Wellington Love Letter

Take a life long prankster, mix in some free time, 3 guys who work in film, some mild homo eroti­cism, and just the right amount of sex­i­ness, and what you get is the Welling­ton Love Let­ter.

Sleepers, Awake!

Welling­ton elec­tron­ic music fans will have fond mem­o­ries of the While_you_were_Sleeping nights. They’ve been hiber­nat­ing for a cou­ple of years, but will emerge blink­ing into the light on Sun­day Novem­ber the 14th at Bet­ty’s. Expect a broad spec­trum of sound, with an empha­sis on ambi­ent and exper­i­men­tal tex­tures, but with touch­es of hip-hop, post-rock and […]

The Lane comes to Wellington

You know how you saw the line­up for the St Jerome Lane­aways Fes­ti­val and were like “Oh man, such cool bands, but I don’t want to have to go to Auck­land to see them”? Well now you don’t have to! Haha! Awe­some­ness.

K Records documentary & Mirah at Happy

A dou­ble dose from the influ­en­tial and inspir­ing K Records out of Olympia, Wash­ing­ton. On Wednes­day you get a chance to ‘bone up’ on this leg­endary label thanks to a screen­ing of the 1999 doco: THE SHIELD AROUND THE K: THE STORY OF K RECORDS and on Thurs­day Mirah (one of K record’s bright­est stars) […]

Will you play, baby?

Welling­ton five-piece The Thomas Oliv­er Band have spent the past few years tour­ing and play­ing live through­out New Zealand with the likes of Fat Freddy’s Drop, Gin Wig­more and Britain’s Oli Brown. With­in this time the band have also writ­ten and record­ed their debut full-length album Baby, I’ll Play to be released in ear­ly 2011. […]

Live Brazil Festival 2010

Oi Galera! The 2010 Live Brazil fes­ti­val kicks off tonight and runs until Sun­day night. There will be Brazil­ian music, dance, and food — what more could you want? Most events will be at Esta­dio on Blair St (the for­mer Tem­per­ance) but tonight’s per­for­mances are at Te Papa. Check out the pro­gramme.

Sun Araw (US) w, Orchestra of Spheres Thursday at Happy

Anoth­er excel­lent show on Thurs­day, you can even make it after Fly­ing Nun at City Gallery Welling­ton. SUN ARAW is the sound of the late-night par­ty deep­en­ing to cos­mic lev­els as you turn up the bass and fog up the place. Mantras emerge from volu­mi­nous reverb. Old-school Jamaican grooves roll deep with Afro-funk gui­tar. Shud­der­ing […]

Music vs Art = Open City

City Gallery is cur­rent­ly exhibit­ing Round­about, a major col­lec­tion of bold, bright and wicked-as works from emerg­ing artists from around the world. It’s well worth a vis­it. Part of Round­about is 48,000 Rev­o­lu­tions, a piece by Fly­ing Nun founder Roger Shep­herd. He’s select­ed 24 hours worth of songs, which ran­dom­ly play. There is also — and […]

Soundstage: Strike Percussion and Warren Maxwell

Welling­ton musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tions are so hot right now, with the puls­ing funked out dra­ma of Eru Dan­ger­spiel cram­ming more than 15 musi­cians and a damn choir onto the stage at the Town Hall last night and Rhi­an Shee­han’s out­stand­ing show at the Opera House in June it seems that being all lush and orches­tral and big is, well, big.  The spores of cer­tain Welly super-groups can be found in base­ments all over Welling­ton col­lab­o­rat­ing on new projects, get­ting back togeth­er with each oth­er, going solo again, it is bloody hard to keep up! 

 

Those Twin­set boys seem to be slut­ting it all over town and War­ren Maxwell has man­aged mix it with NZSO (as Lit­tle Bush­man) plan a cou­ple of shows with a reformed Trin­i­ty Roots and work on new mate­r­i­al with Strike Per­cus­sion.

 

Phew.

 

A lit­tle taster of the full length show brew­ing between War­ren and Strike will be on offer at Down­stage this Sun­day as part of the Sound­stage series.  There will also be some fresh rein­ter­pre­ta­tions of Strike and Lit­tle Bush­man clas­sics (this girl is look­ing for­ward to see­ing what they can do with Cor­rupt Demeanor).  Looks like there may be anoth­er guest musi­cian spot too, so once again time to have a few less $5 flat whites and book tick­ets.

 

What: Strike Per­cus­sion and War­ren Maxwell

Where: Down­stage the­atre

When: Sun­day 17 Octo­ber

Cost: $35

Image by Domini­ka Zielin­s­ka from a set of live rehearsal shots.

Have You Seen This Spam?

Fol­low­ing on from a tid­bit in Mike’s last post, here’s some Thurs­day night hobo coun­try garage enter­tain­ment for you!

Photobucket

Delaney David­son plays at the Mighty Mighty tonight to release his album ‘Rough Dia­mond’ (out on local label Stink Mag­net­ic), and unveils his Ghost Orches­tra for the very first time … fea­tur­ing a real live voodoo rhythm sec­tion as well as ban­jo, brass, vio­lin, lap steel and accor­dian. The band played and talked on Nation­al Radio last Sat­ur­day, and are doing a small num­ber of shows before Delaney heads off over­seas again in April. The Wrong­do­ings play sup­port, before they (we?) lose bass play­er Justin to the big wide world, also in April.

The gig kicks off at 8:30 but as a warm-up Issue #4 of local design mag­a­zine The Nation­al Grid will be launched in fine style by voodoo guru Dr Eric Vornoff and trac­tor affi­ciona­do Boss Christ, from 5:30. #4 and back issues are avail­able at spe­cial prices, and there’s talk of a lim­bo con­test that the Welling­ton­ista’s own Anna Dean has been banned from enter­ing.

Mighty Mighty, Cuba St, 5:30/8:30 tonight
and the gig repeats with extra flair on Fri­day night too.