’t handle that. Another cousin, John Staines, showed me chords on the guitar.

The first song I learnt was Colours by Donovan. When I met Donovan in London many years later I told him that. He was blown away.

What was your point of entry into the music business? How did you get to join the Human Instinct?

I played constantly during my school years at Avondale Intermediate and Avondale College. I formed a band with fellow student Peter Greenwood and rehearsed in St Judes Church Hall in Avondale on weekend afternoons. We got gigs by putting them on ourselves because nobody would hire us – I don’t blame them as we were all learning. But we started to build a following. When our keyboard player got into trouble we disbanded. We were called The Fable.

I answered a ‘bass player wanted’ advert and landed the job with a band called Madison Kate. We had the residency at the Montmartre nightclub in Auckland city. Suddenly I was in a position of turning fulltime, even though I was barely out of school.

EV\Z (-

We were pulling bigger crowds every week, so Phil Warren (future deputy Mayor of Auckland) had us move over to Hatchett's in Cook St. It was a much bigger venue that pulled even bigger crowds when Phil invited The Human Instinct to share the bill with us. We played alternating sets, one hour on, one hour off. And then it happened – Maurice Greer approached me to join the band and my world was turned upside-down.

Neil Edwards, the current bassist showed me all the bass parts and I started playing all night in both bands, until we shifted to Christchurch where the Greer brothers had built Christies nightclub.

How was that time in Human Instinct, musically and professionally?

Actually it wasn’t as easy as that all sounds. My parents were hell bent that I get out of this music scene – and even worse news for everyone was that my school girlfriend was pregnant. The Human Instinct had a bad reputation and my family was not happy with our decision, and how dramatic our young lives had become. We married and raced off to Christchurch.

After a few months we made our way to Wellington and played at Ali Baba’s, then back to Auckland for a residency at Granny’s nightclub. We played five to six nights a week from 10pm to 3am. By now The Human Instinct were playing some of my songs and encouraged me to write more. Our guitarist John Donoghue always edited my songs. He taught me to strip back my lyrics and not to overload lines. Martin Hope was the lead guitarist, an incredible musician who I respect to this day.

Working so much together made us very tight. I always knew when Maurice was going to launch into a drum fill and I knew just which fill he would use. We could read each other. Other bands like Ticket and Split Enz would come and see us, especially at Shanty Town, the new club the Greer brothers had built.

We went into Stebbing Recording Studios again in 1974 and recorded ‘The Hustler’ album, then flew to Tahiti to do some concerts. Nine months later we were back in Stebbing recording the ‘Peg Leg’ album – which was finally released in 2002. Tahiti opened my eyes to the world and Maurice opened my mind to imagine the world outside NZ. In September 1974, together with my wife and child, we boarded a flight to London. We had two suitcases, three guitars and reel-to-reel tapes of my songs The Human Instinct had recorded.

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

What were your expectations of the UK and how did reality compare?

I had this belief that English musicians were the best and I wanted to be part of that sound.

I loved the music that was coming out of the UK. Sparks, Cockney Rebel, Roxy Music, Bowie etc. I had a six-month visa and told everyone we would be home after that. I didn’t know it would be 10 years before I would see NZ again.

Once more, I answered an advert for a bass player, this time in Melody Maker, and landed the job. They were a young glamour band called Baby Face. They had an agent who had them working everywhere over the UK. At first it was like being paid to sightsee, and then things really changed when singer Johnny Wakelin wanted us to back him for his first solo album ‘Black Superman’. Alan Coates our guitarist and I arranged most of the tracks.

The outcome of that album was the first single release, In Zaire, which raced to #4 in the UK charts and #1 in many other territories in the world. We were then shuttled to TV music shows all over Europe. We did Top Of The Pops three times, so it was an excellent way to train with cameras.

I met [ex-pat Kiwi musician] Chris Thompson around the time I was working with Baby Face.

I knew Chris from Granny’s in Auckland. It was his wife Ricki that suggested I take dance classes at the Dance Studio in Floral St., Covent Garden, which she managed. It was here that I met and eventually studied under Lindsay Kemp. Chris had just auditioned for Manfred Mann Earth Band.

Studying and working with Lindsay Kemp must have been an incredible experience?

I spent a year studying with Lindsay Kemp and was asked to join his Theatre Company in his production of Flowers. I learnt so much from Lindsay to do with theatrics and dramatics, it gave me the ability to become a true performer.

So within a year I was acting on a West End stage. I put my music on hold and devoted myself to his magic world. When Lindsay was offered a season in Australia I opted out, I didn’t want to leave London. I was inspired to see how much more I could get out of this industry.

It was Lindsay Kemp that pushed me off the cliff and allowed me to fly. He gave me the courage. He had heard my material and insisted that I should never work in a band environment but instead create a solo career and use musicians when I saw fit. At first I couldn’t quite see his vision, but what he was suggesting made sense economically. Use musicians you want to get the job done. He mentored Kate Bush the same way. He provided a much bigger window to look through. Everyone in the Lindsay Kemp Theatre Company later came to my shows. Everyone was encouraging.

You worked with a number of different artists as well as acclaimed American producer Tony Visconti. How did those sort of collaborations come about?

One thing leads to another. I worked very closely with certain musicians – Clive Edwards on drums, Steve Bolton guitar, Matt Irving bass and keyboardist Bernard Clark. I had a network to pull on. I played so many gigs because

my booking agent worked my schedule hard.

