Presence Magazine - Ten Things - Issue 10 by Presence Zine

Ten Things - Issue 10 - May 2012 - Free

PRESENCE is a free publication that collaborates with up and coming artists. We claim no rights to the photos, artwork and articles given by contributors. ÂŠ 2012 PRESENCE magazine all rights reserved.

Cont ents

Sherpa 8 Guiding Voices Article by Clovis McEvoy Photography by Alex Mcvinnie

Guy Williams 48 Funny Guy Article by Sam Wieck Photography by Alex Mcvinnie

Zowie 21 Lashings Of Stardust Article by Skye Pathare Photography by Owen Behan

Kayleigh Haworth 54 The Art Of Not Being Idle Article by Dedee Wirjapranata Photography by Alex Mcvinnie

Perfect Hair Forever 28 In Love With Girls In Love Article by Matt Monk Photography by Lia Kent Mackillop

Glass Vaults 60 Stained Glass Article by Martyn Pepperell Photography by Hannah Sutherland

Max Thompson 37 Dear Canvas Article by Laetitia Laubscher Artwork by Max Thompson

The Neo Kalashnikovs 66 A Family Affair Article by Anna Schlotjes Photography by Christopher Angell

Opossom 42 Fresher Than Mint Article by Olivia Young Photography by Owen Behan

MOOKIE 72 Nobody Is Safe Article by Westley Holdsworth Artwork by Colette Waaka

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Thank you for picking up PRESENCE Issue 10 - Ten Things. Reaching the milestone of the 10th issue is a big deal. There were many times that I didn’t think there would be another issue. But something has driven this on; maybe it was people constantly asking me, “So when’s the next issue of PRESENCE coming out?” Or maybe it was being re-inspired at gigs, exhibitions and shows. But whatever it was that kept it all going, there would be no magazine without our contributors, past and present. I’d like to thank the following people for their hard work on this issue: Clovis McEvoy, Alex Mcvinnie, Madeline North, Skye Pathare, Owen Behan, Lia Kent Mackillop, Matt Monk, Danielle Law, Sarah Thomson, Ellen Moorehead, Casey Kenny, Eric Ladd, Laetitia Laubscher, Sophie Merkens, Max Thompson, Olivia Young, Sam Wieck, Dedee Wirjapranata, Martyn Pepperell, Hannah Sutherland, Anna Schlotjes, Christopher Angell, Westley Holdsworth and Colette Waaka.

Behind the scenes work: Elise Brinkman, Zaid Azeem, Andrew Tidball, Richard Old, Matthew Crawley, Taryn Kerr, Charlotte Ryan Noel Hutchinson, and Tyler Hislop. For the re-design of the PRESENCE logo and help with layout, thanks to Sam Wieck. My parents Gary & Judith Gotlieb, friends and family for their support. Also a big thank you to everyone to who let us interview and photograph them for this issue. Thank you for reading PRESENCE,

Greta Gotlieb Go online to read this issue with more photos (including colour), music videos and more: presencemagazine.co.nz/issues/issue10.html Keep up to date with our blog: presencemagazine.tumblr.com Presence is self-published and funded by contributions and sponsors. If you would like to be involved with the next issue of Presence with a contribution or sponsorship please email: presencemagazine@gmail.com. 7

G U I D I NG VOI CES SHERPA Article by Clovis McEvoy Photography by Alex Mcvinnie Face paint by Madeline North

“It’s all for the love and passion of it,” smiles Earl Sans, lead singer and songwriter of Auckland quintet Sherpa.

ing,” laughs Sans when asked how it feels to have gained such widespread attention this year.

And what a year it’s been – writing, recording, touring, filming, they have the kind of schedule that would make a juggler wince, and yet Tindall and Sans clearly derive a great amount of joy from the lifestyle. “January was just a great month, I think the highlight would be playing Laneway, and recording the album,” says Tindall emphatically. And as I Building on the success of their 2009 EP, talk to them it becomes clear I’m Sparklers, Sherpa have It’s funny seeing a song as a that after six years of playsteadily grown from niche ing together they are no Auckland club darlings to demo ... and then strangers to hard work and a solid presence on the nek minnit it’s like number rushing from one thing to New Zealand music scene. one on bFM... the next. “I feel there’s a Their debut full-length sense of urgency in the world album Lesser Flamingo is genwe live in,” says Sans. “We wanna get stuff done erating a buzz that can be felt the length and quickly.” breadth of the country, and has seen them playing to audiences from their hometown Their hectic touring schedule, opening for down to Christchurch. bands like The Checks and Goodshirt in recent “It’s funny seeing a song as a demo and being weeks, has been a good thing for the band according to Sans. “I really love trying to win excited about it, and then nek minnit it’s like the crowd over each night. It makes you try fresh number one on bFM, that’s quite a good feelnew ways of putting on a show. Even just the way Sitting with the easy confidence of the studiously talented, and the jiggling right leg of the permanently busy, Sans and lead guitarist Benjamin Tindall are taking time out for a cup of tea and a chat on a grey Auckland afternoon.

you move around the stage and making eye contact with people, it’s all a good way to learn.”

I think all new information and experiences shape things unconsciously.”

Throughout their history Sherpa have been a very DIY band, involving themselves on all creative levels when it comes to their music and videos. “We realised it doesn’t take that much more effort to have all the control,” says Sans, however the reasons are not all philosophical. “Album-wise, the reason for doing most of it ourselves is all financial, you know – not going to a studio, not getting a hot-shot producer. That said, we did get an engineer, James Dansey, so having that was new. And he did shape our sound; if we hadn’t had him the [new] album wouldn’t have sounded that way it did.”

