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Rip It Up Magazine is published by Hark Entertainment Ltd Office 2a Waverly Street, Auckland CBD, New Zealand Postal PO Box 6032 Wellesley Street, Auckland 1141, New Zealand Website ripitup.co.nz Printers Webstar | Blue Star Group Limited | Shit Hot Printers

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Opinions express in the magazine are not necessarily those of Hark Entertainment Limited. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material.

ISSN 0114-0876

CONTENTS

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6. What Goes On/On The Rip It Up Stereo, 8. New Balance Ambassador, 10. A General Guide to Soft Rock, 12. So What‌/Tweet Talk, 14. Sharon Van Etten, 16.

This Month In Clubland, 18. Style Like Bjork, 19 Style Like Pokey LaFarge, 20. Gadgets, 22. Anthonie Tonnon, 24. Film Reviews, 25. Chappie, 26. Album Reviews Pt.1, 27. Modest Mouse, 28. Album Reviews Pt.2, 29. On The Record w/ Trinity Roots/Making Tracks February, 30. Shep Gordon, 32. Raury, 33. Six60, 34. Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, 36. Purity Ring, 38. Public Service Broadcasting, 39. #WINNING

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WHAT GOES ON added lyrics and the 12 tracks of The Magic Whip are the result.

NOEL FIELDING

BLUR It’s 16 years since their last album as a four-piece and Friday 24 April sees the release of a brand new album from blur on Parlophone, titled The Magic Whip. The recordings, which began during a five-day break in touring in Spring 2013 - at Avon Studios in Kowloon, Hong Kong - were put aside when the group finished touring and returned to their respective lives.

Last November Graham Coxon revisited the tracks and, drafting in blur’s early producer Stephen Street, he worked with the band on the material. Albarn then

Due to a scheduling conflict, Noel Fielding’s New Zealand tour dates have been moved from April to May 2015. Please note new dates for all centres and venue changes in Wellington and Christchurch. Please retain tickets for the Auckland ASB Theatre show. These tickets will be valid for the rescheduled date of Saturday 09 May. New tickets will be issued by Ticketek for the Wellington Opera House and Christchurch Isaac Theatre Royal shows owing to the venue changes.

Kele is a DJ/Producer and lead singer of Bloc Party. At the end of 2013 Kele embarked on a new phase of his career, taking all his influences and experiences to shake up peoples expectations of him as a songwriter, performer and producer. April 2014 saw the release of Candy Flip Kele’s second EP on Crosstown and proving that he’s a dancer at heart and a truly versatile beat maker.

SEE HIM LIVE: KELE SAT 21 MAR THE KINGS ARMS, AUCKLAND | UTR.CO.NZ

SEE TOURS AND EVENTS FOR NEW DATES

KELE PARTY Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke is heading to New Zealand to play Auckland’s Kings Arms in March.

OLD MOUT CIDER COMEDY GALA Now into its 23rd year, the 2015 NZ International Comedy Festival in cahoots with Old Mout Cider, is set to kick-off, bringing the laughs to Auckland and Wellingto. Ed Byrne is back for the first time in six years to host. Joining Ed Byrne live at The Civic are Wilson Dixon; Craig Campbell; Des Bishop; Tom Binns; Dai Henwood, Urzila Carlson, Nish Kumar, Guy Montgomery, and more to be announced. Alongside Ed in Wellington will be Dai Henwood, Urzila Carlson, Craig Campbell and Des Bishop, Carl Donnelly, and Steve Wrigley with more comedians to be announced.

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ON THE RIP IT UP STEREO HOT CHIP – ‘HOW DO YOU DO?’ (2012) LION BABE – ‘JUNGLE LADY’ (2014) JAMES BAY – ‘HOLD BACK THE RIVER’ (2014) FATHER JOHN MISTY – I LOVE YOU, HONEYBEAR (2015)

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ARCHER – ‘GARDEN’ (2014)

ALABAMA SHAKES – ‘DON’T WANNA FIGHT’ (2015)

MARIA MULDAUR ‘MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS’ (1973)

KANYE WEST/BECK ­– ‘JESUS WALKS/LOSER’ (2015)

MARLON WILLIAMS – ‘DARK CHILD’ (2015)

DRAKE – IF YOU’RE READING THIS IT’S TOO LATE (2015)

G I N N Y B L AC K M O R E

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APRIL 24

ANDREW JOHNSTONE

NEW BAL ANCE AMBASSADOR clothing line and thinking about winter 2016.

“It’s an absorbing job with an awesome variety of things to do.”

Stephen is 35 years of age and has never thrown out a pair of his treasured New Balance sneakers. Each pair is infused with memory of time and place and is rich in meaning.

“I couldn’t bear to part with any of them, even the oldest and most worn. Each pair is precious.”

Having so many pairs also means he can rotate them and cut down on wear and tear making them last longer, not that they ever actually fall apart. That’s another thing he likes about them, their quality and durability.

He likes them both scuffed and beaten up, shiny and new and selects different pairs for different occasions. The least worn pairs are reserved for formal occasions while degrees of wear are selected depending on mood. A street wear aficionado, his dress code formula is simple. New Balance sneakers, pants or jeans, a white t-shirt and a button shirt over the top.

STEPHEN KIRBY MT MAUNGANUI CLOTHING designer, Stephen Kirby, has 30 pairs of New Balance sneakers in his wardrobe; all of them green except for one blue and one black pair. Last year he thought it was time he mixed it up a bit and added the new colours but it turns out that green is a preference he cannot escape.

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He left and returned to school, this time it was animation, a field that he hoped would satisfy his artistic proclivities.

New Balance are his shoe, always have been and probably it seems, always will be.

Two years in, it was not feeling good and he dropped out. “I wasn’t going to see it through just because I thought I had to, I had learned my lesson from business school.”

“I really like the ascetic. They are very classic sneakers/running shoes. Neither plain nor flashy, comfortable, hard wearing and stylish.”

At a loose end he decided on a trade. He found work in a screen-printing factory and discovered he had a flair for graphic design.

Stephen was born in Auckland, grew up in Austria where he excelled in economics and accounting at school. When his family returned to New Zealand he enrolled at the Business Management School at the University of Waikato, (considered to be the second best Business school in the world after Harvard), and began preparing for what he thought was going to be the rest of his life.

“My search for a place to be in life has been full of twists and turns,” Stephen explained and by accident rather than planning found himself being pulled more and more toward clothing.

About halfway through his degree he began to have doubts about his choice but also felt that once you start something you should see it through.

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Degree in hand he was snapped up by a finance company and hated every second of it.

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It was at Lower, a Mt Maunganui streetwear label, that he found his calling. He has been working for them since 2005 in an everevolving role that includes graphic and clothing design and promotion.

At the moment he is planning for the brands autumn rollout, preparing next summers

“Wearing sneakers helps with peoples perception of age, they make you seem younger and help you to feel younger.”

I ask Stephen about his brand loyalty. “New Balance fit with my dress formula, you can dress them up and down with ease. I also like the way that every model has a number. 574 is the classic sneaker/running shoe and I have plenty of those but my favourite is the 577.”

“The 577 Farmers Market sneaker is an English design made from materials typical to English farm wear. They have a woollen sole, herringbone fabric on the inside and buffed suede on outside.”

Being an avid gardener, the 577 appeals to Stephen’s sensibilities and help him to feel closer to the land. Otherwise, he is especially drawn to New Balance’s Limited Edition Artists series line, in particular designs inspired by literature which include the Moby Dick and Catch 22 cutaways.

“I like the brand because they are not trend specific; they are classic, functionally wearable and reliable. I just love them, simple as that.”

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ANDREW JOHNSTONE

A GENER AL GUIDE TO SOFT ROCK time to shore up the finances with reunion concerts and such.

NEW YORK ‘TAPESTRY’ – CAROLE KING

‘Guitar Man’ (a sentimental ditty about a journeyman guitarist past his glory days), looks exactly like a rock song until David Gates starts singing. His forlorn falsetto/tenor is the antithesis of the “rock snarl” and draws a firm line between genre and sub-genre styles and mores.

New Yorker Carole King began her career song writing for other people. A massively successful and reliable 60’s pop song hit maker, she transformed into a confessional singer/songwriter for the duration of the 70’s. Her 1971 album Tapestry contained some of the craftiest and most persuasive soft rock ever set to vinyl. To this day, Tapestry remains one of the biggestselling albums of all time.

‘TIN MAN’ – AMERICA

ROCK AND ROLL evolved from the “white hot mix” of sounds that defined the American musical landscape through the 1940s- swing, jazz, country and blues. By the mid1950s it was firmly established as a stand-alone genre.

Rebellious fantasy with a hint of danger, it was mostly dance and make-out music for kids that by the early 1960s had gone from shouting ‘golly gee’ to whispering ‘fuck you’.

Popular music emerged from the 60’s innocence lost but altogether more knowing and self-aware and by the end of the decade rock n’ roll’s bad little brother Rock was flexing its muscles and giving birth to a diverse wealth of sub-genres that included the burgeoning soft rock scene.

Over beers with musician Matthew Bannister I poised the question: “How do you define soft rock?”

After some thought Matthew replied: “Soft rock is pop music for adults.”

“Lets start with that then,” I said.

Soft rock has a definitive core surrounded by fuzzy

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outlines where it touches other styles in that strange murky place where musical ideas mix and blend.

It fuses pop and with subtle infusions of rock. It can sound like rock, it can taste like pop, but it remains something different with a vibe all its own.

Soft rock is first and foremost an American musical movement with its hey-day in the 1970s and 80s, an AM radio format concerned largely with themes of romance, love and sex.

Peter McIlwaine – Broadcaster and Educator: “Soft rock is rock with the hard edges taken off. Less guitardriven, more keyboard and melody-orientated.”

‘GUITAR MAN’ – BREAD With a laid-back beat an emphasis on melody, Californian band Bread were the quintessential soft rock act.

Under the tutelage of chief songwriter David Gates, Bread scored 13 US Top 40 Hits between 1970 and 1977. The band, a staple of easy listening radio, struggled with egos and eventually called it quits in the late 70’s, reforming from time to

Crosby, Stills and Nash are often referred to as a soft rock act, but this is a misnomer. Though they can cast a compelling pop song, their collective musical soul is shaped from the ascetics of rock, both in the way they arrange their music and deliver it.

Imagine Crosby, Stills and Nash without the talent, ego and cocaine and there you have America. Soft to the very core, these London-based American’s were one of the first great trailblazers of the soft rock movement.

WINTEC media studies lecturer Paul Judge was asked for his opinion of the soft rock phenomenon: “My gut feeling with the idea of ‘soft rock’ is that it is a derogatory term and I don’t think I can contribute to that particular concept. I associate the idea with the term ‘easy listening’ which also implies supermarket muzak, commercial radio and so on.”

