Author: mitch

“Newtown — it’s a big ship”

New­town DIY dar­lings, zinesters and the tini­est music venue in town, Spacething, have launched their web­site. The site has pho­tos, an events cal­en­dar, DIY and zine‑y links and details of their retail, pub­lish­ing and music dis­tro busi­ness arms and of course the lend­ing library. And pan­das. And a free tetris game!

In a nice local segue, the pic­ture to your right is tak­en at a Knife Fight sin­gle release held in Spacething’s tee­ny back room — with dancers in the alley­way — and the oth­er item I have to bring to your atten­tion is the Stabs play­ing at the Ade­laide tonight. The Ade­laide is, of course, across the road from Spacething; and tonight’s local sup­port is none oth­er than Knife Fight, play­ing their sec­ond-to-last show before they leave town. The Stabs recent­ly played Aus­trali­a’s inau­gur­al All Tomor­row’s Par­ties (ATP) fes­ti­vals, at the invi­ta­tion of cura­tors Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The Mel­bour­nite Stabs have brought their city­side pals The Twerps with them to play tonight’s gig too — and some of you might recog­nise a Twerp as one of our own ex-pats, for­mer­ly a Batrid­er. Small world. 

Spacething: 171 Ade­laide Rd, New­town : spacething.co.nz

The Stabs, The Twerps and Knife Fight: 9pm Thurs­day 5th at the Ade­laide, 114 Ade­laide Rd, New­town

What’s the Time?

This week­end Auck­lan­ders Los Hories vis­it Welling­ton (via tena­cious tee­ny Wan­ganui venue the Eye of Night) to cel­e­brate the release of their debut long-play­er What’s the Time!?

The title comes from drum­mer Kim’s pen­chant for wan­der­ing out from behind the kit — often tak­ing parts of it with him — to eye­ball the crowd and demand the same ques­tion of them; the cor­rect crowd response being, of course, “It’s Horie time!!”.

 

 

They’re bring­ing Palmy’s trac­tor enthu­si­ast and house par­ty king Boss Christ, and are joined by tough-talk­ing locals Knife Fight — 2/3rds of whom relo­cate to Mel­bourne in March, so catch them while you can.

 

 

Sat­ur­day 31st Jan­u­ary

The Ade­laide, Ade­laide Rd, New­town

 

Stink Buzz

Stink Mag­net­ic Tapes, the dogged­ly inde­pen­dant record com­pa­ny that has released music by the likes of the Mys­te­ri­ous Tape­man, Voodoo Sav­age and His Sav­ages, Delaney David­son, The Chan­de­liers and the Damned Evan­ge­list, cel­e­brates ten whole years of exis­tence this Decem­ber. Recent­ly relo­cat­ed from Welling­ton to that op-shop­pers par­adise of Wan­ganui, Stink Mag­net­ic is hold­ing one heck of a knees up next Thurs­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day (11, 12 and 13 Dec) at the com­pa­ny HQ, cnr Drews Ave and Rut­land St, Wan­ganui. At only ten bucks a night for some sweet bands (most­ly of Welling­ton ori­gins) — at least 5 bands a night — you’d be loco to miss it, cam­padres. Rumour has it there’s a spe­cial ‘Were­wolf’ com­pi­la­tion LP on hot black vinyl com­ing out too. 

 

[edit: This time with the fly­er!]

Howe About Some Alt-Country?

“If there were only one per­son allowed to con­tribute fur­ther to the over-stocked pool of record­ed music on this plan­et it should be Howe Gelb” — John Parish

What else can you say about Howe Gelb after that? Well how about how his band, Giant Sand, spawned a rhythm sec­tion that became Calex­i­co? And how about the killer solo shows he played here last time he vis­it­ed in 2005? And what about the fact that he writes an insight­ful, kooky and straight out sweet tour diary here, and cur­rent­ly a lot of it is about tour­ing with Neko Case, who also guests on the lat­est Giant Sand album, along with M Ward and Iso­bel Camp­bell, amongst oth­ers (not the Calex­i­cos, though, they’ve moved on)? And how about the fact that he’s com­ing back, next week — Fri­day 24th — to play for us again?
You know the drill: San Fran Bath­house, Fri­day 24, tick­ets from Slow­boat Records. See you there!

’tis the season!

… and if you like movies, then why not come along to Wednes­day nights at the Film Archive and check out the sea­son of films that the Welling­ton­ista fought over demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly chose from the Archive’s col­lec­tion of NZ fea­tures — all 6 movies are rough­ly relat­ed to, shot or set in our fair city.

7pm Wednes­days from tonight until the 5th Novem­ber, tick­ets are $8 on the door (or $6 con­ces­sion), and if you’re over 18 you get a free glass of wine with your tick­et pur­chase. Because we like wine with our movies. ‘Nuff said!
Tonight’s movie is I’ll Make You Hap­py… the rest of the sea­son’s details are after the jump.

It’s a Conspiracy

Their Myspace head­line is “If some­one says they play with us, they do!”, a ref­er­ence to the list of thir­ty-odd musi­cians that take the stage and/or record at var­i­ous times with the musi­cal col­lec­tive known as Willard Grant Con­spir­a­cy. The loose group revolves around song­writer Robert Fish­er, who sounds a lit­tle like Nick Cave, a lit­tle like John­ny Cash singing Leonard Cohen, and a lot like a good time; with a strong folk vein run­ning through the some­times-rockin’, often-orches­tral arrange­ments and accom­pa­ni­ment that bring to mind Cave-affil­i­at­ed instru­men­tal­ists the Dirty Three (lis­ten to Ghost of the Girl in the Well and you’ll see what I mean).