Lesser Flamingo, released to unanimously positive reviews, has seen the band embark on a nationwide tour and has spawned the bFM number one hit single ‘Lunar Bats’ which they were recently invited to perform on TV One’s Good Morning show. They’ve also already shot and released two music videos for singles ‘Lunar Bats’ and ‘Turtles’, with the possibility of a more collaborative approach being taken when it comes to making more. “With videos we are already looking into getting other people in for directing, so that will be new,” says Tindall.

Being musically involved with each other as long as they have, Sherpa’s sound has changed and grown symbiotically with the band members as they themselves have grown up. “We started the band at 15 and now we’re 21, and those are just the prime years you know?” says Sans thoughtfully. “Even beyond music, just experimenting with things, and getting your mind blown by things. So in that sense

And thanks to NZ On Air, they are definitely going to get the chance to make more. They recently made the funding list for the Making Tracks programme and will be getting $6000 towards a new video. The commission picked Lesser Flamingo’s closing track ‘I’m Happy Just to Lie’, something the band is very happy about. “It was a song that I believed in from the start,” says Sans. “But I guess we’re thinking of how we can be most productive with

the money. Playing around with the idea of doing multiple videos, though I don’t know how NZ On Air would feel about that.” Lesser Flamingo is the latest step in Sherpa’s ongoing musical growth, and sees the addition of keyboardist Daniel Barrett. And like all good artists, the boys from Sherpa are perfectionists at heart. ”I think what you’ve got on the album is somewhat rushed, and last minute,” confesses Sans. “We had the songs and then he [Barrett] came in, so it wasn’t written at the same time. I guess that’s something that could go either way, and I think we got lucky and it sounds really great on this album. But if we had the opportunity to write it all at the same time I think we might get an even better outcome.”

So what’s next on the agenda for these restless youths? “Hopefully going to Australia,” says Sans, “and seeing what will come from the album, seeing if people like it. Using our minds, our cleverness if we have any of that, to try and find an audience over there.” If their accomplishments to date are any indication, I’d say Sherpa have nothing to worry about.

And it’s not just their sound that they’re constantly striving to better; their songwriting process itself is something they think is in need of a shake-up. “At this point it’s been that classic archetype of one guy bringing in a skeleton, which has happened to be me,” says Sans, “and then we’d flesh out the meat together as a band. However I’d love it to be more jambased, more collective.” 15

LA SHI NG S O F STA RDUST ZOWIE Article by Skye Pathare Photography by Owen Behan

Supporting Kiwi talent with state-of-the-art facilities 21

I first heard of Zowie about a year ago, when my friend Tim returned from watching her open for Katy Perry in Auckland with his Y-fronts in a twist: he couldn’t decide which of the pint-sized, ebony-haired, crazily-dressed babes he had loved more. Of course, I Googled and YouTubed Zowie the very next morning, not really sure what to expect from a girl who has been described as a cross between nearly every female artist you dig, and who tout a list of influences and inspirations as eclectic as can be. I liked her quite a lot; her songs don’t need to grow on you – they demand your approval (and your most exuberant dance moves) right away. Dilemma solved, I texted Tim. She’s way cooler than Katy. Zowie is the musical persona lovingly crafted by 25-year-old North Shore native Zoe Fleury. You may know her as Bionic Pixie, or as one half of the lo-fi punk band The Bengal Lights. You may have spied her on High Street, slurping ramen whilst wearing sparkly pink Dr. Martens and fluffy cat earrings. You may have heard her hit single ‘Broken Machine’ gracing airwaves all over town. You may have hummed along to ‘Smash It’ while you (guiltily) watched Pretty Little

Liars. You probably didn’t see her play at Perez Hilton’s request at SXSW in Austin, Texas. But you probably should snap up a copy of her debut album, Love Demolition, which is set for a nationwide release on the 14th of May. “I just can’t wait to share it with everyone,” Fleury says enthusiastically, as we chat one month before the big day. “It’s been a long time in the making and really is the result of a lot of hard work from a bunch of awesome people.” She’s keeping mum on their identities, but she met them on a songwriting sabbatical to the States and Europe last year and they’ve collaborated with superstars such as Britney Spears and Lady Gaga. “My songs are poppier and more layered now, and I like that. We all had such different backgrounds and tastes but the exact same vision, which is rare but so great. You can really hear all the different influences.” Love Demolition would most likely be stored in the electro-pop section (is there one?) of your local record store, but Fleury’s description of her sound is far broader. “If you were deaf and had no conception of music, I’d show you lots of pictures to convey the ‘feel’ of my songs – 23

retro pinball machines, spaceships, kaleidoscope patterns, harajuku girls, lots of colour and craziness.” Zowie is a cohesive unit, all about the marriage of substance with style; and the latter is clearly evident in her “so wrong it’s right!” sartorial choices (many of which are designed by school friend Serena Fagence) and the music video for ‘Broken Machine’, which was directed by the infamous Special Problems crew. When Fleury is asked how she arrived at Zowie, she finds it useful to retrace her steps. “My parents had excellent music taste and my old man [Johnny Fleury] is a great bassist, so he encouraged me early on. I’m so lucky in that respect. I studied contemporary music at MAINZ after school, which helped me network and taught me loads about the industry and the whole creative process. Sometimes it helps to refine and theorise what you already know. Then I started drumming and yelping in my first proper band, The Bengal Lights, with Bionic Pixie as an individual side project.” Inspired by artists who perpetually re-invented themselves, such as Prince and Michael Jackson, Bionic Pixie morphed into Zowie 24

shortly after performing at Rhythm & Vines in 2010. “I’d always looked to punk rock for inspiration, but when I sang ‘Broken Machine’ that night, it felt like it came from somewhere else. So that’s how Zowie was born – she’s got more of the ‘grrr’ factor; she’s still a Bionic Pixie but more mature and self-assured and a little dottier.” Intrigued? Head to Zowie’s official site (iamzowie.com) to have a gander at her three brilliant music videos, check out touring information, have a chat, and get yourself amped up for the new record. Because after years of covetable accolades, being name-dropped by pop culture bibles, and playing alongside the likes of Peaches and The Kills, Zowie is finally ready to go home with you – wearing a sexy red album cover, I might add.

