NZ Musician October November 2016

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O c t o b e r / N o v e m b e r 2016 VO L . 19

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THOMSTON ULCERATE ANNA CODDINGTON NAME UL LOOKING FOR ALASKA EARTH TIGER PITCH BLACK ARMED IN ADVANCE CANDICE MILNER GRAEME JAMES SKYSCRAPER STAN

Introducing: Synthstrom’s Deluge

The Power and the Passion

Devilskin

With the arrival of their sophomore album Hamilton metallers Devilskin stand on the cusp of huge-ness. Their 2014 debut ‘We Rise’ proved a sensation, with Platinum sales driven not by radio but their compelling high-energy live performances. Hard to credit but the four members span four decades in age. Bassist Paul Martin and guitarist Nail, the band’s red-bearded ‘evil twins’, along with drummer Nic Martin talked with NZM’s Richard Thorne. Jennie Skulander, who combines melodic vocals with the power of a spectacular death growl, was justifiably absent.

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t’d be a big call to argue that Shihad didn’t fully deserve to win the Tui for Best Rock Album Tui at the 2015 NZ Music Awards for their ninth studio album. The band are, after all, Kiwi rock royalty, and ‘FVEY’ was both a political statement and return-to-form of an album. But still, especially in retrospect, fellow finalists Devilskin could well argue they were hard done by in missing out.

The numbers all support Devilskin’s case. Their ‘We Rise’ album topped the local album chart for double the number weeks that ‘FVEY’ did.

Devilskin’s debut remained a fixture in the local album Top 20 for more than 90 weeks, while Shihad tipped out after 31 – about the same week ‘We Rise’ was accredited with achieving platinum sales. ‘FVEY’ sold Gold.

‘We Rise’ had reached Gold status within a fortnight of its release on 21 July 2014, quite remarkably keeping Ed Sheeran’s ‘X’ from the top of the main album charts for three weeks. Retailer JB HiFi reported it being the fastest selling album of the year, eager fans queuing out the door to meet and greet the band in their Hamilton hometown on release day.

It was a phenomenon, or at least so it seemed. Speaking with the band’s three male members, bassist Paul Martin, guitarist Nail (Tony Vincent) and drummer Nic Martin, it’s evident they’d agree with that sentiment, but it was one they’d seen coming.

A sensation maybe, but Devilskin was certainly no overnight sensation – they can point to years of determined slog before the release of ‘We Rise’. Four years of driving the country in a sign-written van, slowly building a fan base in the traditional way – winning them over with live performances.

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“We always worked really hard and did a lot of smaller gigs. We spent a lot of time dressing up the stage and making the shows really good,” Paul relates. “As we got more people coming along we invested more in the PA and after that the lights, so everything sort of built from the ground up. But people that saw us in those early days just kept coming back and bringing more people, so it just sort grew exponentially from there.”

It was at the niche indie Wagstock event in Christchurch in 2013 that they all first got an inkling of the success that lay ahead.

“That was the stage when we found out that Jennie can’t walk through the crowd anymore. She can’t be seen in the pub before, and just hop up from a table and get on the stage – people were just all over her. It was like an open air party gig and we parked our van in the field. As soon as the crowd saw the band it was like something out of a zombie movie, people just walking over calling ‘Jennie, Jennie…’ People were jumping in the van wanting to meet her and touch her – it was kind’a weird.”

Devilskin’s ‘We Rise’ tour started three days after the album’s official release. They’d just ordered pizzas before the Dunedin gig when they found out it was the nation’s top selling record for the second week running.

“We’d had a week’s worth of sold out gigs in the South Island and we’d really only done Christchurch before that,” reflects Nic.“All of a sudden this album that was really just a collection of songs we’d been playing for four years was the biggest album in the country. I think we just sat there going, ‘This is way more than any of us anticipated!’”

“It was totally surreal,” Nail laughs. “We were still pulling up to venues and seeing a big crowd going around the corner and going, ‘Oh man,

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there must be something on in town tonight!

What’s happening?!’ It was a pretty humbling sort of shock really. We were just holding on tight and along for the ride, it was awesome.”

Paul maintains their collective work ethic hasn’t changed, that Devilskin are still doing what they were back in the early days. With those chunky black boots, the heavy tatts, his shaven head and that fire-red goatee I’m not inclined to argue the point. But the guy behind radio’s long running Axe Attack metal show is no hard man at heart.

“We still gig hard, we still work hard and we still want to bring in our own stuff. We’re struggling to let the boys unload the truck sometimes!”

“Yeah,” says Nail as they laugh in almost embarrassed agreement. “We’ve all had the lecture about, ‘If you ruin your fingers loading gear is one of the crew going to play your guitar that night?’ ‘Ohh, but…’”

Things had changed though. They were suddenly getting pushed into lots more promo for one thing.

“I think we all still want to be just as invested as we always were, because that’s what kind of lifted us,” says Nic. “This underground kind of swell and the black T-shirt community support just grew, and that was all around us being hands-on, so we still have the urge to do that.”

“Hanging around after the gig to meet people that’s really important,” Paul expands.

“We’re all the same when we go to concerts and see our heroes, we hang around trying to get a guitar pick or whatever. So I think it sort of comes from us all having a love and passion for music that this is the way we’ve always done things, and the band has gone up a rung every time we’ve done anything. Like Nail says, it’s weird cos it feels like we are still doing exactly the same thing, the same work ethic.”

‘We Rise’ proved a perfect choice of album title, though the song to which it belonged didn’t make the cut for their debut recording.

Paul explains it was one of their most powerful live songs and remains in their live set, but the demo just didn’t translate. Needing to come up with a name for the album they all felt that it fit the kind of ascendancy Devilskin were on. Interestingly it’s a pattern repeated with their new album.

“We took a step back after the album was done and looked at it and thought it was totally an ascension. We were blown away with the production quality as well,” says Nic explaining the name choice.

Aside from Little Pills which had been completed earlier in a Hamilton studio session, ‘We Rise’ was recorded at York St – the last full album to be recorded there – with Clint Murphy engineering and producing. Murphy was also at the helm of their new sophomore album, ‘Be Like A River’, only these days he lives in England and plies his trade from Modern World Studios in Tetbury, a small town in the Cotswold area.

Agreeing that they wanted to record with Murphy again the band booked a European tour in February this year, structuring the trip around spending a fortnight at the studio.

“He’d done a great job with the first record and we decided to roll with it again,” explains Paul. “His strengths suit the music that we had

written, and he was keen to work with us again.

“I guess we are a kind of ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it kind of band as well,” adds Nic. “‘We Rise’ had played out so well and we were so happy with the result that it would have been a gamble to look elsewhere.”

Actually Devilskin had undertaken an earlier UK trip during which they’d recorded three songs with Murphy – all on the new album. Mountain was released as a single last year to tide fans over, but didn’t move radio.

“It was a year after we’d been there the first time that that we went back to record – and everyone in Tetbury remembered us!” smiles Paul. “This tiny little village in Gloucestershire.

‘The rockers are back!’”

“Yeah well, we’re pretty hard to miss,” Nail, stroking his matching red goatee, admits.

They clearly loved the experience.

“There’s a really old church in Tetbury, it goes back to the 1700s and it’s got a big high steeple on it. A studio hand organised for us to go in there one day and record the bells, so they are on one of the tracks.

“Walking home one night from the pub with the assistant engineer it was all foggy and gloomy and very English and ‘boom’ this church bell started ringing. ‘Oh, we have to get that!”

The three all laugh as they recall swinging on the bells for more than two hours in the middle of an afternoon. “We were in the bakery later and the girl says, ‘Oh man, the bells have been going crazy today!’, recalls Nic.

Nail remembers holding Jennie up so she could vomit just before their Glasgow gig. “She didn’t ever say, ‘I can’t do it guys.’ I take my hat off to her…”

“And then to record an album to follow up,” Nic takes over.

With ‘We Rise’ they’d just done live guide tracks as pre-production but this time with Skulander pregnant they had to try to make the writing and demoing process more efficient.

“So we bought a computer and we were able to record straight out of our practice room and basically slice up the different sections and put together these songs. It was a pretty different writing process for us.

We do still just go into the room and riff off each other, but this time we had the luxury of plugging into a desk and being able to rearrange things.

“That essentially knocked out the demo process so once we got there we just individually tracked, drums first then bass, then guitars and vocals.”

“I think we all probably had the same (gulp) thought when we heard she was pregnant,” admits Paul, a worry doubtless shared by hundreds, if not thousands of fans of Skulander’s stage presence and uniquely powerful vocals.

“But Jennie says that the band is still what she wants to do. As soon as we heard that she wasn’t going to chuck it all in to be a mummy we just planned for it. That’s all she has ever wanted to do, to be an artist and I think she has

“Bigger balls than any male vocalist I’ve ever worked with.” – Paul Martin With accommodation nearby the Modern World recording experience is an immersive one. Nail enjoyed being able to spend 12 hours in the studio then keep working on things back in their rooms.

“With ‘We Rise’ we would go back to our lives at home then head back up to York St. I really enjoyed working over there. I liked the idea of getting up in the morning and going into the studio, having a cup of coffee and start playing my guitar. I liked having the time to spend on it.”

The recording came at the end of their six week-long trip away, they’d already spent almost a month living, gigging and travelling with each other in a 6-seater van. It was a tour none of the band are likely to forget as Skulander was in that nauseous early stage of pregnancy, added to which she got a flu and so was messily unwell the whole time. Her partner is Paul’s wife’s brother, which makes her Paul’s sister-in-law and Nic’s auntie.

“Bigger balls than any male vocalist I’ve ever worked with,” Paul says admiringly, joking about it being their first tour as a five-piece.

“She’d be spewing all day, snotty as, couldn’t sleep, just a mess, then gets on stage and just owns it. She was outstanding!”

“Throwing up between songs,” Nic adds helpfully.

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sung out of her skin on this new album.”

The band demoed almost 30 songs, including several oldies that hadn’t made the cut for the first album. The newest was F.Y.I., written just two days before they flew to Britain. Fortunately vocals were recorded last because after four weeks of touring Jennie desperately needed a rest. Lyric writing is shared by her and Paul.

“I think we are about 60:40 on this. I pretty much write lyrics and Jen might change the odd word to make it fit, but that’s it. She’s just a star. I’ve been writing lyrics in a few different bands and the vocalist would often be a bit sour because he didn’t like the lyrics, but she just loves the way it all comes together. She’s amazing to work with.”

Nail also sings her vocal praises.

“Back in the early days if she didn’t have any lyric ideas for a song we were working on, she’d be sitting in a chair with a Womans Day on her lap and the microphone and she’d start singing a recipe mate! It’s just about the melody that comes out. ‘What’s that? It’s great!’

Just do that!’ ‘I don’t know, what did I do?’’

They all laugh in shared admiration.

“She’s got a real gift for melody, she really has. I still get goosebumps at rehearsal from her singing,” Paul continues.

“There’s a nice difference in our lyrics too.

Hers are a bit more visceral and she doesn’t

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mince words too much. Whereas mine tend to be a bit deeper I guess and could be interpreted a couple of ways.”

Voices is one of Skulander’s, a song in praise of the band’s fans – their ‘Devil Army’.

“It’s about people having your back and the awesome feeling you get having so much support,” says Paul. “You know what any industry is like, as soon as you pop your head up people like to have a go. That’s Jen’s take on everyone having our back.”

Their fans (“Shit they’re good, they’re so good. They’re rabid.”) help out by putting up posters, handing out flyers, using their social media to encourage friends to attend gigs, and buying Devilskin merch and music.

old school Kiwi rock values evident. It was Nail who bought the band’s bus in the early days and kitted it out for touring, complete with signage and loudspeakers so they could talk to people (or livestock) outside.

“We stuck a wall through it, the gear went in the back with a lounge in the front, a DVD, some sounds and a beer fridge. It was good ’cos we didn’t have to hire vans or trailers. We had it from day dot and it went as far north as Kaitaia and as far south as Invercargill. We had a lot of fun with it.”

Of course, being a band bus it was prone to breaking down. There was a time it was towed into Invercargill and another when the tow rope snapped. “We got towed into Vector Arena when we played ahead of Mötley Crue - the fuel line busted on the motorway!”

That, plus Devilskin’s growing fame meant the bus had to go, as Paul explains.

“It got to the stage where we had to travel incognito. We’d play a gig in Wellington, everyone’s shattered and Jennie’s curled up in a sleeping bag. We’d pull into a gas station and before we can get out there’s a queue of people wanting to get selfies and stuff.

We needed to be more discrete.“ Discrete is not a word you’d apply to their stage act or album art.

Auckland designer Barny Bewick has done the artwork for both studio albums. ‘Be Like The River’ features a very primal-industrial skull-shaped rock, river water flooding through the cavernous eye sockets.

“Personally I think this album feels a step more focused, as far as the songwriting goes and the messages that Paul’s putting forward,” says Nic. “But I still think it’s easy for anyone to realise what’s going on.‘We Rise’ was very bold and to the point, and that was exactly what we needed to do, and I think this time we were working with Clint again and were confident about the sound so we could focus on the messages, take the time to craft that within amazing production.”

“It’s more of a complete listening experience this album, I think,” Paul agrees. “More of a journey than a collection of songs.”

Be Like The River is the name of a song, but not one of the 13 on the album.

“It’s a song that we wrote together that never made the record,” Paul laughs in light of We Rise featuring as the closing track on ‘Be Like The River’.

“It’ll be on the next album! It was weird ’cos the song itself is kind of bluesy and doesn’t sound like anything else we’ve done but it was really uplifting. If we were a bit ho hum at rehearsal we’d play Be Like The River and it would perk us all up. But our manager and our producer didn’t get it whatsoever.”

The song was played on their Mountains and Moon tour and audiences liked it, but in the studio it didn’t quite translate according to Nic. “It’s not an epic song or anything, but for me the lyrics are the big hook in the song. It’s got a perseverance message and to me it seemed relevant to where we are at with this new album.”

“The lyrics are about being like a river, cutting through the stone to get to the sea,“ Paul explains. ”You can wear away at anything, you just got to get to where you are going. Your purpose is your purpose. We’ve all sacrificed a lot, it’s been such an epic journey to get to where we are and we put such a lot of work into this new album – it felt like this is what we wanted to say. Stick to your guns and you’ll break through, it’s about perseverance and self belief.”

”Your average rockers and metallers aren’t concerned with fashion, they’re concerned with loyalty, so they’ll wear your shirt all day long. They’ll get it tattooed on their skin somewhere.” – Paul Martin Paul perks up at the mention of their very impressive range of merch.

“What have you heard? (We sell) more than any other Kiwi bands is what I’ve been hearing. It trucks out. I remember meeting a couple of years ago at Homegrown and we met quite a well-known band manager.

He was going, ‘Everyone’s talking about how much merch you guys move at gigs – what’s your secret? I was wearing one of our T-shirts and I said, “Well, have you got skulls and pentagrams on yours?!’”

Cue much laughter.

“I really think that’s a big part of it though,” interjects Nic, the youngest of the band at 21 but clearly the sage among them.

“As much as [we in] the black T-shirt community are not into fashion trends, because the trend has always been to wear a band shirt, that’s part of the whole scene I guess. You don’t see as many people with pop artists’ T-shirts. I guess because that’s more of a radio single, digital distribution, internet presence kind of thing – whereas metal doesn’t get a lot of that sort of mainstream love.”

“No, and your average rockers and metallers aren’t concerned with fashion, they’re concerned with loyalty, so they’ll wear your shirt all day long. They’ll get it tattooed on their skin somewhere,” adds Paul.

And there you have it again. Among Kiwi bands Devilskin are famed for the number of their fans prepared to permanently ink their love.

“Yeah, the ‘We Rise’ album cover has been tattooed on a lot of people,” adds Nail. “And lyrics to songs… Did you see that one the other day?

Someone had the lyrics from Burning Tree. That’s great man. It’s awesome that they have that connection with us, that blows me away.”

“We’re those kind of passionate and connected people as well. We understand what that means,” says Nic, mentioning the band’s various music-related tattoos.

“We’re on the same page as a lot of people who listen to our music,” his dad continues.“We’re the same sort of people, we’re just lucky enough to be playing music in a band that all these people like.”

So how is it that a 21-year old gets to be liking the same music and playing in the same band as his 53-year old father?

“He was 15 when I basically press-ganged him into the band, he had no choice. He was an awesome player, but he was freaking out and he didn’t really know how to set up his drum kit. After a couple of run throughs we all felt really good. Nic didn’t have an easy run from the start because we were still playing a lot of those small gigs in small venues.”

“Dad had the [Axe Attack] radio show since before I was born, so I grew up with that CD collection – I could always listen to something new.

Now I’m open to anything – half my phone [tracks] is not rock or metal at all – but that’s where the most passion is. It’s what I think I’lI always be connected to the most. It’s raw, you can feel it. Not to take away from people producing albums on computers or keyboards, but being able to go to a gig and see someone hit those strings that you are feeling through the PA is a big part of it.”

Nic also plays in another Hamilton band, progressive metal five-piece Seas Of Conflict, mostly guys he grew up with. At 42, guitarist Nail is twice his age, though still a decade younger than Paul. He’s the quiet one, with

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Producer Agreements – Part 2

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n the last Lawful Truth column we started a discussion of Producer Agreements by considering some of the vital secondary issues that need to be addressed such as defining the actual services being provided, the related timelines these services will be provided on, and also any copyright rights in the resulting songs and recordings. In this edition of NZ Musician we’re going to take a look at some of the common payment rates and terms that you often see in Producer Agreements.

How much a producer will be paid can vary greatly depending on the producer and also the type of music involved. For example in the US hip hop producers have often received greater remuneration given the more significant role they often play in the creation of an album than say a rock or country producer may do.

It’s also important to distinguish at this point between the different ways you may pay a producer. Producers traditionally are paid a cash fee as well as a certain percentage of future record sales and associated income (typically referred to as ‘points’). A producer may also in any situation be paid a greater cash fee and lesser points, or vice versa – depending on the artist they are working with, the artist’s ability to fund an initial cash payment and the anticipated success of the album in question.

It is also not uncommon in some situations for a producer to take just a cash fee or just points. So it really depends on a lot of practical issues relating to the situation. When it comes to a producer’s points you would normally expect to see somewhere between 1% and 3% of royalties. To put this in perspective, when an artist is receiving a 20% royalty under their label recording agreement, then the producer’s 1%-3% would be deducted from this leaving the artist with an actual royalty of somewhere between 17% and 19%.

When it comes to points a producer will also ideally want the record label to pay them on their points directly, rather than having to chase up the artist for payment. In the interests of fairness any points a producer is to receive should also be subject to the same allowances and reductions that an artist’s royalties are. So if under their recording agreement the artist does not receive royalties on certain records, such as those given away free for promotional purposes, then the artist shouldn’t be expected to pay a producer points in respect of those copies either.

Artists should also make sure that the timing of their payment obligations to the producer take into account when the artist is accounted to by their record label or distributor.

For example from an artist’s perspective, if you

are only receiving royalties on a six-monthly basis you don’t want to be obligated to pay a producer every three months.

If a producer is receiving a cash fee as well as points then it’s important the terms of the cash fee are clearly defined. For example, is it a one off payment independent of any points obligations to the producer, or is the cash fee actually an advance against any future points payable to the producer? This will make a big difference to the total amount payable by the artist and the overall amounts the producer will receive. If the cash fee is regarded as an advance against the producer’s points then the artist will not have to pay the producer any further amount until sufficient records have been sold and associated income generated to recoup the cash fee/advance already paid to the producer. If the cash fee is not regarded as an advance against future points then the artist will be liable to actually pay the producer their points from the first copy sold.

Another important consideration similar to the above if an artist has a record label, is the point from which the points due to the producer must begin to be paid. An artist will usually have certain recoupable costs (like recording and video costs for example) that will be deducted from any royalties they earn under their recording agreement before they start to receive any actual payments in the hand. It needs to be remembered that unless a suitable agreement is reached with the producer in respect of how this recoupment issue will be approached, the artist would in theory be required to pay the producer their points from the first record sold, despite the fact that the artist themselves may not yet be receiving cash in the hand royalties from the label.

Producer Agreements like any agreement in the music industry can vary greatly depending on the standing of the parties involved and the particular situation in question. The important thing however is that at least some consideration is given to the types of issues outlined above and in our previous Lawful Truth column so that both parties obtain what they need and what they expected from the arrangement.

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.

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Graeme James

Heading Home

But for injury, busker and multi-instrumentalist Graeme James might still be a classical violinist. Filling the gap he picked up the guitar and now has delivered a smartly entertaining album of Celtic-influenced pop that involves both instruments and his fine voice. Amanda Mills talked with James about the good parts of disappointment and the genesis of ‘News From Nowhere’.

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ellington-based Graeme James’ career as a performer certainly started with a bang, as a contestant in 2012’s New Zealand’s Got Talent. Unfortunately he didn’t make it past the first audition.

“It was simultaneously quite a blast, and an eye-opener of the reality of reality television… of course none of this made it onto the TV! At the time I was gutted, but then I was incredibly stoked – and I still am – that I didn’t make it through!”

James is a talented multi-instrumentalist, coming from a musical family (brother Jonathan is a classical composer), and played classical violin for 10 years before giving it up due to shoulder injuries. He then turned his attention to the guitar, and songwriting.

Around 2010 he purchased a loop station (a loop pedal with more than three tracks on it).

“It allows you to bring things in and out again rather than just having a wall of sound all the time,” he briefly explains.

The art of looping is important to James’ sound, as it comes down to arrangement, and putting the sounds in specific places.

His early public performing was busking in Palmerston North and Wellington, and honed his craft by playing covers.

“If you’re busking you have to play music that people want to hear. You’re much more likely to engage with something that you know… covers are a really natural thing from that perspective. So I always try to do them in a different kind of style to keep people guessing.“ Busking took him to Christchurch and Queenstown, where his performing career really took off.

“I used to busk on the waterfront, and on some nights,I would end up with 200-300 people… that ended up kind of really helping me develop my craft as an entertainer, as a way, having that experience.”

James’ debut album ‘News From Nowhere’ has been written over the last four years, a number of the songs written while busking.

“I’d be improvising… I’d record it on my phone as I was playing. One+One was pretty much written entirely while busking at the train station in Wellington.”

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The album was recorded onto his laptop at his bedroom desk and also at his parents’ place in Taranaki, though most of the vocals were recorded at Organik Muzik Workz in Newtown.

Self-produced, James performs everything on the album, except for guest vocals from his wife Zoe on When You Look At Me, and a friend playing piano on 21 Birds Of Paradise.

“There’s a lot of different themes going on there,” he admits. “I like to try and write from the whole spectrum of my experience.”

‘News From Nowhere’ is a lilting, alt-folk record, with strong threads of Celtic and pop music running through it melodically and rhythmically. The violin features prominently, though plucked and strummed rather than bowed. While some songs are spacious, many are densely textured.