Musician and WINTEC media Studies Lecturer No.2, Matthew, replies: “Yes, I think it started as a derogatory term, but these days I don’t think the old hierarchy of genres applies really.

Everything’s available and people make of it what they will.”

‘STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS’ – PAUL SIMON Simon and Garfunkel tended towards a New York-flavoured folk-style with pop outlines.

Later, as their sound matured and evolved, they produced moments of soft rock, notably ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, but the style was never as an overarching theme in their music.

Later when he went solo, Paul Simon adapted soft rock to his needs and become the genres “adult conscience” for decades to come. Simon’s 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years marks his arrival as “boymade-man”. It’s a world-weary affair laced with cynicism and dark ice. Holding nothing back emotionally, Still Crazy is about as “real” as soft rock gets.

Garfunkel walked across the United States, and having enjoyed the experience, walked across a whole lot of other places.

Both men still flourish.

Sometimes together, mostly apart.

‘BRANDY’ – LOOKING GLASS Out of the Jersey Shore School

of Music, Looking Glass were short-lived one hit wonders who recorded a song that has gone on to become a soft rock standard, beloved especially by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who cover it. Released in 1974, ‘Brandy’ shifted a million units and that was that.

Singer/vocalist Lurie went on to build a successful career in the movie business and still plays ‘Brandy’ for loose change.

Barry Manilow could do soft rock, but his true designation is pop built with sensibilities derived from Broadway, Vegas, and MGM musicals. In 1974 he released what turned out to be one of his seminal tracks, ‘Brandy’, whose title had to be changed to ‘Mandy’ so as not to be confused with the Looking Glass song.

Oddly, NZ soft rock crooner Bunny Walters took his 1972 version of ‘Mandy’ to the top of the Kiwi charts under the name ‘Brandy.’

Billy Joel is often categorised as soft rock. It can certainly be said that this hit-maker appealed to the 70’s and 80’s soft rock audience, but his catalogue is too diverse and accomplished to be easily stamped “one thing or another”.

CALIFORNIA The Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach were not soft rock, but their collective influence heavily informed the burgeoning Californian soft rock scene, as did the work of composers and arrangers like Jack Nitzsche, Van Dykes Park and Jimmy Webb.

The laid-back and reflective West Coast vibe is an essential element of soft rock.

had found the winning formula and that the hits would continue forever... we were wrong.”

Welch’s first big break came when he was enlisted into the ranks of Fleetwood Mac 1971.

The band had recently relocated to California and he helped them to develop a more commercial sound, but he left just before they went mega.

The hits petered out for Welch and years of booze and drugs and general fast living followed.

He recovered and spent his remaining years writing for other artists. On 7 June, 2002, he left this life of his own volition.

‘Sentimental Lady’ is a soft rock classic that is well worth a visit. In the video Welch, shirt unbuttoned to waist, oozes across the screen and plants some sexy kisses on a hot babe. The whole production says a great deal about 1970s soft-porn influenced sexual mores.

The Eagles could seriously soft rock but their ascetic was way to rock for them to be easily consigned to the soft rock box.

Jackson Browne is the more ‘informed’, politically aware end of the soft rock spectrum and the late great and crazy Warren Zevon was more songsmith than rocker, rebel than conformist but Werewolves of London is arguably the soft rock alternative. All genres have a nonconformist/ alternative thread, and Zevon’s is soft rock. John Stewart’s ‘Gold’ is a classic.

Infused with the psychedelia he had absorbed from his time in Haight Asbury, (San Francisco’s hippy district), they included: ‘Joker Man,’ ‘Jet-Airliner,’ ‘Take The Money and Run’ and ‘Jungle Love’, peaking in the mid-80s with the synth-driven ‘Abracadabra’.

‘Fly Like An Eagle’ went to the top of the US charts in 1977 peaking at number two, beaten out for number one by Barbara Streisand. ‘Fly Like An Eagle’ is soft rock for rockers and rock for soft rockers.

The British, the second major player in the world of English Language Music, were evolving their own soft rock brand through the late 60’s and early 70’s and added to the genre with their own unique stylistic tendencies and melodic traditions. Notable bands and artists include Foreigner, Marmalade, David Grey and James Blunt. British compatriot Elton John can rock and roll up a storm, but pop with a little dash of soft rock on the side is more his inclination. Gerry Rafferty soft rocked himself to a small fortune, ‘(Baker Street’, ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’) and Paul McCartney who is often categorised as soft rock, could do soft rock but actually pop.

Christie’s ‘Yellow River’, a million seller, is some ways defines British soft rock more than any other track.

‘YEAR OF THE CAT’ – AL STEWART

In the late 1970s, Californian Bob Welch hit the top of the US charts with a run of hit singles and could be described as a soft rock rocker whose theme was sex.

He had been grafting away for years and as the 60’s turned into the 70’s, Californian based guitarist/songwriter Steve Miller stood on the cusp of the big time.

He was an adequate blues/rock man who was finding his feet applying his skills to pop tunes.

Scot. Al Stewart is officially designated as a folk rocker but to these ears his formative hits are straight out of the soft rock manual. Year of the Cat and Time’s Passages made so much money for Stewart that he was at a loss at what to do with it so he took up drinking fine wine. He became such a connoisseur that in 2000 he released a concept album about wine. It didn’t chart.

Welch: “We thought, (Welch and producer John Carter), we

Over a 10-year period he released a series of iconic songs.

‘STAND TALL’ – BURTON CUMMINGS

‘SENTIMENTAL LADY’ – BOB WELCH

‘FLY LIKE AN EAGLE’ – STEVE MILLER

Canadian Superstar Cummings started his career with iconic Canadian rockers The Guess Who but revealed his true colours through the mid to late 70’s as a soft rocking solo artist.

‘Stand Tall’, about a man scorned by a woman and struggling to hold it all together as he navigates the emotional aftermath, was an international smash hit. Other notable Cummings tracks include ‘Break It To Them Gently’ and ‘I Will Play a Rhapsody’. A journeyman songwriter who added class and compositional flair to the genre.

Dylan has done it and Sinatra tried it on for size. The Who can’t and neither could Nirvana but it turned out R.E.M could and so can Coldplay, but none of these are “true” soft rock acts; artists working exclusively in the genre.

EPILOGUE My exploration of soft rock has revealed a genre of whose scope I was only half aware, and through the course of my journey my eyes have been opened to a world of fashion and culture that had not long ago seemed somewhat inconsequential.

It continues to flourish to this day with hip hop and electronica now in the mix.

As it always is with articles like this, often it’s not what you include but what you’ve left out, so a special mention to other notable soft rock artists: Albert Hammond, Christopher Cross, James Taylor, Kim Carnes, Player, Kenny Loggins Pablo Cruise, Toto, Kansas and possibly Chicago. Something of Harry Chapin, certainly Paul Davis, a little bit of Nilsson. Glen Campbell, Ringo Star and Rod Stewart (for a while). Elvis soft rocked the 70’s, karate style and jump suited and The Fine Young Cannibals adapted it to electronica.

FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH YOUTUBE LINKS VISIT RIPITUP.CO.NZ

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SO WHAT... music for like, months now, obsessing in the studio all night, so I’ve got a lot of new music but it’s been so all over the place. Some of it’s like weird country, then I have love songs, so it’s all over the place so I’m still kind of compiling my record.”

Orlando Bloom plans to “give music a go”.

The actor attended the BRIT Awards at the O2 Arena in London, where he jokingly revealed he plans to make a career switch. Orlando quipped: “The acting thing wasn’t working out so well, so I thought I’d give music a go.” The ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star revealed himself to be a huge fan of British act Ed Sheeran, after the ‘Thinking Out Loud’ hitmaker contributed to the theme of one of his films.

Robert Downey Jr is annoyed Chris Evans hasn’t called him in six months. The actor, who stars as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel movies, has revealed he’s “crazy” about Evans - who plays Captain America - but is annoyed that he hasn’t been in touch in so long. Asked what made him want to appear in Captain America: Civil War, Downey Jr joked: “I’m crazy about Evans. I really am. I don’t know why or how to explain this particular kinship we have. By the way, he hasn’t called me in six months.

Kesha is working on “weird country” music.

The singer has been busy making the follow-up to her 2012 album Warrior and has teased fans they can expect to hear love songs when the collection is finally released, as well as some wacky country tracks. “I’ve been working on

Eddie Redmayne “learnt a lot” from watching the Australian soap opera Neighbours. The actor has revealed Neighbours stars Alan

T WEET TALK “What I hate most about Twitter, is finishing a good tweet, having -1 characters left, and then having to decide which grammar crime to commi” @BiIIMurray

“#TDSBreakingNews Apple finally releases more diverse emojis. So your racist uncle’s Facebook rants are about to get a lot cuter!” @TheDailyShow

“#PawneeForever” @parksandrecnbc

“I can’t wait until robots are able to mimic human expressions so I can buy one for my face.” @nathanfielder

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Fletcher and Jackie Woodburne - who played Karl and Susan Kennedy on the popular show - were major influences on his acting career.

Speaking about the duo, Redmayne said: “I think they’re amazing. I’m a huge fan of them from old. I’ve learnt a lot from them from watching them daily.”

SOlid ENTERTAiNMENT PROUdly PRESENTS

SHARON VAN ETTEN plus special guest RObERT ScOTT (the Clean and The Bats)

“the master of her craft” - The Times “every song strikes a direct hit” - The Guardian “the work of a modern day master” - NME “having toured with The National through Europe and across the United States with Nick cave and the bad Seeds, Van Etten has often left audiences spellbound” - NZ Herald “one of the best albums of the year.....a great songwriter, a wonderful performer. Magnificent” - Off The Tracks NZ “confirms how breathtaking Sharon Van Etten’s songwriting and singing has become” - Under The Radar NZ “the singers voice is the sort that seeps into your soul and stays there” - The Sun “she turns in the performance of a lifetime, she gives everything and its impossible to be unmoved” - NOW “proving her mettle as a singular songwriter not afraid to hold hot coals with bare hands” - Uncut

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‘ARE WE THERE’ - VOTED AN ALBUM OF 2014 A MUST SEE ARTIST FOR 2015

REN KIRK

SHARON VAN ETTEN

SINCE RELEASING HER debut album Because I Was in Love in 2009, Sharon Van Etten has established herself as a vocalist capable of imbuing each note with a spectrum of feeling, crafting melodies and harmonies that feel nearly unprecedented. She writes about the highs and lows of romance and the contortions of her heart, displaying a penchant for wrenching turns of phrase, as her voice sashays between brave and broken, dogged and defiant – often within the same line – disclosing her darkest moments.