In Lov e With Girl s I n Lov e PERFECT HAIR FOREVER

Article by Matt Monk Photography by Lia Kent Mackillop

The Golden Dawn Tavern of Power 29

Can I start this with an addendum? I know when people read about bands they’re doing so to find out about bands. So I’m prefixing this with an addendum: Perfect Hair Forever doesn’t know why anybody likes his music. He’s a strange boy, PHF. He doesn’t like photos of himself and he doesn’t like people knowing who he is. I’ve heard from some people that they think this mantra is somewhat of a dick move. But I can assure you it’s not. At least, it’s not intentional. PHF just doesn’t understand why he has an audience. I start the interview with mister mystery project asking him if he’s going to take it seriously. After five seconds of thought, he says yes.

It was 2011 when the airwaves were introduced to the unique sound of PHF. After garnering a bit of airtime on bFM and putting out EPs for free download on his Bandcamp page, PHF accidentally found himself with a fanbase, and one that wasn’t just limited to New Zealand. Strangely enough there are people who have stumbled across the musician in the UK, “And weird European countries… really strange ones that I can’t even name.” He puts this down to the fact that the titular character of the track ‘Miss Georgina Rizk’ was “…Miss World 1973 or something. She’s from some weird European country… [Listeners] probably just Googled her and that came up, and they were like, ‘What the fuck is this shit?’ But yeah, I mostly get hate mail from people from those countries. Like, ‘Don’t soil her name, you piece of shit.’”

We’re off to a good start. The artist currently known as Perfect Hair Forever started recording under that moniker in 2008. The name comes from the [adult swim] cartoon that bears the same title, but PHF says that he’s never really watched it. “I’ve seen maybe a couple of episodes. I just like the name.”

Really? “No.” English label Art Is Hard Records is working with PHF to release an album this year. I ask PHF how that came about. “I don’t know how it works. The guy just emailed me and was like ‘Hey, I don’t know how I found you but we’d 31

be keen to do some stuff,’ and I was like ‘Okay, what do you want to do?’ And he just asked me what I was working on. I think they’re gonna make physical copies of the Girls In Love stuff.” The two Girls In Love albums may be the most popular of all of PHF’s releases if the blogosphere is anything to go by, but they’re also vastly different to many of his other recordings – small as they may be. “I just want the whole thing to be cohesive. I like it to be its own thing rather than everything be the same. I dunno. I can’t fill up a whole album. I get really bored easily so I can’t really do more than four or five songs, maybe six max, without thinking ‘that’s enough, that’ll do’.” “Are you trying to be a 16-year-old girl?” I ask him. “Because you’re doing really well.” “That’s the point,” he quips back. “It’s funny to me. I love all that girl group stuff because it’s so over the top. It’s like every song is basically about the same stuff and it makes me laugh… I love the fact that most of the songs by those girl groups were written by dudes in their late 20s, early 30s, and it’s all about guys. That makes 32

me laugh. I’m basically a comedy band but obviously no one’s cottoned onto it.” A few New Zealand music media outlets have caught wind of PHF. I bring up the piece that Under The Radar featured on his music. “I don’t know how people find it,” he says. The featured music on said write-up was after PHF came back from recording a bunch of EPs at his family’s bach somewhere in the wops. “I wanted to go away by myself anyway. I have that up there so I thought I may as well take advantage of it.” Even though the response to the efforts was positive, his thoughts on his own music (specifically the Girls In Love albums) are uncertain at best. “When I came back I didn’t want anything to do with any of it. I thought I never wanted to hear any of that stuff ever again. So I basically just put it out and deleted it. Girls In Love isn’t finished and there’s more stuff coming, because the first day I was recording I did some vocals and completely ruined my voice. After just doing one song I was done for the week… I guess it worked out, but I can’t really listen to any of those vocals any more ever again.”

This isn’t the typical process of a musician. Recording a song, releasing it, then deleting it and wanting to have nothing to do with it after that aren’t the wise words you’ll hear on a documentary starring Jack White or Jimmy Page. But PHF doesn’t want to be Jack White or Jimmy Page. He doesn’t even want to play live. “Playing live is scary. I wouldn’t mind it if someone else was singing. But I’ll never ever play Girls In Love live ever. That’s just a private joke that makes me laugh because it’s all about bullshit lyrics and being really catchy and that’s all it is.”

While Girls In Love is the big album that’s being distributed internationally, the rest of his music is something else completely. “That whole WAVES of F.E.A.R. thing just came about by smoking weed and walking out into the forest at night time and listening to cicadas. It was awesome. Then I had loads of weird nightmares. ‘Being DEAD is COOL’ is about an alien invasion. I was drinking on the deck and wrote a bunch of song titles then just filled them with music. Because that’s always what comes first. Song titles.” How’s that for a marketable songwriting process.

Will he ever do any more? “I don’t really want to do Girls In Love anymore because it’s really embarrassing. That stuff comes really easily. I think maybe I should just be writing for girl groups. That’s probably the dream. Get a bunch of 16-year-old girls and write songs for them. But I can’t keep singing because it’s fucking stupid. My parents don’t even know what I do, and I can’t show them that stuff. There’s gonna be an awkward conversation one day where I’m like, ‘Mum, Dad, this is my band’. This will be when I’m 45. On my deathbed.”

This fluidity (read: lack of commitment) to his own music leaves the future of Perfect Hair Forever in the air. But the sky’s the limit, right? “Doing the score for someone’s funeral would be amazing. That’s like a dream job.” Models: Danielle Law, Ellen Moorehead and Sarah Thomson.