“Atlantis was one take live, just me and the ukulele, and then I added a few strings and a few synth-y things,“ he explains. “I tend to go for reasonably dense textures… the key with that is to not overcook it!”

While James uses the looping station in his live performances, for ‘News From Nowhere’ he arranged the music in the studio.

“It uses exactly the same principles… for certain songs, you create a four to five chord pattern, and repeat that over and over,” he laughs. “A lot of the arrangements were developed [live], and I took them into the studio and tried to replicate that.”

The album takes from James’ background of playing covers, and Celtic music. “I think there are lots of different styles on the album…

I thought if I limit my palette not by genre, but by instruments that I use… then it’s going to have a cohesive sound. I hope I’ve achieved that.”

While ‘News from Nowhere’ is a new release, some songs have already had a life of their own – Alive recently came second in the Folk/ Singer-songwriter category at the ‘Unsigned Only’ international music competition. The exposure has been beneficial.

“It helps, maybe from a music industry perspective... I’ve been added to a bunch of Spotify playlists, which massively increases your exposure online.”

Then ‘800 Words’ called.

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“Someone who organises the music for a TV show stumbled across [Alive], I don’t know how.”

James supplied them with five further demos, and finished versions were used on the show.

“It’s borderline ludicrous... The licensing side of things is very, very cool, especially for someone who’s used to doing lots and lots of gigs to survive!”

After the album release and tour, James plans to work with Zoe. “I’m looking forward to… [doing] some work with my wife’s songwriting… we haven’t had a lot of time to do that, but I think that’s next.”

James’ ‘News from Nowhere’ is available from Bandcamp. A release tour begins at the start of October, taking in NZ and the east cost of Australia.

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hristchurch’s Souldrop are a four-piece making music inspired by artists like Sticky Fingers, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Paramore.

Anna Bennetto (16 - vocals) and Finn Perring (17 - bass) originally met at St Andrews College, where they jammed together. Elliot Millar (17 - drums) and Fin Gilzean (18 - guitar) go to different schools.

“We’ve been together since around March, but we’ve all been jamming separately for a while and just got together recently,” says Anna.

“It was one of those weird timing stories,” Elliot explains. “My girlfriend at the time was friends with a few guys in this band and they needed a drummer. One of them posted on Facebook and I commented saying I play. I just said, ‘Come round, we’ll have a jam and see what you think and then I’ll join.’ That was a punk band (The Clips), around two or three years ago. We kind of just moved on to Souldrop.

“We already had a more punk orientated band with all the guys from Souldrop, but we just needed to move onto a different style. So we picked up a more chill singer to even that out.”

Officially formed in early 2016, Souldrop made it through to the Rockquest regional finals. They decided to record a few originals they’d come up with and put together an EP. ‘Souldrop’ was recorded at their school, mixed and mastered by Sam Verdellen, the band’s mutual friend, along with Finn – who himself has an unusually interesting background.

“I moved to Peru when I was five, then Chile, then West Africa, then came to New Zealand three years after that. The different countries I lived in growing up totally impacted the music I write now, 100%.”

A video for their debut single Mill Bay was released on YouTube, and a month after its release it hit the 5000 views mark, pretty remarkable for underage newcomers. Directed by Grace Dephoff, a fellow St Andrews College student, the video features six teens (four being Souldrop) walking around the heart of Christchurch and playing their music.

With the relative success of their first video, the band thought more about what they would like to do after high school with the music experience they have now.

“All of the guys in our band are finishing up our last year in high school, and Anna is year 12,” Elliot points out.

“I’m staying in school, not gonna drop out!” adds Anna, laughing.

“We want to keep the band going, it’s a sick band and it’s super fun but it will be kind of hard since the guys will be leaving school. We want to go into music after high school, maybe study it or something. At the moment we’re just writing music and seeing what happens,” Elliot explains as Anna nods.

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hile filling band member vacancies, hardcore metal vocalist and Subsistence front woman, Charlotte Newell, wasted no time in putting together her own solo EP, ‘Defiled’.

“I never actually intended to do a solo project. It’s just what happened because we couldn’t do the band.

I thought I’d do my project to fill in the time.

Solo projects aren’t something that people do until later in their career, but I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just do it first...

Let's just throw out the rule book,’” she giggles.

This adoring cat lady (she lives with five felines) is so softly spoken it’s hard to believe that she could produce such crushing vocal breakdowns.

“The technique I use is ‘false chord’ which is quite a powerful technique mostly used by men. Once I figured out how to make the sound I started looking into methods to do it safely. You need a lot of core strength, because if you only learn to scream with your throat, you’re going to ruin your voice within a year."

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A lengthy personal battle with mental health has seen Charlotte pushing boundaries musically in the hopes of helping others to push past their own demons.

“As long I can remember I’ve had anxiety. I never knew what it was – I thought everyone felt like that. It was when I moved out on my own that I realised there was something bigger. It was affecting my ability to take care of myself.

“I thought that if I put my feelings out there through my lyrics that maybe that will help someone else. At the very least it will help raise awareness because I think it's a real problem in NZ. I don't want to assume that my music will help people, I just really hope that it will.”

When it came to the production of her ‘Defiled’ EP, Charlotte put trust in good friend, fellow Subsistence member and self-taught producer, Dillan Manihera.

“Dillan’s taught me so many things that would’ve taken me years otherwise to get around to doing. You don’t always know if you’re going to get on with the producer or if they’re going to give you the sound that you want. That’s why I chose Dillan. He’ll never force me to stick with something that I’m not happy with. One of the other reasons for doing the EP was to get more records for Dillan’s portfolio as well!”

From being mistaken for a roadie, to one of the band’s girlfriends, Charlotte’s quick to share advice for other aspiring females setting their sights on the metal scene.

“Don’t care what anyone thinks about you. Do what you love. Never stop yourself from growing or learning. Build your life around what you love, and just have fun. Find other musicians that share a similar mindset or similar goals and work with them. Find people that you can really rely on to deliver.”

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rom an early age, singer/songwriter Deanne Krieg was exposed to an inter-disciplinary approach to music, pursuing both singing and the guitar through her school years. Deanne earned a scholarship to a programme at Capital E that trained her to develop her own music and introduced her to recording and music production. She continued to purse her talents and completed her Bachelors degree in performance, with a focus on vocal jazz from the NZ School of Music.

Her aesthetic sensibilities have been informed by a variety of influences.

“In my teenage years I thrashed Bjork, Radiohead and Portishead!” she reminisces.

Remembering her particularly deep admiration for Bjork she exclaims; “She’s a songwriter, she produced her stuff, she did everything!”

Iceland’s Sigur Ros are another influence.

“It isn’t really vocal-driven music, but it’s about creating a soundscape.

It can be quite melancholic, the stuff that I like, and I find that really beautiful.”

Considering herself primarily a folk singer/songwriter, Deanne also composes and performs as part of a number of projects including Ida Lune (“folk-heavy with intricate harmonies”), The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra and her current solo project WHIM. Her ethereal voice features on three tracks of the recently released Pacific Heights’ album ‘The Stillness’ and she has been on tour as part of the live band, playing shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

“What’s cool with what I’m doing now with Pacific Heights, it does have that melancholic [sound] about it, but it also can be amazing dance music as well, and I think that’s kind of where the two worlds, for me, collide.”

Discussing WHIM Deanne notes that her work with Devin Abrams’ electronica-driven style has influenced her approach to composition.

“It’s kind of a mish-mash of jazz, folk and electronica,” she offers.

Such a unique constellation of influences affords a rich palette of possible approaches to stylistic intersections. In her upcoming EP, ‘Hiraeth’, these distinct intersections are tastefully understated yet satisfyingly articulate efforts that hold their own despite often sparse arrangements.

Following the EP’s October release Deanne is enthusiastic about taking WHIM on tour, expecting a mix of electronic and live instrumentation will be required to achieve the sound she envisions. She already hopes to have a full album as well as a live show ready to tour next year.

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eleased this year, Yamaha’s new Montage is billed a synthesiser from the future and a flagship product for the brand. A further development of Yamaha’s game-changing DX and the later Motif synth range, Montages come in three models, 88-, 76and 61-key versions – the latter being the one I was provided for this review.

Biggest of the range is the Montage 8 which boasts fully-weighted balanced hammer key action and will set you back seven grand, while the Montage 6 comes at the more widely affordable rrp of $5,099. Along with the 76-key Montage 7 model it has a semi-weighted action with aftertouch called FSX. 128-note stereo polyphony, customisable control sequences, 1.75GB of integrated flash memory and a ‘Super Knob’ feature across the range.

ever played. The sound bank at first listen is incredible. Did they use this for the Stranger Things soundtrack? (I think the timing is wrong – but you get my drift.)

Getting into it. This is an FM synthesiser – it’s not an analogue synth. It does not have an oscillator that generates a simple sine/ sawtooth waveforms. It gives you a bank of sounds to manipulate.

The performance/sound bank is incredible.

It covers all genres and the sounds (with large-volume waveform data) are better than anything I’ve heard in a synthesiser. The console is nicely satisfying – I was very quickly able to access the different sound banks.

The Montage offers so many ways to manipulate sounds that it was hard to know where to start. The best place for me was

The signal processing options are the most thorough I’ve come across in a synth. The digital console offers even deeper possibilities, if you want to do more.

The Montage ‘Motion Control Synthesis Engine’ combines two sound engines – AWM2 (high-quality waveform and subtractive synthesis) and FM-X (pure Frequency Modulation synthesis). The two can be zoned or layered across eight parts. The ‘Motion Control’ matrix provides for the creation of new sounds not possible on previous hardware synths.

First impressions. It’s heavy, and when synthesisers are heavy I get excited. It usually means the circuitry is top notch, there’s lots of it AND that the casing of the synth is robust.

The Montage weighs 15kg. It reminded me of my Korg Polysix, which weighs around 12kg and has the most amazing arpeggiator I’ve

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the well-articulated parameter area on the left hand side of the keyboard where there are physical knobs to manipulate Tone, EQ/FX and ARP/MS. The signal processing options are the most thorough I’ve come across in a synth. The digital console offers even deeper possibilities, if you want to do more. I was also pleased to discover you can upload your own sounds/ samples.

As noted above, I’m a big Korg Polysix fan. In particular I love its arpeggiator. With more than 10,000 Arpeggio types the Montage 6 sells itself on its arpeggio function – but I found it too complex, so much so that it was difficult to get a simple arpeggio. This did frustrate me, but

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if you’re a geek for creating arpeggios, then this would likely be your synth.

The semi-weighted keys are luxurious. One of the surprising things about this synth is that it has a touch screen menu that’s actually good.

It works, it’s really intuitive (I didn’t need to read the manual to find my way around), and it responds quickly to touch.

The front panel is like a spaceship – this ‘futuristic’ synth would be easy to navigate in a dark room/stage. It has backlit buttons, the pulsating Super Knob allowing for a wide range of dynamic sound changes, rotary encoders with LED position indicator collars, LED ‘ladders’ for the faders, plus a 17cm (7”) colour touchscreen.

This would be ideal for a live/pro musician, in my humble opinion it beats the pants off the Nord Stage which many musicians use live.

It has a great bank of sounds, with top-notch filters. You can save and recall sounds easily.

It also has a SSS (Seamless Sound Switching) function for switching between performances smoothly without any notes being cut off.

The Montage would also be good in the studio. It supports high-resolution (192 kHz) audio and it has a USB audio interface for recording on a Mac or Windows PC – without the need for a separate device. The connections are also compatible with iOS devices.

The Montage 6 is a lovely synth to play. It has wonderfully weighted keys, an intuitive console (digital and physical) and the highest quality bank of sounds I’ve come across. This review covers just the basics – the Montage can literally do everything and anything you need or could imagine in a synthesiser. Despite the price tag being north of five grand I think it’s great value.

Sophie Burbery is Little Bark - littlebark. bandcamp.com

getting behind the name 21 million Spotify streams is a shit load more than most artists can hope to accumulate, a number all the more impressive if the artist in question has yet to release an album – or celebrate turning 21 themselves. With the benefit of two digital EPs and some very influential international music media Aucklander Thomas Stoneman, aka Thomston, has achieved just that, all while remaining largely unknown at home. He talked topographically with Felix Mpunga.

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smiling Thomas Stoneman, known musically as Thomston, almost bounces into the NZM office on schedule for our interview. He seems excited about delving into the details around his latest endeavour, his debut album labelled ‘Topograph’.

London-born, Thomas was a baby when his family shifted across the world to Titirangi in Auckland, and was at Avondale College before he started to show any real interest in making music. Now 20, he was only 17 when Thomston first popped up, quite literally out of nowhere.

A first track sent to international blogs immediately led, among other responses, to music discovery site Pigeons and Planes singing his praises – and inviting still-lingering comparisons to Lorde by trying to discourage them.

His debut EP ‘Argonaut’ appeared unheralded on Soundcloud in 2014 with global praise quick to follow. A year later came another EP, ‘Backbone’, also released on Soundcloud, also to wide-ranging international critical acclaim and by now quite staggeringly, multi-million Spotify plays.

“I find it hard to pin myself down, but I would just call it pop but that’s coming from a very open-minded view to music,” Thomas says of his music, which started in the traditional way of piano lessons at a very young age. “I think intially when I started singing, I thought I could just sing along to music on the radio and people wouldn’t block their ears. I kind of quickly came to realise that there was something about my voice and I just wanted to explore that.

“Music was always a thing but songwriting didn’t really start till my last year of high school, and it kind of came at a time when I started listening to more music. Then I was like, ‘Hey, I should try writing and see what happens!’”

At that time Thomas was listening to the likes of Kimbra, Michael Jackson and ‘Adele’s ‘21’. Finishing high school his parents gave him an option to pursue his musical career and make an impact within a year – otherwise studying at a university would be the path he’d take. Thomas surpassed their expectations and reflects on that moment.

“Initially I really needed that ultimatum to drive me and push and stop me from waiting for other people. I think that’s probably the biggest mistake that people will make initially in music – they do something then they expect people to approach them – and once people approach them they expect those people to initiate everything because they don’t want to be annoying, or they don’t want to be difficult. But like, you have to be ’cause there are so many people and if you’re quiet and passive you’re just gonna drown out.

“I needed that ultimatum to make sure. I had a year to make things work and if I hadn’t had that I probably would’ve been a lot more passive.”

Dabbling in production Thomas says he found himself sitting behind producers – giving the likes of Josh Fountain (who has produced for the likes of Maala, Benny Tipene and Leisure) suggestions. “‘Can we make that distorted, can we put tremolo on that?’ – stuff like that. Like I knew the basic terms but if you put me at a computer I was very slow. But I was put in couple of situations where I had to be at the control desk. There was one in particular when I went to Sydney and I was working with this girl Wafia, and then suddenly I was pretty aware that we were gonna write a song and I would definitely be the one to have to produce it because she doesn’t sit at the computer either!”

Thomston

The result of that session was the single Window Seat, which appears on Thomston’s new album ‘Topograph’, plus the opportunity to work with one of Australia’s acclaimed producers Ta-Ku, who has remixed fellow Future Classic labelmates Chet Faker and Flume.

“He was lovely, so kind, so humble.”

Unsurprisingly the team who helped him orchestrate and realise the vision behind his debut album is an international one.

“There was Josh Fountain who was a producer, incredible guy. The best thing about Josh was that he was really like a vessel for my ideas, he never came in with like an ego. A guy called Nick Leng produced the track called Headspace. He’s out in LA, he’s great. I also worked with a guy called Fyfe on the track Birthmark and he’s in London. That was the team I wrote the album with.

“Los Angeles, London, Auckland and Sydney are where I wrote. I did some writing in New York but none of them made the album. Golden Age is where I wrote most of the album, lots of Broods and Lorde plaques around, staring at me like, ‘Write hits Thomas, write hits!’”

The album art was done by Sydney-based David Porte Beckefield.

“The idea behind it is that it’s a waveform from the album, textured with a photo my photographer Josh Griggs took. The idea is that the song itself has become a landscape.”

‘Topograph’ was, he says, conceived on the backbone of one track called Broken Skin.

“I wrote that really early on in 2014 and I was like, ‘This is the album.’ It set the sonic palette I guess for the record.”

That pallete turns out to be surprisingly broad, from Mura Masa, Kendrick Lamar to UMO. Just two years removed from his first music production influences Thomas has retained some as a base, but added other smart contemporaries to the mix.

“SOHN was a big one, I really like the minimalism. FKA Twigs, I just really like her percussion, Years & Years, their pop delivery is so good,. Also I feel like we have similar voices, that kind of Michael Jackson influence. I listened to WET quite a lot too, the Brooklyn three-piece, they’re incredible.”

He could be a poster boy for the new culture who champion sobriety over binge drinking and drug culture. Highly focused, evidently energetic, positive and uber-charming – further success seems inevitable, and all those Lorde comparisons more than reasonable.University, at any stage, by now seems very unlikely, while LA is looking good as a future base.

“I just really like it there, there’s so much going on and so many people to write with. It’s so much bigger… the closer I am to Ariana Grande the better! I’m so anxious to write more and have been writing more. I’m like halfway through another album because I can’t stop.”

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There’s Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself – Don’t Let Fear Ruin Your Singing Life

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y last Finding Your Voice column addressed the need to be in love with the songs you sing. Loving relationships allow us to discover what we can offer our voices/songs and what they can offer us. But, what if the relationship is fearful?

What if we denigrate, ridicule and hate our own voices and the songs we sing?

I experience great difficulty and blockage around my voice and songwriting. At worst, fear can silence, blind and paralyse. At best, it creates unnecessary suffering and struggle.

This is real and must be understood, healed and resolved if we are to enjoy our voices and sing freely.

A dear friend of mine is a great writer, yet she’ll do anything but. She’s convinced that it’s bad for her. Just because something feels overwhelming or hard, doesn’t mean we should ‘avoid it’– it’s likely the very thing we are best at

Music, and your voice, is like a puppy. It needs to be taken for walks (literally), exercised (warmed up and used), fed (by a nutritious diet of good songs and singers), played with, stimulated (writing and learning new songs), trained well, given rest, water, compassion, treats, love and care. In return, your voice will be a constant faithful companion, a best friend.

It will comfort you when you’re down, guide you if needed, not tire easily and always be pleased to see you (irrespective of how long you’ve been away).

Some people fear dogs. This diminishes when they learn how dogs operate as pack animals. Unsurprisingly, dogs fear humans if they’ve been badly treated. Let’s hope we don’t have to report you to the SPCV (the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to your Voice).

For our own survival, we must clearly see how we operate. What self-sabotaging beliefs,

Understanding your voice, removes fear.

It’s not you personally, it’s the amount of technique you are or aren’t using. and will ultimately be transformed by.

Sadly, we all too often neglect or give up on music and creativity in our ‘busy’ lives. It’s the first to slide off our priorities list – even for full-time musicians!

As Steven Pressfield’s book The War Of Art attests, the more talented and passionate we are about something the more likely we’ll be to resist it. Hugely creative people convince themselves that they shouldn’t create or sing.

This is insane, but understandable – we care too much. Our level of creativity often manifests an equal and opposite amount of resistance. We’ll find excuses for not doing the very thing we most need to do. It’s like those people who feel too hurt by love to fall in love again.

The child standing atop the hydro-slide too terrified (of rumoured razorblades planted inside) to take the plunge and enjoy the ride. You know the first thing that’ll happen after they splash into the pool? They’ll climb straight back up, and do it again and again.

As with music: stop standing at the end of the platform… dive!

thoughts, habits, attitudes and behaviours are preventing loving a relationship with your voice? List your fears. List what you think about your voice – its faults, deficits and weaknesses as you perceive them. List the things you suspect others are thinking about your voice. What fears emerge as you anticipate singing? As you sing?

And afterwards, in performance, recording and practice. Reconcile these tendencies. Think only loving thoughts. (NB: your voice can smell fear!)

Do you think you need great confidence to sing? A robust ego? You’re either born with it or not? Do you think songwriting should be easy and spontaneously flow from you? Do you think you’ve nothing to say or that your songs are too cliché? Are you waiting for someone to tell you what to sing and how? Have you convinced yourself that certain techniques just ‘don’t work’ and you’ll never get the hang of ‘twang’? Do you dislike the sound of your voice, but fear finding out why? This is where a good vocal coach comes in – dispelling toxic myths like these!

Understanding your voice, removes fear. It’s not you personally, it’s the amount of technique you are or aren’t using. Using good technique gives confidence. I have zero self-confidence and often only hear the faults in my voice.

Thankfully, I’ve unshakable faith in technique.

All fear is unfounded. All excuses are just excuses. Have a read of Charles Bukowski’s ‘Air and light and time and space’ poem to slap your face with the reality of lame-ass excuses.

Sing and write now! You’re not too old or too young. You don’t need to gain confidence first, or get adopted as an adult into a musical family.

The fact that you found your own musical stimulation and carved out your own territory when ‘your music’ was actively discouraged is great training in tenacity and authenticity.

There isn’t a single loss or fear that hasn’t taught me greatly. Each time I have to rebuild or strengthen my voice, from illness or injury, I learn more about the wonders of technique.

Fear shows me what’s unreal from what’s real.

Fear of being judged, making mistakes, singing off-key, forgetting lyrics or melodies guides us to conceive of the song differently.

I think of myself as a model for the song. I’ve a spectacular jacket that wears me! When I wear it, nobody’s looking at me, they’re looking at the jacket. Make sure you wear and model songs with style and panache.

If you fear you’re not good enough, think of yourself as a cook. Add appropriate technique as you would ingredients – the right quantity, at the right time – it’s a process. Begin following a good recipe to assure singing success. (And remember, twang is a spice and some like it hot!) Taste frequently, adjust accordingly, do the prep, customise and share your feast with friends.

Acknowledging and using new ways of looking at fear is vital to eradicating it. It’s in the pause before, not in the doing. Let the activities of singing and songwriting lead you. The dog takes YOU for the W.A.L.K. after all. www.caitlinsmith.com bravecaitlin@gmail.com Fb: caitlinsmithjazz and caitlinsmithmusic

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Anna Coddington

With her first album, ‘The Lake’, dating back to 2008, Anna Coddington is no viral sensation one-hit wonder – and she has never wanted to be.

The decision to take a more gradual approach to audience outreach has ensured a sense of confidence – both for her listeners and from herself as Briar Lawry discovers.

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nna Coddington is an unfailingly creative, charismatic, and pragmatic woman. She has been a Silver Scroll finalist, calls all manner of Kiwi musical luminaries mates, has regularly been part of the evolving Fly My Pretties project, and she’s released two albums to critical acclaim. Her third is inevitably about to rack up just as much appreciation again.

“I decided a long time ago that the way forward for me was going to be winning people over one at a time. I figure that if I make music I like, there will be other people who do too.