Fish­er is grac­ing us with a vis­it as the solo incar­na­tion of Willard Grant next Wednes­day, Octo­ber 1st, at the San Fran Bath­house — and before that Island Bay crab comes out of his shell again to call vest­ed inter­est, I declare my bias, my band The Wrong­do­ings are proud to come out of qua­si-retire­ment to play sup­port at this gig. We’re very excit­ed!

Tick­ets from Slow­boat Records on Cuba St, or online at Under The Radar. Check out pro­mot­er Gales­burg’s list of upcom­ing gigs for a bit of sun­shine too — I’ll be post­ing more about them soon.

Lest We Forget

MarineVille always do the cutest e‑mailouts, so I’m leav­ing this in their words (and punc­tu­a­tion!)…

Yes! This Sep­tem­ber 11 Marineville and Hol­i­day with Friends reclaim the day from such hor­ri­ble tragedies as … the birth of Moby! He may think he’s a smar­ty­pants but he’s not as clever as these post art school hip­ster pop/rockers!!! Come see for your­self!!!
MarineVille / Hol­i­day with Friends
Bar Bode­ga
Thurs­day Sept 11
$5, 9pm

PS: After the gig has end­ed we will be observ­ing approx­i­mate­ly 8 hours silence in mem­o­ry of these Sept 11 events (after the jump):

Live! 3D! audio-visual rave-slash-cinema!

Art No Made is a live audio-visu­al per­for­mance staged by Argen­tinean mul­ti­me­dia artists Niko and Aye­len Schi­avi at the Film Archive this Fri­day and Sat­ur­day night.

The artists, who are cur­rent­ly res­i­dent in Welling­ton, mar­ry 3D film cre­at­ed using Chro­madepth — which trans­forms a 2D graph­i­cal inter­face into a strik­ing 3D illu­sion­al space — with elec­tron­ic sound­tracks DJ’d live in the cin­e­ma. Tick­ets are avail­able from the Archive, pre-sales and door sales alike are $8 or $6 con­ces­sion, and on the night(s) 3D glass­es will be pro­vid­ed for your enjoy­ment of and par­tic­i­pa­tion in this world pre­miere event.

Orig­i­nal­ly Niko and Aye­len designed the project for a par­ty, but have since adapt­ed the project for a lounge for­mat, which “involves the spec­ta­tor all the more since he/she is not los­ing ener­gy and con­cen­tra­tion in danc­ing”.
Fri­day 29th & Sat­ur­day 30th August at the Film Archive, cnr Tarana­ki & Ghuznee Sts

Brian Jones vs David Hasselhoff

You can tell that sum­mer is com­ing from the tour­ing inter­na­tion­als head­ed our way, if not by the weath­er right now! Sep­tem­ber to Decem­ber is always a fren­zy of north­ern hemi­sphere bands escap­ing the cold to tour down under and to kick it off none oth­er than Bri­an Jon­estown Mas­sacre are hit­ting (hope­ful­ly not lit­er­al­ly) Welling­ton on Sept 4th.

Any­one who’s seen the fab­u­lous doco that fol­lows BJM and their friends-turned-bit­ter-ene­mies the Dandy Warhols, Dig, will be excit­ed to see the volatile band in the flesh as well as thrilled to know that after a hia­tus, tam­bourine play­er (yep, that’s his instru­ment) Joel is back in the band.

Sup­port­ed on their Auck­land and Welling­ton tour dates by Shayne Carter’s Dim­mer and by Mar­tin Phillipps’ ever-evolv­ing Chills in Dunedin, the line-up is like a rock-slash-dra­ma nerd’s dream! But to top it off, if you can’t make the Welling­ton show (tix sell­ing fast, by the way — from Slow­boat records on Cuba st or through Under the Radar) you should high­tail it to Christchurch on the 3rd of Sep­tem­ber for the super-spe­cial sup­port from the Has­sel­hoff Exper­i­ment! I kid you not! They reformed for a one-off reunion ear­li­er this year and blew every­one’s socks off so if the deep south is call­ing you, now’s the time to vis­it. (I have a feel­ing this might be a secret sup­port slot but, hel­lo, don’t tell Welling­ton’s biggest gos­sip in that case… that’s me, by the way). See you at San Fran Bath­house on the 4th — BYO tam­bourine.

No Socks Required

Sep­tem­ber is the month for dance lovers — whether obser­va­tion­al or more involved — with the Dance Your Socks Off fes­ti­val run­ning all month.

The fes­ti­val is a cel­e­bra­tion of con­tem­po­rary dance and dance the­atre, and to kick it off there are two inter­ac­tive events organ­ised by DANZ. The lead-in is on August 26th from 5:30 — 7pm with a (free) forum at the Film Archive, fea­tur­ing per­form­ers and pro­duc­ers of fes­ti­val shows talk­ing about their work and shar­ing ideas with inter­est­ed observers and peo­ple with­in the indus­try alike. It looks like the per­fect intro­duc­tion to the fes­ti­val if you’re unsure where to start after look­ing at the pro­gram here. Then on Sep­tem­ber 6th there’s a con­tem­po­rary dance work­shop at Toi Poneke (aka the Welling­ton Arts Cen­tre at 61 Abel Smith Street), only $5 on the door, with tutor Ani­ta Hutchins. Aimed at begin­ners aged 15 and up, the pro­mo says you should wear non restric­tive cloth­ing with bare feet or soft dance shoes, and take your lunch! Call (04) 802 0536 for more info about either of these events, or check the Feel­ing Great web­site for the exten­sive line-up of Dance Your Socks Off events and work­shops.