Oh Hi issue two

one humble hope for insight

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Oh Hi issue two, Round two 2011.

Contact jem@ohhi.co.nz or go to ohhi.co.nz

Thank you to: Ally Koehler Melsa Davey Craig Black Cam Wilkes Dave Stevens Katie Cheer Matt Wills Luke Rockell Kelsey Lawn Laura Shakespeare Olly Martin Callum James Stewart Gareth Warnock Rebs Warnock Michael Tilley Adam Curry The Nerines Hannah and Young Printers The Stomach Central Bicycle Studio

Oh Hi Š 2011

Unless otherwise noted, artists featured in Oh Hi retain copyright to their work. Oh Hi will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in the next issue. Editorial submissions are welcome. All letters will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes are subject to Oh Hi’s right to edit and comment editorially.

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6 and 7 feature Kelsey Lawn 8 and 9 have words from Adam Curry/ Central Bicycle Studio 10 and 11 are about ODR Productions 12 and 13 were decordated by The Nerines 14 and 15 can go on your wall or something 16 and 17 are yum thanks to Melsa Davey 18 and 19 feature Losses 20 and 21 come from Matthew Wills/ Cannibal Cartoonist

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Oh, Hi. This little zine you’ve so kindly downloaded is about a group of good creative people in Palmerston North working towards the same ideals and goals.

Oh Hi aims to address like-minded people who are open to ideas, regardless of the genre. People involved with Oh Hi, like you are right now, share the values and lifestyle of a creative mind.

Oh Hi is about recognising the relationship between creative minds in Palmerston North, who lead their own way but still maintain the same core values.

Appologies from Oh Hi for the large amount of time it has taken for this issue to be available to you. Procrastination is a bitch.

Thank you for your curiosity. Please pass this on if it’s not your thing, or treasure it if it is.

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Kelsey Lawn

How do you introduce yourself?

At shows and stuff? Oh I’m generally quite awkward to be honest. Sometimes I seem alright but most of the time I don’t know how to introduce myself. ‘Hi I’m Kelsey Lawn’… at shows, ‘Hi I’m Kelsey lawn and today I’ll sing a few songs for you’. Basically. I always feel stink afterwards, like ‘oh I should have said something cool’.

How would you describe your style?

I’d say folk/ acoustic. Yea. Where do you get your inspiration from?

I think when I haven’t listened to music for a week, or two or three weeks I start to run out of ideas. Although the music I write is completely different to the music I listen to, which is quite odd.

What do you listen to?

I like Phoenix, I love Grizzly Bear, and I like Bon Iver a lot. Dallas Green… I probably appreciate solo acoustic artists more than anyone else because they do all the work themselves, and I think that’s cool. I like being alone.

If you could be any other artist, who would you be?

Ah. That’s a real hard one to be honest. Geeze I have no idea aye. Haven’t thought about that. There was a song…

Oh Rogue Wave, I can’t believe I didn’t mention them before. They are really incredible and no one’s ever heard of them. It sucks. Whenever I ever tell people to listen to them they’re like ‘eh’, but honestly they’re incredible. Yea, if I could be a band, but one person at the same time, I’d be Rogue Wave. Which is impossible because of all the instruments, but yea. They’re incredible man.

What’s the story behind you playing music?

Oh, good question. Well, this guy at my old school.

Because we were doing performances in music one day, and he was actually like ‘lalalalala I wrote this song’ and I was like ‘whoa, cool’ and then basically I started writing.

But it started off as really shitty stuff. Like I wrote a song called Fat Indian. I don’t know, it was just lame as stuff like that. It started off as a joke basically. Then the first song I wrote was the very first day I bought my guitar. Isn’t that weird? I think that’s weird. And it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t a bad song. The very first time I performed in front of people I was asked to do two gigs and it was insane. I was like ‘oh my god’. I think my happiness scared them because I never got calls after that because I was like ‘Really! That’s so cool’.

So I think I freaked them out a little.

Who was it that asked?

This guy from Zeal in Wellington was like ‘you should come up to Zeal sometime and play’ and this other guy was like ‘there’s this acoustic… song writers… stuff in Wellington, write down your details’, and I was like oh my gosh that is so amazing. Yea. And I’ve improved real quick actually.

Like I’ve only been playing for a year. I started writing three months after I started playing guitar. Isn’t that weird? I think that’s weird. Every time I do a show people are like ‘you’re getting better’ and I’m like yay.

Progress is awesome.