“You do need to have a thick skin in this industry – and I think every songwriter and artist is insecure, to a point. Everyone wants people to like their music, after all. But my approach now is this: if you can really feel solidly confident in it yourself then it’s okay, even if some people don’t like it.

“You need to get to the point where if someone says ‘Oh, this record sucks!’, you just go, ‘No it doesn’t – it fucking rules!’ That’s the goal, anyway. For this record I’ve just done exactly what I wanted to do – and I haven’t let myself just settle for ‘Okay’ on any of the songs – so I’m confident that I’ve made something good.”

Her confidence in the record in question is well justified. Entitled ‘Luck/Time’, the album has had a sweeping journey from inception to release – with quite a change in vibe

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A Better Kind Of Luck For A Different Kind Of Time

from the more traditional singer/songwriter, guitar-driven sound of her first two releases (2008’s ‘The Lake’ and 2011’s ‘Cat & Bird’). The comparatively longer genesis of ‘Luck/Time’ had one key driving factor – life’s ability to sometimes mix up the best laid plans. And Anna wouldn’t have it any other way…

“I started working on this album before my first son was born – and he’s going to be three in November. So it’s been a long time between drinks, so to speak.”

Those who have been paying attention to Anna’s singles over the past few years will hear some familiar tunes on the record – and may note that some songs they expected to hear

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don’t feature. The album has undergone a lot of change in the time since its first stages of development.

“I had five years worth of writing. I’m not an artist who’s constantly touring – because I can’t, really – I do write a lot. The ‘Album’ folder on my hard drive had songs constantly coming in and out of it, so while I did have 10 or 11 songs in there four years ago, I don’t know how many of them are on the actual album. But writing songs is my favourite bit, so I’m happy to be quite involved with that for a long time when I’m working on an album.”

The fact that the album was going to have quite a different approach from what had come before was clear from the get go. Her work to date had all been self-produced – so the fresh take on things kicked off with Anna stepping out from her comfort zone and testing out the wild world of external production.

The album’s first two tracks, Bird In Hand and Make You Mine were produced by SJD. “In my mind, when I started doing those songs with Sean, that was the first step.”

It was not long after starting work on those tracks however that she found out that she was pregnant with her now older son, Arlo. Neither pregnancy nor motherhood stopped her – they just made her keep her eyes on the prize even more than before.

“I just kept plugging away at first, and that was a big reality check. I was kind of naive. I thought, I’ll just work on music while the baby sleeps, and it’ll be fine – I’m not going to let it hold me up! But motherhood is just one of those things you can’t fully understand until you do it – so I found that out!

“It actually made me much more efficient.

Before kids, I was very fortunate to be in the position to be able to work on my music full-time, which is a real luxury. Once Arlo started daycare, I spent all of the hours while he was away working away at it, hardly even breaking for lunch.”

The tracks already undertaken with SJD meant she’d set the new album bar pretty high, but she kept working, and brought on a whole lot of talented muzo friends in a whole lot of different capacities. Initial Pro Tools sessions recorded by herself in her home studio were taken to Mt Eden studio The Lab to get the expert touch on some of the instrumentation. Finding the sweet spot between musical ownership and trusting in others’ expertise on certain instruments, or for certain parts of the process has, she says, opened up a whole new world of sound on the album.

“After we tracked drums and bass at The Lab, I brought them back home again, and tried really hard to be objective – which is just the hardest thing when you’re producing your own music.” Steph Brown of Lips-fame lent some synth and keyboard expertise, as did long-time collaborator Nigel Patterson, a member of Fly My Pretties.

“He’s always told me how he’s got these great analogue synths and Wurlitzers and Rhodes – all set up and ready to go. So I’d send off songs to him and he’d just use some initiative and put down what he wanted to play – and we ended up using most of it. All of the farming out to different people was definitely a fun way to work, even if it did take a really long time to work through it all.

“I’ve worked with some really cool people on this record, and found that it can really improve a good idea and make it great. Djeisan Suskov of Leisure mixed the album, and I asked him to do it because I really love their sound – and he really had a massive impact through mixing, really bumping up a few of the songs to exactly the way I wanted them to be.

“It’s great to work with people who are much better at something than you are – you can sort of catch some of that greatness by osmosis.”

‘Luck/Time’ seemed to be nearing a final shape part way through 2015 – and then she found out she was pregnant again. Sometimes, though, life has an excellent was of sticking you with unrelenting deadlines – and this time Anna had a better feeling for how a newborn would affect her processes.

“I had to rethink how much time I would need to be able to do this justice – and very nearly decided to just put it out on Bandcamp myself and that would be that – it would be done, at least. Instead, I ended up talking to Mikey at Loop.”

Working with a label was also something of

a brave new world for Anna – both her earlier albums being self-released.

Even without kids it’s full on putting an album out independently – there’s just so much to organise, and I just can’t find the time these days for everything I would need to do. So it’s been really great.”

Loop have also helped land her opportunities that wouldn’t have come her way if she’d gone it alone. What started as a potential tour sponsorship deal has resulted in Anna being a brand ambassador for a Kiwi skincare company for instance.

“I feel like my boys have steered me towards the best possible outcome, in a way!”

The album’s diverse array of sounds and textures are musical reminders of the variety of production that went into each song. From the groove of Release Me, to the up tempo sound of The Runner to the lullaby-like qualities of the final track Run With You (presumably perfect for

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getting Arlo and little Eddie Ray to sleep), there is something for people who are into all kinds of flavours of music. Terms like ‘yacht rock’ and ‘reggae’ are bandied around for certain tracks, but each is underpinned by Anna’s gorgeous voice, thoughtful lyrics and her guitar. Despite whatever’s on the radio Anna calls what she writes pop music – and rightly so.

“Pop music is always what I’ve written – unashamedly melodic stuff. I try to write earworms, catchy hooks. It can fall between the gaps – it’s not like the pop that’s on mainstream radio, and it’s not necessarily ‘alternative’enough for student radio either. But I like it – and if I can get in front of whoever those people are who do share similar tastes, they’ll like it, and they’ll get on board too.”

‘Luck/Time’ is refreshing, full of feeling and fun – just like Anna Coddington herself.

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his Deep Thinking bass lesson concerns how two sources of bass in a band can sound big and grunty (is that a word?). I did loads of adverts and television soundtracks between the 1970s and 1990s that combined a synth bass, played by a keyboard player, and my bass guitar.

You need to find two bass sounds that complement each other, and, most importantly, you and the keyboard player need to be extremely accurate. There is nothing worse than two bass notes out of sync and out of time!

I have transcribed two tracks (both from the 1970s when the technique started to become trendy and when synths started to have major technological sonic advances). The first is I Wish (1976) by Stevie Wonder, who played the synth bass part. The bass guitar was played by Nathan Watts, who is still Wonder’s bassist. The bass line consists of quavers (1/8 notes) throughout

with RobQuote Burns Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Quote Pull Bass Guitar = Huge Bass!

and is loosely constructed from an Eb Phrygian scale, although Stevie Wonder, like many Tamla Motown performers and composers, draws on his jazz background and puts several chromatic passing notes into the line.

The easiest way to play this line is to position your fretting hand so that bar 1 can be played between frets 2 and 6, and bar 2 can be played between frets 4 and 8. Obviously, you will need to move your fretting hand between the two positions. The chorus can be played in one position between frets 4 and 8, just watch out for the notes that are changed because of the key signature.

The second bass line comes from River People (1978) by Jaco Pastorius of Weather Report. Pastorius also played drums and timpani on the recording. Most of the line consists of octaves, and it will be a great workout for your alternate string picking (using strings 3 to 1 and 4 to 2).

The synth bass part (played by Weather Report founder and keyboard player, Joe Zawinul) is very closely mixed with Pastorius’ bass guitar but have a look at one of the live versions of the tune on YouTube and you can hear the two instruments more clearly. I have transcribed three sections of the tune. The first two bars are the first bass entry, and from a harmonic perspective, are simpler than Stevie Wonder’s line. That said, try playing it at speed!

It should be attempted slowly at first and you can gradually push up the tempo.

The second part (at 54 seconds) is where the main body of the piece starts. There are several deviations not featured here that Pastorius adds to provide even more interest but you can see that, apart from the work your picking hand, or your plectrum picking, will be doing, your fretting hand will be moving around the neck. There is a lot to think about so, do it slowly at first!

The third section, now up a semitone, (at 3 minutes 32 seconds) is perhaps the hardest part, even though it is played between frets 1 and 3. This is a major workout for your picking hand and you will notice the quaver accent at the end of bar 1.

This two bar figure features both alternative and adjacent (strings next to each other) string picking and you should aim to play the line very crisply and smoothly. You might even want to ask a keyboard player friend to add some synth bass! Explore some Weather Report on YouTube if you are unfamiliar with the band. Until next time, enjoy!

(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. He played on the soundtracks on many UK television shows, such as Red Dwarf, Mr. Bean, Blackadder, Not the Nine O’Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones. Rob is currently a member of Dunedin bands Subject2change and The Verlaines.)

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Armed In Advance

In a behind-the scenes video for lead single Same Old Story, JP Carroll the singer and (left-handed) guitarist of Armed In Advance reveals that it is the Auckland hard rock trio’s video debut. Kethaki Masilamani talked with JP and his bandmates Hugh Hokopaura and Ryan Thomas about their name revision and impressive debut album ’Change/Evolve’.

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P Carroll and Hugh Hokopaura are all smiles as they sit down for a chat, while we wait for drummer Ryan Thomas to finish work. Although the three had never met before forming Armed In Advance, similar tastes and humour bonds them.

“It fit automatically and felt natural right away, pretty serendipitous… and the dad jokes go on forever,” smiles JP. While bassist Hugh says the guitar was part of his upbringing, the band’s frontman, JP Carroll, had an unconventional introduction to his music career. When his high school class were asked to decide their future professions, JP decided there wasn’t a course he wanted to do, he simply wanted to be a guitarist.

Unfortunately his previous attempts at this hadn’t been promising.

“I was kind’a hopeless. My parents tried to get me to learn the guitar when I was five.

My teacher tried to teach me right-handed guitar and I’m left-handed. Lots of people who are left-handed do play right-handed, so that wasn’t the issue.”

Adamant, he persisted, after his parents told him, ’You’re not going to get a job with skills you don’t have’. Six months before the end of high school JP taught himself enough to get into the foundation course at MAINZ. “I lack the common sense or any of the skills to do anything else in life, and so ultimately I’m

just lucky that I’m a little bit of an idiot!”

He’s evidently come along – these days JP teaches music.

Once known as Stitches, the band revamped their logo, name and deleted an album worth of music before deciding on their current sound and name. Armed in Advance comes from the adage ’to be forewarned is to be forearmed’.

“We chose the name because it sounds good, and after extensive googling to make sure no one else has got it,” reports Hugh.

Finding an original band name had become a necessity after discovering an American rapper going by the name Stitches. Their change however didn’t mean a change in identity. The trio say they were lucky in forming the new group early enough that die-hard fans kept up with it.

Amongst those fans evidently is Hugh’s nan.

“I told my Nan to go and ’like’ the Armed In Advance page on Facebook, but somehow she added the band as her employer instead,” he laughs.

With a new name and diligently working on a new sound, the band acknowledge they became more self-critical. Although they have a loyal fan base, getting radio play involves more than having a great song. They did succeed in getting video funding for Same Old Story from one of NZ On Air’s last Making Tracks rounds and more recently Running You Down received

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New Music Singles funding.

“Sometimes rock just isn’t going to make it even if you’ve got the best rock songs. If you haven’t got someone with that taste, you’re probably not in with a good shot… we just got lucky,” says Hugh.

“It’s not necessarily about if you’ve written a good or bad song,” he continues. “There are so many bands going after the same 20 or 30 funding slots… it really depends on what they’re looking for at the time. But it certainly helped that they’d seen our name popping up a lot and quite consistently on gig lists.”

The trio reckon the music industry is not as harsh as it’s painted out to be.

“It’s the same people you see at gigs and you’re almost surrounded with creative people consistently which has been good,” says JP. “There’s no lines of cocaine in the bathroom, just lines waiting for the bathroom.”

They also keep their rock star lifestyle realistic – JP has a bag of necessities for his voice he carries around with him for practices and shows.

“Some lemon juice, Manuka honey, lozenges with vitamins and herbs, some anti-inflammatories for when I get sick – and I can’t drink any beer before a show because my vocals just go bad.” ’Change/Evolve’ they describe as a collaborative effort.

“It was an organic thing where we would start jamming a tune and if we liked it, it would stick around. So without saying a word we agreed on what the direction of the album was going to be,” says JP. The band wrote close to 80 song ideas, with the only focus being “good music”. Audience involvement was a driving factor in shaping the album. Although their signature heavy rock sound is still evident in the ballsy riffs, the attention-deficit disorderly rhythm section and JP’s screams, harmonies make the tracks catchy.

Zorran Mendonsa gets credits for second-to-last track Shallow but the album’s remaining nine songs were produced, engineered and mixed by James Alexander Boyd, with mastering handled by Ermin Hamidovic.

“James actually engineered it and co-produced, so in terms of tone selection, delivery and even looking at song structure,” says JP. “And he also mixed it… he’s a pretty genius guy.” ’Change/Evolve’ was released in early October and when we talk the band can’t wait for people to hear it.

“We hope they get amongst it and listen to the album, there’s nothing cooler than when people are screaming at you to hear their favourite songs,” enthuses JP. “And when they sing your lyrics back to you it’s pretty special.”

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Stage Trek, Episode 4: In Search Of Parties & Events

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here are many great gigging opportunities that will boost your cred and your ego that have nothing to do with earnings. You shouldn’t turn down such work as it can be extremely fun and potentially career-building. My psychedelic/Goth band played a San Francisco Arts Festival as our third gig, which got us the attention of a major local agent and gig promoter, who offered us several key opportunities we might otherwise have worked years to achieve.

On the other hand, there’s more to money than just getting paid at the end of a show.

There’s a certain psychological evolution that occurs for any performing artist, which has to do with responsibility. The stakes are much higher when you know that you’re worth being paid, and you have to deliver a professional-level show every night from now on. This change can bring a whole new level creativity and determination to a band. It can also mean that less serious band members quit when it’s not just fun and games anymore. So watch out.

Playing ’Party World’ for pay Breakout bands often assume they’re mostly going to play a party for the fun of it, when the truth is anything but. The reality is that a band’s duty at any party is to stand in for the host, and take responsibility for the energy and mood of the partygoers.

is a huge fan of your music, but the particular selection of guests who happened to arrive aren’t so high energy. Or vice versa. It’s not uncommon for a reluctant parent to hire a band for their child’s big graduation party, and then to constantly hover around the band, asking them not to play so loud!

Business is business Parties are great in many ways. You can usually count on a captive, supportive audience; an easy setup and breakdown; an informal venue where you can be a bit more casual (but not too laid-back); and of course, payment. But that payment really depends on a lot of things.

First, you should negotiate what exactly you’re offering and what they’re paying. Remember that in most situations, you’ll be bringing your own PA, soundie, instruments, amps and maybe even lights.

If you own your own PA, is it big enough for a big party? Will the venue have a system and is it any good? How long will you have to play?

If the party is shut down by Noise Control will you still get paid? Few bands think of that last question, and even fewer clients. Will you have a cancellation fee, or an advance payment?

The longer a working band has been in business, the more likely they’ll ask clients to sign a contract through a third party acting as manager. This formality may be largely

I actually feel that unless you’re a dedicated covers band, then you shouldn’t play only covers.

That is boring, and reduces you to a living jukebox.

Have you ever seen how much work a host or hostess puts into a formal party – flitting from guest to guest, filling drinks, offering snacks, introducing dozens of people to one another?

It’s fun if you’re that kind of person, but it’s also work. So expect to work your tail off if you play a party gig, and lay off the refreshments.

A good host will work with the band and tell them what they want. If they simply ask for “two really good sets”then use your chops to build the perfect set list that will get a crowd on its feet, then enjoying themselves, then uniting in some way, then cooling down and finally rocking out at the end. Work in any announcements, party games and specific dance songs that you’ll be asked to play. There might also be instructions involving cake and candles.

Even with the best plans, be as flexible as you can during the party and roll with whatever changes may be needed at the moment. You may get hired to play a party in which the host

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symbolic, as such management is often just a friend or relative of the band. But it brings a level of seriousness to the transaction, and that can really help an otherwise careless client to be more mindful. A contract also protects you, because it gives you some sort of basis from which to make a legal claim if you get stiffed.

Originality is a flavour, not the main course Most bands that do a lot of party gigging tend to be working, playing mostly covers along with perhaps a sprinkling of originals.

You might well get away with a more originals-focused show, but you can’t really make the party about how creative and amazing you are, unless you really are becoming an established band and everyone knows and wants to hear your own music.

But this shouldn’t be a huge problem, as most bands tend to mix covers into their regular set, often in a nicely re-interpreted way.

I actually feel that unless you’re a dedicated

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covers band with that exact reputation, then you shouldn’t play only covers. That is boring, and reduces you to a living jukebox. It’s far better to prove to the party audience that your songs can stand strongly next to the more well known hits you might play.

Keep in mind as well that genre music can be the deciding factor in why you got picked for the gig, and you should be clear with your client about what you play from the start. This is the time when you’ll be glad that you’ve recorded a demo of your music that you can link online. (Or maybe this will be the time when you realise that you need to get your act together and go record something.) If you got recommended to the client by a friend of a friend of a friend, then really make sure they know how you sound and what that will bring to their party.

Of course there are a number of different kinds of parties you could play. I’ve found corporate gigs to be some of the easiest to book and play as a manager/musician, because people in suits, ties, and power dresses are way hipper than you might think, and love to cut loose to a good band of any style. I’ve played in boardrooms, skyscrapers and waterfront restaurants.

Graduation parties are also great, especially if it’s with your peers – though this can really be a test of how well you can keep it together when your mates are egging you on to do something really stupid that they can remember for the rest of their lives.

Then of course there are private parties, which as noted above are quite susceptible to noise issues. (The flipside of that is being hired by your local Council to play at an event, during which you’ll never be asked to turn down unless you sound truly awful.) A lot of private parties are held in banquet halls or wineries, or other posh places that are probably pretty cool with Noise Control – but the posher the venue, the nicer you need to dress, and the better your PA needs to be.

I’ve delayed talking about the biggest party/event market of all – weddings. This is such a huge topic that it really deserves its own article, even though it’s technically yet another continent on Party World. But it’s also such a lucrative sidelines for a working musician that everyone should know about it – in detail. Up next in this Building Blocks’ mini-series is Stage Trek, Episode 5: In Search of Wedding Gigs.

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.

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Ulcerate

Death Metal Magic Since their formation in 2000 Auckland three-piece Ulcerate has helped re-define death metal, globally. Along with the new generation of post-metal acts such as Vader and Autopsy, this new wave is shrugging off the genre’s oft self-imposed shackles, while staying true to its defining elements.

Drummer Jamie Saint Merat and NZM’s Sammy Jay Dawson had an early morning chat.

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oasting a massive following in North America and Europe, yet continually overlooked in their homeland, just how did the Kiwi trio of Michael Hoggard, Paul Kelland and Jamie Saint Merat break the mould – where so many before have failed – and gain international renown?

“There was no grand ambition,” says drummer Saint Merat via Skype. “NZ, for the style we play, wasn’t to say a dead-end, but there was going to be a cap on our level of success here. We were never going to rise to the level of other big acts here playing death metal, there’s just isn’t the amount of people and it’s a marginalised genre. You can pull a couple of hundred to a gig, but you’re not gonna call up IRD and hear us on call waiting!”

“All of my favourite bands that play our style of music tour internationally and are on American labels, so I thought, ’Okay if we want to take ourselves seriously, this is what we have to do.’”

Formed in 2000 whilst Jaime and guitarist Michael Hoggard were still in high school, it’s a classic tale of two teenagers discovering heavy music and being inspired to pick up instruments to try and play the music they love.

“We got a couple more members to fill the line-up and basically just started playing shows.

We were always recording ourselves to see what we sounded like, and we were starting to get a bit of interest so we decided to do some demos around 2003-2004. They were pretty well received here so I started sending them overseas to get reviewed.

“This was the pre-YouTube era,

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pre-Bandcamp, pre-streaming. Everything was CDrs. It was the start of Myspace, it was a weird period, but I started sending stuff to magazines and online blogs to see if we could get reviews.

We weren’t even thinking about trying to attract label interest at that point, or building a fan-base, I just wanted to see how our music held up and what people thought of it.”

Some of the reviews were, as he says, “super positive” and before they knew it a buzz had started to spread leading a couple of labels to contacted them expressing interest.

“At the time it was really mind-blowing and super humbling that people gave a shit.

We had a really good offer from Dutch label ’Neurotic’ and in 2006 we released our first album ’Of Fracture And Failure’. Off the back of the first record we did a few shows in Australia to test the waters, and to our surprise people came to the shows and actually knew the stuff.

Although the shows weren’t sold out it felt really weird playing to people overseas that knew our songs.”

There’ve been a couple of bands-worth of musicians through Ulcerate over 16 years but Paul Kelland has been providing vocals and bass since 2005. Following the success of ’Of Fracture And Failure’, Ulcerate signed with American label, Willowtip Records and in 2009 released their sophomore ’Everything Is Fire’. Critics praised the album for its unique approach to death metal, drawing comparisons to heavyweights such as Isis, Immolation, Gorguts and Shellac. Technical prowess, something many death metal bands had until now purposely avoided, was one of the key

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factors to its success, one critic naming it the quintessential death metal album of its era. “’Everything is Fire’ is when we really took off, people really identified with that record.

It was the first release we’ve done where we personally felt we’d hit our stride in terms of our aesthetic and the musicality side of things.

“In support of the record we went on a five week tour of Europe supporting Rotting Christ, Malevolent Creation, Incantation and Neuraxis.

It was just a crazy time. It was the first time we’d played more than three shows consecutively so we really were thrown into the deep end. The tour was 35 shows, but we handled it better than I thought we would. We were a bit worried we might burn out, but really it just got us hooked on touring. We got back thinking, ’We have to do this every chance we get!’

“We did a second album with Willowtip, 2011’s ’The Destroyers Of All, following which we again Europe and North America, this time as the headlining act. The North American leg was only nine or 10 shows, to test the waters, but it was a huge success.

“We did a couple of festivals, most notably The Maryland Death-Fest, which we feel is a highly regarded festival, and we got great feedback. Basically everything since then has been snowballing. We just try things out to see if they work and if they do we go back and do it again in a bigger capacity. That’s become our ethos.

“We’re at a stage where we don’t have to struggle or search for a break, it kind of just comes to us. It’s taken 16 years but everything is starting to pay off now. It’s very easy for us to go

out and do the stuff we want to do rather than sit around hoping there’s something we can tag along with.”

Little did they anticipate it would be Relapse Records, one of heavy music’s most influential and well-respected labels that would come knocking. In 2013 Relapse released their fourth studio album ’Vermis’, with many rating it amongst the very best heavy metal releases of the year.