Van Etten started singing as a child, mostly in choirs: “I loved being part of a group of people that created beautiful songs, and how no person’s part was bigger than any other.” As a teenager she played guitar and wrote a journal, which led to songwriting. “Those early songs were really innocent. I was like 15. I had lyrics like, ‘Every time I look you in the eyes/I wanna rip them out and hang them in the sky’.

I was listening to Weezer and I thought I was hilarious.”

powerful effort yet. Writing from a place of honesty and vulnerability, she creates a bond with the listener, something few contemporary musicians achieve.

“Sometimes I worry my songs are too emotional, I fear that I’m not really helping people; if it was just these therapy sessions of mine I wouldn’t share them with the world … that would be a little self-indulgent,” she quickly adds.

Her therapy sessions are not just about writing, as Van Etten explains how profoundly performing affects her: “It’s always cathartic; sometimes I’ll cry during songs. Cause they’re intense songs and I still feel emotions for those times…” she pauses momentarily, “It’s like looking back at a photo album of a friend who passed away and if I don’t feel anything about a song I won’t perform it.”

The now 34-year-old singer-songwriter has developed her skills and is no stranger to voicing her feelings. Through her saturnine folksy indie-rock songs, she has become wellknown for the emotive qualities of her singing and lyrics. “Writing is a form of therapy for me, because it’s usually when I’m going through a hard time,” she says.

Continuing in this vein, Van Etten confesses a certain strangeness in people knowing more about her: “It’s a weird thing, but I’m not an enigma and I don’t want to be. I hate it when people feel like they need to put artists on pedestals. I’m a human being, there is a person behind the songs.” But in equal measure she values the intimacy and relishes the opportunities her music presents: “There’s something beautiful in being able to share with people and to not feel alone. Because everyone has their own darkness and their own story.”

While she’s never shied away from wearing her heart on her sleeve, Van Etten’s Are We There (2014) still manages to reach a new emotional apex and is her most successful and

It’s this self-awareness and acceptance of life’s ups and downs that make Van Etten’s music so unique, as she makes feeling feelings legit; it’s okay to be emotional, it’s okay to be fucked

up. It’s good to have depth and to care. More than in her earlier records these sentiments seem most present in Are We There, a great tribute to love and being unafraid in love and screaming at the other person to just fucking fall already; then, the concomitant feeling, the fear of falling. “I like that outlook,” she responds. “Because yeah it’s a journey, being in love with someone,… it’s a beautiful thing, and it’s not all the time. But that’s real.”

Singing of the nature of desire, memory, emptiness, of promises and loyalty, fear and change, violence and sanctuary, waiting and silence, Van Etten is an artist who speaks with a true voice, urging us to take hold and to take responsibility. As she writes about reconciling the different things a person might need or want in a relationship, she also acknowledges the struggle to determine what can be endured and what needs to be excised. This is not simple maths, because the parts that feel good and the parts that feel bad aren’t always easy to identify, or to untangle: “You like it when I let you walk over me/You tell me that you like it,” Van Etten sings in ‘Your Love Is Killing Me’.

After all the heart surgery, the album’s closer, ‘Every Time the Sun Comes Up’, asks cheekily, “People say I’m a one-hit wonder/But what happens when I have two?” Define “hit” as you like, but that she’s a wonder there’s no doubt.

SEE HER LIVE: SHARON VAN ETTEN

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THU 12 MAR THE KINGS ARMS, AUCKLAND FRI 13 MAR BODEGA, WELLINGTON SAT 14 MAR WUNDERBAR, LYTTLETON SUN 15 MAR CHICKS HOTEL, DUNEDIN

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NICK COLLINGS

THIS MONTH IN CLUBL AND FOR EXTENDED INTERVIEWS CHECK OUT RIPITUP.CO.NZ/CLUBLAND

DRO CAREY Coming up in electronic music, who was your DJ/producer hero?

It’s kind of hard to say. I’ve tended to consume music pretty erratically and download mixes from a diverse range of DJs. I like to keep it moving – constantly discovering new artists and DJs - and that applied when I was younger too I’d say. Going way back, I’d say DJ Shadow was one of the first artists that put me onto DJ’ing period. Obviously I found his tracks amazing, but then listening to his sets, the way he presented older music and such a range of music in them… that was probably my first exposure to a DJ that wasn’t getting up there and illustrating the coolest things happening in their scene, but selecting tracks based on extremely personal taste, beyond specific genre or scene

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boundaries. And that’s been an important influence ever since.

What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?

Currently, I’m most interested in the engineering and mix down side of things. It’s an area where I’ve developed more so over the years than the writing itself. Discussing different setups and monitors with other producers, trialling the same track on different speaker brands, different club systems, testing out different mastering studios and approaches… currently I’m really interested in the creative boost that the awareness of sonic clarity can give you.

What track of yours do you recommend to people who have never heard your music before?

Either ‘Sanatorium’ from the Vital Trails EP, or ‘Mammal Tank’ from the new EP – both of those show Dro tracks at their

heaviest and darkest, but also hopefully at their catchiest as well.

unbeatable. Never underestimate the importance of the support artists and DJs.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m working on a follow up EP with Greco-Roman. I write music for contemporary live dance as well and I’m working on some new projects with my collaborator, choreographer Patric Kuo. I also have some releases in the works under my other electronic production alias, Tuff Sherm… and some remixes in the pipeline as well.

2014 was the year of “EDM”, 2015 will be the year of…?

The goat, according to the Lunar calendar.

Are there any DJ/producers you have met that are nothing like how you thought they would be?

In general it’s actually kind of funny how much they are in fact exactly as I thought they’d be, and how frequently it’s a pretty spot-on reflection of my own personality. I guess it attracts a certain kind of person. There’s been a few guys – and I think people have probably thought this about me, too – who have been significantly less ‘dark’ than their music would suggest.

Which is generally a relief.

Most memorable DJ moment to date?

My most memorable moments are actually all from when I’ve opened/warmed up for another artist because I find these the most challenging and most rewarding sets. For example, playing before Jamie XX, Modeselektor or Karl Bartos from Kraftwerk… The crowd isn’t there for you so you really need to deliver and at the same time, not over-step where the intensity should be at that stage of the night. When you pull this off and “convert” a large portion of the crowd that didn’t know you from Adam, the feeling is really

What are your thoughts on the current commercialism of dance music in the world right now?

It feels like there’s always been and always will be enough good music out there that it doesn’t really concern me… The “underground,” if that is still the appropriate term for it, remains something that moves, cultivates and evolves much faster than the bureaucratic world of hit-making.

I like the idea of turning around something in two weeks that is deeply and solidly received by 200 people over working on something for two years that (might) be forced upon two million people. Yes you may not have the money of the latter… but I think there’s something supremely satisfying in being part of something that moves quickly.

What’s the musical equivalent of the G-Spot?

Getting two tracks locked and blending them perfectly, but not computer perfectly, still guided by your human sense of the relationship between them…

That has a very specific feel to it and can’t be faked, so I’d say that.

And finally, do you think Paternity Insurance is an essential item on the road?

I had to Google that. And now I’m a bit worried about the world.

SEE HIM DJ: DRO CAREY (AU) FRI 20 MAR: CASSETTE NINE, AUCKLAND

game I would say. So it’s a pretty big deal.

LTJ BUKEM Born Danny Williamson, LTJ Bukem is widely recognised to be one of the leading figures in the genre of atmospheric or intelligent drum and bass, a title he isn’t too comfortable with.

He was trained as a classical pianist and discovered jazzfusion in his teenage years before getting behind a set of turntables in the late 80’s. It was however as a producer in the 90’s that LTJ forged a name for himself with the seminal classics ‘Demon’s Theme’ (1992), ‘Atlantis’ and ‘Music’ (1993). It was in 1995 that he rose to new levels of popularity with ‘Horizons’. A track that combined Kurtis Blow drums, a Lemon Sol riff and inspired vocal from the Maya Angelou 1993 Bill Clinton Inauguration

to create a liquid anthem. This lead to the expansion of his own label Looking Good Records, an Essential Mix and the first compilation series of its kind in Logical Progression. With Looking Good as its outlet LTJ Bukem has played a part in the careers of Blu Mar Ten, Peshay, Blame, Source Direct and more.

In 1996 his label rewrote how compilations were done again with the Earth series showcasing a range of mid-tempo musical styles from hip hop, lounge, jazz and house music. From there LTJ Bukem continues touring and brings his soulful sound to audiences the world over.

What have you got coming out on Viper soon?

We have just finalised a four track EP due out late March/ April. I have had five or so tunes come out on Viper over the last few years. This is the first full Trei EP with Viper Recordings and that will be my first release as an exclusive artist.

What can the people expect from this new EP? I’m a guitar player you could say by trade so a lot of the stuff I do doesn’t necessarily have guitars in it but a lot of it comes from that, so it’s a bit more on the rock tip, with a very melodic sensibility to it. I still like harder

Since 2005 Wellingtonian Trei has worked hard garnishing his tunes to be played by the biggest names in drum and bass. He has released two albums and to kick off 2015 he’s got himself a game changer.

Are there any plans to follow up your 2013 album Satellites with a new Trei album in the future?

There definitely is. That’s what we’re working towards. After this EP, we’re working on some singles, probably two or three singles and then hopefully have an album done and dusted and ready to unleash. I’d imagine the end of 2015, start of 2016.

SEE HIM DJ: TREI SAT 07 MAR JAMES SMITH BASEMENT, WELLINGTON

:

SEE HIM DJ LTJ BUKEM (UK FRI 13 MAR: MONTE CRISTO ROOM, AUCKLAND SAT 14 MAR: GLEN FALLOCH STATION, CHRISTCHURCH

TURNING THE TABLES WITH… A GUY CALLED GERALD

TREI

music, the music that I normally listen to outside of drum and bass are things like your Nine Inch Nails, Deftones, Tool and that sort of thing. There is definitely a heavier element to it.

Late February you got some major news, it’s time to let the cat of the bag…

Well the big news on campus would be that I’ve just signed exclusively to the mighty Viper Recordings, which is a record label run by Matrix & Futurebound in the UK. It would be one of the top labels in the

1. Born Gerald Rydel Simpson on 16 February 1967, in Manchester, England, is a British musician, record producer and DJ. 2. Was one of the founding members of early Acid House act 808 State.

3. Was an avid break dancer in the 80’s.

4. His track ‘Voodoo Ray’ is credited as one of the first acid house tracks to chart reaching Number 12 in the UK in 1989.