D e ar C a n vas Max Thompson Article by Laetitia Laubscher Artwork by Max Thompson

Dear Canvas, Today I stared angrily at you for a while. It’s not you, it’s just that if I’m not in the right mood my strokes and marks become lifeless and monotonous – so I can’t just put my head down and slug away. It’s a pretty scary thing picking up a paintbrush and applying it to a new canvas like yourself, because once I start painting I already know if it’s going to work out or not. I sometimes wish you were more forgiving like a chalkboard is to chalk, because I paint fast and messy and make a lot of mistakes. I do later refine those into something vaguely respectable, so you have to understand I really do need a medium that won’t give up on me. I procrastinate touching you quite often, finding myself fishing (or something like that) instead. Fishing is actually quite a zen activity for men. It’s a sort of bonding ritual for us to silently stare out at the water for hours and occasionally remark that the tides are probably wrong and stuff like that. I figure if the world was going to end via asteroid collision I would probably be out fishing, since fish rely on a lot on the gravitational pull from the moon and

the extra pull from an asteroid would probably make them go a little mental. [Mr Thompson pauses for a moment to consider delicious fish recipes which would be fast enough to allow time for preparation and eating before the actual collision. He then returns to writing to his canvas – on computer, since his handwriting looks somewhat like what a blindfolded Michael J Fox armed with a crayon would muster.] Another thing I love everything about and which you’ll find me drawing often on other canvases (and perhaps even you) is women – especially their doe eyes, upper lips (think Audrey Tautou), hips and freckles. I like drawing pretty things which for obvious reasons a lot of the time means women. At the same time I am yet to find one I can actually tolerate off paper. Nevertheless, this barely inhabited utopia called Great Barrier Island does at times feel like Alcatraz to the single male. My parents had planned and dreamed to live here for quite a while and finally made the move from Ponsonby when I was four. I had an amazingly pleasant childhood (a crippling downfall for an artist) – mainly consisting of 37

tree huts, surfing, loitering around the beaches and doing skids on my BMX. I left the island to go to Auckland for boarding school, university and eventually freelance work in the city, but after travelling for most of 2011, returned again to utopia for summer. It was on this island that I first discovered art. I grew up in a tiny shack in the bush without power, so my sister and I used to have drawing competitions. She was fantastic at putting curly borders on stuff that needed borders, and making all things fluffy and colourful. I, on the other hand, was an excellent drawer of guns attached to rocket-powered dolphins and suchlike. I got my big break at the age of five when a painting I did of a peacock got into the local Great Barrier newspaper. My parents were very proud, along with the other five readers. Don’t get me wrong though, there were times when I doubted whether I would be an artist; like when I was eight and I either wanted to be an architect or pizza chef at a restaurant called MJ’s – a tribute to the King of Pop himself. Even nowadays I find being an artist has some annoying drawbacks. People expect you to have 38

a pencil moustache, live in a loft (although that would be pretty rad) and be really emotional. Never mind the lack of Benjamins. In reality, I’ll probably end up in the future being a 34-year-old washed-up artist with a bad liver and skin cancer too. It would be nice to think I’d be making my money from solo exhibitions by then though. See, I view myself as more a craftsman than an art politician. I don’t think finding inspiration is that complicated that it needs long-winded essays about how it feels when my heart flutters when I glance at a falling dewdrop from a blade of grass on a midsummer’s morning. I find my inspiration in beauty. Anything beautiful. Like people’s faces and works by artists like Klimt, Alfonse Mucha and Bouguereau. What I want is for my pieces to read well, have a clear composition with a good focus and use of lines to assist in directing the eye. And maybe that each piece would somehow also be able to take the most beautiful aspects of life that the eye can see and somehow distil them into a beautyconcentrate on canvas. But that’s all. I leave all the big thinking to the guys who have beards and wear tweed jackets.

Canvas, it’s been a long day and I’m quite tired, I’ll try attacking you again tomorrow. I’m off to go to bed to read my iPod’s manual (I can’t sleep if I don’t read something boring).

Yours Sincerely,

Max Thompson

Max Thomspon is an Auckland-based freelance illustrator and artist who has drawn for the likes of Stolen Girlfriend’s Club, Saatchi & Saatchi, Hell Pizza, Asia World Football Cup and Tui Beer. He grew up on Great Barrier Island and graduated from AUT with a degree in graphic design, but realised illustration was more of a passion and has done it since. In spite of being incredibly honest and forthcoming, Mr Thompson remains an unintentionally mysterious, whimsical and sexy character – qualities much of his work contains as well. To see more of his work please visit www.maxillustration.com Photograhphy by Sophie Merkens 39

F R ES H E R T HA N M I NT OPOSSOM Article by Olivia Young Photography by Owen Behan

Blue Meanies, or psychedelic “shrooms”, are commonly found in sub-tropical humid climates under trees and lurking amongst graveyards. As the track name for Opossom’s latest digital release, the listener is in for an experiment – of the aural variety that is, as Kody Neilson recalls an adventure during his formative years.

As we reflected and recapped the intensive latter stages of The Mint Chicks, and his nowhealthy relationship with his brother, it soon became apparent of how far removed he is from those days. Neilson now spends his time working alongside Michael Logie (another exMint Chick) and partner Bic Runga, drumming for UMO (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) and producing for various artists. After a bad trip, the alias of Opossom looped in Neilson’s head until the band came to fruition in late 2011.

Despite summer’s noticeable absence the past few months, I caught up with Kody Neilson on a particularly hot, sticky and Opossom’s latest LP Electric Of Hawaiian decent, he sure somewhat uncomfortable afternoon over nicotine and Hawaii reflects on both his doesn’t need a summer to show off his olive tan. And some overpriced soda. As ancestry and his fascination aside from his music, he’s we hovered over the cabinet for simple, psych-pop of always been one to dress of wilting food, Neilson at impeccably. Opossom’s latest first seemed to be a man of the ‘60s and ‘70s. LP Electric Hawaii reflects on few words, as he hid beneath both his ancestry and his fascination for simple, his ultra-cool off-grey glasses. But like the psych-pop of the ‘60s and ‘70s. With a need ruby on his ring, he warmed to our converto reference the Hawaiian style of slack guitar, sation in the sunshine. I was secretly hoping finger picking and rock’n’roll, he describes the he’d spring some weird stunt, as he has been sound as traditional songs played with a more known to pull, but seemed far more together modern bluesy feel. and “on good behaviour”.

