Author: stephen clover

A reminder about Beans

A quick reminder about Beans, appear­ing on Sun­day night at SFBH in Cuba St. (pre­vi­ous post here.)  Sup­port is from fmr-Trin­i­ty Roots-man Riki Gooch’s Eru Dan­ger­spiel out­fit, and DJ Alpha­bet­head!

Tick­ets are $25 and avail­able from Slow Boat Records or Under The Radar… updates and more info from Gales­burg.

 

Chris Watson tomorrow night

Alt­mu­sic is proud to present Chris Wat­son, a found­ing mem­ber of influ­en­tial exper­i­men­tal music groups Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio.

Wat­son is now one of the world’s lead­ing sound recordists spe­cial­is­ing in cap­tur­ing the sounds of wildlife and nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na, and he cur­rent­ly records for and makes pro­grammes for BBC Radio 4’s Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Unit.

In 2006 Wat­son was award­ed an hon­orary Doc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Eng­land “in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to sound record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, espe­cial­ly in the field of nat­ur­al his­to­ry and doc­u­men­tary loca­tion sound.”

Chris Wat­son puts his micro­phone where you can’t put your ears.

In a per­for­mance you might hear the unearth­ly groan­ing of an Ice­landic glac­i­er or the voic­es and rhythms of the Hum­boldt cur­rent around the Gala­pa­gos Islands.

Tomor­row night, you will expe­ri­ence a Live Soundmap of Red Rocks as record­ed by Wat­son and a team of local recordists.

Chris Wat­son at the Adam Art Gallery
Sat­ur­day 10th Octo­ber at 8 pm, $10
Work­shop at Fred’s at 4 pm, ear­li­er the same after­noon

For more infor­ma­tion about Chris Wat­son’s exten­sive audio career: ChrisWatson.net

Beans!

Beans (aka Mr Ball­beam)- MC, world­wide mav­er­ick and glob­al racon­teur, is set to soon be shakin’ our minds, ass­es and pos­si­bly tec­ton­ic plates lat­er this month of Octo­ber.

A rest­less shifter, find­er and push­er of bound­aries — artis­ti­cal­ly, lyri­cal­ly, son­i­cal­ly, Beans has been cre­at­ing and per­fect­ing his own style for over a decade, solo and as one quar­ter of sem­i­nal (and recent­ly reunit­ed) New York hip hop group The Antipop Con­sor­tium. Ever rel­e­vant, Beans teeters on the edge of the hip hop avant­garde, lead­ing the charge against medi­oc­rity wher­ev­er it exists. Inquir­ing impuls­es and relent­less quest­ing lead him to find oth­ers also seek­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ing and tour­ing with kin­dred spir­its as var­ied as they are amaz­ing — Holy Fuck, Bat­tles, Radio­head, DJ Shad­ow and Pub­lic Ene­my to name but a few in a long list.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7oMG81awEY]

His most recent album, Thorns (2007) twitch­es, glitch­es and snaps with beats that run the spec­trum from min­i­mal growl to tongue-in-cheek cheesy, sweet­ly sleazy, while his words are angu­lar and con­fes­sion­al, going for the jugu­lar of real­i­ty — pol­i­tics, sex, death, love, and music. The stuff that mat­ters, that moves.

Pre­pare your­self to be moved, and in a pio­neer­ing spir­it ven­ture forth to lis­ten, watch, shuf­fle, nod with arms fold­ed, and maybe, just maybe even dance to Beans.

Sun­day 25th Octo­ber — Welling­ton — SFBH — $25
Sup­port from Eru Dan­ger­spiel & Alpha­bet­head!

Tick­ets are $25 and avail­able from Slow Boat Records or Under The Radar… updates and more info from Gales­burg.

March against Night Class cuts

In the 2009 Bud­get, the Nation­al Gov­ern­ment announced an 80% cut in the fund­ing pro­vid­ed to schools through­out New Zealand to run night class­es or Adult Com­mu­ni­ty Edu­ca­tion (ACE).

In 2010 all school ACE fund­ing will be replaced with a new approach that rein­vests approx­i­mate­ly 20% of cur­rent school-based ACE fund­ing to re-focussed pri­or­i­ty areas, such as lit­er­a­cy and numer­a­cy. It is like­ly that there will be only a small num­ber of schools receiv­ing ACE fund­ing for 2010 and beyond.

- Bud­get 2009 Fact Sheet [PDF, 42 Kb], avail­able on the TEC Web­site

In essence, this deci­sion will spell the end to over 100 years of night class­es in New Zealand, and some­what unsur­pris­ing­ly the Com­mu­ni­ty Learn­ing Asso­ci­a­tion through Schools organ­i­sa­tion has organ­ised a march tomor­row (Tues­day 4th August) in protest. 