The gigs got a following. They also got me publishing and management.The management got me a recording deal. The recording deal hooked me up with producer Tony Visconti and through these sessions I bonded with Hans Zimmer who is now a very successful music composer for films.

Warner then put me with Tony Visconti and everything went really well from the word go. I thought it was all a bit too close being produced by Bowie’s producer. Everything was labeled in those days. I was labeled to be in Bowie’s camp. And then, out of the blue, Tony played some of my tracks to Bowie and Bowie wanted me to record with him using my band.

Tony was always searching for a unique sound. He was the first producer to use the Harmonizer on the snare. With me he phased the hi-hat. He also insisted I play bass. I had done hundreds of gigs as a front man and now he wanted me to get back to basics and play bass – because he felt as a composer and singer I could express myself fully rhythmically. He was right. My first album, ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ was very live and tight. Tony’s production of my album has stood the test of time. It was a privilege and an amazing experience to work with Tony and for him to allow me into his life – he is a great guy. To play bass for Bowie was a great experience.

Hans and I co-produced my second album, ‘Figvres’ together. I had to convince Warner Bros. that we could produce a great album. When I played Reading Festival in 1979 we were the first to ever use computers live. That is Hans for you. A pioneer of music. He was way ahead of everyone else, and that is what I saw in him.

With life, yes there was luck, like meeting Hans, but equally there was bad luck. So many ups and downs. Life becomes a muddle sometimes.

I always panicked about whether I could trust people or not.

Who were some of the bands around and the venues you played in that New Romantic era?

I met electronic musician and producer Richard Burgess when PolyGram wanted him to produce me. We spent time discussing and planning the project, but unfortunately it didn’t materialise. I knew Steve Strange because he would always came to Legends nightclub that my manager owned. He would have a drink before he set out to The Blitz.

Steve was the leader of fashion and he had large group of followers who went everywhere with him. He and I used to hang out at clubs together, like the Embassy and Legends. Steve was always around – we would be at openings and launching of venues, as this is what we did to promote ourselves. So when it came to my art exhibition, Steve was there in the photo along with Mark Wardel and Richard Burgess.

I guess the band I hung out with mostly was Ultravox. When they were not working on the road or in the studio Warren Cann drummed for me. He and I recorded two albums together, ‘Figvres’ and ‘The Heldon Project’. Later on Midge Ure of Ultravox produced me. David Sylvian and Japan invited me to support them at the Lyceum. So I knew Mick Karn, David Sylvian and Steve Jansen really well. They introduced me to

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

Yukihiro Takahashi from Yellow Magic Orchestra who played drums for me on my ‘Figvres’ album.

In return he invited me to write and sing with him on his solo project ‘What Me Worry!’.

I guess Gary Numan invited me to do backing vocals on his ‘Beserker’ album because we were hanging out in the New Wave orbit.

Simple Minds used to come to my gigs and I was always at theirs. That was just how it was.

Mick from Simple Minds used my couch several times to get some shuteye.

When did you find your own voice, as a singer and songwriter?

When I left The Lindsay Kemp Theatre Company, Alan Coates from Baby Face called to say that the band Screemer were in need of a bassist / vocalist. I reluctantly joined the band. Screemer was signed to Arista Records who put us in the studio with producer Phil Wainman (The Sweet). I felt like a puppet. I felt glam rock was already over. I played Andrew Bailey, (head of A&R at Arista) some demos I had done. A year later they dropped Screemer and signed me and put me in the studio with Manfred Mann and Chris Thompson producing.

Although these sessions were never released they were used to get me a deal with Warner Bros. I was performing over 175 live shows a year. I found my voice in the rehearsal studio and constant performing.

What brought you back to NZ in 1984?

A number of reasons. Firstly my mother was very ill. I hadn’t been home in 10 years and on top of this I was extremely burnt out. I believe that had I not come home then I wouldn’t have lasted another 10 years. The social aspect and the business aspect of music did not allow for a personal life. Relationships were destroyed.

I was constantly insecure. I guess I needed to ground myself. I was certainly a different person when I came home from the one that left. Totally.

Who would you consider made the biggest impression on you and why?

Perhaps David Bowie, because he taught me the art of relaxing into your work. How many artists walk out from the control room into the studio… run say eight bars for Visconti to get a sound… and then deliver in one take? He did it with every track. I have never done that. He was simply a true professional.

Ray Davies of the Kinks. He was also charming, friendly and endearing. It was great to play bass for The Kinks on ‘The Misfits’ album. But thinking back perhaps being in Basing Street Studios with Marvin Gaye was hard to beat.

His producer invited me into his studio when I finished recording in Studio 2 late into the night.

He said come down. Oh my god, now there was an artist! He was singing After The Dance for British television. He was a truly gentle person. I could see his genius in his eyes. lllYp"JP9B_J>>Y3SO lllYp"JP9B_J>>Y3SYjL

EP

Extended Play For the full length version go to

www.nzmusician.co.nz EV\Z (.

FY QBU GJMFT ° NBUU FDDMFT Commonly referenced as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the city of dreamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Los Angeles is often alluded to as being the town that can either make or break you in the US / global entertainment industry. The international capital of film, television and, of course, many parts of the popular music industry. A great place of artistic cultivation and creative freedom, LA has provided residence to an abundance of NZ bands and musicians over the years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Naked and Famous, Gin Wigmore, Nick Gaffaney, Mark de Clive-Lowe and Ladyhawke â&#x20AC;&#x201C; just to name a few currently resident Kiwis.

