Getting serious at St. Andrews

An unprecedented weekend double-header of delectable contemporary music (a.k.a. “modern classical”) is about to go down at St. Andrews on the Terrace, featuring two of New Zealand’s premier modern music ensembles.

 

The evening of Friday May 4 sees Auckland’s 175 East in The Sleep of Reason…, a concert featuring newly commissioned works by Phil Dadson and Ross Harris, and the world premiere of Aaron Cassidy’s solo soprano sax lung-twister asphyxia.

Then on Saturday night Wellington’s Stroma present Gnarly Buttons, described as a “cornucopia of contemporary clarinettists”.

This is going to be superb. Programme details after the jump.

WBL Round 2: The results

  Won Dr. Pt. Rnd. Total
Xero 2 2 2 0 12
Clemenger 2 2 0 0 10
Silverstripe 1 2 0 1 7
Bowltron 1 2 0 0 6
Bowlingtonista 0 2 0 0 2
Clicksuite 0 2 0 0 2
Dr: Drink Bonus, Pt: Points Bonus, Rnd: Random Bonus.

Team results and commentary after the jump.

Let Me Lose My Mind Gratefully

Hold onto your hat and get ready for one of the most over-the-top rock n’ roll bands of all time.

Hailing from Japan, the King Brothers (Myspace page here) make it their business to somehow mash-up the elements of every vital era of rock n’ roll music and then utterly demolish it. They approximate the sound of the Germs backing Howlin’ Wolf — with his hand caught in a garbage disposal unit.

What up, weekend? 27 April edition

So, what to do over the next couple of days? Do like we do, and do these things:

  • Get your fancy pants on, and head along to the Madame Fancy Pants new store opening tonight at 217 Cuba St.
  • I’m sure you know by now how we feel about anything even vaguely Tiki-related, so naturally Voodoo Mambo at Mighty Mighty ranks highly on our must-do list.
  • Or, if you’re after something more traditional, why not check out the Maori Market 2007 at the TSB Bank Area? it promises to feature

    …paintings, weaving, sculpture, wood, silver, bone, gold, and greenstone carving, clay, Ta Moko or traditional tattoo with items ranging in price from $500 to $80,000.

  • How about an immersive environment of light and sound? That’d be Looklessness and it’s on at the Film Archive. Saturday night sees a “live performance by the artists entitled Light-mantled Sooty Albatross. People are invited to view live in action “the mutli-projector analogue delights: spliced and bubbling marmite collage, eye-bending glass light, and bleached, honeyed sprocket-holes.”
  • Or, if you prefer your birds to rise frm the flames, there is, of course the Phoenix Foundation playing at San Frindigo on Saturday night.

WBL Round 1: the results

So we met, we bowled, great epic battles were fought, and drinking was the winner on the day. And also Xero. Here’s the league points so far.

  Played Won Drawn Drink bonus Points Bonus Total
Bowlingtonista 1 0 0 1 0 1
Bowltron 1 1 0 1 0 5
Clemenger 1 1 0 1 0 5
Clicksuite 1 0 0 1 0 1
Silverstripe 1 0 0 1 0 1
Xero 1 1 0 1 1 6

Team bowling scores are after the jump.

The Wellingtonista Bowling League Draw

It gives us tremendous pleasure to announce the draw of our Bowling League. Brave (but foolish for thinking they could possibly beat us) teams from Xero, Silverstripe, Click Suite, Clemenger BBDO and the fantastically named Bowltron will be taking part and therefore get massive karma points.

SEE THE FULL DRAW HERE.

Round 1 will be Tuesday 24th at 8pm at The Lanes on Wakefield St.

The rules on the night are as follows:

  • If at the end of the game your team’s sum total (total of all four players) is higher than your opposition’s then you get four competition points.
  • If your team consumes more than four alcoholic beverages (or averages more than one per player) you get a bonus competition point
  • The team with the highest sum total on the night gets an extra bonus point.

So if you booze up and roll like a god your team could come away with 6 points.

Expect to see many people at Clemenger crying on Wednesday morning after the Bowlingtonista give them the thrashing of their lives. Hurrah!

3rd Annual NZ Comics Weekend

For the third year in a row, the New Zealand Comics Weekend is up and running from at Graphic Comic Shop (106 Cuba Street), and the Southern Cross Garden Bar (39 Abel Smith Street, Wellington.)

This annual festival of independent comics runs alongside the Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo in order to showcase and highlight the underground talents in New Zealand Comics.

More info here at Feeling Great.

Alt.country at the Bathhouse

American alt.country legends Richard Buckner and Edith Frost are playing together at the San Francisco Bathhouse on Wednesday night.

There are three kinds of American folk artist: those who sit, contented, on a back porch contemplating America’s landscape and ways; those for whom its landscape and ways are something to stand against or move boldly through; and those whose America is a shadowy, impressionistic place that moves inside of them. This [latter] is the area that the sombre-voiced Richard Buckner has been exploring since 1984 –(Sylvie Simmons; The Guardian, 2004)

What up, weekend?

Wanting to stalk us this weekend, and/or find something for yourself to do? Here are our suggestions:

theNewDowse goes ape sh*t

The spiders are coming!Taken straight from the Weta Holics website:

As if you needed another reason to live in New Zealand! The wonderful Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt has just re-launched and is now calling itself TheNewDowse . . . AND they’re hosting a King Kong exhibition from June to November this year!

They’re calling it Becoming King Kong. I feel excited just thinking about it!

It’s opening on 23 June and runs until 11 November 2007. A wee bird tells me that it’s packed with insights into the ground-breaking film-making technologies used to make the movie, as well as the creative processes used in the conception of the character of Kong. That’s right – the grumpy ape that keeps on turning up in the film he he…

The exhibition will take you behind the scenes to experience the Weta way of working, the expansive collection of the sculptured creatures, the beauty of the sketches, the innovative techniques and the secrets of how these were achieved: it took thousands of drawings, hundreds of design maquettes and Weta Digital’s visual effects team years of work to create the character of Kong.

To celebrate the exhibition, we’ll be revealing previously never seen before online images from the making of the film in the new Weta Gallery

Coming soon