Yea it really is. But I don’t even realise, because its not practice for me. I just play guitar. I don’t call it practice, I’ve never called it practice. It’s just fun.

I heard you bought a banjo?..

Yea, so I bought a banjo. It was on layby for ages. I’ve written two riffs on it and one has words, like a sentence.

But it’s definitely more difficult than guitar. Because the tuning is like (hums tuning) actually that’s wrong, but something like that. The top note is way higher, it’s weird. I don’t know any chords yet. I definitely don’t play it as often as my guitar, I like guitars a lot better than banjos to be honest but banjos are pretty sweet anyway. I used to have a glockenspiel. They are cool, but I sold it to get the banjo.

I barely even used it, I sold it to my sister.

What is your inspiration?

I think the reason I write, I don’t know if its true, but I had a shit childhood. Yea. My mum left us when I was two, and she moved around lots, like every few months she’d move houses and boyfriends. It really sucked, I absolutely hated seeing her, because I hated her I guess for ages. I’ve only just moved into her house this year. It sucks. Whenever I have fights with her I can just go straight to my guitar and improvise and it sounds mean.

At least some good is coming from shit times.

Yea I think so. It definitely makes me a lot happier. Before I couldn’t write… am I talking too much?

No. Well before I could write I just build up so much sadness and im still a really unhappy person to be honest. I can be a happy person, like now im happy but yea. Im generally really sad. I’ve been depressed for so many years man. No one actually knows that. It’s really bad. Im used to looking at the negative in everything. I don’t know why or how that happened, but yea. I just have so many bad memories. It’s weird because all my songs are happy.

I think your songs sound happy but you can tell there’s a sense of tragedy behind them.

Really? That’s good. I’ve written some sad songs. I’ve written two sad songs out of all my songs. I wish I could write sad songs. When I’m in a bad mood I can’t write and it sucks because when I’m in a bad mood I want to write, it’s all I want to do. Bad as in angry usually, it depends. I’m not really creative when im furious.

Some people cry when I sing to them, and it’s really cool.

But it makes me cry too. I stop playing because I’m like ‘oh don’t cry’ and they’re like ‘no, keep going’ and they start crying again and then I cry. I mean it’s cool, but not.

So music is an emotional thing for you?

Yea, I love music. Don’t know what I’d do without it. So many people say that, it seems so cliché but its true.

Where can people hear your music? http://www.myspace.com/kelseyjolawn youtube.com/user/EssentialNo

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Who are you?

Adam Curry.

And what do you do?

I pretend to fix bikes.

That’s it?

Well occasionally it works… you want really indepth answers? Can I google the answers? I’m sorry, I am… what was the first question?

Who are you?

I am Adam Curry from Central Bicycle Studio. Extreme bicyclist.

And what do you do?

I fix bikes and build bikes and customise bikes and drink beer.

Why? Because I dropped out of school early and do not have an education. So I’m trying to make my way through this world, and the only way to do that is to have my own business. So I can make enough income to support my drinking habbit.

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Whats the story behind you and bikes?

I started riding bikes for more than fun when I was about 14, and I tried mountain biking but I was no good at it so I gave road cycling a go and I was ok at it.

So I continued road cycling and track cycling.

I went through the age group stuff, then went to the States and did some serious racing stuff but it got to the point where I realised I wasn’t as serious as anyone else who was doing it, and I was kind of just doing it half ass so I stopped and got a job at a bike shop, fixing bikes. Which I’d been doing for years anyway, ten years.

Then basically it got to the point where I didn’t like bikes, and then after a couple of years you know, I did like bikes and wanted to use my experience to open a shop that I would like to go to. So just a repair shop where people can come and hang out and talk shit.

What type of bike/s do you ride?

Well the one I like the most is a Charge Griffin frame which I’ve built up with different componentry that I really like. It’s just built so I can ride around with Gareth and his friends and feel like a hipster.

So it’s a fixie?

Yea.

Adam Curry/ Central Bicycle Studio

What makes you happy?

Getting to the end of the day, feeling like you’ve achieved something, and deserve a beer. At which point the beer makes me happy. I drink to numb the pain.

Where’s your favourite place to ride to?

Currently the top of the Plaza car park and skidding down. But scenic ride, I like riding round Apiti loop, which is Ashhurst- Pohangina- Apiti- Kimbolton- CheltenhamFeilding- home. About 140km, but it’s a really nice ride.

Do you listen to music when you ride?

Yea. Not on the fixie but cycling yea.

What do you listen to?

Just whatever my mood is. Tend to listen to a lot of rap when I’m riding a bike. But just everything. Anything and everything. Sometimes it can be angry.