After stints living in Melbourne, London, New York and doubtless several other exciting cities, Betchadupa (on extended hiatus) drummer Matt Eccles, now mainly of Das Pop (presently on hiatus) fame, these days calls LA home and is once again a bandmate to fellow Kiwis. He talked about his LA life with Poppy Tohill.

O

riginally from Auckland, with music and drumming running thicker than blood throughout the veins of his family lineage, it was really no surprise that Matt Eccles exhibited a musical talent from an early age. In fact he was drumming at the ripe young age of five, initiating a career as a professional musician by the time he was 15.

Now with 29 years of life and an abundance of impressive musical experiences under his belt, Matt made the decision early last year to quit the flat he shared with Liam Finn and EJ Barnes in Brooklyn and make the move from the east coast of America to the west.

Matt still drums for his long-time Belgium pop band, Das Pop, but with that band taking a break from the road and him now in LA, these days he predominantly records and tours with Kiwi psychedelic pop and rock internationals Conan Mockasin and Ladyhawke. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just more of everything overseas and in Los Angeles in particular,â&#x20AC;? Matt reports.

While describing his new home in Hollywood Dell as a neighbourhood located smack bang in the middle of gritty Hollywood, he laughs that it is considerably less expensive than New York.

EV\Z )%

Having a larger apartment and the greater proximity of neighbours has allowed him to set up his own home studio which not only allows space for a full set of drums, but one in which he can play. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That certainly wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the case in New York or London, due to the volume of the noise.â&#x20AC;?

Having parents so thoroughly engraved within the music industry has obviously proven helpful, even dating right back to Eccles childhood and first musical-escapade at age 11, forming pop/rock band â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Betchadupaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; alongside a young and musical like-minded Liam Finn, after meeting one another on a family summer holiday in Mt Maunganui in 1997. In moving to live in a different country, connections and work was something Matt was ex-ceptionally lucky enough to already have, in great quantity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Music has always been Mum and Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never pushed me towards it. I always wanted to be a musician, but never thought about it seriously as a career. I was lucky enough to grow up around a lot of musicians, within my group of friends and family, so I sort of just ended up falling into it,â&#x20AC;? he claims.

With Betchadupa on an extended hiatus due to Liam Finnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heightening solo career, Matt, living in London at the time, began touring with long-time friend James Milne (Law-rence Arabia), before joining Das Pop in 2007 and exclusively touring Belgium. Later meet-ing fellow ex-pat Conan Mockasin (Hosford) he became a permanent fixture in both Mockasinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recording and touring band by the end of 2011. More recently he took on the role of Ladyhawkeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (Pip Brown) touring drummer.

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

“James [Milne], Liam [Finn] and a lot of the others, are people I’ve just been lucky enough to grow up around and have spent a bit of time with, which is then how I went on to meet people like Conan and Pip at parties in various places.”

“Moving and living overseas, I never intentionally wanted to just hang out or work with New Zealanders, it kind of just happened,” he chuckles. “But it is nice having a similar shared experience from all starting in the same place however. Because we’re all sort of doing different versions of the same thing.”

With both Hosford and Brown also residing in LA, the hardships of having and retaining steady on-going work has somewhat minimalised, though that’s not to say he hasn’t faced challenges and struggles alongside the inevitable frequent travelling and touring.

“Every time you move to a new country, it’s basically like starting all over again. I don’t have my own project where I’m writing my own songs and releasing albums, I’m basically just a

gun for hire, which can be great sometimes, but not if there’s no jobs.

“I should probably be doing some other work right now, for example, because I’m not doing much recording in the studio or touring just yet. But luckily enough my girlfriend works for a company that produces podcasts which need some original, incidental music and mood pieces in the background, so I’ve been able to help them out and do a few of those lately.

But the biggest challenge for a musician like me, and I guess anyone living anywhere, is just about trying to keep the money coming in. I love it, but certainly think it’s not for everyone.”

“People like myself, Liam and Conan have been touring since we were pretty young and it’s really all we’ve ever done. I certainly think there’s an addictive quality to being on the road and travelling in a gang, but like anything, there’s also definitely times when it’s just nice to stay put and be at home [in LA] for a little bit.”

December saw Matt head back into the studio with to work on new Conan Mockasin

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

material, whilst 2016 brings with it a busy touring schedule following the planned first quarter international release of Ladyhawke’s third album. Prioritising the various touring and recording commitments will be Matt’s biggest challenge of the year, although he admits that Hosford still has to actually come up with more songs before they return to the studio and plan any more touring with him Having not lived in NZ since 2003, Matt admits he’s looking forward to hitting our shores once again when touring.

“As you get older there’s a stronger pull to be back home and closer to your family,” he confesses. “But for now, with my work opportunities and the travelling (with a busy touring schedule throughout America, Europe and Australasia ahead), Los Angeles makes the most sense and is definitely the place to be.”

glJgg9_Y3SOd O"ggG9l933M9`

EV\Z )&

Y GBDUPSZ

Dave Dobbyn â&#x20AC;&#x201C; You Oughta Be In Love

V

alentines Day will have passed when you get to read this, but in the spirit of the day have a watch and listen to this romantic Kiwi gem. (youtu.be/KpekVZARaRY) With iconic well crafted tunes, compelling lyrics and patriotic themes, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no doubt Dave Dobbyn is a Kiwi songwriting legend.