Jamie said then that ’Vermis’ uses melody in a “weird and unsettling” way, and that the band had made a conscious decision to bring back the kind of unpredictability Ulcerate had always shown in the past.

With their place amongst death metal music’s elite, the band’s soon to be released fifth album ’Shrines Of Paralysis’ once again builds upon the model they’ve held to since the beginning. It walks the fine line between living up to their hype without being defined by it, using it instead as an excuse to further both the band’s musicianship and the genre’s boundaries.

“We wanted to make an album that begged for a repeated listen.

Why show all your cards at once? It needs time to click. It might take six months of persevering, but then, things start to reveal themselves.

“We get asked a lot, what’s your influence for the new album, but the truth is we’ve been doing this for so long that we don’t really have that many outside influences creeping in. We’ve always been very clear, musically on the path we want to take, so there’s no conscious decision to emulate anything. We’ve never thought, ’Oh, we should make this part sound like that band etc.’”

Now in their early 30s, Jamie and Michael were mid-teens when they first began playing together, and as he says, they just wanted to play music in that darkened death style.

“Immolation, Gorguts, Crytopsy – they were the main three influences we had. When we started recording our first album we really wanted to focus on creating atmosphere, inject subtleties and not just go for the throat 100% of the time. We wanted to do things differently, add a bit more nuance underneath.

“You could say your biggest influence is your own body of work. We never thought we’d get to five albums, and really it’s a shitload of music.

So we’re just constantly reflecting. When you’re touring you really get a feel for what works, not just from an audience feedback vibe, but from the band just jelling over the music or not. Sometimes by the end of a tour I think, ’Ahhh, I’m done with that song, I don’t want to play it live and I don’t want to push down that path again.’ So we’re constantly reflecting on what we’ve done and where we’d like to go.

“Recording an album really does take a long time, it’s been a year and a half since we started working on ’Shrines Of Paralysis’ and we still haven’t started the tour. So we’re ready to take a break from the creative process and focus on tightening our live set. Eventually we will get that itch to start creating again, and really that’s our indication to start. These aren’t easy songs to construct and we do spend a lot of time on each song, probably far too long. Arranging, re-arranging, pre-producing… recording.”

The new album’s eight tracks average over seven minutes long.

“When it comes to writing we’re what I’d call a jam-based band. Some

bands these days are a bit more clinical in their songwriting, in the fact that one person will write the main body of work then outsource it to the other musicians to fill the rest of the parts. Everything has always been constructed by Mike and me sitting in one of our rooms, with practice pads and amps.

“We’ll sit there for a few hours and throw a couple of ideas, just to get melodic and riff ideas. We basically focus on the guitar aspect and build up from there. Once we’ve got some ideas we’ll track things loosely, then start building the drum ideas up from the demo tracks. When things start to feel good we’ll track them and start arranging them in a jam scenario, or arrange them on a computer and just see what works beside what.

“We just try to keep everything feeling natural and see where they want to end up. We tend to write in a linear fashion; in the sense we’ve never had verse, chorus style structures. We’ll have nine or 10 big sections that are separate from the rest of the song. It’s about trying to find tension and release points, but we try to stay away from making things needlessly complex for the sake of showing off. We’ve never enjoyed music like

We still play a lot of shows in NZ and try to make them special, but when we started touring internationally – that became our focus rather than maintaining a presence here. that, taking a technical approach just for the sake of it. I feel it’s a bit show-off-y” Although Ulcerate continue to turn heads on the world stage, to the vast majority of NZ music listeners their reinvention of the genre has gone almost un-noticed.

“I guess it’s just a really fucking weird style of music. It’s violent sounding and people don’t want that kind of experience when they’re listening to music. Maybe that mindset won’t ever change. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. People will be into violent sports, or have no problem with violent or dark movies, but when it comes to music somehow it’s taboo? That dark music is not to be listened to unless you’re a certain type of person… it’s strange.”

“NZ is just such a small market for death metal, and that’s the way we treat it. For the style of music that’s kind of the way it has to be. It’d be very different if we were a pop band, touring all the time and playing festivals, but it’s not gonna happen for a band like us, and we’re fine with that. It’s no big deal to us. We still play a lot of shows in NZ and try to make them special, but when we started touring internationally – that became our focus rather than maintaining a presence here.

“We’re not a pushy band, we’re not big into the press or hyping ourselves up and stuff. We do what we say, we say what we do. We let people make their own minds up about us and let whatever kind of buzz we have do the talking.”

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While his music is typically quirky but dark modern folk, Skyscraper Stan made quite a splash with Kiwi audiences attending the David Bowie tribute gigs that toured the country following his death this year.

Spectacularly tall, outrageously dressed and awkwardly limbed, Stan Woodhouse could nonetheless channel glam-phase Bowie impressively.

And what a voice. Recorded in Melbourne and just released here in NZ, his own debut album is called ‘Last Year’s Tune’. Stan talked candidly about playing solo around Australia with Silke Hartung.

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hen Stan Woodhouse, aka Skyscraper Stan, says he lives a very transient kind of life in Australia he isn’t kidding, the photo below shows his ‘swag’ – that’s home to you and I. “For a long time when I’ve been sedentary, I’ve been in Fitzroy, or suburbs nearby, but I haven’t had a fixed address for a year and a bit. I kind of just drive around...�

It’s not aimless driving though, he’s signed to a Sydney booking agency who know that he really wants to work all the time, so they book him on those big long solo tours that Aussie can offer the hardy. There’s still a lot of regional touring to be done there, playing those once grand old pubs from back when there still was gold. “You drive through gold country and you’ve got those old towns with corner hotels that have big rooms upstairs. Quite often the venue will have a bed for you. A lot of the time I’ll play at a venue and they’ll let me put the swag out in a driveway. If I don’t have a gig, I’ll often stop by the side of the road close to where truckers stop, and go a little into the bush from there. I have a swag, which is an Australian thing. You would have heard the word ‘swagman’ in Waltzing Matilda – a swag is a canvas tube with a mattress in it.�

If he plays enough nights a week, he mostly has a free place to stay. “It’s when I don’t have as many gigs, that’s when I struggle to have a place to sleep.�

N a m e d ‘Skyscraper Stan’

by Tom Rodwell

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and Rohan Evans back in the days when he was a barman and occasional performer at Auckland’s Wine Cellar, Stan moved to Australia seven years ago, basing himself in Melbourne. He admits he didn’t expect it to be that cold. “Melbourne gets really cold, and it’s really wet in the winter. I can’t live in my swag in Victoria in the winter. The cold is okay, the wet is horrible.�

Of course cold and wet is just a part of the Aussie challenge. “When you drive through central NSW, Victoria or through Queensland where the humidity is high but it’s also 40 degrees. The dry heat down south gets really bad, so every now and then you get 35 degrees and then I worry about my guitar in the car.�

He plays a Maton, the Australian guitar manufacturer also based in Melbourne. An artist liaison from the company approached him after a folk festival show offering sponsorship. “He gave me this guitar and I have totally fallen in love with it now. It's absolutely incredible. I have no idea which model I’m playing, but it’s sort of a smaller dreadnought guitar that makes me look huge. Not a big guitar but wonderful to play. I had to fall in love with it. I was playing a really old 1951 Silvertone, which looked great but played like shit.�

Stan sees himself as a songwriter more so than a musician. “I’m at a competent level on the guitar but I’m no virtuoso. I’ve got a lot of friends who are really talented musicians and I can’t keep up with that, the way their mind works. But as long as you surround yourself with them and include them in your band you’re always going to sound like an amazing musician because they’re all covering your gaps!�

Before leaving NZ he was studying biology at Auckland University and working at the Wine Cellar, where he threw himself a combined 21st birthday/going away party. “My band played and we had Mason Clinic play. I had this idea that NZ was this place I wanted to leave and never come back to because I been reading too many stories about people like Woody Guthrie, the American dream, being a rambling man – I was an arrogant little shit, basically. I moved to a place that's less than four hours away but still mostly New Zealanders. “I always found something quite alluring about Australia. It’s got cultural problems, and it does violate human rights, they do all sorts of horrible things, so it can be really embarrassing to live in Australia right now, but it's a pretty remarkable and inspiring place. The physical environment at least.

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His father is Australian and Stan was born in Sydney, but grew up in Auckland. He now has an Aussie passport and as he says, could go on the dole if he wanted to. While finishing his degree at Melbourne University he was soon drawn to the local music scene. In the beginning, no one would give him a gig and he says it can be quite a catty scene.

“I found it pretty hard to break into the scene at first but once I did it became quite supportive. I was kind of a dorky, awkward, super skinny, really unco-ordinated, lanky kind of country blues singer at the time, and it took me a fair while to get gigs. It wasn’t actually until I left Melbourne. I had been living there for eight months without playing any shows, living with lots of druggies and junkies and bongheads – just not good people.

“I’d go in and ask for a gig and they’d ask me for demos and I didn’t have any demos. I would just struggle. I don’t think I was very good at asking for shows, came across as awkward and weird and they probably thought, ‘Well if you’re this bad at talking to people, what are you going to do when you get on stage?’”

Scraping some money together he bought a stationwagon and then with his girlfriend took off to NSW. “We went to a town called Tamworth where they do the Tamworth Music Festival – it’s a nightmare! It’s 40 degrees every day and there are all these middle aged men in washed out denim and fake Stetson hats who have no respect for women at all, so it was really hard for my girlfriend at the time. Everyone’s just drinking all day long, for 10 days, so by the end people are just punching on – that’s an Aussie term for getting in a punch up.

While there he did meet a bunch of musicians whose gigs he’d been to. Getting a gig at a photo studio above a toy store he got all these “cool guys” Melbourne musos in with guest passes, making himself feel “really cool”.

Even better, when he got back to Melbourne they started hooking him up with gigs. Now he reckons that it’s probably easier to get gigs there than it is in Auckland because there are so many venues in Melbourne, including a lot of smaller ones.

“I haven’t played there for a while but there's a bar called the Old Bar, which I think is kind of like the Melbourne Wine Cellar. It’s dirty and you stick to the floor – at least the Wine Cellar isn’t carpeted! You stick to it! One of our backing singers stepped up on the stage and the sole of her shoe stayed on the floor!”

He has also lived in Sydney on and off, and finds it easy enough to get a gig there, too.

“Small venues are very popular in Australia right now. When I say small venues I kind

of mean a place that can fit between 50-80 people. Tiny little cocktail bars but they have music.”

And while it’s hardly riches, he says he does get paid well for playing, which is why he tours often.

“Say the Central Tablelands, inland NSW. If I go out there on a Thursday night I get a AU$250 gig, on a Friday I can do a AU$400 gig, on a Saturday AU$600 and on Sunday AU$300. I’ve worked four days but I’ve made good money! I don’t know if I could do that here, but you can there. You just got to be willing to live in a swag and drive around in a crappy old Mazda that sounds like a lawnmower.”

Stan’s self-managed but says it’s super helpful to have the Sydney-based Harbour Agency booking gigs for him and avoiding the hassle and hours of admin emailing venues and putting his own tour runs together. Aside from that as an independent musician booking gigs you can’t get venues to someone sign a contract – and there’s no such thing as a short drive in Australia.

there’s very overt racism, people wear it on their sleeves – race relations in Australia are not good and that’s very confronting.”

In early October Stan played a string of 10 NZ gigs from Auckland to Dunedin. He was promoting ‘Last Year’s Tune’ an album that, as it happens, has been out in Australia for a year, but only just released officially in NZ. Plans to tour the album with the musicians he’d recorded it with (Skyscraper Stan and the Commission Flats) imploded after the death of someone close to the band, meaning they just couldn’t tour. Instead he went off solo again – the Commission Flats subsequently deciding that the (his) touring life wasn’t for them anyway.

“You have to be able to take up a certain levels of discomfort and my standards are incredibly low. I can put up with practically anything.”

Being his first it’s not an album written from start to finish, more a collection of his better-crafted songs. Most were written over a two-year-period in Australia but it does include

“I don’t think I was very good at asking for shows.

I came across as awkward and weird and they probably thought, ‘Well if you’re this bad at talking to people, what are you going to do when you get on stage?’”

“I’ve had many experiences where I trusted people, I organised things, I went along and played the show, it cost me a lot of money to do and and I never got paid. I lost all the money because there was no legal obligation to pay me. You don’t get your money. If you’re playing a local show that’s fine, but if you get a band there and the money isn’t forthcoming it can be a bit heart breaking, and bank breaking.”

Of course Australia is harsh in other ways too. When he first moved over it was in the depth of a drought that had gone on for nearly a decade and all the houses he stayed in had little egg timers in the shower. You’d have to get out got out when the timer ran out.

“There are certain things like people having to live with a particularly hostile environment, that has been interesting especially because I play so many regional shows. Every summer we go out playing just as it’s getting into fire season. You see people preparing for it, clearing all the land outside their houses of anything that could burn so there’s a buffer zone between the bush and their home.

“You go up to somewhere like Darwin and

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Bruce, a song he wrote seven years ago about a guy he knew while working at the Wine Cellar.

“I like how different the tracks on the album are, that it moves through a lot of different modes and sounds. The songs are some of my best, I think. The sonic template of the album is solid. I enjoy the instrumentation on it. We had this brilliant Hammond organ player called Bill Haines who’s an older guy from Melbourne who came in. It’s a big sound and it does the songs a really great service, and it’s something I’m still really proud of.”

Surprisingly he does anticipate living in NZ again in the future.

“I do really have a lot more love for this place now. I should have had this love throughout my entire childhood, but I somehow decided to be a citizen of the world and therefore NZ was too small. I travelled a fair bit out of America as well, and you do kind of realise that NZ is a beautiful, special place. It’s also a place where I feel I belong, which I don’t feel in Australia.”

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by Dave Johnston

Mixing In The Box – Part 3

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ou’ve been given a track to mix. Where to begin? While there are many ways to approach a mix, starting with the drums can allow you to get right into creating the sonic environment for your

track.

So, first things first. Drums are the most important instrument.

Okay – full disclosure, I’m a drummer. Yeah, alright… the vocals are important too (fine, they’re usually more important). Bias aside though, getting the drums to sound right for the song is crucial. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the important questions you should ask yourself before diving too deep into that mix.

What’s your vision?

The best engineers will have a ‘vision’ for the final sound right from the get-go. Through your understanding of the genre, consultation with the artist and your own taste and experience, you should be able to imagine roughly how the end result will sound. This will influence the mixing decisions you make along the way. If you don’t have a vision, you’ll just waste time pushing around faders and knobs.

Building your kit Do you want the listener to visualise the musicians as if they’re performing in a room, a concert hall or an other-worldly space? Clean and pristine or grungy attitude? Should it sound like a real drummer or a drum machine? The earlier these decisions are made in the production process (ideally they were considered prior to hitting record), the better.

If you’re going for a ‘real’ drum sound, a good place to start your drum mix is with the overheads. Turn them up and pan them out if they’re recorded in stereo – are we there yet? Probably not, but well

recorded overhead tracks can get you a long way to a well-rounded drum sound. Gradually bringing in spot mics for kick and snare will add clarity and definition. Introduce toms and hats, and pan to taste.

Some EQ and compression will further shape and clean up your tone, remembering that there will inevitably be a fair bit of spill from the other mics to battle with. It may be appropriate to blend in some drum samples for more punch and consistency.

Try sending all the drum tracks through a subgroup Aux track, which will allow you to process the kit as a whole with broad strokes before tweaking individual elements. This won’t only save time, but sometimes it’s good to treat the kit as one instrument rather than a whole heap of individual elements. This is known as sub-mixing.

Adding effect Various styles of compression on the room mics can give you many different ‘environment’ options. Artificial reverb can expand the palette, allowing you to really customise the acoustic space. Often the snare drum will require its own flavour of reverb. Try playing around with the pre-delay setting on the snare reverb until it sits well. A lame sounding snare drum can make an entire track sound lacklustre.

Some genres might call for a more artificial drum sound, particularly in pop and electronic genres, in which case programmed drums or samples may dominate the drum sound. This will come down to the vision for the track. Be sure not to lose sight of that vision – if it’s meant to sound like a real band is playing the music, a fake sounding drum mix can make the track seem lifeless and sterile.

One more thing. If no one’s told you this before, distortion is your friend and it’s not just for guitars! Distort things (snare drum… wink wink). Turn up the knobs. See what happens! It will be fun and you’ll probably learn some stuff. Remember that distortion causes signal compression, so will alter the dynamics of the source material (which may be a good thing).

It’s all about balance Remember that drums are one of the only instruments that take up the entire frequency spectrum. From the low end of the kick and toms right up to the sandy tops of the snare and the shimmer of the cymbals, the drums are everywhere. Knowing this, it’s important to remember that they aren’t always meant to be the focus of attention, and once you’ve placed your other instruments into their virtual space, you may need to do some tweaking to help give those instruments their own positions in the track.

If you boost the top end of the cymbals and hats, they might sound more ‘hi-fi’ by themselves, but you may be killing the vocal clarity. Harsh cymbals and hats may interfere with the high-midrange of your guitar tone. Toms and kick need to be assessed alongside the bass guitar to make sure everyone is mates down that end too. Using automation and making smart complimentary EQ moves can help you avoid masking issues, resulting in a clearer mix overall.

Think about why you’re doing things There’s an endless wealth of technical information available online regarding specific mixing techniques for drums, however maintaining a holistic view and having a good think about your approach before you start twiddling too many knobs can go a long way!

Dave Johnston is the Industry Liaison at SAE Auckland. He’s also a musician (Villainy, The Zoup), and a freelance music producer plus mixing engineer.

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Deluge – NZ’s Very Own World-leading Groovebox

Industry

Something new and exciting is coming to the world of electronic music – and what’s more it is coming out of our very own capital city.

Seamus Maguire talked with Synthstrom Audible founder and creator of the Deluge, Rohan Hill, about how his personal DIY project ended up turning into a sophisticated professional piece of sequencer/synth hardware that may well prove a global hit.

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ynthstrom Audible and its founder Rohan Hill may not be household names in the electronic music world – but they soon will be. The company’s about-to-be released first product – the Deluge – is an astonishingly comprehensive piece of gear. Initially starting out as a casual, almost naïve DIY project for Rohan to exercise his programming and electronics skills, it has slowly expanded into a world-class groovebox and sequencer that is a serious competitor to anything else on the market today.

Although the first production run has yet to be commissioned prototypes have been demonstrated in the US and Europe. Specialist synth dealers across the globe are reportedly eager to get retail quantities and plans are in place to exhibit the Deluge at the Las Vegas CES Show in January.

What makes the Deluge so impressive is the fact that it is almost entirely the result of Rohan’s own time and efforts. While other music gear companies like Novation or Korg hire teams of marketers to figure out what musicians want, and scores of electronic-engineers to design the gear, Rohan has managed to make something more interesting – and done so almost entirely on his own as the photos over the page illustrate – in the confines of his Wellington flat.

Rohan Hill’s history of hardware design and programming is of humble beginnings. He developed a good understanding of coding through studying for a Computer Science degree from Victoria University, and also gained a basic knowledge of electronics by way of a few DIY projects – such as building a guitar amp, making cables and programming the Arduino, a hobbyist microcontroller.

However even contemplating a project such as the Deluge requires a lot more than just a hobbyist’s understanding of electronics. He had to teach himself a wide range of new skills from programming commercial grade microcontrollers, writing the code for the synthesizer

and effects from scratch, and also learning circuit-board design – something that really requires a degree in electrical engineering just to get your head around.

Rohan’s initial motivation to make the Deluge was not the result of noticing a gap in the music hardware market that he could fill, or of any commercially minded goals at all – instead it was a very personal desire to create a sequencer that he could use with his own music that would also pull him away from sitting in front of a computer screen. That was at the beginning of 2014. He’s been working on it, literally day and night, almost constantly since – around 7000 hours all up he guesses.

“The original philosophy and reason for making the Deluge was for getting sequenced music off the computer and out into the performance environment,” Rohan explains of the wider context. “I think a lot of people making electronic music in a live performance setting feel a bit limited being stuck behind the computer screen or having to edit on the screen if they wanted to do something like change the beat on the fly.”

His Deluge offers exactly that. It is a comprehensive sequencer, sampler, and synth engine (both subtractive and frequency modulation) with several onboard effects, with an intuitive programming and playing style. It’s very portable, has an internal microphone – along with mic and line inputs – and even has speakers. It has its own battery pack so you can play (with) it anywhere without the need of a

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power supply, and it has an astounding 128 back-lit silicone pads (that is twice as many as other competing tech like the Ableton Push) all while still managing to be smaller in size.

It also has modern sequencing capabilities, being able to sequence the internal synth engine and sampler and also externally via MIDI and through a variety of clock, trigger and CV outputs.

Of course that’s not what it started out to be, indeed not even what the first working prototypes offered. A lot of these ideas were gained through listening to what his friends and fellow musicians asked out of a groovebox and sequencer. Rohan – thanks to the advice of Ian Jorgensen (aka Blink) – held early trials and demonstrations with electronic musicians and as a result has left no stone unturned – the Deluge is a very modern piece of gear.

Jorgensen seems to think so too. With all his work establishing A Low Hum in its various manifestations, organising tours, running Wellington’s Puppies bar/venue, writing books and challenging the music industry status quo, it’s fair to describe Jorgensen as a visionary.

When he learnt about Rohan’s ventures into making the Deluge he was immediately eager to get on board and help in any way he could.

“After chatting to Rohan at a show at my old bar and hearing about this device I had a play a few days later and within minutes was writing songs on it. He told me he was only planning on making a couple of units for him and some friends, I don’t think he had any idea just how

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revolutionary a piece of equipment he’d made and I figured that if this old man could write songs after a few minutes, anyone could.”

It was mid-2015 Jorgensen came on board and they started looking at it as a genuine business project. Jorgensen already had some plans. It was his idea to get Rohan demoing the early version Deluge with electronic musicians in Wellington from its early stages so that he could get the important and necessary feedback to make sure it had everything a musician could want. He has since helped secure support and funding from Callaghan Innovation – the government agency supporting technology businesses in NZ – and just recently has spent a fortnight in Europe demoing the still-unreleased Deluge at a variety of events, private studios and synth retailers – expanding interest in the Deluge well beyond Wellington.

While Rohan remains humble about the quality of his work, Jorgensen sees the potential – his role from here on out as a promoter for the feature-laden groovebox will be a vital part of the success of the Deluge.

“I had no idea just how badly people have been waiting for a device like this until travelling around Europe. I did around 30 demos over a few weeks and people are rabid, it definitely ticks a bunch of boxes for people in their dream portable all-in-one device. It was always interesting to see exactly what features got people most excitable, sometimes things you don’t think are that special really give people a kick – though the Deluge’s ability to play at 10,000 BPM always generates a smile!”

