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]