His 1986 tune You Oughta Be In Love (YOBIL) while arguably not as anthemic as Slice Of Heaven, Loyal, or Welcome Home, is undeniably charming â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and chock-full of clever songwriting and arranging techniques to boot.

The melody joins at the verse, Dobbyn comfortable in a wide tenor (to high tenor) range over warm underpinning accompaniment.

He has room to move here, and move he does â&#x20AC;&#x201C; completely at ease, rhythmic phrasing relaxed and natural, gliding over (tricky) larger interval leaps and full to falsetto, back to full voice switches. He also employs tasteful embellishments by elongating what I would assume are written phrases, listen closely to his back-phrasing and phrase extension (without over-dramatising). Line after line of gold as in

Composed for the NZ film â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Footrot Flatsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, YOBIL is a love ballad sung by the cartoon stripâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main human character Wal, a gruff, gumboot, stubbies and singlet wearing farmer, to his girl Cheeky. The scene where the song is finally unveiled is deeply sweet, with a touch of ironic comedy. Wal, now dressed in a suit, pirouetting about, singing the high pitched, acrobatic melody and lovey-dovey lyrics to his dog = epic feel-good cuteness, right in line with the songâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s singular lyrical theme of affectionate attachment. However, the film versionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prolonged verse-verse form (the original first chorus is omitted) means we have to wait a whopping one minute forty seconds to hear that great chorus hook! (youtu.be/ qJOWpEBz0t0) Essentially a slow 12/8 pop-rock ballad with an almost ploddy dotted-quarter accent in the rhythm section throughout, many subtle devices are employed to pique the listenerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interest and lift this song from the realm of the ubiquitous to the unique and memorable.

We are drawn into the song with the opening â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;vocalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; synth patch on a rootless Csus2 (key centre tonic chord) which quickly moves to a C major triad before a playful xylophone melody joins over the IV and V chords. Deep warm celli and subtle counterpoint strings bring a sudden lushness and the scene is set â&#x20AC;&#x201C; weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re wrapped safely in diatonic land here.

However, Dobbyn uses chord embellishments to propel. The C is always a warmer add9; the G suspends before falling to include the 3rd, adding drama; the voicings and orchestration subtly shift; the strings at the intro move the IV chord a little more. Then at verse two we find a clean electric guitar adding a ninth to the F chord (and an edgier texture too), many other emotive harmonic gems are revealed throughout.

this great example, 'Hold on, and give it all you have' (b.5 to b.7).

Check out the entire second verse and some of the adlibbing on the final chorus for more great phrases.

Back to the pre-chorus where Dobbyn intones â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Then, here she comes, in walks my babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and we move to the relative A minor, the violins adding ninths and tension, before a penultimate secondary dominant D7 chord and a subtle â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;smileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; wafts in on the BVs, lifting us toward the dominant where a great chorus

EV\Z )'

setup follows. G to an F/G to a higher-voiced G and finally a staccato string stab on a G+; fraught and foreboding, a great gasp of silence before the first chorus falls.

A G+ would normally precede a C chord of some kind, however the chorus surprisingly (and happily) begins on the IV chord (F major), alternating with a double plagal bVII (Bb major) and our C major tonic. We finally get our big hook, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complex and elusive. Try singing it back after one listen exactly in time with Dobbyn! The chorus melody continues, tracing

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

with Dixon Nacey

more delicious harmonic embellishments along its linear pathway; a ninth on the tonic chord, suspending slightly, while backing vocals harmonise lushly through the chorus, adding colour and rhythmic movement (Ab [b7], C [M9th], and a subtle Eb to D [4th to 3rd] over the Bb9 chord add a touch of wistfulness and also provide a sweeter release to the final C tonic resolve). Arguably the most dramatic moment of the entire tune is b.14 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we are compelled to follow it toward a conclusion (the resolving tonic chord at b.15). To end the chorus Dobbyn gives us a climactic, shimmering high C (b.19), falsetto style, as the strings descend to a G+ for a two bar tag (b.20 and b.21) a quick full-band diminuendo ensues; preparing the second verse.

While the structure is straight forward (intro | verse | pre | chorus | rinse and repeat) a stripped back 8 bar interlude comprised of the intro / verse chords replaces what would normally be a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;middle 8â&#x20AC;&#x2122; bridge section and provides a strong dynamic contrast via more sweet string lines, xylophone cuteness and some soft, subtle improvised fills before the final chorus comes crashing back in.

An end double chorus with a bit more oomph and some bells and whistles sees us following the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;golden ratioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (ish) model, and that generally equals satisfied listeners. I would put myself in that basket â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I recall being an

infatuated 11 year old in 1986 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this was my soundtrack back then and as it has surfaced over the years Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always enjoyed it. Maybe Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a hopeless romantic...

Dixon Nacey is a guitarist, composer, producer and MD, who teaches music at Auckland & Massey University, CPIT in Christchurch, and online at www.jazzguitarlegend.com.

Mermaidens

Painting a picture of Wellington trio Mermaidens to NZM readers back in April 2014, Maddie McIntyre told it like this: If you took a dash of stoner rock, sifted in a bit of classic ‘60s surf, added a pinch of dark dream psyche pop and then stirred through a healthy dose of mood punk, you'd get the tall, long-limbed glass that is Mermaidens. About a year later the trio brought their musical pastiche into a studio, where they bashed out eight new mostly live recordings, now packaged together as a debut album titled ‘Undergrowth’. Over cups of tea and coffee, singer / guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Abe Hollingsworth discussed their new album, due for digital release in March, with Laura Dooney.