Stepping aside from what he describes as a “bad buzz”, Opossom provides the ideal platform to produce music on a more underground level – without the expectations and pressures of the days of The Mint Chicks. Simply put, he wants to live a life of producing music that is both uncompromised and keeps him busy. We waffled around the idea of shifting away from the New Zealand music scene, and how it’d be pretty sweet to do a Dolly Parton – tour America extensively in a van. As the ruby glistened the stories piped up, and he recalled a recent gig in the Mexican desert and the wild horseback adventure of some American bands to get hold of some cacti. Kody Neilson should write a novel (and so he better read this). This Opossom project does not fall far from the UMO tree, however Neilson is quick to note that UMO is more of a high school band, just as the Mint Chicks was before it. Nuggets of sonic and hi-fi sounds set you on an adventurous, whirling journey with plenty of psychedelic, pop-ish vibes. The accompanying video for ‘Blue Meanies’ is well worth a watch, 46

and compliments the trippy track nicely. However, I do question whether his interests will become slightly favoured towards drumming for Ruban’s band and recent Taite Award winner Unknown Mortal Orchestra. There seems to be no rivalry between the two and their individual musical accolades, and he plans to join the UMO tour again later this year as their drummer. Shrooms ripen at certain times in a year, and Opossom’s patch appears well worth the experiment. And we all know a good meanie gets snapped up pretty quick. Two dates are locked in for Australia in mid-May in Melbourne and Sydney and the release of their self-produced and recorded album is due at the beginning of June via Dark Summer Records / CRS Records.

F unn y Guy GUY WILLIAMS Article by Sam Wieck Photography by Alex Mcvinnie

“Arrogance goes hand in hand with stupidity. You’ve got to be really stupid to start doing stand-up comedy; it’s such a weird jump to take – from never doing it, to standing up on stage and telling jokes. For me personally, I never realised how hard it was.”

became a highlight of his week. After hearing about the New Faces competition, his arrogance firmly gripped the hand of his stupidity and he went for it, along with “10,000 other middle class white guys”.

“I would encourage everyone to give New Faces a go. You just have to give it a try. I had a Guy Williams is tall, sonorous and nervereally natural progression after going to see calmingly affable. As we sit and talk about a lot of shows. The competition came along at stand-up comedy, he has one foot firmly the right time.” planted in self-assuredness and uses the toes of the other as a pivot point in If you are funny then you Where traditionally a comethe gravel of self-deprecation. The self-assuredness would will be successful, that’s the dian could work the road for years before attaining feel arrogant if it weren’t for greatest thing about standacclaim, in the wake of techhis genuine, plainly-spoken up comedy. People will pay nology, Guy found success fears of incompetency. After relatively quickly in the timeenough episodes of Marc any money to laugh... scale of a career in comedy. Maron’s WTF podcast, it feels His three to five minute sets in clubs turned as though the well-adjusted comedian is an into a national tour as Dai Henwood’s protégé. anomaly. Which makes Guy Williams all the That helped land Guy a regular spot on The Jono more disarming. Project as a writer and performer, a writing gig on 7 Days and a mind-bending encounter with Paul He started stand-up in Wellington and freely Henry on Breakfast. Currently he’s writing for admits that during his childhood he was barely Sticky TV, the best job he’s ever had, he says, on aware of the form. But during his BA, the account of children’s relatively low standards. comedy show at The San Francisco Bath House 51

You could extrapolate that standards in comedy operate on a bell curve, with the 20–30 age bracket riding the crest. The conversation arcs towards a theory: access to YouTube and the wealth of comedy, both traditional and peripheral, seems to have affected a large portion of people, many of them in that 20 – 30-year-old age group. The rise of podcasts that pull back that curtain has invited the fixed-gear riding barbarians to the green room door and introduced them to callbacks, tags and notions of comedic voice. A new audience exists for whom watching comedy is an active pursuit, rather than a passive distraction. Does this make the task of the new comedian even more daunting? “At first I didn’t understand what a big task three minutes or five minutes is. It’s the same when I’m going out to an hour now. I don’t really understand till I’ve tried it, how difficult this hour is going to be.” On the Verge of Nothing is Guy’s first complete hour. It’s also a foray into a different style – a transition from absurdist one-liners into a more narrative approach. On top of the pressure of a full hour and a new system of delivery, he is also one of the five Billy T finalists for 2012. However the pressure may be imagined, he seems quite calm about both; “the pressure for me is having people come to the show.” An annual comedy award for somewhere as small as New Zealand can seem strange. Surely the saturation point for stand-up comedians 52

in a country this size would be remarkably low, making it difficult to shuffle past the old guard who are already tightly packed into a narrow doorway. Guy disagrees. “If you are funny then you will be successful, that’s the greatest thing about stand-up comedy. People will pay any money to laugh, there will always be a market for laughter. If you’re not laughing then there’s not much more to it. With good comedians, certainly there can be more to it. They’re interesting, you can learn something. But if nothing else, you have to make the audience laugh. A bad comedian is just a guy talking crap pointlessly.” On the Verge of Nothing runs from the May 15–19th at The Classic Studio in Auckland. As we talk about the show, Guy leans in to the dictaphone and tells me, “It won’t be as good as Stewart Lee.”