One of the most interesting parts of the design of the Deluge is its ‘piano-roll’ style of sequencing. To the best of my (and Rohan’s) knowledge the Deluge is the only sequencer to offer a hardware sequencer in this style.

With other sequencers a note is selected at a certain point in time in the sequence and then the necessary information such as pitch, note length and velocity can be entered or edited.

With the Deluge, the pads are laid out in a 16 x 8 array that allows for immediate visual feedback through a two dimensional display of sequencing where the horizontal axis represents time – both in terms of time divisions and note length – and the vertical axis represents pitch, whether that be indicated with a certain scale or chromatically.

This provides an immediate visual indication

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of what is happening musically. For example, you can see that the sequence is playing quarter notes with each note being an eighth note in length, and on top of this you can see what pitch each of those notes are.

A really smart feature is the ability to zoom in and out of sequences. This is handy as it allows for in-depth sequencing while also allowing for a broader look over the pattern as a whole. It also allows for easy movement from one part of the sequence to another.

Each sequenced track can be any length the user likes, allowing for complex polyrhythmic patterns – something that a lot of vintage and modern sequencers seem to overlook.

This allows for intricate sequences that can be continuously changing. For example, the length of a track of hi-hats with certain accents could be 15 sixteenth notes, while the kick and snare could be a standard 4:4 – resulting in a continuously changing rhythmic pattern.

The Deluge’s ability to sequence external gear is very comprehensive. While MIDI sequencing is certainly a standard feature on any modern sequencer, the Deluge offers a vast range of sequencing for other kinds of external gear. With the rise of popularity of

processing engine (which initially came later) is now part of the same engine.”

It features two oscillators with oscillator sync, ring modulation, unison, detune, portamento and an arpeggiator. What’s more the filter can also be both lowpass and highpass. The coding isn’t based on any previous synth but instead was programmed by Rohan from the ground up – a complicated and lengthy process.

“When I started looking at a synth engine and first decided that I wanted the Deluge to make sound I did look for open source synthesisers that I could just throw in there, but there was actually surprisingly little I found.

There was one open sourced synth that I looked at but it wasn’t something you could very easily put into another system and I wasn’t really able to figure out what the code was doing [in order] to try take any code from it. And also there would have been a licensing issue with using something like that in a commercial product.”

His synth engine also includes ‘frequency modulation’ synthesis which allows for some unconventional and interesting sounds beyond the regular subtractive synthesis.

The number of voices on the Deluge is limited only by the power of the CPU –- depending on how many effects you are using and how complicated your sampling and synthesis parameters you can have around 48 voices – up to 64 if you are only sequencing unaffected samples.

The onboard sampler allows for both importing samples via the SD card and also live recording which means, as Rohan describes, “It’s an actual sampler and not just sample playback.” This means – like other samplers – you can sample a record and cut up the samples, or you could sample the drummer of your band and cut each hit into its own sample, then program your own drums.

Also interesting to note is the inclusion of an internal battery and microphone that will allow owners to take the Deluge to some weird spots and use it as a field recorder. You could, for example, walk to the park and record the birds and then cut up these samples and use them as the basis for an abstract ambient track. What’s more you can also use samples as the basis for the synth engine, passing them through the filters and envelopes and LFOs for some interesting sounds. There are also a selection of preloaded samples provided on the Deluge

The Deluge is an easy, portable and fun synth that the most untrained electronic musician/ composer can very quickly create working tracks with. modular synths and a resurgence of interest in vintage gear that requires unusual methods of sequencing, the Deluge provides almost every method of sequencing imaginable.

Rohan went above and beyond to make sure all kinds of synths could be sequenced, his determinedly comprehensive research leaving no stone unturned.

“When I decided to add CV and gate I spent a lot of time researching because there are various standards and none of them are very standard at all in terms of different numbers of volts-per-octave and hertz-per-volt. It was very difficult, pretty much none of the vintage gear has a spec sheet on what voltages it accepts, so there was heaps of trawling through internet forums and reading up on all kinds of sites on all kinds of standards and what devices used them and what the exceptions are to the normal rules of how that stuff works in terms of devices that require non standard things.”

The very comprehensive synth engine on the Deluge was programmed by Rohan from scratch. (Think about it… Rohan did for a full month.)

“I spent September 2014 doing nothing but programming the basic synth engine. It had oscillators, envelopes, filters, FM, unison detune, ringmod, noise, flanger, and the Deluge's extremely flexible patching / modulation engine. It has been constantly expanded and improved since then though, and the sample

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such as 808- style drums, so programming can be instantaneous from the moment you start using it.

Actually that is a real key to the appeal and possible global market appeal of the Deluge – it is a fun synth that the most untrained electronic musician/composer can very quickly create working tracks with. On paper the feature array sounds daunting but the intuitive design, layout and visual cues of the multi-coloured LED pads makes beatmaking, layering, creating intricate loops and track creation a breeze, even for beginners.

Onboard effects include an ‘analogue style’ delay, reverb, chorus, phaser, flanger, bit crushing, live stuttering, and more – all of which, again, were programmed by Rohan. The delay, he recalls, was a real challenge.

“For the speed of the delay to go up and down it has to resample stuff on the fly and potentially read and write to a buffer at a re-sampled rate, and switch in and out of doing that as the rate changes without crackling.

That took a really long time.”

Pressed, he reckons probably one and a half weeks (of his typical 70-hour weeks that is) was spent on the variable-speed delay algorithm.

“Mostly in late 2015 but it still crackled occasionally, and I finally solved that problem early this year.”

All the effects can be assigned on a ‘per-track’ basis, however you can also apply effects to the whole song which allows for nice filter sweeps and live stuttering over the whole output.

As remarkably comprehensive as it is, there are some features that would have been nice to find, like additional assignable outputs so as to allow different tracks to be mixed separately out of the Deluge.

“That was just one feature that had occurred to me but it didn’t make the cut of things that I crammed in there,” Rohan explains, meaning there were inevitably others that also missed the cut. Not because they were too hard for him I understand, but because like any new piece of

equipment it has to meet a retail price that will ensure it succeeds in the market. (The price point remains under wraps as this issue goes to printa fortnight ahead of the official introductory launch.)

It’s also important to remember the intention and origin behind the Deluge – it didn’t start out as a commercial product – it just ended up being one. It is rooted in a world of homemade and DIY gear.

Apart from the printing of circuit boards all of the production is currently being kept in NZ – including the metal work, assembly and soldering. It’s a nice touch. Several of the businesses Synthstrom Audible have been working with were introduced by Callaghan Innovation, most notably Quick Circuit in Upper Hutt who will be manufacturing a large chunk of the product.

A first production run will be based on pre-orders only and supplied direct to customers explains Jorgensen.

“Again, with the support of Callaghan Innovation I will be visiting LA along with exhibiting the Deluge at CES in Vegas in January next year.

We’ll be investigating distribution options at that point if we choose to go that route – though we’ve already established quite a few direct relationships with specialist synth stores worldwide.

The Deluge would have been a lot harder to produce had it been just five years ago. With manufacturing and electronics costs going down globally it has become easier for smaller boutique companies to make high quality consumer products for a reasonable price. Rohan laughs in reporting that the CPU power of the microcontroller in the Deluge is faster than the first computer he ever owned – and with the rate at which technology is improving, the standard and quality of hardware will only get better with time.

If you’re keen to be among the first to get your hands on a Deluge they’ll be taking orders through www.synthstrom.com from October 25.

Rohan has already planned further firmware updates for the Deluge – something that will be easy to do for users as it is just a matter of uploading the update files onto an SD card. Some ideas he mentions that weren’t able to get onto the first run include more comprehensive voltage control, time-stretching of samples, more synthesizer wave shapes, and possibly even resampling. He plans to keep listening to what the inevitable Deluge community wants and to keep adding more and more features. It is the beauty of digital hardware paired with a company that actively listens to what people want out of their product.

Rohan Hill’s efforts are worthy of admiration and considerable applause. His seemingly innocent and simple desire to make his own synth and upgrade his lifestyle has resulted in a piece of musical gear of the highest calibre. The specs of the Deluge seem to outshine many competing sequencers of companies much bigger than Synthstrom Audible, which is a very impressive feat.

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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

TRICKS & SLEEVES: Locked Out Of Space Crunchy Auckland indie rock quartet Tricks & Sleeves deliver an urgent and then again relaxed slice of proto-punk sandwiched against a shoegaze meets Neil Young vibe. Recorded at Northwest Digital and produced by the band (Jacobsen cousins Aaron, Jesse and Karl) with drummer Gareth Van Niekerk also engineering and mixing, these songs shift unexpectedly, as the best tend to do. An uplifting chorus is something of a specialty as is a cunning middle eight. Running a line somewhere between The Checks and Big Star melodically, they then rip out a riff more in line with early Purple. Next thing you know we go down into a pair of doomy ballads the first a Neil Young-esque solo effort the second a swinging portrait of gloom and mistrust.

It is hard to pick the best cut from this album, some have great drum performances, others lead breaks or slinky bass lines or vocals you can’t forget. What I think is that this ensemble is so complete and united it shines through in the music they create. I’m even going to call Broken Beacon one of the best songs of the year. Special mention too for the track Magenta]ÊÌ iÃiÊ}ÕÞÃÊV> ÊÃÜ }°ÊU Darryl Kirk

STEVE ABEL: Luck/Hope

In the world of NZ musical styles, alt country/folk is a popular one, and features some well-known and revered musicians.

Steve Abel is one such artist and his third full-length release ‘Luck/Hope’ is an album of intensity and beauty. The performances are stellar, restrained and impassioned at once, teasing out the feeling that rests just beneath the veneer of the songs. Abel’s guest musicians are also a roster of who’s who in the local music industry; Buzz Moller, Gareth Thomas, Geoff Maddock and Jolie Holland all add their expertise – among others. The slow and deliberate songs are based around the guitar and Abel’s careworn voice that carries emotion and weight of the world, especially Dance, with its beautiful, almost ghostly melody, building harmonies, and sparse, twinkly piano accompaniment from Thomas. The album was recorded over six years in NZ and in New York, and the city that never sleeps plays a large part, not only as a recording location but also in Sidewalk Doves, a Ryan Adamesque paean to the city. ‘Luck/Hope’ adds to Abel’s reputation as a gifted songwriter with an authentic voice. This record is quietly graceful, a thoughtful collection of songs that linger long after the music has finished playing. s !MANDA -ILLS

HENIKA: Henika

This self titled debut ‘mini album’ (6-tracks) is an interesting exercise in genre-defiant songwriting. Auckland musician Henika trained as a jazz musician but with influences from Bjork to Bowie her album is hard to describe stylistically. The River opens with a church organ hum alongside Henika’s very clear, haunting and strong vocals (also adding to the religious feel of the track). Other parts creep into the mix, distorted guitar and drums coming in and out. Henika clearly has a taste for ambient music and a confidence in arrangement. Certain sounds will appear and disappear with unclear origins, and the layering of instruments is often deep and complex. Andrew Buckton recorded, mixed and produced this album and aesthetically Henika is reminiscent of other polished projects he’s worked on such as Midnight Youth’s epic rock sound explored on their 2009 ‘The Brave Don’t Run’ album. Despite its unusual nature, ‘Henika’ is a fairly straightforward listen. If you’re into alternative folk rock with an ambient twist you’ll likely enjoy it. s /LLY #LIFTON

MAALA: Composure

Auckland singer/songwriter Evan Sinton, aka Maala, takes you on a journey with this debut, intro number Composure setting an epic tone for the rest of the record. Lose Your Love comes soaring in with polished vocals backed by big bass synths and melodic percussion. The hook is lush and catchy. Reminiscent of quality internationals like SOHN, with broody brassy synths Maala’s sound is paving the way for a new generation of pop NZ is still discovering. Kind Of Love is a sexy upbeat track with subtle high-pitched arpeggiators to keep the groove moving paired nicely with a foot tapping 4/4 beat and a loud and catchy chorus. Breathe Out is more stripped back with Maala’s voice doing most of the work as a bass synth and minimal percussion wrap up the production. The songwriting is strong on many fronts, the wordplay on lyrics and chord progressions also helping make this an impactful first album. With congratulations to Josh Fountain who is named various times as a producer and engineer ‘Composure’ transforms into an epic pop release. Let Me Know stands out with hard hitting reverberated percussion reminiscent of FKA Twigs. Throughout Maala does a wonderful job of keeping an equilibrium between melancholy and optimism through the use of soft vocals, minor chord progressions and transitions that lead you to big hooks that are optimistic Ü ÃÌÊLi }Ê i `ÊÌ }iÌ iÀÊLÞÊ}À> `Ê«iÀVÕÃÃ °ÊU Felix Mpunga

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ABBIE: Lost/Found EP

Catchy, soulful, infused with summer. Auckland songstress Abbie’s debut EP is a total treat for the ears. Opener The Million sets the tone balancing her naturally rich vocals with top-notch production values. The track is very 2016 in its instrumentation and sounds just as appropriate for local radio here in Aotearoa as providing the soundtrack to a peppy international show or ad campaign. It’s easy to envision the song played live, with a chorus ready made for crowd sing along. Give It Back is a more subdued and sad track, emotionally echoed in Ships. These two are spaced between the EP’s other more upbeat songs, ensuring a balanced listening experience – also ensuring that listeners are treated to the full spectrum of Abbie Harker-Ferguson’s incredible voice. William Henderson produced at Woodcut Studios for newcomer label Waatea Music. Special mention must go to te reo M ori track Rerehua which features Maaka. Tonally in line with the rest of this seven-track album’s sound, Rerehua is a particularly beautiful and daring song in a commercial music environment that often doesn't play well with M ori language offerings. If Abbie is part of the vanguard aiming to update this space, perhaps change can finally be afoot. s "RIAR ,AWRY

MATT HERRETT: Time EP

Delicately moving around the room and filling the air with a loudness made of acoustic ambience, Matt Herrett’s EP is a collection of four folk songs, each tasting full of heart and soul.

With (fellow Glass Boatee) Missie Moffat adding some vocals, Jarrod Bakker on Hammond and Herrett on vocals, dobro, piano and harmonica, the majority of the EP was recorded within the space of a fortnight, and all done in the comfort of Herrett’s New Plymouth home. One Little Smile provides a sweet start, the lightly picked acoustic guitar shining and Herrett’s reserved vocals carrying the piece in an inviting manner. Moonshiner is a traditional folk song of a similar tempo and pensive mood, Bakker’s harmonica joining the scene with the warmth so authentic and true to the genre. Final track Ticking Clock plays tribute to Herrett’s late mother, herself a folk singer. The natural air of sadness in the song is a perfect reflective end to the EP. All in all, ‘Time’ is a neat collection of acoustic solo folk. It captures the part of life that is spent dancing on the beach as the sun goes down, and hands you a moment of serenity Ì >ÌÊ ÃÊ} Ûi ÊvÀ Ê iÀÀiÌÌÊ Ãi v°ÊU Sam Vegar

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SKYSCRAPER STAN AND THE COMMISSION FLATS: Last Year’s Tune

Well-travelled lofty songwriter Skyscraper Stan refuses to heed the Ghostbusters’ warning, and gleefully crosses the streams of Donovan-esque psychedelic pop, Staples-esque groove, and, frankly, any other -esque he feels like. He’s been called a ‘country crooner’ too, and you get hints of that on tracks like Always Thinking Of You, but Stan and his accomplices The Commission Flats smash through genre boundaries as the song progresses, rampaging through the neighbourhoods of skiffle, soul and rockabilly on their merry way from country to town. They describe their sound as ‘troubadour rock ’n’ roll’, and this helps to convey the storytelling aspect of the music, as well as the energetic delivery. The musicianship is outstanding from start to finish. The Flats are a very tight band. They get to shine in their own way but never tread on Stan’s toes as he perpetrates his consummate vocal delivery. Formerly from Auckland, now based in Australia, Stan spent some time in America soaking up musical influences. It would be easy to say that the strategy paid off, but that would imply that anyone could take a trip to the crossroads and return a prodigy. The truth must also take into account such prosaic realities as hard work, inspiration, talent and a singular musical vision. ‘Last Year’s Tune’ is a tremendously rewarding listen s "ING 4URKBY

MARSHMELLOW: Love Is Love

Marshmellow is a pseudonym adopted by Marshall Smith, Auckland singer, songwriter, producer and writer, who makes music for screen productions large and small, and toured internationally with his former band The New Freedom. This new (digital) release is truly a solo affair, with all tracks performed, written and produced by Smith, though production collaborators Kings, 3ple and Alessandro Cruel appear on some of the EDM tracks that tend to overbalance the album. ‘Love Is Love’ is a stylistic mix (dance music, ballads, chamber-pop, funk, R’n’B, trance, and touches

of gospel), and is an album of two halves. The first seven tracks belong purely to EDM, while the remaining songs are mellow, a musical and melodic come down, if you like. This slower half is where the gems lie: Me And Scott Walker is a lovely waltz ballad, where the melody flows easily, while The Boy Who Could Stop Time is hushed, with brushed drums, atmospheric production, and beautifully judged strings, a 180 degree turn from the EDM of The Moment I Wake Up and Heartbeat. ‘Love Is Love’ could easily be a collection of tracks cobbled together with no thematic cohesiveness, but isn’t – testament to Smith’s production abilities. A couple of tracks find a happy medium. Electro-pop dance anthem Zeros & Ones builds nicely while Small Talk balances stuttering beats with delicate vocal lines. Smith shows an extensive range, though the best material focuses attention on his melodies, words and performance. s !MANDA -ILLS

THE RUBICS: Blasphemy EP

2016 NZ Battle of the Bands champions, The Rubics, launched their debut EP just ahead of taking off for their overseas tour prize. Rob Jatulan Jr (vocals), Brendon Thomas (guitar), Jason Bell (guitar and keys), Nic Montgomery (bass), Zel KuĹĄt (drums) and Simon Opit (keys, CD artwork and photography), make up the Auckland six-piece. This four track EP rapidly forces energy into the airwaves and sends its listeners through a time warp. ‘Blasphemy’ is a hybrid of genres from rock‘n roll, to blues, to funk. Although, with the EP title and the nun (Phoebe Walsh) on the CD cover, it’s hard to see how you would come to expect any of those genres at all. Recorded

by Dave Rhodes at the Depot Sound Recording Studio and mastered at Sage Audio, The Rubics show off their swagger with the opening title track, before opting to change gears and send hearts aflutter with the bluesy guitar on Come Back To Me. Single release, 69 Shots is a crowd pleaser, its ’70s funk-styled tune lays down the boogie in such a big way, enticing you to play it again. Polishing off the EP with a Reggaeton beat and classic rock flavour Soldier contains a lyrical truth reminiscent of protest songs of the ’70s. The liveliness of ‘Blasphemy’ is contagious and masterfully done. The Rubics undoubtedly have the ability to unify music lovers across the globe with their gift. s $EE -UIR

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BOTH SIDES OF THE LINE: Party Line Dunedin six-piece Both Sides Of The Line have been crafting their own brand of bluesy rockabilly for a few years now. ‘Party Line’ again highlights the smoky vocals of Glenda Rogers and the songwriting skills of Rogers and John Sule, which underpins the album. While for the most rhythmically upbeat, it’s the slinky, bluesy tracks that work best, and you can imagine Willing To Sell My Soul (surely a morality tale for young performers everywhere) being sung in a smokey jazz club, through the shuffling Reacher would be more at home in a ’60s nightclub. Occasionally, there’s some restraint on show. Let’s Pretend feels like it wants to break out of its limits while Turned Round Upside Down feels too lightweight for the story it tells. Albums with a retro ’50s and ’60s sound, and performed with a mature, classy flair are few and far between, and ‘Party Line’ fills this gap nicely. While some tracks are a little slow to get going, the rest find their groove quickly and Both Sides Of The Line sound like they are having fun, surely the best affirmation for any album. s !MANDA -ILLS

ARMED IN ADVANCE: Change/Evolve

Formerly known as Stitches, Auckland trio Armed In Advance’s debut album adds a new coat of polish, toning down the fuzzy brilliance of their previous ‘Stitches EP’. Clawing their way amongst the top of the modern pop/hard rock wave by mixing nu-metal, punk-pop and post-grunge, this independent release is impressively well produced. Contrary to its title though, ‘Change/Evolve’ does little to change or evolve rock music stereotypes from the mid-2000s. Whilst tracks such as Running You Down and Stay are certainly catchy, the record as a whole feels at times as though the band is playing it safe. Recorded by James Alexander Boyd and Zorran Mendosa, JP Carroll (vocals, guitar), Hugh Hokopaura (bass), and Ryan Thomas (drums), created something truly special on their earlier EP, but fall shy of capturing the same intensity, creativity and magic here. While the musicianship is tight, the record begs for a rawer approach. There are great songs here, screaming to break through the over-done production. Consider this a band still perfecting their art. s 3AMMY *AY $AWSON

PITCH BLACK: Filtered Senses

‘Filtered Senses’ is studio album number five for the pioneering flag bearers of Aotearoa’s rapidly evolving electronica scene, Pitch Black. It’s the duo’s first full-length release for nine years, made primarily by sending sound files back and forth across the globe while its protagonists got on with life in different parts of the world. Eventually Mike Hodgson (London) and Paddy Free (Piha, New York) got together to add the spit and polish final touches at Hodgson’s home studio, with the requisite trademark attention to detail which ensures the end product doesn’t disappoint.

More than that, it works as a timely reminder of just how much Hodgson and Free still have to offer, and just how cutting edge the pair’s work has been across two full decades of working together. If anything, ‘Filtered Senses’ takes things to a different level; while Pitch Black’s signature dubby dancefloor textures remain firmly intact, this feels somewhat darker and denser than anything they’ve done in the past. There’s a claustrophobic, paranoid, almost post-apocalyptic energy buried somewhere deep in this mix, and the 8-track album is all the better for the way it rather perfectly represents the worrying state of our planet as we approach the end of 2016. Looking forward to the remix version already – if we make it far, that is. s -ICHAEL (OLLYWOOD

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A rich history of reggae, Rastafarianism and protest music in NZ has culminated in the making of Unity Pacific’s third album, ‘Blackbirder Dread’. This album delivers what we have come to expect from veteran songwriter, Twelve Tribes of Israel founding member and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Tigilau Ness.

An energetic and uplifting approach to protest music is not uncommon in NZ reggae and this album celebrates the approach triumphantly and immoderately. Reggae can risk sounding repetitive but this album navigates around this effortlessly, often using powerful melodies, delayed introductions of musical layers, alternate chord progressions and, as in

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the case of Where You Gonna Run, temporary departures into rock-rooted sections. The title track borrows on live dub and trip hop traditions, skanking boldly and taking its time to evolve organically. Hold Me Close blissfully elates with catchy, familiar melodies and rich, layered harmonies that are so typical of our own reggae. Herb Tell The Truth tells the story, both musically and lyrically, of a strong Bob Marley influence. Rock Away, featuring Tigilau’s son Che Fu, casually carries that familiar, playful sentiment across while the powerful Reggae Testamon sports familiar, infectious rhythms and cerebral harmonies.