T

here is a slight discord between the rumbling, haunting music of Mermaidens, and the sweet friendly nature of two of the three band members I met on Cuba Street in Wellington. Gussie Larkin is the band’s co-lead vocalist and guitarist (both roles shared with Lily West) and Abe Hollingsworth plays drums.

Over the past three years since they became a trio Mermaidens has put out a couple of EPs and secured themselves a name with high rotation plays on student radio. A hectic tour schedule in 2014 saw them playing a heap of shows, both in their home town Wellington, and around the country.

Mid last year Larkin and Hollingsworth took off overseas for a bit – Larkin to the UK for six months, and Hollingsworth for a three month look around south east Asia and Japan.

Before they left Mermaidens recorded their debut album, for the first time swapping out flat bedrooms and lounges for Blue Barn Studio in Newtown. That’s where James Goldsmith, known for his work as an engineer at Munki Studios before it got levelled to make way for a new park, is now set up.

Goldsmith is described by Larkin as “our number one favourite person.”

“Love him,” agrees Hollingsworth. “We’ve known him for a long time. When we first started playing gigs at Puppies he was always

doing sound for us.”

“And he’s really, really, good,”Larkin adds.

Over three days and under Goldsmith’s watch, the trio bashed out a recording of their newest songs. As Larkin explains, ‘Undergrowth’ sounds like it’s live because it was live.

“We played it all together, and we can’t do it any other way, that’s just our style. It’s not polished, like it’s pretty loose, the playing…”

“It’s not polished pop music. That’s the vibe. It would’ve been weird if it was slick,” Hollingsworth affirms, “because it wouldn’t be right.”

“Like, we’re not heavy, but we are a bit gritty.”

Recording in a studio setting did allow the trio to expand on their previous recordings.

“You can hear all the little guitar parts and we were able to do lots of different layers of vocal harmonies which is a really big part of the music,” says Larkin, adding that the songs are pretty consistent with the Mermaidens vibe, being very imagery based.

Under The Mountain, the second single from ‘Undergrowth’ talks about monsters and heads, sprouting from your teeth, for example. ‘I’ll float away, you can’t stop it. I’ll float away, sky is falling,’ it insists.

“It’s kind of like a dream, it could be a dream,” Hollingsworth says of their lyrical style in general.

“It’s not really attached to what I do in my everyday life,” continues Larkin. “I definitely write about like, sticking it to the man sort of… it’s more abstract,” she half explains.

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

Songwriting is shared between Larkin and third band member Lily Paris-West.

“It’s really half and half on the album which is cool. There are four songs where I’m the main voice, and four songs where Lily is.”

With the two ladies on lead vocals it’s all too easy to draw obvious comparisons, but there are definitely some elements of Sleater Kinney to be heard, and a PJ Harvey-type ethereal quality to both the music and words. They kind of sound like a gruntier version of Washed Out. Mermaidens aren’t on a label, and the songs are only being released digitally, through sites like SoundCloud and Bandcamp, though they’re thinking about selling tapes as merchandise at their shows.

“Well, it’s not expensive, and no one really wants CDs,” justifies Larkin.

“CDs are kind of irrelevant,” agrees Hollingsworth. “People would use CDs to put the music on iTunes, right – but then you can just download it, so why even have a CD? Whereas a tape is a different format.

“It’s really weird to navigate that idea of merch, of distribution, of releasing stuff – because people are just listening to music, so it’s kind of like a non-thing. But at the same time it’s really nice to buy the products,” he says.

With the album due out in mid-March, the band plans to do a release tour straight away, starting at Wellington’s San Francisco Bathhouse.

Whether you’re into cassettes as merchandise or not – Mermaidens’ live show is not to be missed. This band really is one to keep watching over the next few years, both figuratively, and literally.

O9_O"J79P`Y,"P73"OUY3SO

EV\Z )(

Auckland Folk Festival 2016 Kumeu Showgrounds, February 5-8 Photos: Trevor Villers, www.villers.co.nz

EV\Z ))

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

Groeni

The H Isn’t Silent On the face of things Groeni is an electronic act producing a deliberate, almost minimalist, percussive rhythm-based ambient drum’n’bass-meets-trip hop. We’re thinking bedroom producer with a laptop and USB mic, right? Well no, at least not when the Wellington trio play live on stage. Shared between Mike Isaacs, James Paul and singer Alexander Green there are samplers, sequencers and digital percussion, a Prophet 6 polyphonic analogue synth and MiniBrute analogue bass synth, a Telecaster (!) and heaps of pedals for both guitar and voice. Martyn Pepperell talked with synth maestro Isaacs about Groeni’s recent fast track and latest EP, ‘Hinde’.

A

s Groeni,Wellington musicians Alexander Green, James Paul and Mike Isaacs make a shimmering and textural form of live techno music. Placing an emphasis on gorgeous soul-folk vocal arrangements, rich textures and driving hypnotic rhythms, their music serves as both a lush and detailed listening experience on record and a compelling live experience.

In a testament to their musical ability, over the last year, Groeni have released two EPs, ‘Hewn’ and ‘Hinde’, toured nationally several times, and performed at the Auckland leg of Laneway Festival. They also received substantial support from the Red Bull Sound Select and NZOA Making Tracks programs and won acclaim from overseas radio and media outlets like BBC 6 in the UK, KCRW (US), Australia’s Triple J, Indie Shuffle and EDM.com. It’s been an excellent run for 12 months.

