Author: mitch

Dancehall Cinema

For those of you more inclined towards UK roots reg­gae cul­ture than euro-beats, there’s a little some­thing for you at the Film Archive this Thursday 7th.

The Archive, in col­lab­or­a­tion with NiceUp – loc­al reg­gae for­um and dance­hall spe­cial­ists – present the premiere Aus­tralasi­an screen­ing of Music­ally Mad, a doco that exam­ines sound sys­tem cul­ture and the UK roots reg­gae scene, inter­view­ing some of the shin­ing lights of the com­munity, past and present, and provid­ing an his­tor­ic­al con­text for the Carib­bean-influ­enced music­al cul­ture. The film is brand spank­ing new and Nice Up are keen to show it off to the loc­al scene, so much so that they (and their spon­sors) invite you to come down early, at 6pm, to the Archive – on the corner of Ghuznee and Tarana­ki Sts – for food, drink and social­ising pri­or to the movie screen­ing at 7pm. Read more here.

Tick­ets are on sale now from the NZ Film Archive for $8/$6 con­ces­sion, as well as avail­able on the night.

La Musique Automatique – avec une Tigre!

If you like your music multi-lin­gual then boy are you in for a treat or, indeed, un petit plaisir next week when Ber­lin-based duo Ste­reo Total hit town on Sat­urday 16th. I fell in love with the kooky elec­tro-gar­age rock-à-billy pop­stars a few years ago when I dis­covered an album of theirs that soun­ded like the B52s mixed with Peaches with a couple of Sug­ar­cubes stirred in. Their “homemade” iron­ic pop com­bines French chan­son with Ger­man elec­tronika, with a euro-lin­guist­ic twist, so that on one album you get a song that croons “j’aime l’amour à trois” then a few songs later the same track pops up declar­ing “I love love with the three of us”! You can listen to some of their new songs on their Myspace page and buy tick­ets for $30+bf at Slow­boat (Cuba St) for next week’s gig at the San Fran Bath­house.

AND they’re bring­ing JD Sampson, one-third of fem­in­ist nu-york-punk-icons Le Tigre with them, fresh from her MEN DJ/remix pro­ject and a vis­it to NZ for the Big Day Out ’08 with Peaches and Herm.

ALLONS‑Y!

I Heart Live Music

You know that most gig pro­moters live in Auck­land, eh? And that Auck­landers don’t know we exist, right?

As a response to the Auck­lo­centri­cism (it’s a word, ok) of the tour­ing scene, a bunch of loc­al pro­moters have sprung up, ban­ded togeth­er and gen­er­ally defied the odds to bring some amaz­ing inter­na­tion­als to intim­ate Wel­ling­ton ven­ues over the last few years. Which means we don’t have to travel to see our favour­ite band, and tak­ing a punt on an unknown quant­ity is a lot easi­er and way less expens­ive than trekking up the island. Plus the like­li­hood of hav­ing a quiet beer next to the main act after a show is ramped up sev­er­al notches when it’s at SFBH or Bodega.

Which brings me to I Heart Hiroshi­ma. They came over from Aus­tralia in April to sup­port Rata­tat in Auck­land, but they could­n’t make it down here. Rata­tat, how­ever, played to a sold-out crowd at Bodega and knocked our socks off. They told IHH about it, and the band begged indie Wel­ling­ton pro­moter Palo­mino Agency to bring them down to see us. They’re play­ing at Bodega next week – Fri­day 18th – so do us all a favour and go see them! Their songs have been all over tv and radio recently, but if you haven’t heard them, and you liked Rata­tat – or you like the fab loc­al sup­ports Thought Creature or Little Pic­tures – take a punt. Tick­ets are only $20+bf right now from Slow­boat on Cuba St so why would­n’t you?

Cut for Winter

As the killer Wel­ling­ton wind stalks the Wel­ling­tonista towers by day we’ve been seek­ing solace in beau­ti­ful music, as you do. And since a copy of Cas­sette’s brand new EP Can­cer landed in my cold little hands I’ve been able to listen to very little else – oth­er than the howl­ing wind, natch. As their press release says, “If you like eagles, there’s 3 on the cov­er”. And if you like Cas­sette, you can catch them at Bodega next week to launch those very same eagles.

Details after the leap

Good Morning Everybody!

Have you been to Aunt Daisy’s Boat­house cafe yet?
Martha did and thought it “tres awe­some” – her frang­lish, not mine.