Th e art o f not b e i ng idl e KAYLEIGH HAWORTH Article by Dedee Wirjapranata Photography by Alex Mcvinnie

When I first met Kayleigh Haworth, she was the friendly, cherub-faced coat check girl at the Powerstation. I was there most weekends last winter due to a sudden glut of gigs too good to miss. It got to the stage where she knew me by name and checked my coat for free, which was pretty sweet. More recently, I ventured upstairs to the Basement Studio to see Tigerplay (part of the 2011 season of Auckland Theatre Company’s Young and Hungry) and there she was – playing the charmingly sloth-like character of Alison, shoving chunks of kebab in her gob, making us wince and laugh as she spat bits out and gagged into a frying pan. As the scene ended she fell asleep on her mattress in the kitchen, kebab in hand, and on waking simply took another bite. Now that’s what I call commitment. Haworth had always been destined for acting; her parents raised her to be an adventurous wild child. Her earliest memory of performing was when she was four, playing the lead snowflake in her school’s winter show. She remembers being really excited, eager to perform her little song and dance in front of everyone.

“My parents would encourage me to climb trees, and put on little plays in the garden, and climb on adventure assault courses, even though I couldn’t quite reach the bars. They always fostered a sense of curiosity and adventure that lends itself to acting. It is quite a curious process to become someone else, or to interpret someone’s writing and bring that to life.” Another major influence was her high school drama teacher Lynette Summers. “She was singlehandedly the greatest woman ever. Second to my Mum,” she laughs. “She really fed my little burgeoning ego. She told me, ‘You know, you are a very talented young woman, if you work hard at it, you could do really well with this.’ I really idolised her. She’d been to Toi Whakaari and everything, she was this trailblazer, first drama teacher they ever had, and then she passed away unexpectedly.” This affected her deeply. “It felt like an incredibly personal loss that nobody else could understand. “When you’re 16 years old you doubt yourself enough just in your normal day-to-day life. And then – to have the one person who really gets you, and believes in you, and is telling you 57

that you can do this, and all of a sudden they aren’t there anymore – that had a huge impact on me.”

me stood there taking a good hard look at myself. That’s not always the easiest thing to do in a room of strangers.”

She almost walked away from acting, and though she still took part in various productions, she didn’t “regain her heart for it” until her second or third year of university.

That said, she does enjoy a challenge. Her most memorable role so far was at university where she played the role of Kate in Sarah Kane’s Blasted. “We had a guest lecturer, Jutka Devenyi, for a political theatre paper. I had never heard anybody talk about theatre the way she talked about it; the texts she chose were visceral and repelling and made you think twice about why you would ever watch, produce, write or perform something. When she introduced Blasted I’d never read anything that made me sit up and pay attention in that way, so when we had to choose a text to perform, that was the obvious choice.”

Originally from England, Haworth moved to New Zealand when she was 12 from a village called Idle, in Bradford, West Yorkshire. There’s a certain irony to this, as she’s the complete opposite of idle. She’s super busy. Finding time to squeeze in this interview was a challenge in itself. “I’m most relaxed when I’ve got stuff on the go. I don’t like doing nothing,” she says as we discuss her busy schedule, juggling two jobs with rehearsals for her recent show Everything She Ever Said To Me. This was the first full length play for emerging theatre company Scratch New Writing written by Keziah Warner, who had a successful show in the 2011 Auckland Fringe Festival with Silk. Haworth described it as “a rare and lucky project” she was happy to take part in, because she really believed in the script. Her character Jo was one most people could relate to, if they’d ever been through that quarter-life-crisis stage. Her life was stuck between a state of crippling self doubt and that very human desire for everything to be ok. “I mean, how do you tell people when it’s not? It was a scary role to play as it’s quite intimate – no explosions, no stunts, no glamour, just 58

She ended 2011 with a bang after the year didn’t quite go as planned. “I learnt some really valuable lessons about being adaptable, and some really important lessons about myself that I wouldn’t have learnt any other way.”Her success in Tigerplay gave her an added confidence boost, which led to her decision to take off and explore. Spending two and half months travelling in ten different countries was the perfect way to celebrate surviving the year. It wasn’t something she’d planned for, but she knew she wanted to do it. As John Lennon once said: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” Sometimes throwing out the rulebook and changing your expectations can be a very good thing.

STA I NED G LA SS GLASS VAULTS Article by Martyn Pepperell Photography by Hannah Sutherland

“Vibes! That is what it is about for me right now,” explains Richard Larsen, one half of acclaimed Wellington stargaze duo Glass Vaults. “It’s about making really good environments. But it’s changing though, we’re moving towards exploring new, just as powerful environments though other feelings.”

Both wear black pants and shoes, with Larsen rocking a maroon shirt and Pierce a creamcoloured woollen sweater. They’re the sort of guys who, while off stage, easily fade into the background. On stage however, as their devoted Wellington audience, attendees to their lionised performances at Camp A Low Hum, and those who have seen them on a handful of spot dates around the country will attest, their sound is anything but wallpaper.

“We can easily do what we do in a melancholic way,” contributes Rowan Pierce, Larsen’s counterpoint. “We’re trying to do more upbeat stuff With Pierce handling various that we are still comfortable Glass Vaults in full flight has samplers and effects units with at the moment. We’ve been described as by punters and Larsen on guitar, keydone it in the past and it has felt a bit cheesy, so we’re as a religious experience. board, or even grand piano (one time at an enchanted trying to find a way to make community theatre in Newtown), and both of major scale music in a way that we like.” them banging out the occasional tribal rhythms on a very minimalist drum set-up, they’ve beIt’s just gone 2:30pm on a sunny Saturday aftercome known for creating thick, fully textured noon. I’m talking with Larsen and Pierce on walls of sound. Placing as much of a premium the stoop outside of the Mount Cook-located on Larsen’s clear-voiced vocals and melodic Blue Barn studio space they’re been practising ideas as the washy, post-shoegaze drone that and recording in for the last year. Just down Pierce finds so enchanting, Glass Vaults in the road, a group of Polynesian kids are playing full flight has been described as by punters as a ukulele and singing some group chants, interreligious experience. mingled with laughter and shouting.