Where can people find you?

Next to Candys, where all famous people who’ve entered Palmerston North have entered...

Anything else?

I’m not really an alcoholic, I just talk a big game. And I like skids. I’m a simple boy. I think at the end of the day, anyone who rides a bike enjoys a good skid. I’d say the first thing we all try to do when we learn to ride a bike is pull a skid.

Central Bike Studio Details: 06 3586151 69 Walding Street Palmerston North, New Zealand, 4414 Mon/ Fri Sat

8:00 am - 6:00 pm 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm

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ODR Productions

Dave Olly Hello. Hello.

How do you introduce yourselves?

Olly Martin. O- Martz actually. Im just David usually, or the ‘D’ in ODR. I’m the ‘R’ in ODR. O-Martz. Martz.

The ‘O’ stands for awesome. Awesome. Awesome Dave Martz.

Is that what ODR actually stands for?

Only drowned rats. Ohhhhh dead rabits. Like, because you’re gutted about the rabbits. It’s a mystery. Basically it doesn’t stand for anything, but it does stand for anything it could stand for. Because we’re serious and indie and stuff. Hikabaloser.

What’s your deal then?

Basically its just a name for everything that we do, you know, for us to do it under that name, to get props for it. Basically to kind of build something, like we do live sound, hire out PA, manage bands etc… to manage bands etc. If you cant hear olly he’s saying to manage bands etc. Um. Um. We put out CDs you know, like a record company type thing. It’s so when people go ‘oh who did that’ and they say ODR and they go ‘oh and they also did this’ it starts to build this good snow ball. Yea snow ball.

So ORD is a snow ball?

Yes. ODR is a snow ball of collective sounds. We are on the spot. Fuckin I tried.

So that’s your deal, you snow ball?

Yea we snow ball. You know, we put on shows, we’re trying to snow ball. We try to be as helpful as possible I think. That’s what I try to do. Yea yea yea. Anything we can help with, we want to because we can. If people can’t do it they won’t do it. So if we can do it, it’s getting done. I don’t know if I’m making sense.

What?

So where did the snow ball start?

Ollyfest wasn’t it? Yea Ollyfest this year when I started doing it and I was like ‘Hey Dave’s in the room, Dave, help’ and from then it just worked. Luke’s there, ‘R’, Rockell, just so you know. Luke Rockell. That’s the ‘R’. Ohhh dead Rockell. L Rock.

Where’s the snow ball rolling?

We’re trying to figure out, how much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck it.

When we get there we’re pretty much sussed. We’ve made it. Well we don’t know yet, we’ve got to meet a wood chuck first. We’re never going to stop. You know?

I don’t mean that but you know? We don’t really have an end goal as such, because we just want to keep going more and more, always you know. Once we’ve achieved something, why not keep going. If we can eventually be bigger than Jesus then we’ll be happy aye. If we can be crucified for doing this, then good things will happen.

As big as possible, how big was Michael Jackson? He wasn’t that big. Ok, um, who was big? El Ron Hubbard.

We want to be as big as El Ron Hubbard. And his cereal put together. I want to be bigger. He wants to be bigger but he’s got to eat a lot of cereal to do that. If I pack some boxes under my shirt I’ll look bigger. What was the actual question? Yea sorry we’re being ridiculous.

You just answered it. If you could be anybody else, who would you be?

I’d be olly. I’d be busy. If I could be anybody else, I wouldn’t be anybody else, except El Ron Hubbard, because that’s my goal. So eventually I’d get overtaken

by El Ron Hubbard and be the head of ODR, the ‘O’.

So to sum it up, we do anything to help a brother out.

To excel things, and we have no money. Yea give us money.

How does one go about requesting your services?

If you know us, talk to us, if you don’t then email through an email or find someone who does know us. Jem knows us. ODR productions at gmail dot com. We’re getting business cards soon. So yea you can talk to me, or Luke Rockell, or David Stevens, or me, Olly Martin.

You said you twice. Even if you just hoon down to Creative Sounds, the Stomach, there will be someone there who can help you out.

They always point people in the right direction.

They certainly do, they are also very helpful. Yea. Palmy’s going to be bigger than Auckland and Wellington combined. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. In a musical sense. There’s so much stuff in Palmy and it’s weird that no one knows about it. It’s the perfect place, the lower North Island has got it covered. You just talk to bands and they say their favourite shows are at the Factory or the Fish House, or other places like that.

Best crowd I’ve played to in New Zealand. Definitely.