If you haven’t vis­ited the charm­ing 1950s-style tearooms in Titahi bay yet, per­haps you need a mid-winter week­end of music to tempt you? As if the sea views, Supreme Cof­fee and kids’ play­ground wer­en’t enough, Aunt Daisy is pop­ping the mulled wine on to heat and put­ting some live music on the boil from 4pm this Fri/Sat/Sun. Kids get in free and grown-ups can fork over a mere $7 for sweet sounds the likes of Rosy Tin Teacaddy, Achilles Botes and Jess Cham­bers. Go here for more details.

The only sane answer to this insane windy weath­er, I think!

May Contain Traces of Nuts

Finally Wel­ling­ton gets its own MySpace Secret Show, and what a show it is – NZ’s own world-class, world-fam­ous, worldly-wise elec­tro rap­pers, mas­ters of the mel­low-drama and hip hop­era Coco Sol­id play for free at an as-yet-undis­closed Wel­ling­ton ven­ue (that’s the secret, duh) next Wed­nes­day (18th). They also have a psy­che­del­ic kal­eido­scope of a new video on their MySpace page for their new single ‘Elec­trik Love’; it’s made by Aleks Sakowski who also made the over­whelm­ingly bril­liant ‘Crime­fight­ers’ vid – which I feel com­pelled to include here as it’s my abso­lute fave and it wins people over like noth­ing else:

More Coco love, and details on how to get into the gig, after the jump:

Brave New World

I read a great review of the new album by the Bravery , The Sun and the Moon, where the review­er claimed that the band were the Stone Temple Pilots to The Killers’ Pearl Jam. How great is that – grunge bands-as-meta­phors! And a meta­phor that I can cer­tainly relate to (err, not that I’m the Wei­l­and to any­one’s Ved­der, but y’know, I appre­ci­ate the ana­logy). And yeah, the Bravery are one of that bunch of Nu-Wave-New-York bands that seem too fash­ion­able to be true, but unlike the Killers et al, they’re actu­ally really good – less fash­ion magazine, more FASHION (bop bop bop) a la Bowie.
Ok before I get into glam similes and really lose the plot, all I wanted to point out was: The Bravery are play­ing in Wel­ling­ton this week­end – Sat­urday night at San Fran Bath­house to be exact, with sup­port from loc­al synth-core darlings Heat Like Me. Get your party pants on and check them out, tick­ets are avail­able from Tick­et­mas­ter or on the door from 7:30pm Sat 14th.
A wee heads up for Fri­day night too – Liam Finn plays Bodega, fresh from a US tour with … Eddie Ved­der!

Flat White, one sapling, please Barista

I just wrote about this for this week’s issue of Band­wag­on, but it’ll be out a day late because of the Queen’s day off yes­ter­day – so I thought I’d let you Wel­ling­tonis­tas know about it too.

Thursday June 5th is World Envir­on­ment Day, and one of the cutest of a bunch of inter­est­ing events going on is hap­pen­ing down at the MP’s end of town. The folks at Green Land, pur­vey­ors of fine cof­fee and counter foods with an eco-eth­os, are giv­ing away free North­ern Rata (Met­ros­ider­os robusta) sap­lings with each cof­fee sold on Thursday until stocks run out.

Hunt them down in Kate Shep­pard Place in Envir­on­ment House – walk/bus/run/skate there for extra car­bon kudos!

This Is What it Sounds Like When Nuns Fly

For the last few weeks there’s been an air of rockin’ excite­ment passing around Cap­it­al City… and lots of flights being booked down here from that place up north that houses the Auck­land­ista. Remin­is­cing on social net­work­ing sites has reached a fren­zied peak and the rumours have been proved true – the Has­sel­hoff Exper­i­ment are reform­ing for a once-only show this week­end in Wel­ling­ton.
More after the jump.…

Invest in Your Future – and Beyond!

Don’t worry, I don’t mean like prop­er grown-up invest­ments, but instead I wanted to give you a list of things com­ing up in the social cal­en­dar that you might want to save that last $[insert amount here] bucks for. I’ve recently become only semi-hardly-employed (any­one need a freel­ance editor/writer’s ser­vices?) and am slowly relearn­ing the concept of select­ive social­ising, for which advance warn­ing is always good.
Read on for upcom­ing gigs, events and even some insider­’s rumours.…