5. The vocal used for ‘Voodoo Ray’ actually says “Voodoo Rage” but the sampler he used didn’t have enough memory.

6. Has remixed David Bowie, The Stone Roses, Black Uhuru, Tricky, Lamb, The Orb Finley Quaye and more.

7. Established Juice Box Records which ran from 1992 to 1998.

8. Has also gone by the aliases Inertia, The Ricky Rouge, K.G.B. and The 2G’s (with Goldie).

9. Has released nine albums between 1989 and 2013.

10. His album Black Secret Technology (1995) is regarded as the first full-length Jungle album ever released.

SEE HIM DJ: A GUY CALLED GERALD (UK) SAT 21 MAR CASSETTE NINE, AUCKLAND

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ST YLE LIKE BJORK

Karen Walkwe Eyewear ‘Praise Maker’: $349 karenwalker.com | Asos ‘Sequin Drawstring Bag’: $18 asos.com Douglas & Bec ‘Swan for Kate Sylvester’: $135 shop.katesylvester.com | Georgia Alice ‘Beam Skirt’: $414 blackboxboutique.co.nz Asos ‘Sequin Fringe Dress’: $156 asos.com | M.A.C Cosmetics ‘Chartreuse Pigment’ $30 maccosmetics.co.nz NYMPHETS ‘Welcome to Paradise’ Collection: nymphets.co.nz | Adidas Originals ‘Honey Metallic Trainers’: $114 asos.com Superette ‘Seed Lights: 27 Strands’: $159 superette.co.nz

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ST YLE LIKE POKEY L AFARGE

Moscot Eyewear ‘Lemtosh’: $419 Black Box Boutique | Crane Bothers Pocket Square: $95 crane-brothers.com Crane Brothers ‘Fumagelli Veleso Fox Tie’: $225 crane-brothers.com | Gentleman’s Brand Co ‘Daily Regime Pack’: $95 crane-brothers.com The Brothers ‘Hoffman bag: $295 thebrothers.co.nz | Gubb & Mackvie ‘Vauxhall Jacket’: crane-brothers.com Fantastic Man ‘Issue no.20’: $35 magnation.com | Kookai ‘Michigan Fedora’: $60 kookai.com Vanishing Elephant ‘Derby’: $295 blackboxboutique.com | Mr Bigglesworthy ‘Morgan Armchair’: $2,400 mrbigglesworthy.co.nz Simon James Concept Store ‘Cube Planter’: $39 store.simonjamesdesign.co.nz

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GADGETS

What | Petcube Why You Need This | Petcube is a gadget for pet owners, that allows you to watch, talk and play laser games with cats and dogs through the mobile app anytime, anywhere! (watch the video on the website) Where To Get It | petcube.com: $199 USD

What | The Brothers ‘Leather Cord Taco’ Why You Need This | If nothing grinds you more than getting your headphones in a twist, then you need this! The cord taco keeps your headphones/cords/tape measures from getting tangled and looks good doing it.

Where To Get It | thebrothers.co.nz: enquire

What | Quitbit Why You Need This | Want to quit smoking but just don’t know how?

Then you need this! Quitbit is a lighter that tracks all your smoking. It has a built in display and can wirelessly connect to the Quitbit app on your phone to provide feedback so you can make healthier decisions.

Where To Get It | preorder @ quitbitlighter.com: $99USD

What | Parrot Flower Power Why You Need This | Are you a plant killer? Then you need this! In a pot or in the ground, the Parrot Flower Power monitors and analyzes the four parameters essential to your plant’s health. Flower Power detects when your attention is needed, sending a notification to your smartphone or tablet which uses Bluetooth Smart to sync to Flower Power.

Where To Get It | www.amazon.com $55USD

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PLAYING FAVOURITES

ALEX LOUISE OPHELIA Favourite drink?

Vanilla thickshakes.

Favourite restaurant/café?

Lot 23 – never ending wifi!!!

Favourite takeaway?

Thai and pizza. Together if possible.

Favourite colour?

Blue.

Favourite classic film?

Wizard of Oz. Favourite childhood memory?

My brother’s “farting break dance” at the family Christmas talent show. We got it on film.

Favourite party food?

French fancies – throwback to tea parties in the UK. Favourite vice?

Fat pants at inappropriate times.

Favourite song?

Currently the Marian Hill remix of ‘Human’ by Aquilo.

Favourite meal?

Anything my flatmates cook me that doesn’t involve mushrooms Favourite cause?

Anything dog related - SPCA

Favourite label to put on your relationship?

Infatuated.

Favourite ‘90s TV show?

Friends.

Favourite word?

Blimp.

Favourite album?

Alt J – awesome wave.

Favourite type of groupie?

Groupies with pizza.

Favourite body part on you?

Eyebrows.

Favourite body part on someone else?

Bums. Always.

Favourite venue?

A 2-man tent in my garden.

Favourite candy bar?

Twirl. It’s a tidy flake Favourite current TV show?

Utopia.

Tuesday Night Double Feature NEW VIDEO: ‘PLAY WITH ME’ NEW EP: INVISIBLE OUT FRI 13 MAR PHOTO CREDIT MILANA RADOJČIĆ

Led Zeppelin ‘Greatest Hits’ plus Pink Floyd ‘Wish You Were Here’ 8PM / 10 MAR / 17 MAR / 24 MAR

$35 R18 Includes two glasses of wine and a snack.

BOOK NOW AT STARDOME.ORG.NZ / 09 624 1246

ANDREW JOHNSTONE

ANTHONIE TONNON

I ANNOUNCED TO the office that I was going to interview Anthonie Tonnon and asked if anyone knew anything about him. The editor informed me that “he was handsome, welldressed and charming.”

I put this to him the next day and he laughs, “I don’t know what I’m doing but I am going to keep on doing it.”

Tonnon hails from Dunedin and moved to Auckland in 2010 in search of opportunity.

“After a while I began to realise that no matter what I did in Dunedin it didn’t matter anywhere else and if I was ever going to make something of myself as a musician I needed to change towns. Let’s face it, Auckland is the gateway to the world.”

While he is very grateful the opportunities that Auckland has offered him he still feels like an outsider, even after five years.

“My first Auckland summer was the best summer I have ever experienced but it’s a complicated place to fit in to and get to know.

In Dunedin you can stand on a high hill and take in the whole city in a single view. You can’t do that with Auckland.” Otherwise Tonnon struggles with the city’s obsession with economic status and finds touring an affirming respite from Auckland’s moneydriven culture. “The rest of the country has different priorities and it’s good to get out on the road and be reminded of this.”

I ask about the new album, which I say sounds a little like Supertramp. He laughs and says that growing up, his family’s car only had three cassettes in it: Supertramp’s Greatest Hits, The Best of Vanessa May and the Phil

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Collins classic Face Value.

from his deft and often wry observations.

“We listened to the same music over and over and it seeped in.” It amuses him because I am not the first one to pick out this influence.

“Frankly Supertramp was not on our radar at all when we were recording but it came out anyway and people have been noticing.”

Lou Reed’s Berlin has been a big influence on the new album. “It’s a very dark album, so dark that it becomes joyous. It is filled with so much pathos that it becomes bathos, so sad that it becomes ludicrous. I really love the way Reed can put so much action into his songs and I love the way he construct his choruses to advance the narrative rather than drive the song.”

I suggest there is also something of ‘80s synth pop about Successor. “Yes,” agrees Tonnon.

“A while back I watched a BBC documentary about Krautrock and its influence on ‘80s synth pop bands like Human League and I really got into the music for a while.”

Tonnon is indubitably a musical kleptomaniac who takes it all in and reworks it in unique ways. The track ‘Songs of our Youth’, from the new album, addresses the flow of music through the generations with its clever and insightful pastiche of references that takes in the Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Kinks and yes, Supertramp.

This proclivity for exploring and re-examining the musical past comes as no surprise as Tonnon’s degree at Otago centred on history.

It wasn’t until 2008 that he started to take the music more seriously. “I came to music late but when I did I realised that I had made the right decision for myself.” His first band was Tono and the Finance Company, who quickly attracted a loyal audience who have reliably turned up for gigs and helped him to make it all happen.

Bowie’s Krautrock-influenced Berlin trilogy (Low, Lodger and Heroes), also plays a bit part in Tonnon’s musical “inner life”. “They are the albums that just keep giving. Strange and odd and endlessly fascinating.”

Tonnon is part of the contemporary Kiwi indie movement and identifies with artists like Lawrence Arabia and Liam Finn and we chat for a moment about the scene.

“It’s definitely a male-dominated scene that has issues with women operating in it and is slow about encouraging girls.” He cites Amelia Murray who goes under the name of Fazerdaze, a “bedroom” recording artist/ producer with a growing reputation. “She is a great guitarist with excellent production skills that largely go unrecognised because she does not fit the right profile. Kiwi girls are world beaters in pop but we struggle with the less commercial-orientated female artists.”

HEAR THE FULL INTERVIEW ON RIP IT UP RADIO: SOUNDCLOUD.COM/RIP-IT-UP-RADIO

The new album was written and rehearsed while out on the road and has a definite sense of movement about it as it passes an eye across the NZ cultural landscape, drawing out story

SEE HIM LIVE: ANTHONIE TONNON SEE TOURS AND EVENTS FOR DATES NEW ALBUM: SUCCESSOR OUT FRI 06 MAR

FILM REVIEWS

LAURA WEASER

DIRECTED BY: SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON STARRING: DAKOTA JOHNSON & JAMIE DORNAN

* ***

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY It’s one of the year’s biggest box-office successes and, let’s be honest, no matter what the reviews say you’ll have to see it just because you need to know what all the fuss is about.

So let me tell you what you’re in for for nearly

three hours - if you’re looking for a comedy, packed with more awkward moments than a Jim Carrey flick and more weird sex than Showgirls, you’ve come to the right place. To the credit of the Bafta-nominated director and her notuntalented-oh-so-pretty cast, they didn’t have

great material to work with from the get-go.

Based on a Twilight fanfiction that women over 30 went strangely gaga about, Fifty Shades… reads more like EL James’ school creative writing assignment than a credible novel. Weird dialogue, a full-on creepy dude who stalks the object of his desire and sub-par sex scenes – it was never going to be a winner. Take it as it comes, and you might actually find you enjoy yourself. For the first half, that is, where the dialogue is so passable that it had me in tears of laughter. But once the highly anticipated 20 minutes of sex and spanking dies down, you’ll quickly be asking for the ending to come as things go from bearable to boring. Jamie Dornan is good looking, no doubt, but there’s an air of serial killer from his The Fall days that he just can’t shake as he lurks around Anastasia.

Which brings us to the leading lady herself – Dakota Johnson, relatively unknown, does an amazing job with what was simply a Kristen Stewart-Bella rewrite. Bringing credible depth and humour, she makes Anastasia likeable. But sadly, she can’t save the show.

DIRECTED BY: THE WACHOWSKIS DIRECTED BY: RICHARD LINKLATER

STARRING: CHANNING TATUM. MILA KUNIS & EDDIE REDMAYNE

JUPITER ASCENDING From the Wachowski siblings comes a film so bizarre and pointless, it’ll have you huddled in a ball crying out for The Matrix.