Consistently strong, ‘Blackbirder Dread’ was recorded and mixed at Roundhead Studios with the engineering by Nic Manders and Scott Seabright and mixing by Kenny McDonald. s !ABIR -AZUMDAR

MEGAHERTZ: Sun In My Solar System

Recorded and mixed by Arnie Van Bussel at Nightshift Studios, this is the Christchurch indie trio’s second release after their 2015 EP ‘Transmission’. Megahertz luxuriate in a signature NZ indie rock sound over 11 songs and 42 dreamy minutes, focusing on vocal melody and hypnotic structure to keep ‘Sun In My Solar System’ spinning. Predominantly cruising at a classic mid-tempo groove, the band provides a genuinely compelling moment with third track The Point, a reflective tune with an insightful chorus lift. Recent single Curiosity provides further interest with another well-constructed chorus, a chromatic descending vocal melody mimicked by both guitar and bass that sticks in your head for hours. There are a few slower almost-ballad tracks to be found here for the new (and not so new) romantics. The title track lyrics express joy and gratitude, while Snitch is full of solemn reflection. Production values are good but the album would benefit from better mastering to smooth and remove some errant frequencies. That said the album retains qualities that make indie rock what it is, and too much polish might subtract from the atmosphere Megahertz have obviously intended to achieve. ĂŠĂœiÂ?Â?‡VÂœÂ˜ĂƒĂŒĂ€Ă•VĂŒi`]ĂŠĂŒÂ…ÂœĂ•}Â…ĂŒvĂ•Â?ĂŠĂ€iÂ?i>ĂƒiĂŠvĂ€ÂœÂ“ĂŠ>ĂŠÂ…>Ă€`ĂŠĂœÂœĂ€ÂŽÂˆÂ˜}ĂŠL>˜`°ÊU +ANE 0OWER

RED LIGHT RUNNERS: Legs EP

Davy Mac (guitars/vocals and production), Carl Win on bass, Phil Murray (drums) and singer Sharron West are Red Light Runners. Their funky new EP ‘Legs’ is a three-track, nine-minute EP taste of what the Auckland rockers have on offer. Their toetapping beats may take a few listens to gain a full appreciation, but it’s well worth the investment of time. Thumbs up for the addition of full track lyrics in the CD sleeve. Along with their name, the CD artwork by Davy Mac, Tony Hulme and David Sayer indicates a muscle car enthusiast may linger within the team. Mac’s gritty vocals laced with West’s haunting harmonies are a combination that transition flawlessly from the EP’s beginning to end. Dr Gray is a highlight with its storytelling melody and well-placed guitar solo 90 seconds in. From a marching band drumline to rattlesnake tambourines and funky boom bass tones, Red Light Runners deliver a live music gig right to your speakers. A rock ‘n soul collection that carries psychedelic undertones with solid production from evidently passionate musicians. s $EE -UIR

DAVE MCKAY: Guitar Plus & Orchestral 2

Released simultaneously, these two albums follow Dave Mckay’s earlier ‘Instrumentals Guitar’ and ‘Instrumentals Orchestra’ albums. The two new discs pick up straight where the last two left off with McKay, Ben Olson and Chris Dent sharing vocal duties over McKay’s music and lyrics on ‘Guitar Plus’, McKay’s instrumental approach mapped out further into fully fledged songs. Olson’s shred guitar influence is one of the guiding voices of the disc, along with his classic power metal vocals. Production values vary song to song, with some cringe-worthy MIDI drum sounds notable. ‘Orchestral 2’ is much more a sequel, albeit with a darker vibe – less classical, more film score. Again it’s the obviousness of the MIDI instrumentation that lets it down, and the production, Backstage Drama for example, horribly peaking. Recorded by McKay at The Sound Pound in Auckland, both albums are in dire need of a proper studio and a full session band to justify the evident compositional effort and skill involved. Sadly neither feels like a final release, rather a demo tracking for musicians to practice their individual parts s 3AMMY *AY $AWSON

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A luscious collection of instruments, some polished vocals and a funky assortment of rhythms are pieced together in Jesse Sheehan’s debut album. And it is rather fantastic. No two songs are similar and each contains developed melodies and rhythms that build very purposeful pieces. The versatility of Sheehan’s voice allows tracks like Girl to carry a slower R’n’B style groove with some melodic and delicate vibrato, while in Stone Girl he lets loose to the faster beat and delivers a raw, wild sound. His engagingly real and diverse vocals aside, what’s particularly striking about this album are the instrumental arrangements. Produced by Neil Finn, ‘Drinking With The Birds’ uses numerous musicians and many fine sounds that seem to pop up in each song just at the moment you begin to thirst for it. Among the very large band, a harp appears in Girl and cello in Sentimental Fool, both standing out as they enrich and build thick textures that give quite a mature sound. These non-traditional pop instruments add character and charm, as well as anticipation in listening to each new song, not knowing what will appear. Sheehan and Finn have done an incredible job; the lyrics and vocals are outstand }]ÊÌ iÊL> `Ê ÃÊ ÕÌÃÌ> ` }]Ê> `ÊÌ iÊÜ iÊ> LÕ Ê ÃÊ>ÊÜ À Ê vÊ>ÀÌ°ÊU Sam Vegar

SHANA GRACE: Hello, It’s Me Again EP

As the title purports, Shana Grace’s debut release is conversational in prioritising lyrics over a stripped back acoustic guitar thread throughout the five tracks. The majority of the songs are slow and self-reflective, many lyrics spoken rather than sung.

Each feels like a text conversation with a friend after you do something out of character, or a diary entry when you’re not quite sure you can tell anyone. Of course the friend in this case is God and questions of faith abound throughout each track. ‘Hello, It’s Me Again’ is earnest and vulnerable, a one-way conversation that holds out hope for a reply, starting a conversation with someone you want to get to know more.

Perhaps the most intimate track is the final Bars. We hear Grace open her mouth before beginning to sing, in all her nervousness and anticipation. She sings of prayer, “I learn to speak and how to listen,” and we can feel the vulnerability in that listening, that waiting.

Similar to Jocee Tuck and Lydia Cole, Grace sings about faith rather than solely about Christianity, and creates a relatable way in for those who do not necessarily practice the religion. Instrumentally, this is simple and effective. Grace worked with various musicians to pair her voice with guitar, banjo, slide guitar, organ, piano, violin, and bass. Mixed by contributing musician Jono Annandale, Grace’s production is smooth and subtle. ‘Hello, It’s Me Again’ is a confession without the guilt: a confiding. s !MANDA 2OBINSON

WINTERBORN: Purgatory

With this (digital-only) debut release Wellington three-piece death metal outfit Winterborn deliver a visceral and topical dialogue over a convincing thrash backdrop. The two-year old band’s sound has elements of Slayer’s punk side and Sepultura’s relentless aggression. While the songs have more emphasis on riffing than solos, bassist Dhanesh Parmar’s technical command is evident throughout.

After a fierce opening My Own Purgatory showcases the twists and turns to come within the band’s arrangements. Rolling Thunder steps up the intensity and, apart from a guttural chorus chant, is instrumental. In the short space of six tracks the band deliver an unmistakable message of intensive anger. Winterborn have evidently already built a strong following and released ‘Purgatory’ independently with help from a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Available via Bandcamp. s 3TU %DWARDS

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From the opening notes it’s abundantly clear where Phil Doublet's allegiances lie. The tone and sheen of a Nashville production is embraced wholeheartedly, from the polished, fat mix to the solid performances. Doublet’s vision is executed confidently by a kick-ass crew that includes drummer/producer Arnie Van Bussel. Doublet tackles the lion’s share of the instrumentation and proves adept at pretty much anything with a string across it, or keys, notwithstanding the fine efforts of Anita Clark on violin and veteran pedal steel player Paddy Long. Things take a more

reflective tone four songs in with Nothing Else to Do, the first self-recorded solo track on the album. At times, the DI’ed guitar and programmed drums detract a little from the expensive feel of the production, but testament to the quality of the mix this is barely noticeable. The closing, dramatic, Norfolk Trilogy is an atmospheric 11-minute epic that recalls the convict history of Norfolk Island. The song runs the gamut of creaking Dobro blues to full on soaring Gilmour-esque slide electric, marching drums and, best of all, a cameo from Doublet’s own father, whose gravelly, working class tones effortlessly support the weight of the often grim subject matter. Lyrically, there’s nothing here that’s going to give Dave Alvin any nightmares, but that lazy comparison should be more than enough to give a sense of the quality of Doublet’s work. His lived-in voice, solid sense of melody and very sharp guitar playing clearly demonstrate that he’s far from outgunned by any «iiÀðÊUÊMatt Herrett

BATTLECAT: Bullshit Live EP

Hamilton punk band Battlecat have only been together just over a year but in that time they’ve mustered all the creativity and vigour of seasoned unit clear in the path to success. With a dozen songs written and gig tested, their debut release ‘Bullshit Live E.P’ showcases four of the fresh cuts. The four-piece includes three previous members of Hamilton metal band The New Kill plus a new member in guitarist Chris Vallett. Anfem reeks of attitude and careless disregard of authority with a visceral and heartfelt delivery from vocalist Mark Saunders. Unpunk follows with a punk-by-numbers approach showing nothing fancy, just aggressive grit. The lo-fi budget approach to recording is not in vain as the finished product delivers perfectly for the genre.

Vallett’s raw guitar tone cuts through the mix and makes its presence known from the first bar. Bromance breaks the mould of short, sharp punk length and clocks in at just less than four minutes. The band’s ability to transition between explosive bursts and brooding moments is commendable considering the short length of the play list. The DIY approach with live recording and the album sleeve’s quirky art work brings their debut together as a well marketable product. Battlecat have a genuine punk attitude and hold no regard for those who don’t see it their way. Just the way punk should be! s 3TU %DWARDS

INDIE SOULL: Live At The Bitter End, NYC, EP

Indie Soull is the chosen moniker of singer/songwriter Mutch Katsonga, a shortening of his previous band’s name The Indie Soul Movement that came together in London a few years ago.

With five live tracks out of seven, and all over in 22 minutes, this is acoustic only, in the style of open mic style performances.

Katsonga has a very beautiful ‘sweet’ voice. I agree with references to Michael Jackson, but would add ‘Faith’-era George Michael. Exposed, honest and with a point of difference, the sort of songs that will always resonate with some in the audience and leave an impression. Restless Clouds is presented in two versions, the studio version illustrating that Mutch Katsonga has all the skills needed to produce radio-worthy recordings. My main gripe is that this talented songwriter is selling himself short, these songs deserve fleshing out in the studio with a full band. s !NIA 'LOWACZ

RIQI HARAWIRA: Sound Of The Long White Cloud

Featuring more guests than a celebrity wedding Riqi Harawira is the focal point of a set of tunes that span hip hop, soul, funk, rock, and pop. At 21 cuts this is a big album. In some ways better for it – you get a variation of styles – but I found that the tracks Harawira recorded with his band could have stood on their own as a very solid album. Some of these tunes date back to the mid-’90s (when he provided lead guitar in Dead Flowers) but are not diminished by time. While the songs are well written and on the whole, the production is carefully arranged there is a disconnect between the band material and solo offerings. In the last ten years Riqi has been collaborating with a number of artists who fall into a more hip hop vein including Sir T, Kas “The Feelstyle” Futialo, Sarah Spicer and Juliet Cross. The album comes across as an overview of an evidently prolific artist who is obviously pushing forward with his craft, exploring new territories and prepared to collaborate at any opportunity. The standout tracks are those with a live band, but alongside, those cuts is 2001‘s Believe recorded Ü Ì Ê ÕÌÕÀiÊ Õ Ê iVÌ Ûi°ÊU Darryl Kirk

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EVA PROWSE: Humid Nights

‘Humid Nights’ is Eva Prowse’s second solo album, following 2010s ‘I Can’t Keep Secrets’. The two are drastically different, here the Wellington songstress leaves behind her up tempo folky aesthetic for full blown synth pop. The songs are generally concise and relatively stripped back, consisting mainly of a few clear synthesiser parts, occasional guitar, bass, drum machine and vocals. The choices of sound are generally interesting, though the drums at times feel a bit too stock standard 808. Self-produced and recorded, Prowse seems inspired by the new wave synth pop artists of the ’70s and ’80s like Human League, Duran Duran and maybe even a bit of ’90s/2000s Euro dance pop (think Sophie Ellis-Bextor), but largely cuts the corny hooks and lyrics for a more modern approach reminiscent of Grimes’ tracks like Genesis. Final song 20th Century (a groovy highlight) features a very ‘Grimesy’ airy pentatonic quasiJapanese intro synth line. Prowse probably shows the most folk influence in her lyricism, largely non repetitive and following some kind of narrative. My Lover, another standout track, exhibits more complex songwriting and arrangement. Prowse changes chords quickly and cleanly, following along with her vocal melody. The track gives way at about the halfway point for a baroque-styled guitar part before launching back into a choral arrangement. ‘Humid Nights’ is a tight collection of simple but effective alt-pop, upbeat music with lyrics and instrumentation that stand up to an engaged listen. s /LLY #LIFTON

ANDY RICHARDS: Shine On

Andy Richards has been playing music for well over 10 years – a mix of covers and originals, and this is his second ‘solo’ release.

His first, ‘Falling’, and was recorded in a short timespan.

Crowdfunded and recorded over a full year at Hatfields Beach (by Geoff Paddison) this benefits from the contributions of five friends/fellow musicians and brother Cory on drums, plus sonic additions like a horn section on Heaven To Me. The vibe, the CD cover art included, is overwhelmingly happy with upbeat tunes – even the ’50s vibe of Come is sweet rather than sad and depressing.

Jack Johnson is definitely a touchstone, as would be the likes of The Exponents, Crowded House, Ed Sheeran et al – just a lot more relaxed. Warkworth-based Richards proves himself a versatile musician with his positive and upbeat jaunty tunes. Dumb Little Love Song is the name of the album’s lead single/video, the lyrics ironically defending his lyrical simplicity. s !NIA 'LOWACZ

RAY BISHOP: Music For Life

Hamilton-born musician, performer and songwriter Ray Bishop has released this mainstream reggae-rooted pop/urban album through Waatea Music. Bishop has had a diverse career driven by passion and inspiration. With ‘Music For Life’, Ray shows us that he has recently turned his gaze towards a number of new messages. The energetic single and leading track of the album, Te Reo Tuatahi, reminds us that te reo M ori is Aotearoa’s first language and that it is to be treasured. The digitally released album features a number of upbeat and driving classic reggae tracks such as Wahine Ataahua and E Tama as well as more pop and electronica influenced reggae crossovers such as Whanau and Tihei Mauri Ora. Wairua is a multi-lingual dance track written for its potential appeal in mainstream market. Ray has also included a more downto-earth, singer-songwriter composition Te Pu. Produced in tandem by William Henderson and Tere Ngaeruaiti at Auckland’s Woodcut Studios, many of these tracks carry positive, inspirational messages relating to women’s rights and fatherhood. s !ABIR -AZUMDAR

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A globe-spanning collaborative recording, recorded partly in Brazil and partly at Kamo High School in Whangarei, ‘Brazilian Groove’ is a laid-back jam of an album. The groove is strong in this one. James ‘JimmyRed’ Marshall currently lives in Brazil, and from there he assembled a group of musicians to help him realise his vision of a multicultural selection of songs. The songs are fairly evenly split between the genres of smoky blues and upbeat Latin American styles, although Jack C. starts with a haunting vocal in Te Reo and then explodes into fast punk! The track Rio, which JimmyRed wrote in support of Kiwi athletes at the Olympic Games, has a ska vibe EV\Z ()

with its upstroke rhythm and punctuating horn parts. In trying to mention every event, the song does end up being a bit of a laundry list lyrically, but that doesn’t detract from the positive message and the happy feel. On Dreams, JimmyRed and crew pay very close homage to Hendrix’s Machine Gun. Once again, the lyrics have a positive message, this time about following your dreams. The album is a mixed bag of Kiwi-meets-Latin American, and the artist obviously had a blast making it. Due to the jammy nature there are the odd unpolished parts, but JimmyRed’s joyful exhortation to follow your dreams ÃÊ viVÌ ÕðÊU "ING 4URKBY

SKY MACHINE: Young Guns EP

Sky Machine is a project by Christchurch’s Brydon Hulse. His debut EP is sparkly and full of synths, a colourful fizz. The title track is a strong start with an upbeat electronic backing reminiscent of arcade games from the ’80s and ’90s. The effervescent alt-pop sound evokes Troye Sivan and Vampire Weekend, while the lyrics talk of an apprehension about growing older, remindful of Lorde. Quality production has helped shape the EP’s busy electronic sound. ’Young Guns’ feels like the soundtrack to your favourite coming-of-age film. If What We Came For is the energy-filled car ride on the way to the party with the windows down and friends laughing in the back seat, then following Ghosts is the walk home afterwards, tired, tipsy and content. While some of the beats feel a little disjointed it’s not like teenage years ever flow smoothly.

Land Of Black Gold is the last of the EP’s five tracks and the perfect closing song. Everyone is dancing and the credits begin to roll. s !MANDA 2OBINSON

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Recorded out of the back of a van on the Wellington coast, Nikita Tu-Bryant’s eight track release is about as DIY as it gets.

The hand-numbered packaging is beautifully homemade and reflects the feel of the music. Arrangements are often primitive, but the confidence of her performance and the beauty in Tu-Bryant’s voice sharpens the delivery very nicely indeed. It’s hard these days for any artist to make a bold statement armed with little more than an acoustic guitar and a voice, so Tu-Bryant has wisely chosen to take a raw approach and, for the most part, leave these recordings as intimate, single-take snapshots. Silence is embraced frequently and the gaps between the songs are almost epic. The enigmatically named ? is noteworthy in that it provides a short but welcome change to the tone, with auto-panned delayed acoustic guitar and soaring, echoing, wordless vocals. The decision to include the sound of the lapping tide across the entire record could be eyebrow-raising for some and the jet aircraft flying overhead at one point is definitely somewhat of a distraction. It is, however, unquestionably real, and one gets the feeling that for Tu-Bryant, music is a smaller piece of the artistic puzzle. She has an abstract, observational appreciation of the world around her, and it would seem disingenuous to leave that world out of her art. All in all, a really lovely and surprisingly successful experiment. s -ATT (ERRETT

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An album of originals in the style of Great American Songbook, and like that musical institution the songs here are quietly subversive. This is the third album by Californian-born, Wellington resident Bruce Brown who pairs a Ratpack-era Dean Martin vocal style with witty, tongue-in-cheek, lyrics. He lulls the listener into a sense of stylistic (1950s lounge jazz) security, but then drops lyrics such as, ‘It’s a good time to be a man now that men are gorgeous too. We can get dolled up when beauty calls, we’re not afraid of shaving our balls,’ from It’s A Good Time (To Be A Man). (Brown’s vocal enunciation is marvellously clear, no need for a lyrics website!)

Even when he gets serious the lyrics show a real attention to detail in word choices.

Providing elegant accompaniment to Brown’s piano and vocals are a who’s who of local jazz men – Roger Mannins’ sax and flute, Noel Clayton on guitar, Tom Warrington’s bass and John Rae on drums. Of particular note is their work on Let The Demons Run Amok which has some great down and dirty drums paired with feather light saxophone melodic lines. This is an album for anyone who likes music with great humour. It combines fun, and occasionally shocking, lyrics that bring to mind Cole Porter’s work and fantastic jazz musicians. s !LEISHA 7ARD

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Y GBDUPSZ with Dixon Nacey

10 Years – Seth Haapu

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hen I was ‘sample-listening’ through the top 20 2016 APRA Silver Scrolls awards finalists, Seth Haapu’s 10 Years caught my ear.

Having heard the man perform live a few times I was no stranger to his unique compositions, with clever arrangements held together by his warm and delicate vocal style. Seth is a strong musician and a skilled accompanist on guitar and piano, the latter of which is the principle underpinning instrument in 10 Years, released on Soundcloud late 2015.

A piano and voice ballad set in a pseudo-half time 4/4 feel (between 104-108 bpm – yes it’s played live!), this tune has enough interesting twists and turns, enough of Seth’s great writing, singing and playing and just the right amount of ‘pop’ to keep composers, musicians and the average listener alike, all coming back for more.

The opening phrase (expressed as right-hand octaves on acoustic piano) reveals the main melodic character in the story – we’ll hear more of him (or her) in the chorus.

This triplet quarter note motif dances upwards against a steady downbeat counter-pulse, just four notes - C#, D, E (over the A major tonic triad) with the returning C# landing softly on a Dma7 (IV), right in the heart of the chord.

Then on measure three an A7 darkens the mood slightly, the sudden inclusion of this non-diatonic secondary dominant (V7 of IV) foreboding.

The driving 4/4 rhythm of the intro dissipates into half time, with softly-played semibreves at the verse giving space for the opening lines; ‘I found a lifeline at sixteen, all stars and black jeans’. The note B utilised for the ‘sixteen’ lyric is cute (a major-sixth of the valid chord Dma7); a call that finds its response at the close of the

first two phrases as the lyric ‘jeans’ glides back to the tonic note. These lyrics float out over the I-major to the IV-major using a small pitch range (As, Bs and C#s) before ‘I could breathe easy, cool off and go’ introduces the first tension with that old culprit the perfect fourth (D).

Propelling us through a ii(m7b5)-V(7)-i(m7) in the relative F# minor, the next line ‘Temper so hot it could blow’ completes a four-chord progression on a warm B7. Whilst typically a minor chord type in this key (i.e. the ii chord of A major), this unexpected dominant adds yet more colour.

The second half of verse one yields another surprise A7 chord preceding the IV Dmaj7, as hinted at in the intro. Minims are used in the comping now; strong on beats 1 and 3, adding motion and drama.

The previous iim7-V7-Im7-IV7 in F# minor progression repeats before Seth’s register leaps up, hitting us with a sweet falsetto on‘sometimes my love is a bluff’ over rising chords that settle on the relative F# minor. Now more interest for the listener; an uneven five-measures are used at the pre-chorus, with a delicious, suspenseful D6/9 chord to end.

The lyric throughout verse one paints a picture, albeit disguised, of what might be an early relationship, or an introspective musing, or possibly something else (a lifeline found, a deal with the devil, secrets...). Either way it is surely a reckoning, a reminiscing edged with regret, reinforced later by the lyric in verse two; ‘closer to fury and further from you’ or at the bridge; ‘now I know how lucky I am’, although perhaps this last is genuine gratitude.

Adding to the mystery is the use of first person perspective and an absence of pronouns such as ‘her’ or ‘she’; only an undefined ‘you’ at the close of the pre-chorus and chorus.