“Music can take you to meditative zones,” Larsen muses. “I think when we first started playing shows immersion was a big thing,” Pierce continues. “I remember a lot of the first shows we played just trying to build up as much immersion as possible. We still really enjoy that, it’s quite a key element of what we do, but finding a balance – the minor major scale stuff – finding a balance and making those moments stronger by having moments which are just melodically stronger and then building up to those moments, or choosing those moments.” Outside of the live arena these two close friends who, while both originally from Manawatu, didn’t start making music together until they both attended university in Wellington, and have found the need to maintain a critical profile online. Still at this stage, as Pierce puts it, “a band from the bottom of the world on blogs,” they’ve developed a cultish following through giving away two very well-reviewed EPs for free, 2010’s Glass and 2011’s Into Clear. Spawning shimmering singles like ‘New Space’ and ‘Gold Star’, giving Glass away brought them into contact with Florida’s Jukboxr label, who eventually released both EPs worldwide in lushly decorated 12” vinyl format. “I think fighting against the Internet culture is a losing battle,” Pierce continues. “Online is where music gets shared, where most people listen to it. Bands play shows, but they probably have just as many fans who just listen to them online.” Having potentially reached a glass ceiling in terms of local audience pull (“I think the 64

audience we really get excited about reaching is quite limited in New Zealand,” Pierce says), in mid-May, Glass Vaults will realise a long-held goal – heading to America in search of more; “People that are happy to let songs take their time,” Pierce continues. “Who don’t need it delivered straight to them.” Now teamed up with New York/Toronto marketing company The Musebox, under the direction of Kiwi ex-pat David Benge, they’ve locked in a residency in New York, and are busy booking in spot dates around it. “The aim is to invite the industry and labels that we would really like to work with to come and see us live,” Pierces explains. “We’re going to head down to Florida to meet up with our label and play some shows in Miami,” Larsen laughs. “I think we’ll play in Baltimore as well, and maybe do some shows with Joe Blossom and David Kilgour’s brother Mark.” “We’re doing this out of necessity,” Pierce says. “If we weren’t doing this I’m not sure what we’d be doing. If we want to really do this seriously, we need better infrastructure.” With the level of heartfelt sincerity evident within their music, it’s hard to not hope they find all that they desire.

A FA M I LY A F FA IR The Neo Kalashnikovs Article by Anna Schlotjes Photography by Christopher Angell

Boulevard by two really nice criminals, who Roaring onto the music scene with an ended up playing percussion and tambourine earful of sound and a mouthful of a name, at the show,” laughs Volita, proving without a The Neo Kalashnikovs are poised for world doubt that the Neos are definitely no Hanson. domination. Their fresh single ‘Tell You What I Wanna’ showcases a gutsy band with smooth The band’s philosophy towards music is one aesthetics, a wonderfully fun-loving attitude, of reformation. They see themselves as “rock and a strict family first rule where members revolutionaries”; saviours of rock music, their are concerned. mission being to fill the hole that decent “We were born knowing each other,” Says young rock music should inhabit. “We are Moss. “It was a gradual process of waiting basically trying to transmit some new young for the next band member to be born. Sure rock to the masses. We there was a bit of a wait with I think it’s time that the were listening to The Rock Gabriel, he’s turning 18 in July, but finally we can unveil baby boomers moved over yesterday and the news was about Korn getting a DUI, the full line-up. Our other a tad and let some Santana putting out a 38th sibling Charlie is 10 and can young bands in... album and Soul Asylum rock the ukulele hard, he’s putting out their fifth studio welcome to join.” album…all of these bands are like 100 years old now… I think it’s time that the baby boomers Influenced by bands such as Cage the Elephant, moved over a tad and let some young bands in The Silversun Pickups, Paramore, Autolux and cause it’s starting to look a little bit wrinkly.” Ed Sheeran, the Neos are the face of a new, desperately hip breed of family band, and their With a band full of creative types who also cool factor is only rising if their recent trip to happen to be siblings, you’d expect the atmosLA is anything to go by. phere to be ripe for squabbles and arguments. “[We ended up] getting a lift to our show at However, once again the band proves they are the Viper Room in a white Cadillac on Sunset 69

not your average siblings – they’ve somehow honed their creative process to a tee to avoid disagreements. “Volita writes the lyrics and has collaborated with friends, like past cowriter Amelia Martin from her first band The Romanovas, and more recently the legendary NZ beat poet Shane Hollands. She describes the songwriting process as ‘like having a baby, sometimes immaculately or sometimes with someone else’,” says Moss.

we’ve started a new club night called Pink Candyfloss Cocaine at the Wine Cellar with our label, and Volita has started a gender inclusive rock society called FEMROCKNZ, which will be doing an outdoor concert once a year.” On top of all this, the band hopes to undertake an extensive tour of the US and UK, as well as a few appearances in good old NZ. “We’ve been meaning to tour NZ, me and Volita have been talking that road trip about for ages,” says Gabriel.

However they do it, the fruits of their songwriting labour are indeed immaculate. ‘Tell You What I Wanna’ is a well-crafted piece of music. With its humming guitars, punchy bass line and unique, attention-grabbing vocals, it’s a single you really want to listen to. “It was banged up on the west coast of California,” says Moss. “We actually recorded that live in Venice Beach while feeding everyone hotdogs. It was really hard work!”

So with all of that in the pipeline, the future looks rosy for this idiosyncratic music-making machine. Their single ‘Tell You What I Wanna’ is available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure – if I were you, I’d check it out.