Okay, a little extreme perhaps, as Jupiter Ascending clearly has great intentions. It starts as a grand, unique, interesting concept – everyday gal Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) spends her days in poverty, cleaning toilets and hoping for an adventure. So she gets one, when she’s whisked off her feet by half-human, half-wolf Caine (Channing Tatum), who reveals that the universe isn’t as simple as she thought. This grand plan, complete with an intergalactic corporation and a space royal family, quickly falls into sci-fi and rom-com clichés as the writers/

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** **

directors probably realised they were in too deep and needed to bail out to keep it a commercial blockbuster. Visually, this is a real treat. Best experienced loud and large, IMAX was the perfect platform to show off not only Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis’ flawless features, but also the vast space of, well, space. That said, CGI gets the better of them in fast-paced fight sequences, and the best action scenes are when they go back to good old fashioned hand-to-hand combat.

Amid Oscars season where movies are getting praised left right and centre for creativity and execution, Jupiter Ascending fails to make the grade on both counts.

The best part? Channing Tatum’s partial abs. Enjoy.

STARRING: ELLAR COLTRANE & PATRICIA ARQUETTE

BOYHOOD (DVD) Narrowly missing out on the Best Picture Oscar, don’t let that discourage you from giving this a watch. Filmed over a 12-year period (an incredible feat on technicality alone that should be an incentive to check it out), director Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise) explores the pain, joy and everything inbetween that comes with growing up, from six to 18 years old. Follow the world through the eyes of Mason Evans, Jr (Ellar Coltrane) as he lives with his single mother Olivia in Texas, struggling to understand her personal battle that is trying to raise two kids. His absentee father (played by Ethan Hawke) shows up on the scene and fails to reconnect with them, spawning

*****

a complex series of events over the next 12 years. Some might argue it’s like watching grass grow, but if that’s the case this patch of lawn is growing, failing, picking itself up again and trying to find its way in the world. The key to the film’s success is the core cast, with Oscar Winner Patricia Arquette delivering an outstanding performance as single mum Olivia. Ethan Hawke, once the grimy ex-husband of Uma Thurman, also delivers a stand-out display. A nostalgic time capsule of the mid-2000s and complemented with a fitting melodic soundtrac. This is one any parent or child alike with find simultaneously heart-warming and heart-breaking.

C HAPPIE Weaver) warns him against it, fearing it’s a step too far and prefers, instead, to concentrate on the money-making scouts.

Deon defies his boss and downloads the program into the “body” of a damaged scout.

Deon and his machine are then kidnapped by a desperate criminal gang – Ninja and Yo-Landi.

Blomkamp, who wrote the script with his partner, Terri Tatchell, had already used a robot similar in design for a spoof TV commercial and in 2004, made a short film, Tetra Vaal, again featuring a Chappiestyle machine.

NEILL BLOMKAMP WAS well aware that he was asking a lot of his close friend, actor Sharlto Copley, when he offered him the eponymous role in his eagerly awaited new action thriller Chappie.

The director has been friends with Copley for two decades and they have worked together on both of Blomkamp’s previous films District 9 and Elysium.

But Chappie was different – very different. Copley would be required to deliver a performance quite unlike any other during his career. He would have to play the world’s first sentient robot.

“So the reference I kept giving him was that you can have eightyear-old chess geniuses that can beat 50-year-old men around the block on a mathematical chess logic level but have nowhere near the emotional maturity that the 50-year-old man has,” he says.

“What Sharlto did with that is the stand-out thing in the movie.

Chappie is the character that you leave the theatre thinking about because he is this lovable, ultrabizarre savant being – so Sharlto pulled it off.”

On screen, Copley is unrecognisable. But beneath that robot exterior his movement and voice – his performance – bring Chappie to life.

Chappie is an action-packed thriller set in the near future with an all-star cast that includes Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel, Sigourney Weaver and South African rap-rave artists Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er of Die Antwoord.

Patel plays Deon, a brilliant engineer with a weapons manufacturer and the brains behind a revolutionary new force of droids – known as “scouts” – used by the South African police.

Secretly, Deon has been working on a prototype for the world’s first sentient robot but his boss, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney

“When I was writing Elysium somewhere around 2010 and 2011, I was listening to Die Antwoord and in the process of writing the other script, and just having them in my consciousness I wrote this treatment for Chappie that just kind of came out of nowhere.”

“I had this idea for a robot that was raised by this band and it was pretty fully-formed. I kind of vaguely based the design of the robot from the short. The short is tied to Chappie but it’s not the genesis of it.”

“I wanted to make a film about the idea of sentience and consciousness being something that ultimately lies in any form, especially in the future, and I was interested in how we, as humans, would interact with or treat something that was sentient, that wasn’t us. And how would it view itself,” says Blomkamp.

The result is a gripping action thriller laced with humour and featuring a unique character unlike anything audiences have seen before. For Blomkamp, filming spectacular shoot-outs and car chases featuring ‘droids

and the giant Moose robot was, he says, “thrilling and fun.”

He was also blessed with an A-list cast. “I met Dev and I felt that he had every single attribute the character had; he is young and energetic and very smart and also very analytical and questioning. I also felt that Deon needed to be a character that the audience really liked and it’s impossible not to like Dev. I was very happy with him on every level.”

“I don’t remember how early I came up with the idea of Hugh for Vincent but it was the same as with Dev. “Hugh is Australian so I thought ‘let him speak in his native accent’ and on top of that I wanted to kind of push the Australian thing further and make him larger than life. There are a lot of similarities between South Africa and Australia, I think.

“Working with him was so awesome. I would work with that guy on every movie I do for the rest of my life if I could. He is so collaborative and so talented – he is a director’s dream.”

Working with Sigourney Weaver, the twice Oscar-nominated film legend, was an absolute pleasure, he says.

“I was very interested to see how the crew responded to her,” he says. “A lot of the South African crew were really star-struck, which was quite interesting.

But she is just a total beauty to work with – she’s absolutely awesome.”

IN CINEMAS THU 12 MAR

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ALBUM REVIEWS **** BOB DYLAN SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT (SONY MUSIC)

I saw Bob Dylan for the first time last year. With a warm and inviting atmosphere, the layout was such that even from way up the back it seemed like Dylan was within hands reach. The vocal were ragged and fragile and not always easy to listen to which the exact state we find them in his new album, Shadows in the Night, a collection of standards from the great American songbook that have at one time or another been recorded by Frank Sinatra. Dylan is a songwriter/singer who, while

IBEYI IBEYI

*** *

(XL)

Cuban twins Naomi and LisaKaindé Díaz are only 20, though their exotic faces already look haunted by life. These young women are the daughters of the late percussionist Miguel Díaz of the highly respected Cuban ensemble, Buena Vista Social Club, and on ‘Think Of You’, he is eulogised with his own sound samples. Ibeyi seem to be attempting to conjure the ghosts of the spirit world on their selftitled debut. But as intoxicating as it is in parts, the record is almost side-tracked at times by its clear vocal and musical debt to Bjork, together with a sound palette that’s not just minimalist, but skimps on variety (which is, as we know, is the spice of life). I got bored with every song featuring the same raw electronic percussion and echoed piano, but a track like ‘River’, played in isolation, shows their potential: passionate, incantatory and brimming with baptismal drama.

GARY STEEL

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DŸSE DAS NATION

*** *

DARLIA PETALS

*****

he has none of Sinatra’s vocal finesse, does understand how to deliver to a great lyric and serve a melody. Man ageing pop stars, Rod Stewart for one, have turned to the great American songbook for inspiration, but like many, his efforts lack the authenticity that Dylan and his fine band have brought to these glorious tracks.

ANDREW JOHNSTONE

SONGHOY BLUES ***** MUSIC IN EXILE

(CARGO)

(MATADOR)

(TRANSGRESSIVE)

Jarii Van Gohl and Andrej Dietrich perform a lean kind of punk influenced heavy rock/metal hybrid that takes the heavy riffing and roaring anger of Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman into Teutonic territory. Add to that a propensity for repetitive guitar figures hotwired from the 1980s version of King Crimson, and a nutty sense of humour, and Das Nation starts to take form. At their least impressive, DŸSE sound a bit thin, like they’re two guys trying to do the work of four, but at their best, as on the six-minute ‘Spinne’, they go into these weird vocal routines that confound as much as they entertain. Not understanding the words is frustrating because, at heart, I can’t help but feel that there’s a thread of theatrical, gonzo comedy tempering the malevolent rage, a bit of Viv from the Young Ones acting out a Johnny Rotten.

Or maybe I’m just dreaming.

How novel - an eight-track mini-album from a trio of grunge revivalists from Blackpool, England. With two acoustic demos tacked on the end, it’s probably premature to consider this as Darlia’s definitive manifestation, but Petals is a mildly intriguing proposition for all those legions of fans who have always yearned for some kind of crash collision between bratty Britpop and Nirvana.

Naturally, they do that dynamic contrast thing where the verse is relatively poptastic and melodic and the chorus is an over-amped attack of coiled rage, but the interest is in how different their version of grunge is from the American model. During the noisy bits, for instance, singersongwriter Nathan Day’s vocals are virtually lost in the guitar scree and catapulting slam of the bass and drums, bringing to mind UK noisy boys like Jesus & Mary Chain and others of that ilk.

To the casual observer, Malian music can sound much of a muchness. Whether it’s the rural blues of Ali Farka Touré or the desert grooves of Timbuktu group Tinariwen, as with early blues and 1970s reggae, there’s an essential template and it’s not the goalposts that are moved, just incremental variations within. And so it is with the debut of Songhoy Blues which literally is a dusty, raw kind of blues-based music where the rhythmic template is consistent.

The variations are mostly in the way the ensemble vocal melodies iterate themselves like chants or incantations, and the few bars in which the electric guitar is allowed to extemporise. Despite the pointless presence of Damon Albarn on one track the recording is a largely straightforward performance of 11 songs that are as infectious and danceable as the very moment blues had a baby and called it rock and roll.

GARY STEEL

GARY STEEL

GARY STEEL

ANDREW JOHNSTONE

MODEST MOUSE then he asks how it is we have managed to create this place.

“This is a big question,” I say, “and we have to talk about the new album.”

“Um,” he says, “I don’t want to say to much about that. I don’t want to tell the fans what it’s all about. They can figure it out for themselves, all I want to say that we really like it.”

He steers me back to NZ.

ISAAC BROCK MODEST MOUSE ARE unlikely superstars, but superstars they are.

Their 2004 album Good News For People Who Love Bad News went platinum. 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank peaked at number one on the mainstream American album charts and sold a truckload.

Modest Mouse is an unorthodox juxtaposition of conflicting sounds that defy easy categorisation. Their sound is melodic and jagged, strange and beautiful. It is deft pop and alt-rock carved from the mists of the Pacific North West.

has been unconventional.

