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.