So what’s next on the agenda for these quirky, cool, talented siblings? “At the moment we are coming up are some super slick video clips and [are pushing] radio airplay on multiple continents. Also in our hometown Auckland 70

No b o dy is safe MOOKIE Article by Westley Holdsworth Artwork by Colette Waaka

I first met artist Colette Waaka, AKA Mookie, when I was working at Auckland’s Real Groovy – my first job upon my arrival in New Zealand just over two years ago. It’s fitting that this interview takes place in the staff room, where I spent most of my time surrounded by the drawings that had begun to emigrate from the confines of the shop floor. When she’s not at the beach reliving her youth (which was misspent on Waiheke Island), she’s basically Real Groovy’s in-house craft manager, although that’s not what they actually pay her for. It wasn’t long after I started working there that I began to notice the myriad of drawings that would pop up throughout the store on walls and post-it notes stuck to computer screens; bottles of drink would be given new labels, and masks built out of old boxes could be found around the place, as well comic strips of staff members – including myself. She never quite got my hair right and always gave me a random scar on my face, and added a few flies buzzing around my head. The comics usually revolved around me being hung

over too. “I’ve drawn you so many times,” she says. “I’ve actually got, in this very building, lots of drawings of you. It’s pretty weird. But you’re fucking hilarious to draw, and also when I do speech bubbles with whatever you’re saying, in my head I’ll put on a fake English accent.” Nobody is safe from the sharp end of Colette’s pencil – even the owner, Chris Hart, gets a regular caricature. “Chris the manager disappears; he always does it at the busiest time of the year. He goes to the South Island on an ‘epic journey’ and he takes two weeks even though he only goes camping for one. He just goes home and has a cup of tea for another week. “I always make a temporary Chris Hart so people can ask him questions. Last year I made a Chris Hart balloon head; it was a big pink balloon with his face on it. I sticky-taped it to his computer with a big speech bubble that just said ‘No’. That’s exactly Chris Hart.” Aside from these drawings that the average punter doesn’t get to see, she also does a lot of the artwork for the store – from advertisements

in the huge street windows, to the labels of their limited edition Jaffa Cake flavoured fizzy drink and beyond. Colette doesn’t really remember when she started drawing, it’s just something that she’s does – and that’s what’s so great about the stuff she comes up with. “I don’t really remember, I just draw all the time. I used to draw pictures of dogs on skateboards, that’s still my main thing, but now I’ve added a touch of vomit to it. What I’m trying to do is perfect the art of drawing vomit and I haven’t. It’s so fluid and yet chunky and I don’t think I’ve captured that. I don’t ever shade anything and I never use colours, and vomit is a multitude of colours.” In case it’s not obvious from that statement, Colette doesn’t really take herself too seriously. But dogs on skateboards and vomit are indeed recurring themes found on her gig posters, and both aspects really define her approach to drawing. These two themes are also regular motifs on the Nocturnal Collections posters that pop up once a month; you can see them on posts and walls all over Auckland City, and in the late Volume magazine. “That’s one of my favourite things to do because Guy, who runs Nocturnal Collections, doesn’t give a shit,” she says. “He’s just stoked. He’s stoked about everything. If you talk to Guy and he’s having a bad time, he’s still got a fucking huge smile on his face. He’s the best. I could draw a flyer for him with my left hand on used toilet paper and he’d be like, ‘That’s fucking cool, thanks man.’”

Colette is also behind the artwork for my band Proton Beast, and she pretty much makes us look a lot cooler than we really are. “The whole reason I do Proton Beast stuff is because I feel like you’re not gonna do a very good job. That’s why I did the cassettes because I was like, ‘Oh, he’s gonna fuck this up.’ It could be awesome, you’ve got to outsource a lot of Proton Beast stuff, and you don’t have a lot of takers so I have to step in.” Most of Colette’s work revolves around people she knows and places she frequents, with characters based on the different groups of people you see around the local music scene – case in point, the comic strip of a night at Whammy Bar included in this article. “It’s totally Joe at the bar. I haven’t told him yet. That’s just what I imagine it’s like, don’t you reckon? “Originally I was going to do the standard Whammy, which is do the lockdown and the chicks get down to their bikinis, but I was like ‘nah’ because it’s going to wind up looking like someone I know and they’re going to be furious. They’d be like, ‘How did you know I took my fucking top off at Whammy?’ So I just did a dude with his cock out, they’ll all be claiming that.” As well as people and places she knows, often drawings come about through fleeting plans, most of which never happen, like band shirts for bands that don’t exist yet and the step-bystep guide for ‘Scrumpy Hands Box Joust’. “It’s been four years we’ve been waiting to have it. The idea is we all get skateboards and we build suits out of boxes, which I already make

when I’m at work ‘working’, and if we wrap ourselves in foam or something can’t we have a joust on skateboards? And you’ve gotta do Scrumpy hands while you’re not skating. Then you finish your Scrumpy hands jump on a board… how is that not the most amazing night?” Knowing that Colette hates the obligatory “where did you record your album” style questions commonly littered throughout band interviews, I felt I had to find the art equivalent for her. Being artistically challenged, the best I could come up with was, “What pens and paper do you use?” “I go for the outline 0.8, sometimes 0.5,” she answers. “I don’t buy them often because I find $8 to be too expensive. In fact I’m pretty sure I’ve asked you to go and buy me pens before and you haven’t. You still owe me one box of Tiger beers for artwork… that’s $20 worth. With paper, people either give it to me or I steal it from work out of the photocopy machine.” Clearly a lifetime of doodling on everything and anything has shaped how she works. There’s no romanticising the process, no lighting a single 78

candle in a darkened room, it’s more grab and go. Just as in the world of music, it’s usually the people who aren’t in it for money and fame that produce the most interesting art. And even though Colette’s work is mostly dogs on skateboards, it usually documents the culture of the present music scene much better than most magazines and websites do – totally free of pretence and always soaked in vomit. How can you not like it?