His is an unlikely career; an alt-music aficionado with liberal progressive tendencies, a drifter and former street kid, he should be playing to small crowds and selling albums in the thousands. Instead it’s stadiums and platinum trophy disks.

I ask him about what it is that makes Modest Mouse work. Isaac speaks for a moment before saying he doesn’t really know.

“I am thinking of moving my family to NZ,” he says suddenly changing the subject. “I have heard it’s real good down there?”

Isaac Brock’s affected vocal style and guitar experiments bring to mind a New Zealand equivalent, Phil Judd (Split Enz, The Swingers, Schnell Fenster) and there is another NZ connection with something of 80’s and 90’s Flying Nun about the whole Modest Mouse sound.

I agree that it is.

A remarkably down to earth kind of guy, Brock is not interested in strict 20 minute interview slots. He prefers the organic approach, which probably explained why the young lady who was coordinating the interview schedule sounded so exhausted.

“We don’t have too much of that here,” I explain. ” Kiwis aren’t very religious. We are pretty secular in our views.”

“I am an unconventional guy,” he tells me, but I already know that. I have heard his music. His side project Ugly Casanova is, as he describes, “Modest Mouse without the democracy.” Here he gets to do whatever he wants, and without band-mates to temper him, he flies off into space. He is unconventional all right, his music is unconventional and his life

Isaac was bought up in a fundamentalist Christian community, hated it and continues to hate the “ignorant” brand of conservative Christianity that pervades so much of American life.

He asks about our politics. I tell him that we have a conservative government at the moment but that our “republicans”, The National Party, are more like moderate democrats. “Kiwis”, I explained, “are generally a fair-minded bunch with a ‘live and let live’ attitude who harbour a distrust of extremism.”

We talk about social healthcare and the Maori/ Pakeha relationship and the ongoing efforts to rehabilitate the indigenous environment and

“Okay”, I say, “The Maori cut a sharp deal with the British government way back when, promising them full participation in the new society. That has kind of informed us as a people ever since, a spirit of co-operation.

We look out for each other and care about the greater good.”

He seems satisfied for the moment so I ask about a track off the new album, the song ‘Coyotes’ and in particular the line: “Mankind behaves like a serial killer, giant old monsters afraid of the sharks”.

“Is the song about the genocide we are waging against the species of the earth?”

Again, he’s reluctant to say, but does express a profound love for nature. He has spent a lot of time in the Pacific North West and as a young drifter often lived off the land. He was shocked at the way timber companies exploited the forests, turning them from complex ecosystems into plundered wasteland in the blink of an eye. The sight of this desecration has haunted him ever since.

“Do you think I could get into NZ, I mean is it really strict like it is here?” asks Isaac, off topic again.

I don’t know the answer to that but suggest he shouldn’t have too much trouble, especially if the new album sells as well as its predecessors.

“Yeah, the album,” he muses, ”Sorry to the fans about such a long gap between records.

We decided to build a recording studio and then we had learn how to use it and then we fiddled away. We could have just gone on forever refining the songs, but I realised that if we didn’t finish I would end up broke and living under a bridge again.” He laughs.

NEW ALBUM: STRANGER TO OURSELVES OUT FRI 17 MAR

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ALBUM REVIEWS BJÖRK VULNICURA

*****

(ONE LITTLE INDIAN)

Brutal. The grieving process, the healing process, followed later by the guilt and shame inherent in the public acknowledgement of that pain. As far as the “breakup album” goes, this is about as brutal and as stomach-churning as they come. Thanks a bunch, Björk. The dark ambient spaces that she has so expertly crafted throughout her career with the smallest of electronic shards are here in a stretched, scary form.

In this new landscape, they are populated with academic vocal harmonies, end-of-the-line lyric

*****

COLLEEN GREEN I WANT TO GROW UP (HARDLY ART)

I Want to Grow Up is for those of us still figuring out how to be adults; the awkwardness of our teenage years now replaced with the vicissitudes of responsibility, for yourself and for your actions.

With apt wisdom Green’s first outing with a full band maintains the modesty of her earlier records, the accompaniment is a wellmade bed for lyrics, defined by their wit and tender spirit. On the title track, the rote pop fetish for perpetual youth is inverted.

The comfort, security and routines of ageing are longed for.

‘TV’, a droll paean to the solace providing appliance of the lonely human is connected with a wink to the next song, ‘Pay Attention’, which laments a short attention span and diminished ability to multitask. It’s a charming piece of work about maturing without the tiresome, bleak attitude.

SAM WIECK

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*** *

*****

honesty, complex strings and the very occasional burst of pitch black glitch. Ever-so-lightly touched by Arca (FKA Twigs), Antony Hegarty and The Haxan Cloak, Vulnicura remains Björk’s very own controlled demolition of the loss of control. (Perhaps fitting then that the album’s very release was sans control, leaking a full two months early). Not necessarily pleasant, but perhaps just plain necessary.

SARAH THOMSON

*****

DRAKE IF YOU’RE READING THIS, IT’S TOO LATE

SCREAMING FEMALES ROSE MOUNTAIN

THE AQUADOLLS STOKED ON YOU

(DON GIOVANNI)

(BURGER)

(OVO SOUND)

Rose Mountain is a touch odd.

The core elements of a typical Screaming Females record are present and accounted for: Paternoster’s powerful chest register, Germanium fuzz guitar tones and considered yet unkempt solos; incredibly tight but not clinical rhythm playing from Messrs Dougherty and Abbate; the songwriting is as good as ever and there’s bonus points for great harmonies. But something isn’t right about the fancy new duds. The sleeves on the jacket are a little too short, the trousers a little too long. The production is so crisp it sucks some of the venom out of the performances, then corrects it with post-facto saturation. Unfortunately, the lumbering riff capping the intro of the title track feels like the last exciting moment on the record as the remainder lags. Rose Mountain is far from ugly, it just fits a little awkwardly.

Bubblegum fuzz-pop and malt shop dreamers by their own admission, The Aquadolls ply a very competent trade in SoCal beach guitar lines and Connie Francis cooing (if Connie Francis was into weed, skaters and Tumblr). There’s something a little goofy and wilfully idiotic (sorry) about Stoked On You that can’t help but be ultimately charming. After all, if you’re going to transplant the sometimes truly dippy qualities of squeaky sixties US teen pop, it’s probably best not to take yourselves too seriously (*cough* looking at you, post-2012 Bethany Cosentino *cough*). Misfires jostle pleasantly among the odd joyous earworm (‘Wander’). All things considered, each song possesses an appreciated knack for not dragging out a happily simple idea past its two-and-a-half minute welcome mark. Score: Two alien-head-emojis out of the pizza emoji. Or whatever, man.

There’s a strong chance that the number of people who can mouth along to a nominal amount of a Drake track (and a banger, mind) is greatly outnumbered by the number of people who could offer you up their favourite iteration of the “Drake The Type Of N*****” meme. Besides having holiday homes in the debates raging around ideals of masculinity and struggle within rap, Drake has significant property holdings within the wars of rap authenticity. So, what’s a scrutinized 28-yearold millionaire to do? Release a debatedly-dubbed “mixtape” as curious and conflicted as his cultural cachet, seems to be the answer. It’s no genre-thumbing, stonk/sob alternating Take Care, but IYRTITL does further and deepen the anxious, almost nauseating personal spaces that Drake and Noah ‘40’ Shebib (although personally seen less on

SAM WIECK

ON THE RECORD

MAKING TRACKS FUNDING DECISIONS FOR FEBRUARY 2015 NZ On Air will fund 20 new music projects from its February Making Tracks funding round.

Funding of up to $10,000 for each of the following Making Tracks projects in the November round, comprising up to $4,000 for recording a song and $6,000 for making a music video of that same song:

Stan Walker Weird Together – ‘Going Back To Trinidad’ ft. Rembunction

VIDEO ONLY Black River Drive – ‘Wake Up’ Coco Solid – ‘Slow Torture’ ft.

Disasteradio Dictaphone Blues ­– ‘Lance’s Tape’ Eden Mulholland – ‘River of Hurt’ Marlon Williams – ‘Hello Miss Lonesome’

RECORDING & VIDEO

WARREN (BRO) MAXWELL MUSICIAN & DAD Your house is on fire, what do save?

No brainer – I save my family… but pre-copulation would have been my Goldbeard acoustic guitar. Actually 20 years ago my flat did catch alight and I ran out in my dressing gown holding my Ibanez Artist thinline and my Selmer MKVI alto… the neighbour’s TV exploded!

Favourite ‘90s TV show?

Beverly Hills, 90210. Hard!!

Dream job as a kid?

Cameraman for Blondie videos…

First album?

Beat Street.

If you weren’t a musician, what would you be?

Mortgage free or a landscape gardener.

Ultimate festival line-up?

Joy Division, John Coltrane, Frazy Ford, Jimi Hendrix, Radiohead, Jesse Harper, The Cure, Pink Floyd, Geoffrey Gurrumul and Steely Dan. Who would play you in a film?

The seventh baboon on-call extra in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

How do you discover new music?

I usually discover new music through friends, of which many are musicians so we are constantly sharing YouTube links or albums.

Worst job you’ve had?

Doing my building apprenticeship I hated putting Pink Batts into a ceiling. What a shit job that one is!

Anna Coddington – ‘Release Me’ Arcee – ‘Rebound’ Charity Children – ‘Holy War’ Edward Waaka – ‘Crazy’ Ekko Park – ‘Validation’ Ginny Blackmore – ‘Under My Feet’ Hollie Smith – ‘Lady Dee’ Jackie Thomas – ‘Until The Last Goodbye’ Jon Lemmon – ‘When It Came Along’ Joseph & Maia – ‘Stay’ Lawrence Arabia – ‘Another Century’ The Veils – ‘Dark Rider’ Unknown Mortal Orchestra – ‘Can’t Keep Checking My Phone’ Vince Harder – ‘Find Love’ ft.

The seven independent broadcasting and music professionals on the February Making Tracks Panel were: Barnaby Weir [Producer; Wellington] Jeff Newton [NZ On Air; Auckland] Kiri Eriwata [The University of Auckland; Auckland] Leon Wratt [MediaWorks; Auckland] Lydia Jenkin [Time Out, NZ Herald; Auckland] Mike McClung [NZME; Auckland] Penny Blair [95bFM; Auckland]

Which song do you wish you wrote?

‘Lilac Wine’ by James Shelton.

Biggest fear?

Failure.

First gig in attendance?

Roger Fox Big Band, 1983, Whangarei Town Hall.

Any vices?

Cheap beer and workaholic.

Favourite lyric?

“Hey, hey manu moko, mokopuna warrior hunter.

Made to wear the corset dress by the Captain Litmus looking for grails. He paints his riri masterpiece with the colour trust on a Gemini canvas. We all know you’ve been hurt.” from the new TR song ‘Bully’.