Palmerston North has a lot of potential, and ODR wants to help bring that out.

Stomach (06) 359 0120 84 Lombard Street, Palmerston North odrproductions@gmail.com

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Baking With Melsa Vegan Chocolate Cake  Â

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Ingredients: 3 cups flour 2 cups tightly packed brown sugar 1 cup cocoa 2 tsp baking powder 1 cup canola oil 2 tsp vanilla 3/4 cup water 1/4 cup strong coffee 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar Directions: Preheat to 180c Sift dry ingredients Add wet ingredients in two batches (mixing well between) Pour into round dish Bake for 30-35 minutes Icing options: Can either be iced with chocolate “butter-cream” icing sprinkled with icing sugar or with a chocolate ganache.

Chocolate ganache: 1/2 tin full-fat coconut milk 1 block dark chocolate 1/2 cup margarine.

Directions: Combine all ingredients in a pan or double boiler melt until smooth.

Allow to cool for 20-30 minutes, then spread evenly over cake.

Tips: To make a different flavour cake, omit coffee & cocoa adding 3/4 cup flour instead then add flavors.

Can be used to make muffins, just divide the mixture between 12 muffin-pans and reduce cooking time to 15-20 minutes.

Can be frozen (unicied).

Will keep for 5 days in an air-tight container.

Suggested sound track: She & Him/ In the Sun. Cake in the photograph made by & photograph taken by Melanie Davey

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LOSSES Dave Cam Who are you?

Umm….Cameron and David. Wait do we say the band name or our names?

Both We’re Cameron and David, from a band called Losses.

Yea. What do you guys get up to?

We play music. Yea I play the drums, that’s what I get up to. At practices and at shows. I play guitar, that’s what I get up to. And he’s good at basketball, because his brother’s good at basketball. Um, and he goes to school.

David works. And no good at basket ball because I don’t have a brother who did basketball. It’s a genetic thing. I watch Cam play.

When you’re on the drums you’re watching him play too?

Yea, he’s watching… well we kind of have to watch each other. Yea, a lot of the music is though the eyes. Because we don’t have count ins. Because they’re kind of 2000’s, and we’re kind of twenty ten new, so we’re kind of moving 18 into that. We like to surprise people. Yea.

So you communicate though your eyes?

Mmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmm. A lot. Sometimes with sticks though, we don’t want to be completely twenty ten or else we’ll eliminate the people from 2009. Then we won’t have any friends.

What’s your history?

There’s not a lot of history because we’re pretty new still.

Mmmmm. How old are we? Couple of months. Like two months old so there’s not a lot of history. Show wise probably like a month old. Yep, so practiced for a month and it worked so we played a show which was…. AppleB. Yea which was at a flat before my other band went on tour and that worked as well so we kept doing it. Play an impromptu one as well last week because the other bands were taking too long. That’s kind of the role we like to take you know. Our set’s only eight minutes long for eight songs/ seven songs. So you know, if you want us to fill a hole…. I’ll refrase that.. take from that what you want.

Influences?

I don’t know this one. Ok, lots of 31G which is a label from California, started by the singer from the Locust. Yea things like The Locust, Some Girls, Swing Kids, Charles Bronson, spaz, lots of power violence, and ah…. And punky stuff as well as lots of hipster wanky hardcore stuff.

What floats your boat?

Umm… like what do we like?.. Hey, we did play in costumes.

When? At the last show. We’re mentioning how playing in costumes gives you more elite points. And we did so…. Sorted.

They weren’t matching though. True. Ok so what floats our boat… hrm. I don’t know how to answer that question at all. Pizza! Yes pizza. Pizza and skateboarding. Yea! Sometimes at the same time. If you can skate to get the pizza, probably don’t eat it on the way home because you might fall off trying to eat the pizza. Short answer, pizza and skateboards float our boat.

Where can people find your material?

They’d go to JB HiFi, and if they couldn’t find it there they’d talk to either me or Cam. There’s a download as well. There is a free download as well. We understand people don’t want to pay for things. But people who do want to pay for things don’t care if they can get it for free elsewhere. That’s why real copies cost money, fake copies- don’t charge them.

Any funny stories?

One time we got five minutes warning that we were playing a show, probably less. Three minutes. Olly came up to me and said if you can get ready in three minutes you can play. And that was why we played last week, our second show ever. That was an interesting one, I bled all over Josh Bains snare, which I still have the cut on my finger from. I was borrowing it, and he’s very protective of his snare. So inbetween songs I’d be like wiping the blood off, like licking my hand and wiping the blood off to make sure at the end of the set it wasn’t covered in blood and I didn’t get in trouble. And I bled on Daves guitar. Yea because he smacked Gareth in the head with my guitar. Yea. And Gareth was walking around with his hand on his head because he was bleeding.