The chorus moves with a strong quarter-note pulse in the left hand, a heavier dynamic and, almost a minute in, a third and final additional instrument in the form of a simple, grounding bass line. Now we hear that intro melody in full flight as it is extended and embellished over a variation on familiar chords that reaches the pinnacle moment so far; ‘10 years of nothing or 10 years of something true’. A great hook, and WOW, that high C# on ‘something’ – delicious!

In the shorter verse two, repeated non-diatonic dominants imply a bluesy darkness, heightened by low pitched ‘aaaahs’, hard panned and multi-tracked. These vocal backings trace through ‘inside’ chord tones (commonly called ‘guide tones’ which are the 3rd and 7th of the chord), contrasting the lilt of our triplet-quarter note melody. The second pre-chorus also moves more, with prominent BVs that stack under the lead into a bigger second chorus.

The middle 8 contrasts the verse and chorus harmony by seesawing between the ii-minor (Bm7) and the V7 (E7) and the backing vocals simplify here – an octave double instead of the three or four part close we’ve just heard, that splits at the end of the bridge into a clever counterpoint over the final chorus – sometimes beating the lead to the lyric, other times fractionally trailing behind. Seth explores the melody in his lead vocal here; back phrasing, re-phrasing and ad-libbing with superbly controlled maturity.

And then, one final surprise and our first bit of production as an 808-like kick drum sample drops downward at the song’s highest point (under the lyric ‘something’) and is quickly followed by a reverse piano sample sucking us into the concluding F#m7-B9-E7 sequence. (Yes – that’s three bars – go back and count!)

I sometimes feel assaulted (insulted?) by some of the hyper-compressed, over-produced, dynamic free, auto-tuned, super shiny and shamelessly vapid songs that make it to mainstream radio. All-too-familiar chords cycle around all-too-familiar melodies, using the latest fashionable production techniques to get across often feeble lyrics and themes. How refreshing to listen to a song that has breath, space, colour, harmonic depth and mystery; that tips its hat to the classic piano-based singer/ songwriter style of composing and playing yet retains modernity and its own sense of identity.

Seth Haapu – you got my vote!

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.

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Photo: Nita Meyer

Looking For Alaska

Warm-hearted Folk

Looking for Alaska are working towards the release of their self-titled debut. An album this year was not part of the plan for the Hamilton duo, but circumstances resulted in a weekend to record a single becoming a fully-fledged band album session. Finn McLennan-Elliott talked with Amy Maynard and Aaron Gott about the upcoming release.

A

aron Gott and Amy Maynard are a couple who have been playing music together since 2013. They’re probably two of the hardest working and most travelled musicians in the North Island at present, most weekends see them heading out of Hamilton to play shows. Distance is not a barrier, they are just keen to be performing. “We just wanted to play music. If we can make a living out of this we don’t have to go flip burgers – and we’re not crazily employable in any other field,� Aaron smiles. “Where we started out was just going to lots of open mic nights. We’ve never had to fight for gigs, once we started putting our name out there, one thing would lead to the other.�

Amy and Aaron regularly get on the road just to support other musicians, even when they’re not themselves playing. Now integral part of the Waikato folk music scene, they host their own shows in Hamilton regularly where they invite out of town artists to perform, as well as being attentive audience members for other acts. Aaron enthusiastically points to this aspect of the community as the thing he loves about playing music. “That’s the greatest thing we’ve found about the folk scene here in NZ. At the Auckland Folk Festival, that was our first time at a big folk festival, we met so many people and it was just amazing, we were blown away by everything.

This is the place to be. What a cool scene to be part of.� “It never feels hard to drive up to Auckland

or go out and support other people playing, because everyone’s so generous and welcoming,� adds Amy. This sort of mindset and attitude has meant Looking for Alaska are at the top of many artists list for performing with. It’s also been important for the duo that they can offer an alternative model. “We can do the quiet two-piece thing, but we can also do the bigger full band, so it covers all bases,� Amy explains.

The pair met four years ago when they were both studying music at Wintec – Waikato Institute of Technology. Aaron was fresh out of high school, while Amy was getting back into music after a break of many years. “I wanted to do music as a thing, but wasn’t ready to start the minute I left high school so I thought I’d study it and meet people. In many ways both of us really went into Wintec trying to meet people,� Aaron reflects.

A recording assignment led to him asking Amy to sing with him. “Someone was recording me singing and playing, and I really wanted to do a duet song

by The Decemberists. I’d heard Amy singing in class so I knew she had a great voice, and I asked if she wanted to come sing a song with me.�

Looking for Alaska surfaced in 2013, and earlier this year they booked a weekend at Auckland’s Roundhead Studios in order to record a single. After meeting up with producer Regan McKinnon plans shifted a bit. “Regan was running the Porch Recording Studio in Hamilton for a long time before he went overseas. He’s done a lot of work with Luke Thompson and Joseph & Maia. I met him briefly when he was running the Porch. “He just got back from the States recently and there was a music symposium in Hamilton and we were both there. He basically said to us, ‘If you want to work with me I’ll have to like the music.’ But we got a message a couple of days later from him telling us to come round,

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so we thought, ‘Oh good he likes the music!’�

Aaron explains to laughter. “We mentioned the booked time at Roundhead, so he said, ‘Let’s do an album!’�

They had five sessions in McKinnon’s home studio doing pre-production and arranging the songs and then headed north as Aaron outlines. “We hit Roundhead for two days with the full band and tracked the whole album in that time. There’s five of us – Regan is playing extra guitars now and then bass player Stephen Daniell and our new drummer Jeremy Hantler.

We had Scott Seabright behind the desk, I can’t say enough good things about him – he’s so fast and onto it.�

Both feel like everything snowballed and suddenly they have recorded an album, but concede that a debut EP was supposed to have been completed much earlier and so the songs were all ready to go. The self-titled release will be a reflection of the first years of the band, with songwriting credits shared equally between them. “Writing is mostly separate,â€? explains Aaron. “The songs change a lot from when one of us comes up with them to when we perform them together. But a lot of them we start alone, because otherwise we just end up fighting if we write them together. We’re both quite‌ “ Amy interrupts, “Stubborn.â€? “We both have very strong opinions,â€? Aaron laughs. “Usually, if I write, I’ll write to the guitar, so I’ll come up with some chords to write lyrics to.

While Aaron is kind of the opposite, he’ll often write words first. I hear tunes in my head and then find the words from there.�

The South Island and Australia are on the horizon for Looking for Alaska. Further forward, they laugh about the bigger U.S. plan. “We might start in Los Angeles and do a tour up the west coast ending in Alaska, because‌ why not?â€? >"39,SSLY3SOd SSLJPB S_ M"`L" !

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OUT ON THE STREET Snorting inspiration off the mirror of local industry news, gossip, rumours and guesswork Freshly Bagged

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by Dave Rhodes

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hen newly established British audio company Aston Microphones set out to design a new vocal recording device for an already overcrowded mid-priced microphone market, they knew they had to come up with something unique. Something that not only sounded great, but also looked different and exciting.

Enlisting a panel of 30+ experienced sound engineers they conducted double-blind listening tests at each stage of product development. The result is an offering of two microphones.

The Aston Origin is a cardioid condenser microphone with a 1” gold-evaporated capsule teamed with transformer-less circuitry.

The microphone I was given to review is the Aston Spirit, which is a multi-pattern condenser mic again with a 1” gold-evaporated capsule.

A recessed switch at the top the body allows selection between omni, cardioid or figure-of-eight polar patterns. There is also a -10 and -20 db pad and a bass roll off switch. Its hand-selected capsule is matched with transformerbalanced circuitry.

According to Aston’s promo, the Spirit is designed to deliver ‘a beautifully open sound with sparkling harmonics… giving a stunningly natural and transparent recording, capturing all the detail in the high range but without adding the harshness that some condenser microphones seem to.’

The review mic (and a matched shockmount) were accompanied by a much bigger box containing Aston’s impressive Halo reflection filter. The Halo is Aston’s take on the classic reflection filter concept for reducing room ambience in less-than-ideal recording locations. They have created a

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unique and eye-catching design that looks like a bubble made of bright purple acoustic foam. At $599 it is only $150 less than the Spirit mic itself (rrp $749).

So how does reality live up to the marketing? The first thing I noticed when I opened up the Spirit mic’s box is that none of the photos do it justice. It looks like no other microphone I’ve ever seen.

The body of the Spirit is a mottled silver colour, a result of each chassis being tumbled for several hours, giving every microphone its own unique finish.

The grille that protects the capsule is also unique and eye-catching – it has a built-in wire mesh behind the very stylish wave-form wire frame. The mesh is designed to act as a built-in pop filter. In general, the microphone looks almost ruggedly home-made – not in a ‘quickly whipped up in the back shed’ way, more like ‘lovingly crafted by a slightly eccentric uncle who likes to pay far too much attention to detail’ way!

The day the microphone was delivered I happened to be starting an album with the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band.

The band wanted to record all their instruments live in the room together then overdub vocals, which gave me a great opportunity to try the Spirit on a number of different acoustic instruments.

Eventually, it found its way to the acoustic bass, where everybody really loved it. It revealed a nice tight bottom end that kept the upright bass under control while bringing out the presence of the strings when needed.

By moving the microphone up or down relative to the bridge, we could get the perfect balance of lows and attack. Interestingly, a few days later I had another acoustic bass player in the studio and the Spirit worked really well again, and this time I needed to move it much further up to get the right balance. This illustrates just how much difference the source can make.

When we got to the vocals for the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band, I tried a couple of microphone options and chose

a much more expensive classic microphone to start recording male lead vocals.

Switching to female vocals we needed a different microphone.

This time when I put up the Aston Spirit the singer’s voice came to life. There was a presence and air to the vocal that really shone through the mix without being harsh in any way. The low mids were still thick like the previously used microphone but now the vocal was exciting. When I switched back to the original mic for more male lead vocals I felt like something was broken.

After checking every cable and connection to determine everything was working, I put the Spirit up for the male vocal and it too came alive! From that moment on, we recorded every vocal for the album on the Spirit.

On acoustic guitar, where I often prefer a small diaphragm condenser, I found the Spirit had an articulate definition on the transients while retaining a nice warm body.

I have a regular voiceover client who can be sibilant at times, but that issue was tamed when we tried the Spirit on his voice.

I also took this opportunity to test out the Halo reflection filter by placing him in the centre of my room rather than in the usual voice booth. I can report that the reflection filter works as advertised, the recording came out drier than from the vocal booth.

The Aston Spirit will set you back $749 and comes with an optional shockmount for another $200. While I can see it would be possible to use the microphone without the shockmount, the position of the stand adapter on the microphone body and that fact it is not adjustable can make positioning the Spirit a bit tricky.

With the shockmount you not only get the benefit of reduced rumble and handling noise, but also a much wider range of positioning options.

Having trialed the Spirit over two weeks, I found it shone on both male and female vocals. I particularly liked the way it added air and presence to female vocals.

It sounded great on most acoustic

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instruments including acoustic guitar, mandolin, bağlama (don’t worry – I didn’t know what it was before I recorded one last week either!) and upright bass.

It’s nice to see a company striving to create something new rather than just a cheaper imitation of a classic design. It seems the listening panel knew what they were doing, as they have helped Aston create a unique looking and excellent sounding microphone.

Their Spirit is priced for the project studio but it would be just as at home in a high-end setting.

Dave Rhodes is a Tui award winning sound engineer and the Studio Manager at Depot Sound recording studio in Devonport. In 20 years recording Dave has worked with most styles of music and is enthusiastic about encouraging and recording new artists as well as established bands. This year the Warratahs’ album he recorded won Best Country Album at the 2016 VNZMA. www.depotsound.co.nz

Future’s Knocking Even for those with close ties to our electronic music scene it must surely come as a surprise that Pitch Black have been churning out their often ground-breaking music and visuals for more than two decades. A human generation but more like an eon in terms of the dance floor dub/electronica they specialise in. Okay, so it’s been nine years since ‘Rude Mechanicals’, but 2016 sees the duo of Paddy Free and Mike Hodgson mark their duo’s 20th year by dropping ‘Filtered Senses’, their fifth studio release. Michael Hollywood talked with Pitch Black’s famously orange-coiffed multi-tasking master beatmaker.

I

t’s late Thursday afternoon in New York when I connect with Paddy Free via Skype.

It’s difficult not to notice how animated he is, given that it’s early Friday morning here in Aotearoa and everything is still a little slow and blurry at this end. Free is temporarily based in the Big Apple while his choreographer partner, Louise, completes her arts residency in the city.

If, now well into his 40s, he’s still a ball of energy, then that’s just as well because life is moving pretty fast.

2016 has been a huge year for Free and the many different projects he’s involved with. Not least of which being Pitch Black, his collaboration with fellow production genius Mike Hodgson, a partnership that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

That milestone has been marked by the September release of the duo’s fifth studio album, ‘Filtered Senses’, and the prospect of a NZ summer tour which brings the pair home for festivals including Rhythm & Alps, Splore and Northern Bass. There will also be other festival dates plus a few rather more intimate gigs.

The day we speak, Huakirangi, Free’s collaborative single

with Scott Morrison and brand new Hall Of Famer Moana Maniapoto, is set to be released.

Free’s working relationship with Maniapoto has been fruitful during the nine years since Pitch Black last released an album, and he’s quick to note that – amid all of the other mayhem – there’s a date in Finland on the horizon with Moana & The Tribe. It’s hardly surprising then, when Free says his calendar is full until at least the middle of April.

We talk about what local audiences will get when Pitch Black brings its show back home for those precious 20th anniversary gigs, and about how the new album will translate into a live environment. No surprise we should expect something special in terms of visuals.

“The vast bulk of it is festivals, just because it’s easier to just go into existing things, with Mike being in London and me not getting back until the end of November. And it also means a slightly bigger thing. We’ve got Mike’s son, who’s a lighting tech and VJ, collaborating with a light sculptor to build us a set worthy of marking the 20th anniversary.

“We’re expecting sets to be around an hour.

At least half of it will be stuff off the new album.

We had this crazy thought that we could try to do something – an excerpt – from every track off every album, in order, for the trainspotters! We do have a couple of songs in the live set that are hybrids of lots of older songs – there’s one that starts off as a song called Big Trouble Upstairs, which then goes into this medley that pulls stuff from everywhere. So some of the songs that we’re not going to play in their entirety, we’ll throw them into the medley.

“We listen back to our old live sets and go, ‘I can’t believe how slow that is.’ With dance music just getting faster and more intense, that’s what you have to deliver in a headline slot nowadays.

We’ve definitely felt that what used to work in the mid-to-late ’90s, just feels so sedate now.”

Which brings us to ‘Filtered Senses’, and the small issue of the geographical distance between Hodgson and Free while the album was in its infancy.

“It involved about 18 months of sending rough ideas back and forth. The pace really picked up in the last six months, and then we finally threw it all together in two weeks at Mike’s place in Hackney, in his attic.

“We had booked a dry hire of a small studio not far from his place, but we went in there and decided we liked the sound of Mike’s room better. So we cancelled that and ended up working with our own monitors in his room.

“I was sleeping in the same room. It’s quite nice when you get an attic with a gable roof which cuts out the sort of reflection you get in a square box. I really liked it, and with the

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Pitch Black computer being 10 feet from the bed, it was luxurious!” he laughs.

‘Filtered Senses’ has a heavier, denser, and slightly darker hue to it, when compared to a lot of their earlier work. We discuss the notion that it’s merely a reflection of the big city living and the more intense pace that the pair have both experienced over the past couple of years.

“We take equal responsibility for it being a bit darker. I’ve characterised it as having a bit more graphite under its fingernails, as opposed to black sand. I really didn’t get to work on it outside of headphones until I came to Mike’s because I’ve been on the move, but yeah, I definitely think it does reflect that.”

There’s also a strong vocal presence on ‘Filtered Senses’, whether processed or more orthodox singing, with London-based newcomer Alison Evelyn featuring prominently on a handful of tracks.

“Mike does an open decks night at a pub in Hackney, where everyone can bring along a 7” to play. Alison was a punter there and a local friend. She’d done some recording in the past, so Mike asked her to come in. She was happy with the proviso that whatever she did might just end up as pure fodder; you know, we may take two syllables out of it and process them, and that might be all that makes it onto the album. But there are vocals there, some songs have quite a bit. ” As if the upcoming tour and multiple side projects aren’t enough to be getting on with, Hodgson and Free have committed to putting together a visual clip (or video) for each of the new album’s eight tracks.

“These days, YouTube is the new radio, so you have to have something. Mike’s got this long history of VJ-ing. Prior to meeting Mike, I was working in film and video production companies as a trained tape operator, so I’ve always had an interest in visuals as well. Between the two of us we’ll cook something up.”

And, almost inevitably, there will be remixes.

Each of their previous four albums have been the beneficiary of post-release remix projects.

“We’ll definitely do one for this album. We’ll find some people we like, or people whose music we like. Sometimes people contact us cold to say they really like a track, or they’ll say they’ve done a remix, just off the stereo mix. If we like it, we’ll throw them the stems and they can pick anything out of that, to see if they want to make more of it.”

So there’s clearly no taking the foot off the pedal over the remaining months of 2016.

Speaking with Paddy Free it’s easy to see how they have managed to prosper and remain relevant across two decades. His energy and enthusiasm for the project is infectious, and he remains disarmingly humble about his own achievements, and indeed, those of Pitch Black...

“We’ve got no plans to stop. We’ve always thought that if you’re never fully in fashion, then you’ll never go out of fashion,” he concludes. lllYUJg3G,M"3LY3SYPp

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Name UL

Under the rapper pseudonym of Name UL, Emanuel Psathas recently released his debut album. The honest and confrontational album focuses on our youth drinking culture, doubling as a love letter-of sorts to the capital city. He talked about ‘Choice(s)’ with Jack Woodbury.

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Wellington By The Bottle

ixon Street’s Flight Coffee Hangar is a bustling little concrete box at 9:30am.

Emanuel Psathas appears right at home in the small café. Loud, vibrant and full of coffee aromas, it seems pertinent to meet Wellington’s latest hip hop export here.

Under the pseudonym Name UL, 20-year old Psathas recently released his debut album, a 12-track effort titled ‘Choice(s)’. The album, he says, is for (and by) Wellington. Debuting at #1 on the NZ iTunes Hip-Hop charts, the album follows the ‘4pm to 4am’ story of a Saturday night out. Focused on youth drinking culture, it’s a challenging statement that critiques both its author and target audience.

“The whole concept is so challenging, so confrontational of our culture, and especially youth culture. It’s something that I’m a part of, so I was really nervous…

“I’ve always been the one to question things that are directly in front of me. I don’t care about the momentary discomfort of confronting something… If there’s something I think is wrong, then I have to address that. For my first album, I want to show people that I’m willing to say what needs to be said.”

‘Choice(s)’ tells Psathas’ own journey through this youth culture.

“That was my life at that point. Just this cycle of going out every weekend. 4pm to 4am… I’m not saying this from an outsider’s perspective. I really was in that, and I still am to some extent.”

On My Side he outlines this central criticism while referencing Nas’ iconic N.Y. State of Mind.

‘So we show up / pour up / throw up / ‘til we grow up or we die / I swear it’s just that Welly state of mind.’

Psathas justifies the allusion.

“There’s no other way to put it, it’s a genuine state of mind.”

Recording began in 2014 though the album only really began to take shape two years later. Coincidentally alcohol was the biggest impediment to progress.

“I don’t think I got it sorted until the final stages of the album… I was writing it from a place of frustration… I sorted out a bunch of

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stuff with myself and my habits, and it meant the album got done.”

Notably absent from the 12 tracks is Name UL’s 2015 single Only 16.

“It’s kind’a weird with Only 16, cause it’s like the early stages of me moving into the concept, just confronting the culture and being young… It’s the start of pressing deeper into the culture.”

Mixed by Lee Prebble and mastered by Mike Gibson, ‘Choice(s)’ features production from Whiterose, C-Sick and Psathas himself, among others. Indicative of both his instrumental and lyrical talents, standout We Talk Too Much benefits from self-production in collaboration with Eno and Frank Eleisa. Its unquantized boom-bap drumbeat and sweet piano loop give Name UL plenty of room to exercise his lyrical chops. Tracks like this are where the album truly shines. Its greatest achievements come in the quietest moments when he’s given enough room to let his voice take the lead.

The album’s narrative is also driven by a selection of recordings bookending particular tracks. On title-track Choice(s) Name UL includes a brief skit outside a petrol station, coincidentally scored by Frankie Valli’s Sherry.

“All those were secret recordings of me and my homies hanging out. There was about four hours of stuff that we went through for that album.We cut down so much.”

Except for the phone call interlude in the center of Waiting, Psathas is quick to correct, “I’m not that much of a dick in real life!”

Assisted almost exclusively by fellow Wellington musicians,the album’s credits double as a love letter to the capital city. In reference to his involvement in the mixing process, Psathas details: ‘…me and Lee [Prebble] really bonded over this project. We knew we had this sound really ‘Wellington’… we made the whole thing in Newtown.’ However, in a change of pace, Name UL will be working in the US for Warner Music for the first few months of 2017.

“Name UL remains the priority,” he specifies.

Though he naturally sports a NZ accent, his Name UL rapping features a recognisable American twang. Psathas seems confident in

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his justification.

“I learned the instrument from America, in an American style… If that’s what you hear when you’re listening to the music, then maybe you’re missing the point.”

He echoes a similar nonchalance when quizzed about comparisons to Drake.

“People who aren’t avid listeners are really gonna be hindered in how they listen to my content. If they’re the type of person who [goes in] with a preconceived judgement in listening to it, that’s a negative for me.

“I think [it’s a] positive though, depending on what rap you get compared to, it’s an endorsement.”

Most importantly,Psathas stresses autonomy from his father, the internationally successful Greek/Kiwi composer and NZ School of Music lecturer.

“People tend to put you in the same sentence. The biggest negative is that people just assume that I have an easy ride, like he does heaps of stuff for me. I don’t want to defend that, it’s not my job to prove I did it. I just kind of shut off if people ask if he’s helped me.

“Literally, just talk to him, he mentors me as a dad, he just tells me what to do as a dad. I’ll play my music for him, but he’s not in the studio with me, he’s not writing my raps.”

There’s plans to release a ‘Choice(s)’ vinyl and a video for Falling, the album’s second single. And Psathas is already recording again.

“Falling is my chance to visually capture everything I was trying to say on the album, because I know now that people engage with the concept… I’m making it with all Wellington people. I haven’t been more excited about making a video.

“I was in the studio the day the album dropped. We’re working all the time. I don’t know what I’ll be rapping about when I’m 25, but it’s gonna be the same kind of thing. It’ll be so honest, it’ll be what’s on my mind… I hope it doesn’t take another two years before my next one.” >"39,SSLY3SOdP"O9jM

HVJUBS DPPM HVJUBS DPPM with Kevin Downing

Technique – Have You Got It?