Along the way, Groeni has progressed from Alexander’s solo production project (with Isaacs and Paul acting as session players) to a fully fleshed-out group collaboration.

“When we released ‘Hewn’ James and I were just there to do the live stuff,” Isaacs explains.

“After about a year of playing together, we realised that our favourite bits of the set were the parts we had written together.”

With that realisation the three set up a shared Dropbox folder and started leaving sketches and ideas (recorded at their home studios) inside for collective listening. In subsequent group writing sessions, these ideas began to expand into fuller songs.

“While this all sounds quite straight forward, it was actually pretty difficult as we’re all quite emotional,” he admits. “We were tip-toeing

around each other, not wanting to offend anyone. It got to the point where we realised that it was actually an enormous disservice to the music. To get the best music possible, we needed to be brutally honest with each other.

It took us six or seven months to be able to say to one another, ‘That sucks’. It works now, and it’s been great for our relationship.”

While this was going on, the trio also went through the process of transforming their live set from a laptop-driven performance into a hardware heavy exercise. They got hold of keyboards, samplers, drum machines, effects units, and began learning how to play their old and new material in a live and improvised manner.

“The software was actually confining us, and it was temperamental,” Issacs says. “We’d be playing, a cable would come out, and everything would crash to a halt. Hardware is way more fun to work with as well. The possibilities in front of you are endless… We wanted to move towards having more improvised elements and provide audiences with a unique experience every time.”

In October last year, these processes lead them to the release of ‘Hinde’ and a national tour in support of it. While their prior EP ‘Hewn’ came out through German record label/ distributor combo Project Mooncircle/HHV.DE in digital, vinyl and cassette formats, ‘Hinde’ began as a digital self-release.

“The contrast between the two release experiences last year was really kind of crazy,” he reflects.

While Project Mooncircle/HHV.DE provided them with a level of support and coverage they

COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+

couldn’t achieve on their own; it also meant they’d had to wait a year and a half to release that first EP. He says they used that time pretty productively, to write new material and put together the live show, but looking ahead they wanted to a shorter gap between recording and release for ‘Hinde’.

“Self-releasing was definitely a hard slog in comparison to releasing with a label. Credit should go to James, who took this whole process on and probably sent about 5000 emails… I think he did a really great job of getting the new material to some people who were willing to put their necks out for us.”

As part of that process, James managed to convince Wellington company Coffee Supreme to help fund a limited edition vinyl release of ‘Hinde’. He also did the legwork on an application for a joint funding grant from Red Bull and NZ On Air. Groeni used the money to work with Wellington director Joel Fear to create a gorgeous god’s eye view music video for the Hinde track. They are supporting its release with an art exhibition of stills from the clip and playing a series of live shows around the country in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin at the start of March.

What next though?

“Good question,” Isaacs chuckles. “The next step is an album. We haven’t had much writing time lately. The plan is to knuckle down after this tour. We have no real direction yet, but we want to explore different types of synthesis and some new production processes. We are hearing prepared piano on the album as well.” lllYB_S9PJOj`J3YPp

EV\Z )*

71 Sunset

N o t h i n g L e f t

To Say

An oddly catchy name that, on the face of it, might deliver anything from Californian radio pop to nu metal. Turns out 71 Sunset belongs to a band of four mature gents who play a grunged up brand of alternative rock / hard rock, and have recently released a cracking debut album titled ‘Bitter Earth’ on the AAA label. David Hitchcock is the band’s guitarist, Elliot Pike is on bass, Dom Morris plays drums and Darrin Floyd handles lyrics and lead vocals – and provided the answers below.

How did the band as it is now come to be?

To cut to the chase, we were all at the point of needing new musical challenges. Ads were placed and answered. Jams happened and we quickly became a permanent unit. The chemistry was there from the first time we played. I think we all knew at that moment how things would pan out.

The bandname sounds like an address – how did you come up with it?

It’s one of those things, the necessity of identity. It’s hard to avoid cliche sounding names for rock bands but we think we’ve managed to do just that ha ha. The exact formula and process used to come up with it remain a closely guarded secret… like the colonel’s secret recipe in a way.

Apart from the band, how do you guys connect?

We’ve spent a huge chunk of time together over the last year and a half. With gigging, recording, videos and the day to day stuff there really hasn’t been a lot of time for anything else. We all have families, and the complexities that come with that, too.

We try and share the load across the board when it comes to the business end of things. Often it just comes down to who has the time to get it done first. Usually decisions are easy to make as everyone is pretty communicative. There are no egos or attitudes to get in the way either!

The lyrics are fairly dark. How close to your reality do they come?

There has always been a dark element to my lyrical musings. I grew up reading Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Anne Rice etc. I draw lot from their styles of writing while transforming toward the musical requirements. There is most definitely a lot of reality and honesty in the lyrics if you know where to look. I try and keep it on an ambiguous enough level that people can take what they want from it, but I think the

emotions come across no matter who is listening.

A lot of things happened to us and our families during the writing and recording process, all of which influenced the lyrical content in one way or another. There were births, deaths, cancer battles, relationships dissolving and forming. Rain is a fairly introverted look at myself, struggling with the death of my father and trying to make sense of how someone so pivotal in my life was suddenly gone. In a way it’s me exploring my own self worth and reminding myself about what I can contribute and at the same time not to get too hung up on everything beyond my control.

How the album come to be called ‘Bitter Earth’?