NEW ALBUM: CITIZEN OUT FRI 13 MAR

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ANDREW JOHNSTONE

SHEP GORDON

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LEGENDARY TALENT MANAGER Shep Gordon is the subject of a new documentary film by comedian Mike Myers.

Supermensch hit the headlines recently when a drunk and rambling Johnny Depp presented Myers with the award for Best Documentary at the glittering Hollywood Film Awards.

Was Depp drunk or acting drunk? I didn’t have time to ask Gordon about this but I suspect it was all a stunt and attentionseeking stunts are what Gordon does.

He was still only 19 when he took on Alice Cooper and made him notorious. He didn’t know what he was doing which turned out to be a good thing. “I was right out of the box and it worked for me.”

“I brought this poor chicken along to a gig and threw it into the crowd. Alice knew nothing about it and we were both surprised when the audience tore it apart. Blood shot out everywhere. It was insane. I hadn’t thought it through but it worked.”

flashing, arm tightly around her waist.

“We arrived in a limo and as she got out she tore her dress. “Welch slides back into the car and says, ‘Shep, my dress is broken and you are going to have to hold it together for me.’

“So here I am at the Academy Awards, sweating nervous buckets because my arm is wrapped around the most beautiful movie star in Hollywood.”

His father, who had watched the whole thing on TV, rang him the next day to express his pride and admiration at his son’s achievement.

Only a couple of years before Gordon was making a living dealing pot. “A dangerous profession?” I prompted.

“Not really,” he replied. “Pot was not on the radar. I remember one day the cops knock at my door.

There’s a pound of weed sitting on my couch and all they care about is my car which is parked in the wrong place.”

The next day photos were in all the papers and a shocked nation wanted to know more about this crazy Alice Cooper guy.

It was through pot that he got to meet a certain crowd of musicians that included Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

A little while later the phone rang and a sultry female voice asked him if “he could do for her what he had done for that freak Cooper?”

“I would sell them pot and one day Jimi asked me what it was I do and I said I sell pot. He told me that I needed a cover story in case the cops got curious; ‘a cover story that accounts for the money’. That’s when he asked me if I was Jewish. Back then when a man asks you if you are Jewish your best option was to run, but Jimi was different so I said ‘Yes’.”

“Who could say no to Raquel Welch,” he says with a wry cackle. “Then she says to me, ‘I want you to be my Escort at the Academy Awards in four days’ time.’

‘Well, of course,’ I barked down the line.”

Suddenly there he is, bemused and bewildered and walking Raquel along the red carpet, crowds cheering and cameras

Hendrix looks at him and thinks for a moment before saying “If you are Jewish then you should be a manager.”

Gordon stumbled upon the struggling Alice Cooper a few

“So here I am at the Academy Awards, sweating nervous buckets because my arm is wrapped around the most beautiful movie star in Hollywood.”

days later and agreed to pay him $10 a week to tell people that that Gordon was his manager.

“Suddenly I was his manager, I hadn’t thought about it but now it occurred to me that perhaps I should actually do something, not that I thought I was a manager or knew what a manager did.”

Honour and integrity are not words often associated with the music business and Gordon muses for a while before saying that he has never done anything bad to his clients nor wanted ever wanted to.

He knows secrets but would never tell. That’s a given. He would never betray a client confidence nor seek to rip them off. It’s not in his nature.

He warns his clients, “this business might kill you, fame is dangerous,” and he often wonders at the moral dilemma of giving someone fame. “On one hand you’re giving them what they want but on the other hand you are aware that what you are offering is a mixed blessing.”

I cannot let the time slip by without a brief mention of Groucho Marx, a man I have admired since childhood. When Gordon became his manager, the frail old comedian was nearing his end. Despite his age related difficulties, Groucho remained intellectually sharp. “I couldn’t speak around him. Here’s this old man who is just so clever with words. What could I possibly say?” Gordon pauses then adds, “Words were his life.”

years and we talk about living in Polynesia. He mixes with the locals and enjoys Polynesian culture, “the real one, not the Disneyland version.” I ask him if he feels Polynesian and he replies that he would like to think so, “in a former life” before wondering if a Jewish Polynesian is thing.

He laughs.

He’s off to a Umu (hangi) the next day. With wild pig and deer hunted from the hills, it’s going to be a large familial gathering of friends and he’s looking forward to it.

He expects to die on Maui, but he’s not dead yet.

These days he manages celebrity chefs, a phenomenon he is credited with creating.

I tell him about my years in hospitality industry and my theory that chefs are by in large sociopathic narcissists.

“That was true for a long time but those days are gone. These days chefs study at culinary institutes and come into the workforce prepared and focused.

They are a lot more respectful of their staff and better team players.”

He goes on to say that the culinary arts are populated by all shades of personalities, and just like every other art suffers the rogues as well as the geniuses.

SUPERMENSCH: THE LEGEND OF SHEP GORDON IN SELECTED CINEMAS NOW VENDETTAFILMS.CO.NZ

Gordon has lived in Maui for 40

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TIM GRUAR

R AURY

A COUPLE OF years ago I had a chinwag with Aussie promoter Michael Chugg, who’s the brains and money behind St Jerome’s Laneway Festival.

He emphasised the value in the endless search for new music, bands and talent. By doing this, he reckoned, you can always stay young, hip and relevant.

And that’s important when there’s even more reason to feel saturated and jaded by avalanche of commercial music that seeks to bury us every day. So on to the stage this year, at least on the Australian leg of the Laneway tour, comes 19-year-old Raury.

Raury is a bit of an enigma.

He’s the sort of artist that record companies salivate over – accessible, edgy, alienating and familiar all at once. His debut Indigo Child will probably be shelved in the hip-hop section of your local digital record store but it’s really as far from that as Beck’s Mellow Gold once was.

Pigeonholing him would be about as hard as getting one of those fiddly tags on the legs of a bird. His stuff easily conjures

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up comparisons to Andre 3000, Bon Iver, Kid Cudi and Frank Ocean – all heroes of his. Then on the other hand he’s a bit like our wee Lorde Ella – down to earth, slightly folky, stripped back, honest, with critique. I managed to grab him on a rest day whilst between dates down under. He tells me his Melbourne gig was “a bit of a revelation. I’m down here with a band, finding our feet. I’m a sort of bedroom producer, so this (live thing) is new territory for me. The crowd really dug it, it went off!”

Although he’s been working on his craft since he was nine – half his life – it’s the last couple of years that he’s made his mark, collaborating with SBTRKT, track swapping with Kanye West and opening for OutKast – all before releasing a single record.

A good start. Raury is fairly laid back about all this, citing the power of the internet is “to reach out and touch someone”.

Raury’s videos are your best introduction to his thinking.

‘God’s Whisper’ is “just a bit

of a reaction to all that stuff about teenagers who are all out partying and getting stoned and driving fast cars. Not every kid is livin’ in (Hollywood) Taylor Swift glam delusionland.

I wanted to just show friends headin’ to a big bonfire what kids at home do (in Atlanta, where he’s from). It cost nothing and is not about getting totally trashed and trying to kill yerself to be cool, you know?” The whole song is an unabashed exultant campfire singalong – a kind of hip ‘Kumbaya’. “I guess that was what I was after. Because everyone has a good time when they can join in. That’s what I’ve learned on this tour. I’m young and this is all new. I’m not even site-seeing because it’s all about putting my energy into what I do on stage. The audience is unaware of me and I am working to get them (onside).”

Raury is a magpie by trade and even pilfered from his idle Kid Cudi, with glee, he tells me to pad out his favourite live song ‘Superfly’. “I loved Cudi’s ‘Day ‘n’ Nite’, so I used it for the basis

of a song.” Pilfering liberally, he tells me that all music, like art, is a reference for something new. “I bet the Old Masters didn’t dream up their great paintings. (He means Van Gogh and Rembrandt). They copied and reinvented to comment on what was happening on the day. I want to do that too. I like to look at what I have and look at it in a new way. I don’t always want to be some corporate pawn.”

‘Cigarette Song’ is the one that catches my attention. The video is set in in a forest with very cool hotel style treehouses which later in the song are set alight – at least that’s the brief. “The forest is not far from my home in Atlanta.

You can stay in these – very romantic. I wanted to capture that, kind of natural glam. Not the whole gold, velvet rock ‘n’ roll, it’s more natural, but I still wanted the whole (swelling orchestral) drama to finish. The fire that engulfs it all.” Don’t smoke kids, especially on a first date in a forest.

NEW EP: INDIGO CHILD OUT NOW

ANDREW JOHNSTONE

SIX60 other music.” Everyone in the office seemed to nod their sage in agreement but it was hard to tell from my corner of the room, the dark corner with a light that has no on-switch.

I light up a cigar, make coffee, put on some headphones and listen to the album again. When it finishes announce to all and sundry, “they sound less boy band and more Maori boys singing their hearts out.”

CASTLE STREET IS the heart of the notorious student district in Dunedin. It’s the place where couches are burned and students drink to destroy.

660 Castle Street was home for a while to a group of Otago University lads who started a covers band in 2008 called Six60.

By 2011 they were playing their own songs and have recorded an album. A blend of grooving soul and dub-step with infusions of rock, reggae and electronica, the album, Six60, was a sensation.

They released it themselves and it went straight to number one in 2011. The album sold quadruple platinum and good handful of hit singles did similarly.

Four years later, they are back with a new album, a new sound and a new state of mind.

Introductions done we go next door to the NZ Radio Training School to use one of the recording studios. The buzz of 40 students running three radio stations came to an abrupt halt as the word spreads that Six60 are in the building.

Discovered, they were swamped with questions and requests for selfies. They take it all in their stride and by the time they were seated in the studio; they are

animated and ready to tell me about the new album.

The making of album number two, Six60 (2015), has been coloured by the kind of trials that can make or break a band, in this case make. The difficulties the last four years has made them stronger, wiser and left them humbly assured by their successful navigation of difficult waters.

So, what have they been doing for the last four years?

“Germany”, they all say at once, looking at each other wondering how to approach that story.

When superstar German comedy actor/director/tastemaker Matthias Schweigghofer included one of their songs on the soundtrack for his new film Fatherhood, people took notice.

Without a hint it was coming, the world’s third largest music market opened its doors for the boys and they stepped through.

Fatherhood, a film about a man who gets his testicles bitten off by a ferret while participating in bondage flavoured sex, was a smash hit and gave them profile.

Despite the potential of the situation however, something remained amiss and a sense of dislocation began settling in over

the band, one they could never quite shake off nor ever properly explain.

They enjoyed the German people, the cheap beer and the endless parade of grilled sausages, but Germany wasn’t for them.

Back home, the creative juices began to flow successfully again and the band returned to the studio with renewed vigour and focus. The songs they had been waiting for started appearing and the excitement began mounting.