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uitar players love to share their thoughts on the topic of technique.

You can also find it discussed in lots of books, videos and on numerous websites. For many guitarists it seems that ‘technique’ just means to be able to play fast and flashy accurately with little effort.

That simplistic approach is really missing the point because technique covers a lot of different areas for the modern player.

To look at things from opposite point of view, technique can also cover how slow or sloppy you play. Experienced players will tell you that playing very slow and precise, while keeping strict time, is very difficult to do.

But technique can also cover things like touch, movement, finger pressure, the co-ordination of the two hands, how you use music theory, how you learn songs, how you read music, etc. In fact there are techniques to everything we do as guitar players, and the better you are at all of them the better your music will be, and the easier it will be to execute what you are doing.

Let’s take a look at a few common areas of concern that affects most players.

Changing chords Many players are very sloppy in their chord changing ability because they tend to use the wrong techniques. If you take a look at the two chords in Exercise 1 you will find you learnt them in your early guitar lessons. But how well can you change them?

Put your fingers on the chords and shift all the fingers from one chord to the other at the same time very slowly, while only lifting the fingers by around 1mm – no more. This is surprisingly challenging for most players to do very slowly, so doing it at a quick tempo is even more challenging.

If you can’t do this then your technique might not be good enough to play all those songs you want to play. Make sure to do it very slowly in practice.

Now try the example in Exercise 2, using the same technique. Quite a bit more difficult isn’t it?

Finger and string pressure For the next stage, play the static note in Exercise 3 using the normal finger pressure you use when playing. Take note of how much pressure you are applying to that note. Now begin to play that note again while

backing off the pressure until the notes begin to buzz, then apply just a little more pressure to stop the buzzing.

That is how light you need to push the string down. You can most probably see that there was a big difference between how you press now and what you need to do in the future. Now you need to get used to pressing a lot lighter for all your single note work.

Now what about chords? If you go back to Ex.1 and Ex.2 try the same technique to changing chords but also press more lightly at the same time. By combining these techniques you will be able to negotiate chords a lot easier and more smoothly.

When beginning to combine certain techniques together it can get very difficult, and that is why you need to work on only one technique at a time – no more.

Pick technique What different techniques do you know and can use with your pick?

Using the notes in Exercises 3-5 now play consistent alternating down/up strokes with your pick, while keeping an even tone and volume. Again not easy to do, and this can take a while to really master.

Make sure you are only pressing lightly enough to get the strings to ring clearly with no buzzes, squeaks etc. Notice I have you playing fingers 1, 2 and 3 only for now and you will experience different finger pressures for each one, which need to be compensated for. Later you can involve the little finger.

Learning songs What techniques do you use to learn songs quickly – or does it always take forever? Do you find that you need to go to the internet to find chords to songs? One technique is to use your theory knowledge in conjunction with your aural skills because it cuts down on the time it takes to work things out, and is much less frustrating.

For example, if you know your chord scales in the key of C major like that in Exercise 6, then if you are working out a song in the key of C you will only need to listen out for those chords only, not all the other chords you might know.

Most popular or rock songs tend to stick to the 1 (C), 1V (F), or V (G7) most of the time, while using the Dm and Am occasionally. There are millions of songs that use this formula – Google ‘4 chord songs’ and over one million results will come up.

So you can see there is a lot more to technique than many think, and a lot more to think about whenever technique is talked about. There are techniques for every area of your musical abilities.

Kevin Downing is a professional guitarist, teacher, and author.

His contact details, along with many other articles and freebies, are on his website at www.guitar.co.nz

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Earth Tiger

Holiday Plans What began as a friendship in a Bay of Plenty kiwifruit orchard has blossomed into one of New Zealand’s most exciting up and coming acts. Cruz Mathews and Thomas Taylor met in 2014 at a friends-and-family gathering and have since come together to create the pop-friendly hip hop of Earth Tiger. Anneke Smith talked with the duo about the upcoming release of their debut EP/album with the suitably summer vibe-y title of ‘Holiday’.

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aving released their debut album mid-October, it seems as though Earth Tiger has come out of the woodwork just in time for summer. With a shared passion for ‘90s and ‘00s hip hop the duo of songwriter Matthew Neshat (Cruz Mathews) and producer Thomas (Tom) Taylor only released their stylishly aspirational debut single, King Like Jordan, in March this year. Six months later they have an eight song album on its way.

What’s most interesting about Earth Tiger’s first release is the environment in which it was created. The pair currently call Tauranga home, but it was Australia’s Byron Bay where the majority of ‘Holiday’ was made.

“We had this funny routine. We’d get up, we’d get a coffee, go for a swim. We’d come back and make music, we’d go for another swim and then we’d start drinking,” Cruz explains.

“And that was how it all happened. It was sun, ocean and beers.”

Talking with them it quickly becomes apparent that Cruz and Tom’s feel-good music is a natural extension of their personalities.

“We’re both quite creative people in different elements. We both get a bit crazy and loose sometimes. I’d say we’re just normal, average guys that have a passion for music,” Cruz muses.

Despite sharing the same music aspirations the pair come from very different backgrounds.

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Part of the seminal electronic hip hop/pop act Kidz in Space, Cruz lived in Australia for four years working in mining, travelling and recording music until he realised music was something that was missing from his life. Tom holds a culinary work background and worked as a chef across the Tasman before returning to NZ to pursue a career in music alongside Cruz.

Listening to their released singles such as Lucky Ones, King Like Jordan and Holiday you may be at risk of relaxing and feeling your mind drifting to a warmer season. It’s as if Byron Bay shaped much of the creation of ‘Holiday’. Both agree that the relaxed lifestyle they had while there was integral to the style of their music.

“That’s where it was really influenced. There’s a lot of beachy vibes. King Like Jordan has a really nice beachy feel to it, and Holiday had a little bit of a beachy feel too,” recalls Cruz.

‘Holiday’ is Earth Tiger’s first EP release, and a chance for them to fill New Zealand’s fast approaching summer with upbeat tracks.

Songwriter Cruz originally recorded the vocals himself in Port Hedland, Western Australia before collaborating with Tom in Byron Bay. Producers Nathan Sowter and Alex Price (aka Alex Wildwood of Shakes) have since been working with the material to help the duo craft their creations into next summer’s hits.

Earth Tiger’s music style is a curious mix of hip hop, rap, pop and R&B genres – within eight tracks ‘Holiday’ has something for almost every keen music listener. It’s not surprising they’ve been likened to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Rap vocals and the EP’s production (Paul De Laroche provided bass lines and guitar licks) combine to create the perfect sound for summer’s backyard barbeques, road trips and house parties.

Working out of Tauranga the duo tour with session musician Dylan Israel, aka Izzy Bones.

Tom and Cruz are responsible for keys and ocals respectively, while Izzy Bones plays bass and guitar. “He’s amazing, music is his life. He’s

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really good, he’s good at everything… it sucks,” they both laugh.

Earth Tiger has kept themselves busy making music videos in the past few months.

Lucky Ones (which features glorious vocals from Olivia Bolton) was shot at Salton Sea, California and the next trip scheduled will shoot Slide to the Left in Tokyo. Both are friends of film directors located around the world who evidently jump at any chance to shoot music videos with Earth Tiger.

Touring is at the forefront of the duo’s future plans. They will be making an appearance at Bay Dreams next year in January, and hope to make the most of the warmer seasons’ festivals on their home turf. It’s hard not to envision Earth Tiger’s latest singles not becoming summer anthems.

“The best thing about touring in NZ is the summertime. And if you can tour on festival line-ups it’s amazing. It’s so much fun and you get to hang out with all the other artists.”

Both claim they don’t have an end goal and just want to produce great music for people to enjoy.

“We just want to have fun, play some shows and make some music and try and make a living through it,” Tom smiles.

Signed to Auckland indie label Move The Crowd Records, Earth Tiger enjoy the benefit of having Warner Music NZ working to get them more exposure.

“I’m really glad how the radio has been picking up all of the singles so that’s really cool,” Cruz takes up. “The Edge and ZM have been really with great getting us on for interviews and things like that. At the moment we’re just trying to build that foundation so we can branch out and do more touring.

“Everyone’s been looking after us real well.

We’re just trying to give them the best of us.” >"39,SSLY3SOd "_gG JB9_ j`J3

Volume – NZ Music on Show at Auckland Museum

Industry

Photo: Raymond Sagapolutele

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t’s early October when we talk and Mark Roach really can’t wait for the next three weeks to pass and Auckland Museum’s new exhibition, ‘Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa’ to open. It’s three years since “a lightbulb moment” led him down the path of envisaging an actual, tangible hall of fame for NZ music.

The October 28 launch of Volume, a seven month-long special exhibition at Auckland Museum will bring his subsequent journey to a completion. While it won’t exactly be the embodiment of the NZ Music Hall of Fame that Mark first started contemplating, it will in all manner of ways be a much bigger and better exhibition of popular NZ music and the musicians who have made it, well, popular.

Occupying 900sq m of exhibition space at the southern entrance of the Auckland Museum, Volume will take visitors on a journey through the highs (and inevitably some lows) of NZ music since the late 1950s.

The exhibition timeline starts at 1957 – when rock’n’roll got its official start here, with the release of seminal tracks including the likes of Pie Cart Rock and Roll, Lawdy Miss Clawdy and Rock Around The Clock. By the time Volume winds up in NZ Music Month next year it will neatly be 60 years since those artists like Johnny Cooper and Johnny Devlin first made teenage hearts swoon and parental ears burn. Pretty much anyone with a pulse (and any NZ history) should, it seems, expect to have memories rekindled in that way that only music does.

The Volume exhibition is organised by decades, each with its own area and interactive experience. There’s a 1970s pub stage with real instruments visitors can play. A record store straight out of the ’80s, complete with vinyl bins to flick through. A DJ and VJ experience covers off the ’90s dance music explosion while the 00’s area includes a mocked up recording studio where complete novices can try their hand at mixing a song.

Anyone who can recall the ‘60s will almost certainly love that decade’s recreation of the C’Mon television studio, complete with colourful go go dancers and monochrome TV screens.

Clearly Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa is a far cry from a simple shrine to the 20 acts/individuals who have been inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame since its inception in 2007, though each will have their place in the exhibition. Like any great producer, Auckland Museum’s staff have taken the basic acoustic song idea that Mark Roach first submitted and multi-tracked the heck out of it, creating the exhibition equivalent of a wall of sound.

Apparently it’s not uncommon that people approach museums with their wacky specialist exhibit ideas, but it is unusual for those suggestions to be progressed. In contacting Auckland Museum back in 2014 Mark had the distinct advantage of talking as a senior staffer of our music industry’s leading body, Recorded Music NZ. He has the title ‘Special Projects / NZ Music Hall of Fame’ on his business card.

Recorded Music NZ is the organisation that (among other related activities) collects and disseminates music public performance royalties, provides us all with the weekly Top 40 charts and stages the annual NZ Music Awards. The vagueness of his job title probably stems, Mark laughs, from the wide array of roles he undertakes – making a more specific descriptor too unwieldly.

“I do a multitude of different roles that aren’t easily described and often get roped into projects because I have a useful skill set. Broadly I guess it’s a marketing role for Recorded Music NZ. “Obviously an aspect of the organisation’s role is to advocate and promote the NZ music industry, and the ways that we do that include the charts, the music awards and the Hall of Fame. I became involved in that partly because of my longevity in the industry, as well as the design skills I have.”

Two acts get inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame each year, one at APRA’s Silver Scroll Awards ceremony and another at November’s NZ Music Awards. The genesis of that awkward scenario lies in both organisations separately thinking about doing something hall-of-fameish around the same period. Rather than compete, RIANZ (as it was then) and APRA agreed to combine their plans. The easiest accommodation was for each to do an induction at their annual ceremonies, with both constituting entry into the NZ Music Hall of Fame.

That was about as far as their early agreement extended however and the whole thing desperately lacked cohesion, with differing branding, mixed messages and general industry and public confusion. There was, of course, no evidence of an actual hall – after six years not even a website.

Mark recalls talking about it with his then boss Chris Caddick in 2014 and asking him what this metaphorical hall of fame might look like.

“That was a lightbulb moment, when I thought we should have somewhere that we can celebrate our inductees.

That started me on the path towards this project.”

The combined NZ Music Hall of Fame relationships were formalised with the establishment a trust, and regular strategy meetings led to the development of an online ‘virtual’ hall early last year.

Mark describes that as the first stage, with the long term goal being to have a permanent place to celebrate NZ music. Off his own bat he started researching music museums around the world. He cites the British Music Experience that he visited in London. It collapsed after a few years but is due to re-open in Liverpool following a tendering process. In a similar vein he mentions a rugby hall of fame optimistically set up in Auckland CBD’s Chase Plaza back in the early 1990s that also spectacularly failed.

“Overwhelming evidence was that, unless you can road test these things and get a feel for what the public actually want, there’s no point in building a museum. So the best idea is to build a small scale version, gauge

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reactions, get lots of feedback – and that’s really what this exhibition is, kind of a stage two.”

It was just two years ago, September 2014, when he first contacted the museum on behalf of Recorded Music NZ. “As I was writing the pitch [for Auckland Museum] I realised that it would be too prescriptive to keep the exhibition to Hall of Fame inductees – why don’t we make it about the whole of NZ music and have a Hall of Fame section in it?

“I realised this wasn’t just about the Hall of Fame or about inductees, it was about celebrating all of NZ music. And in a way that’s what the NZ Music Hall of Fame is trying to do as well. We only induct two artists a year because it’s a rarified atmosphere, the highest peer accolade in our industry, and the concept has never been to induct too many because that would distill the honour.”

He describes Volume as touting the history of NZ’s ‘popular’ music.

“It’s not going right back to the 1940s and the likes of Blue Smoke – more the history of Kiwi rock’n’roll I guess – but we can’t say that as there are so many other genres included.”

Auckland Museum describes Volume as a landmark exhibition that ‘brings the music of our nation to life through hundreds of songs, stories, costumes, instruments, handwritten lyrics and images generously loaned by some of our best loved musicians’. Exhibition organisers engaged veteran music writer Graham Reid as content advisor, researching and detailing the key players, movers, shakers and events over seven decades of NZ music. Quite some task.

The visitor experience will start with the present NZ music scene, progressing back in time through the ’00s, ’90s, ’80s, ’70s and 1960s/’50s. Each decade has its own interactive aspect – an opportunity to get hands-on, or rather ‘ears-on’. For the ’00s it’s a recording studio where you can try your hand at mixing a song.

“It’s rudimentary, five or six instrument tracks, but enough to give people a taste.”

The ’90s interactive is a DJ and VJ experience while the ’80s is, rather oddly it seems since they actually do still exist, a record store.

“Initially I thought that would be a bit flat as an interactive experience but the museum has a youth advisory group. Tthey tested it out on them and it rated through the roof! For a generation now it’s an alien experience, and they thought that sifting through record bins was really cool,” he laughs.

Mark was himself largely responsible for producing the ‘vinyl’ – actually just replica album outer sleeves with the original covers on the front. For the flipside music journalist Russell Baillie was contracted to write bullet-point bios, with band information and related insights.

“The initial concept was to flood it with second hand records, from various record stores, but as we progressed that idea a number of issues became apparent. We couldn’t get some of the key records we wanted, and some we could were horrendously expensive, and over time you have to think about stock damage and even breakage – over seven months a lot of hands will be touching those records.”

Between the museum team, Mark, Russell Baillie and Volume content specialist Graham Reid 185 Kiwi albums were identified as being important enough to warrant inclusion.

He notes that it’s a good way to get more artists into the exhibition, but, as with all aspects, they had to draw a line at some point. It is literally an ’80s record store so the ‘vinyl’ included only goes up to 31st December 1989, anything released after that doesn’t feature.

The 1970s interactive feature is a pub

stage – which Mark reckons will be the most fun interactive part of the exhibition.

“It’s sort of every pub, so it could be the Windsor Castle, or it could be The Gluepot sort of thing… People can pick up instruments and play along with a song. There’s a guitar, a bass, drum kit and keyboards. They are all proper instruments that have been retro-fitted with LED lights that guide you what to play – and there’s a huge projection in front showing a crowd going nuts and dancing along (in time) to the music you’re playing!”

He giggles with glee and apparent disbelief – admitting he hadn’t realised the exhibition staff were kitting out actual instruments.

The crowd footage was recently recreated and he recommends keeping a close eye out for familiar faces.

Celebrating the 1960s is a recreation of the C’Mon television studio – the spirit of Pete Sinclair is strong with that one.

“The cool thing about that is that you get to see the C’Mon studio in its full technicolour glory – I’d never seen it in colour! I’d only seen the black and white TV footage. They’ve researched and figured out what all the colours were. The go go dancers projected onto the screen are wearing vivid yellow dresses with red swirls.

“There’s a black and white TV screen in there too, so you will be able to see how this amazingly vibrant era of music and fashion was stripped to monochrome in those early days of television technology.

“Again, it’s nice to show pretty much anyone who wasn’t a teenager in the ’60s just how colourful and amazing that era was. There are all sorts of layers that I think visitors will take away.”

Indeed, all sorts of mental, historical and even emotional layers, as well, of course, as all manner of merchandise to purchase from the Volume pop up shop. Along with the usual merch like t-towels, T-shirts, cushions, coasters, picks, pens – and record players – a nine-disc /180-track CD collection has been prepared for release which will be available for sale within the exhibition.

Essentially a double disc set for each decade covered, the music will be available separately and digitally as well.

About a quarter of a million visitors are expected to attend the Volume exhibition between the end of October and May 22 next year.

“I think it‘s quite an honour to be presented like this,” Mark finishes, noting that the longest Auckland Museum exhibition prior to this was six months. “Having the museum commit seven months to this exhibition is massive, and all the costs are being borne by the museum.

“In context there are nearly 200 objects and 500 images. Both those figures are probably double what you would expect to find in a normal exhibition at this museum.

“There is a huge number of staff here who have been working on it, I keep meeting more people! It’s a massive commitment and ultimately I think it points to how much people like NZ music, and how much they want to celebrate it.”

”It’s a massive commitment and ultimately I think it points to how much people like New Zealand music, and how much they want to celebrate it.” – Mark Roach

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Images supplied from the Volume: Making Music In Aotearoa exhibition.

Over page: Johnny Devlin making a record store appearance, 1958/59.

Split Enz circa 1978, photographer Bonnie Schiffman.

This page: Alastair Riddell’s (Space Waltz) suit from 1974.

Bill Sevesi and his lap steel guitar.

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Photo: Justyn Strother

Candice Milner

The 2014 release of her debut single Helping Hands in support of Canteen and the Cancer Society marked Candice Milner out as an artist of interest. Still a teenager she has now delivered ‘Evergreen’, an album of not pop that she can best describe as being from her idiosyncratic home town, as she tells Jennifer Shields.

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yttelton local Candice Milner announced herself in the the scene last year with her single Run For It winning the (late) audience.co.nz’s monthly charts for June, and so gaining her a Making Tracks’ WildCard grant.

Since then she’s been working hard preparing her debut album ‘Evergreen’. Planned for release in March this year, it has taken longer than expected.

Featuring as a Fresh Talent in NZM last year, the then 16-year old was working with Kevin Allison at his Angels Gate Studio in central Christchurch. When Immigration NZ made it impossible for Allison to remain in the country she looked instead to her Lyttelton home base.

Recording with Ben Edwards at his Sitting Room Studio began in September that year.

After sending through some samples of her music and telling Edwards about herself, Candice thinks he was a bit apprehensive to work with someone so young.

“He worked with Marlon Williams when he was 17 I think, but Marlon had this known thing around Lyttelton. I think he was a little worried I’d want to sound like Beyonce, but I hope he ended up pleasantly surprised because he ended up doing an album with me!”

Candice cites growing up and living in the picturesque port township herself as a huge influence to her music.

“Christchurch is lovely but Lyttelton is this haven of musical and artistic people. I wrote a lot of my songs looking out my window at the hills, or on the bus to and from Lyttelton. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m not a pop singer, you know? You expect it for a lot of singers my age, growing up around pop culture. But I grew up in Lyttelton and, I dunno how to describe it… it’s different.”

When One Door C l o s e s ...

This distance from pop is evident in Candice’s music as well as her approach and influences, as she struggles with the pressure to create commercially successful music as a young artist.

“It can be stressful being a young woman artist, you get taught to compare yourself to others a lot, especially pop stars, and sometimes it feels like our music industry is trying to Americanise things. Pop culture is sort of forced on some artists and I’m not for that. I like the honest music, you know?

“NZ is like this happy place away from all the big countries, I like that vibe. Sometimes it’s a bit much because people say, ‘Oh, you’ve gotta take it seriously and do all these interviews and get on this and do that’, and I just really want to have fun and make people happy.”

She cites the likes of Courtney Barnett and Kimbra as influences, especially when it comes to vocals and lyrics.

“Courtney’s arrangements are so cool and her voice, people listen and go, ‘Oh yeah, she’s monotonous’, but when you listen to the words she’s so funny.”

Her own album is varied both in terms of genre and sound, with some songs more stripped back, focusing on her voice and guitar, and others fuller, with Chris Close (Black Fox Trio) and Anita Clark (Devilish Mary and the Holy Rollers) appearing, among others.

Edwards described it to her in terms of food as Candice recalls.

“He said, ‘You know when you have food put in front of you? You don’t want just the carrots, you want some peas, you want some roast chicken, and then we add the gravy at the end.’”

Candice definitely feels her album is sounding unique, talking a lot about the

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opening track Mabel, one a few others have described as ‘a Disney song’.

“I describe it as a nursery rhyme, about this fictional character Mabel, which sounds a bit weird or creepy, and a cherry tree, and it sounds pretty but the words are a bit horrific,” she explains, calling back to Courtney Barnett’s influence in lyric writing. “It’s got some piano, some creepy nursery rhyme fiddle, and a chanting chorus of about five people.”

Also on the album is a re-recorded version of that first single, Run For It, one of the more upbeat and catchy tunes with a hook, which won the NZ On Air Wildcard grant, along with a “…a weird folk rock track about how I crashed my car and once accidentally overdosed on Panadol.”

The variety is definitely intentional, showing off her range and skill as such a young artist producing a debut album. It was also difficult, in particular when it came to placing it all together.

“At first I thought, ‘Oh no, I’ve spent all this recording time on a bunch of tracks that aren’t gonna fit together at all,’ but somehow I think I’ve got an order that works.”

She showcases a strong range of sound and emotion, with some songs sombre and simple, reminiscent of Tiny Ruins and others more like Bannerman with fuller arrangements and bigger, catchier choruses.

Having worked on it constantly for a year Candice is looking forward to a big rest.

“I get writers’ block waiting to release these songs, because I’m worried that if I write more I’ll hate these ones when they come out. So I’m going to rest then let loose and write everything I can.” >"39,SSLY3SOd3"P7J39`Oj`J3

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