So you have facebook or myspace?

Nope.

Where would you like to be in a week and a half?

In a week and a half we would have finished playing our third show, and at that third show we will have our EP for sale. So….

In a week and a half I would like to have EPs. (Show was on 12 th of November)

Is there a reason for that?

We have a tumblr. We have a tumblr where we update people. I don’t think its nessesary to have a facebook.

Yea you don’t stand out getting a facebook at all. You don’t stand out getting a myspace. It’s kind of cool being low key. It’s just an understated thing which is nice. So that’s fucklosses.tumblr.com or else losses. bandcamp.com Anything else you’d like published?

I thought of something funny, and gimiky, but i forgot it. Oh, rubbish that. The funny one eh, I don’t know about that. http://fucklosses.tumblr.com/ http://losses.bandcamp.com/

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Instead of happy… what makes you angry?

When other artists come to me and go ‘I’m going to do this and this and this, and it’s going to be so cool’ and then all they send me is like one crappy drawing that they’ve talked up for hours and hours. They spend more time talking about what they’re going to do, than what they actually do, and then they wonder why nobody respects them, and why they have to ask for people to come and look at their work. It’s true I could go for hours about just that.

Matthew Wills Who are you?

My name is Matthew Wills- the Cannibal Cartoonist, and I run Drawfest New Zealand, which is a New Zealand drawing group.

Where do you come from?

I started out in Waihi, moved to Hamilton, then moved to Auckland, then moved to Palmerston North and now I’m moving to Wellington. I get around.

What makes you happy?

I don’t know, we’ll come back to that one, I’ll have to think about it.

What recent adventures have you been on?

Recent adventures… well I went to Auckland, for Auckland Armagedon, where I was running the Drawfest stall. Organising a whole bunch of artists and their art we sold during the event, which was three days long. Then the next weekend I was in Wellington, the other side of the country, selling my own art at a Halloween art market.

Through My Galaxy.

So you do a lot of that stuff?

Yep. I go to about six or seven conventions a year at least, and I’ve hit a few up in Australia before as well. I’d like to do more soon too.

What’s your favourite thing at the moment?

My favourite thing…. Well I really like the cartoon series Archer at the moment. I watch a lot of it, even though it’s a very short series. And I’ve just started watching the series Frankenthal, which is also very good.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

My inspiration… Right now I’m going for a very kitch angle, where I’m drawing a lot of vampires and werewolves and things, which is really kind of boring but I’m having fun with it. Normally I just try and be as original as possible.

Shun all of those kind of conventions, but lately I’ve just been lazy. The point is I’m having fun with it.

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I think you summed it up well.

The reason I started Drawfest was because of those type of people, I want to protect New Zealand from being those kind of people. I want to inspire people and help people. And stop people who only care about themselves and money, from running things like stalls at Armagedon.

What’s ahead for you then?

Well I’m moving down to Wellington, and I am getting an art studio. So I will have my own art studio, I’ll look into running Drawfest as a proper business, start maybe making some real money out of it which would be nice. It’s not really the point of the thing though, it’s just I do spend a lot of time on the road as it is and if I could start doing that full time, go to more art conventions because there are plenty more of them out there in New Zealand, then that’d be really cool. Representing a whole bunch of artists who can’t make it around the country all the time.

Like a rock star but a cartoonist.

Yea… And a merchandiser of other people’s goods as well. So I can give other people opportunities while I travel around sleeping on couches and going to all these arty events. There is a tattooist convention coming up in February in Hamilton which I’m thinking about going to but it’s a bit on the expensive side for a stall so I definitely need lots of other people’s art as well.

Where can people see your stuff?

They can go to www.cannibalcartonist.com or they can go to my deviant art www.cannibal-cartoonist. deviantart.com oooh. Or they can go to www.twitter. com/cannibalcartoon and I will just talk about stuff and things, mostly Armagedon.

Anything else?

Drawsome… Inkcredible, Penoltamitae. When you put pen to paper everyone wins, that’s why its called a draw. Use that one. http://www.cannibalcartoonist.com/ http://cannibal-cartoonist.deviantart.com/ http://twitter.com/CANNIBALCARTOON Artwork on right by Matthew Wills

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Issue two/ Round two 2011