It was taken from a line in Save Me Now, a reference to our planet being subverted through the exploitation of natural resources, in the name of profit.

The album illustrations are outstanding – what’s the story behind them?

Gene Harris is a long time friend of Elliot’s and his work was first bought to our attention a few years ago now. He basically came along to a jam session one night, and at the end he had a series of sketches of us that we were all super impressed by. When we recorded our previous 4-track EP it was a no brainer to get him to do the artwork for that. We were so happy with the results he was an automatic choice for the album.

Cutting out a lot of intricate details – the album art is his interpretation of what he felt best represents us as a band, our music and our individual views on the world.

What’s with the Facebook photos of you all sleeping in the van?

Ha ha yes, that was the early morning drive home from a show in Tauranga. We left at 3:30am and those pics were taken in the middle of nowhere about 4:30am or thereabouts. I don’t think anyone was actually asleep, more just delirious from lack of sleep and not wanting pics taken.

Nothing like driving a fully laden van in the pouring rain, one bald front tyre, no WOF and overdue road user charges too… Thankfully not many cops around at that hour!

What were some of the points you discussed when you went into RedRoom Studios with Matt Smith?

Before we hit the studio he’d already seen us play live a couple of times so it made the process quite easy. We basically didn’t want to sound like a polyester version of ourselves, if that makes sense. We wanted the end product to be as close as possible to what you could expect us to deliver live.

Do you plan ahead for a long time as far as the band is concerned?

We are in discussions with the label and other parties at the moment as to what the future holds. There will obviously be more shows, and also talk of international touring. We’re halfway through writing for the second album and hope to begin tracking that sometime soon too. bT`jP`9gYe ,"P73"OUY3SO

EV\Z )+

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

ChicMix Looks To Break The Glass Wall For Female Audio Engineers

W

hile solo-moniker female artists such as Adele, Sia, Beyonce and Rihanna are dominating the recording industry, the same can’t be said for the other side of the glass wall… In few industries is the gender gap as obvious as it is in the field of audio engineering, where just 5% of those employed are female.

SAE Creative Media Institute is launching a campaign to help redress the local gender imbalance, starting with its first female-only audio engineering workshop, ChicMix scheduled for March 12.

SAE campus manager, Dr Suzette Major, says it will be the first in a series of initiatives by the institute to highlight a career in audio engineering for NZ women.

“Bringing more women into the industry is an ongoing key objective for us. It’s essential to increase the number of females represented in the recording arts, so we can bring more balance to the industry. When more women are involved at this level of production, they can have a more significant voice in the production of music, film and pop culture in general.”

Dr Major feels the local audio engineering industry lacked female role models, leading to lower awareness of the industry as a career choice.

“Have a read of the album credits on any locally produced piece of music – or internationally, for that matter. Where are all the girls’ names? It’s not traditionally a woman’s domain, and there are not a lot of high-profile women in the field or portrayed in the media.

“I think it’s not on a lot of women’s radars as a

career option. They might not have considered it – and even if they have, they might be unsure how to get started.”

24-year old Aucklander Mona Sanei was first drawn to audio engineering as a teenager, and encouraged to pursue it by one of her high school teachers. Now a qualified audio engineer, she freelances in the film and music industries in audio and creative production. She says working in such a highly male-dominated sector often presents challenges.

“It can be funny – you can get questioning looks! I was recording Stan Walker’s concert and while I was setting up my gear, someone asked whether I was a groupie!

“At another job, I asked a staff member where the microphones had been moved to, and she told me to ask the sound guy. I told her I was the sound guy.”

While Sanei says she wishes there were more female audio engineers out in the field, she does think the trend is shifting slowly.

“I definitely have seen the number of women in the audio industry rise in the past couple of years, and I hope it continues. I hope that women aspiring to be audio engineers know that there are so many great opportunities in the audio industry, and that everyone is very supportive of each other. The work is always exciting and personally, I couldn't be happier with the path I took.”

Jeremy McPike, studio manager at Roundhead Studios, says he’d welcome more female audio engineers.

“We are emerging from a bit of a ‘boys’ club mentality,” says McPike. “About 95% of all the

Advertorial

sound engineers and music producers who come through my door are male, but there are no physical, social or technical barriers for this to be the case anymore. Women sound engineers bring a unique quality to the work they do, so if we shift this balance, it could take music production and sound reproduction to an entirely new place. Our doors are open to women, 100%.”

Dr Major believes one of the best ways to get more women involved is to demystify the industry by offering practical, hands-on experience.

“I look forward to the day when I look out across the SAE campus and see lots of females studying with us,” she said.

SAE offers internationally recognised audio programs including the Bachelor of Recording Arts, Diploma of Audio Engineering and Certificate in Electronic Music Production. Job prospects for audio engineering graduates are diverse and include recording studio engineer/ producer roles, live sound technician, audio production for theatre, television and film, and all facets of radio.

Subscribe to Six great issues of NZM delivered to your door, for just $30!

Name

Address

To subscribe to receive NZM for a year all you have to Email do is fill out this form and send it back to us at PO Box 99-315, Newmarket, Auckland with your $30 cheque made payable to NZ Musician.

Phone If you prefer to pay by direct credit then just let us know by emailing editorial@nzmusician.co.nz. Simple really, a full year (six issues) of prime NZ music coverage for COB ;ZWgjVgn$BVgX] '%&+ just $30.

Enclosed is my cheque for $30.