(unre­lat­ed protest pho­to via KiwiFren­zy On Loca­tion)

Join the march against the fund­ing cuts to ACE, leav­ing from Welling­ton High School (from Gate 4 at 249 Tarana­ki Street) at 2.15pm.  March down Tarana­ki Street, along Dixon and Vic­to­ria Streets, through Man­ners Street into Willis Street, down Lambton Quay, and arrive at Par­lia­ment around 3pm.

Old dogs and new tricks

Welling­ton’s “ol’ faith­ful” taxi-cab com­pa­ny Com­bined (or Welling­ton Com­bined Taxis to give them their full title) have gone through a bit of a trans­for­ma­tion in the last 12 months or so.

With the arrival on the scene of new “green” play­er Green Cabs (about whom we have writ­ten — and been wit­ness to some con­tro­ver­sy — in the past), I guess they were faced with the choice of adapt­ing, or get added to the bot­tom of the endan­gered species list.

Hap­pi­ly (for them, us, con­sumer choice AND the plan­et that we share) they chose the for­mer.

Read on after the jump to find out what they have been up to..

Use ’em or lose ’em

[EDIT: com­ments were inad­ver­tent­ly dis­abled on this post, but they are now enabled.]

Accord­ing to a sto­ry in the Dom Post today, a Greater Welling­ton region­al coun­cil report up for debate this week sug­gests clos­ing the least-used sta­tions in the region (Muri and Kenepu­ru sta­tions on the Para­pa­rau­mu line).  Coun­cil trans­port and access com­mit­tee chair­man Peter Glen­sor said the coun­cil and KiwiRail would decide ear­ly next year whether to close Muri sta­tion, and would con­sid­er the future of Kenepu­ru.

[Slideshow via hadley­wood’s album of Welling­ton Rail­way Sta­tions]

Appar­ent­ly while pas­sen­gers make about 16,000 trips on the Para­pa­rau­mu line each day, only 26 peo­ple use Muri dur­ing morn­ing peak-trav­el times and 22 use Kenepu­ru.  That’s not a lot, and its easy to under­stand the argu­ment behind ditch­ing them.  How­ev­er, in these times of cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, it’s hard to get behind the (poten­tial) clo­sures. 

[more after the jump]

PUDDLE PUDDLE PUDDLE

The love­li­ness of one of New Zealand’s best-ever pop bands The Pud­dle is man­i­fest­ing at Hap­py on Sat­ur­day night.

They’ve even got a video for a sin­gle off one of their new albums:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3hhurq5Fo]

Sup­port from Marineville. Hap­py down­stairs cnr Vivan and Tory streets.

 

Stockhausen! (reminder)

Just a quick reminder: Stock­hausen’s Mantra!  Sun­day, 6 pm, Hunter Coun­cil Cham­ber, VUW Welling­ton.

There will also be a pre-con­cert talk by Robin Maconie at 5 pm in the Hunter Lec­ture The­atre. Tick­ets: $5/$10/free for stu­dents.

More here.

A Bit Of Love for an Old Organ

The Welling­ton Town Hall is rat­ed amongst the top ten in the world for acoustics ^{[cita­tion need­ed]}, and this was a sig­nif­i­cant argu­ment in the 1970s and 80s when the demo­li­tion of the Town Hall became a pos­si­bil­i­ty.  The organ in the town hall is 104 or so years old and is reknowned world­wide for being one of the few Edwar­dian organs in the world that has sur­vived to the present day with­out alter­ation.

Once again Welling­ton City Coun­cil is run­ning a free Organ Con­cert Series on Sun­day after­noons fea­tur­ing our City Organ­ist, Dou­glas Mews, and oth­er guests. After a spell in Europe check­ing out a myr­i­ad of baroque instru­ments and play­ing the occa­sion­al organ recital, Dou­glas says he’ll be full of inspi­ra­tion and enthu­si­asm for his con­certs on Sun­day 9 August and 6 Sep­tem­ber.

[the details after the jump]

Dub Encounters Volume One

As Welling­to­ni­ans, we love dub, right? ^{[cita­tion need­ed]} Some­times to a fault, even? ^{[cita­tion need­ed]} Any­one else remem­ber that famous review a few years back in Pave­ment mag­a­zine of some local out­fit that read:

More eff­ing trum­pet-dub from Welling­ton

Any­way if its to your taste, there’s some seri­ous dub trick­ery com­ing down in the next cou­ple of weeks…

[the details after the jump]