Payment has been made by directEV\Z ), credit.

/;. /PUJDF #PBSE CLASSIFIEDS MCA - CD & DVD PRODUCTION

ROUNDHEAD STUDIOS INDIE RATE

CD & DVD Duplication from just $1.50/unit + gst bulk.

We also replicate at full retail quality. Direct to disc printing. Premium card packaging or traditional jewel cases. We do it all. No set up fees on 100 units or more. Online cost estimator at www.morecoreaudio. co.nz Ph 0272102725 / (09) 8139242 sales@ morecoreaudio.co.nz

Producing a world class recording in New Zealand’s best studio with New Zealand’s best engineers is more do-able than you think. Take advantage of Roundhead's special indie rate for unsigned artists.

Only $1500 + gst for two days including engineer / producer! Contact Jeremy on 09 377 7600 or info@ roundheadstudios.com for more details.

WANTED PRO TOOLS 8 EXPERIENCE.

BLUE LOTUS RECORDING STUDIO

Ellerslie area. I have a small studio/ex-Revolver and will trade time/$/? for some tuition. Call Al 021 501 906.

High-end and demo recordings, mixing and mastering available in central Auckland. $35 per hour includes engineer, drum kit, amps, upright piano. Phone Marc 021 050 1041 or view the studio on Facebook.

LOCAL MUSICIANS MUSIC www.localmusicians.co.nz Have you written a great song? Do you receive local, national and international radio airplay? Do you want to be interviewed for an internet TV show for promotion of your great song?

Contact shirley@localmusicians.co.nz Mob 027 529 5916 Skype Shirleyhowe7

TSUNAMI SOUND STUDIOS… Is breaking the price barrier with recession busting specials. Your band can stay for free and record at Tsunami – NZ’s best live rock studio for $250p/d for 2 or more days. No hidden extra charges! Easily NZ’s best recording package. Huge sound, in your face mixes, free production advice. www.tsunamisound.co.nz

HIRE STAGING, PA SOUND, BACKLINE, LIGHTING Vocal PA systems to concert Line array systems for music (bands and DJs), dance or speech. Drum risers to outdoor covered stages, party lights to band show lighting for events from 50 people to 3000 people. Dry Hire (you pick up) or with full technical support where we set up, operate and remove we can help you with your event. www.therockfactory.net 09 270 9555 or therockfactory@gmail.com

EARWIG STUDIOS 24-TRACK ANALOGUE RECORDING 2 inch MCI 24-track and Studer half inch 2-track.

Soundtracs 44-channel console. Neumann U87 mic, Urei, dbx, Focusrite and Aphex compression.

Chamber and plate reverbs. Leslie speaker, Rhodes, piano, Hammond etc. $60 per hour including gst and engineer. 8 hour day rate $350 inclusive. www. earwig-studios.co.nz or ph 027 278 1660

MAKE AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR With top Canadian luthier David Freeman from Timeless Instruments and local expert Paddy Burgin in this three week Wellington course, January 2017. More than 100 students since 2003. Spaces limited. Details at www. burginguitars.co.nz Contact paddy@burginguitars. co.nz or call Wellington 384 5572.

EARWIG STUDIOS PA & LIGHT HIRE Vocal PA with mics and monitors $135. Mic up rig with engineer $340. Larger rig $450. Lighting also available. See www.earwig-studios.co.nz/pa_hire.htm or phone 027 278 1660

EV\Z )-

ALLMUSIC GUITAR TUITION Professional Guitar Tuition in acoustic, electric & classical guitar, music theory. Weekly classes and casual consultations by appointment. Contact us on 07 834 3469 for more information. Tutor - Stu Edwards.

BMA (Music), NCAET. www.allmusic.co.nz

RECORDING STUDIO NEWMARKET $50 + gst per hour with engineer or Dry Hire (byo or DIY engineer) weekend special $500 + gst from Fri night to Sun night. Backline Pearl, Gretsch, Fender, Marshall, Vox, Ampeg & Korg. We can record drums for DIY bands, professionally recorded drums makes a huge difference to the final outcome of your recordings.

Call 021 358 577 or therockfactory@gmail.com

EARWIG STUDIOS REHEARSAL SPACE Earwig Studios is available for 3-5 hour rehearsals for $50. Full amenities, vocal PA, bass bin, quad box and drum kit available. Contact Darren on 027 278 1660 or darren@earwig-studios.co.nz

GUITARISTS The Secrets of Successful Practising for Guitarists is a book that will super-charge your progress immediately.

It's written by Guitar Cool columnist Kevin Downing, and you can get it from his website www.guitar.co.nz

Standard NZM Classified Ads (max 40 words) cost just $30 inc. gst. Optional sizes and features available on request. To place a Classified advert by remote send your ad copy, with cheque (payable to NZ Musician) to: NZ Musician magazine, PO Box 99-315, Newmarket, Auckland 1149. See the Contents page for phone and email contact details.

Get Noticed Here!

Advertise on NZM’s Notice Board wth a display ad for as little as

$100 + gst in mono, or $180 + gst in full colour Contact editorial@nzmusician.co.nz to book Notice Board space in the next issue.

Two optional ad shapes for the same low price: Notice Board Window like this ad (59mm x 40mm) or Notice Board Strip (122 x 20mm)

lll#COBjh^X^Vc#Xd#co

www.nzmusician.co.nz NZ Musician @nzmusician

NZ MUSIC S E RV I C E S DIRECTORY 2016

Edition

24