I play the album out loud in the office. That’s me, 52-year-old male over here and three females, all in their 20s, over there. They all stop what they are doing and say things like, “Oh my god!

They have gone all boy band.”

“Seriously?” I thought, listening harder, and there it was, kind of, maybe. I don’t know enough about boy band music to tell.

Regardless I launch into a lecture, offering my theory to the room.

“Boy bands have been a part of the contemporary music scene long enough to have influenced a whole generation of kids.

These guys would have grown up hearing it, and it’s perfectly reasonable to imagine that it this vocal style has seeped into their music along with a lot of

The last four years have seen the band challenge itself on every level in their quest to wrest something new from their collective musical consciousness.

“We did not want to repeat the first album, we wanted to evolve,” they explain.

This time around, their signature electronica and dub has taken a backseat to the band’s guitar pop tendencies but it’s the vocals that have received the most attention, and it’s the vocals that set this album apart from the last. With its layers of harmony and melody worked and turned to a fine textured shine, Six60 have made a statement about their love of the voice and the kind of voices they like listening to.

Six60 have signed up with a big US Talent Agency and are currently negotiating with a major label for an American rollout. The boys from 660 Castle Street in Dunedin have been offered at crack at the very big time and are preparing to take it on. They have been a pleasure to have in the studio, nice guys, interesting guys. The kind of guys you hope all success to.

YOU CAN HEAR THE FULL INTERVIEW ON RIP IT UP RADIO: SOUNDCLOUD.COM/RIP-IT-UP-RADIO NEW ALBUM: SIX60 OUT NOW

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TIM GRUAR

ORQUESTA BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB when they wanted to come and work here it’s been difficult. (But now) they can now work here, in Varadero, Havana. That’s the good thing about the (new) relationship (with the US) that we have now. It allows us to work and share.” Has Cooder been back with you? I ask.

“Ah si, we have seen him when we go to Los Angeles. We have seen him there, spent time together, but he has not worked with us again.”

The Orquesta is now multi-generational, with ages ranging from 20s to 80s. “There are three or four of us left. There’s Guajiro (Manuel “Guajiro” Mirabal, trumpet), Omara (Omara Portuondo, vocals), Eliades (Eliades Ochoa, vocals and guitar) and myself. All the rest (have retired), or unfortunately, died.” The ensemble also includes vocalist Idania Valdéz, the daughter of original member Armadito Valdéz and the grandson of Guarijo Mirabal, “who plays trumpet as well.”

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB was always more than a film opening up the musical styles of son, bolero, danzóns and guajiras to many ears around the globe – it went further, re-igniting the Western world’s interest in the old-world charm, sights and smoke of Cuba. As part of a stellar line up WOMAD is bringing the BVSC exclusively to the Taranaki leg of the festival. It will include four members from the original ensemble which featured the popular Ry Cooder/Wim Wenders movie of the same name. Through a translator I managed to pitch a few questions to laúd player Barbarito Torres, who’s been part of the project since those days. Torres is a renowned jazz musician (BVSC, Afro-Cuban All Stars and his own orchestra). He says that while things might have changed with fame and touring he and his surviving band mates still remain close neighbours back in old Havana.

I ask him if the BVSC’s repertoire had changed much since the film. “Si Pero,” he replied, “What we are going to present (at WOMAD) is some new songs and (some that) the audience knows (like ‘Chan Chan’ and ‘El Cuarto de Tula’)”. Although a challenge for my translator, I want to ask how the group feel about being music “preservationists” – keeping the

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traditions alive. Some of the idea might be lost in the translation but he is clear: for him there’s no distinction between modern and traditional music. Music only becomes an artefact when it is forgotten, and here, that is not the case.

I ask about the impact of the film on Cuba.

“All the tourists … the first thing they do is ask for us! (They) come because they know of the BVSC and didn’t know anything about Cuba. This has been a big success … like a promotional tool, a strong one … very important for the culture of the country and … they get to know the music not only of the BVSC, but other types of music we have in Cuba. We have given them the opportunity to (get to) know Cuba. And through tourism Cubans can now meet and mix with people of every race and creed.”

The international policies of America initially banished the group from travelling there. Has anything changed under the Obama regime, I ask. “Ry Cooder was prohibited from working with us again. The laws didn’t allow it at that time.” (He was even fined about $25,000). “But things are different now. It’s great … that we can now go and work (in America) without problems. And the same for the “Americanos”

In the film Cooder identified The BVSC as a “Club”, although the exact location of the venue in Havana is still under debate. Does this club still exist, I wonder. “No no,” Torres says. “It has not existed for many years. It existed in the ‘50s.”

Now it is more of a moniker to hang the genre on, but in the day it was definitely a swinging joint. Not that the spirit has stopped, They’ve been touring in some form virtually since the first film screening. But sadly all things must end. This is the last tour – “Adios” – which is set to complete around October, followed by a big send off at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana. “Bueno, mira (Well, look), it’s the last tour because remember that Omara and Guarijo are getting on and we have to let them rest. Todo que comienza tiene que terminar – everything that starts has to end, and needs to end on a high!”

In finishing, Torres adds: “It’s not that the Buena Vista is over definitively. One day we could get together to play somewhere if necessary. We will still see each other. We are still going spend time together.”

TRANSLATOR: ROSINA VAN DER AA FROM CUBANFUSION SEE THEM LIVE: ORQUESTA BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB AT WOMAD 2015 FRI 13 MAR – SUN 15 MAR TSB BOWL OF BROOKLANDS, TARANIKI

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PURIT Y RING

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PURITY RING’S BREAKTHROUGH album Shrines (2012) was in many ways a prescient suggestion of indie-pop music to come. Their debut album earned them the number one spot on iTunes’ electronic chart, Pitchfork’s Best New Music laurels and praise from both sides of the Atlantic (New York Times, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, NME). While Shrines was composed remotely between Halifax and Montreal, Another Eternity marks the first time Megan James and Corin Roddick have made a record in the same room, venturing home to the frozen industrial landscapes of their birthplace, Edmonton, Alberta. Again recording and producing the follow-up themselves, it’s ethereal but gutsy, bold but whimsical, as well as being doused in confidence and meaning.

Never ones to bow to the status quo, the duo’s dubbed-out retro-futuristic approach to sound on Another Eternity is crisp and precise, but dense with feeling -- filling a gulf between clinical sheen and lung-collapse heartbreak. James’s imagery is bold enough to make a poet weep, but it’s not just the words that make an impact, as Roddick’s layers of sound create a collage of fleeting emotions.

Their songs are charming, scuffed at the edges, with multifarious melodies that are accentuated by James’s youthful tone. Ren Kirk caught up with Megan James ahead of the album release.

So, looking back, were there any formative moments for you as a kid, anything that really stands out in your memory?

Umm, only the sort of things that feel extremely irrelevant. Like, we have a lot of family in Aussie, and one of the first memory I can recall (I was maybe like three) and my Uncle Terry was in Canada visiting. He bought me over one of those clippy, grabby

koalas, that has “I love you” on their little red vest. Yeah, he bought me a pack of them and I was utterly obsessed!

And why not?! But what about musically, how and when did that start for you?

Since I was little I always played piano, I was trained classically.

That’s where I started writing songs too, because it was a lot more gratifying learning something I’d made up... I do like classical though, it’s my origin.

What about your family environment, did you get any inspiration there?

Yes, I had a very musical family, with three older brothers. And one just older than me was in all these punk bands and was really cool... I kinda idolised him. So the first songs I wrote were me trying to be like my brother.

When I think of those days I laugh at myself, cause I’m so far away from it now.

So how did you and Corin meet and start making music together?

He was a drummer and the kids who played shows all knew each other... we’d both seen each other play.

And how did things work when you started out, because you made the first album long distance, didn’t you?

When we first started it was really organic, but also sort of beautiful. We divided the labour, but yeah we barely even communicated! I’d send him a demo I’d recorded and he’d kinda change it, sort of shift the music to match what I did. And then I’d shift too. The way it was written was so not cohesive, considering how cohesive it sounds.

Another Eternity sounds a lot more expansive than Shrines, with more wide open spaces. Is this a reflection of the shared environment do you think, or just a natural progression?

Our new album is more focused because we’re more focused,

and Corin has better chops. We did every song together, talking about every decision; all the sounds and production and vocal melodies.

It feels like many of the tracks on your new record are tinged with sadness -- ache, tremble, tears -- and also the body’s reaction to these emotions?

Umm, I think that is the general feeling, but it’s kind of like a pot of all my music, if you know what I mean? I write about whatever is giving me something to write about in any given moment and all of these tracks come from quite recent events, writing from journals and stuff. So there’s not like a plan or anything. If I wrote about political subjects I would make that like a thing, but I didn’t and it’s mainly just the insides of me and the insides of Corin.

Your vocals also seen to be more prominent, is that intentional?

We wanted the record to be atmospheric, but not in same way as Shrines, more about songwriting. It’s hard to differentiate, it still is us and Shrines is all of those things too, but we wanted it to sound like all of the work we put in to it. The first one was pretty lo-fi, in terms of electronics that have been reverbed over, and so brushed. Another Eternity is cleaned up, so the elements that are essentially us are uncovered.

‘Bodyache’ is quite infectious with its pulsing beats and swirling keys -- what were the motivations behind that track?

Corin wrote those harp chords and nothing else, because he liked it so much he scared himself and didn’t want to touch it anymore. I spent like three hours walking around and just listened to it and sung. I don’t even know what it really means -- it was definitely in the moment and it sounded exactly like what we wanted. That was a cohesive song to write, it went very smoothly. And all happened in

one day.

‘Stranger Than Earth’ has quite a menacing beat and dark electronics, which contrasts so nicely with your vocals. What’s it about?

That song’s interesting. I wrote the vocals with piano chords and Corin took the piano out and made the beat after. It’s mostly about dreams, doing what your dreams tell you to do. A lot of those lyrics are directly from dreams too.

Tell me about the musicality of the brooding anthem ‘Begin Again’?

When I first wrote that I thought it was bad, but I showed it to a couple of people and they disagreed. Feel like that song is pretty representative of us, but also has these breakdowns in the chorus. It’s silly and funny, but it works, so you have to take it seriously. It’s now one of my favorite songs I have ever written.

Tell me about the timesuspending “stillness in woe”?

And what made you decide it would be the closing track?

We actually wrote it to be the last track. We were looking for the closer and that just turned into it... although it started a lot simpler and evolved in to what we thought a good closer would be; longer, more moody, more refined, a landscape of atmosphere.

What are you most looking forward to with the release of Another Eternity?

Getting a lot more involved in the music videos. We’ve always been involved in artwork -- we worked with the same artist again for this record cover -- but it’ll be rad to also work on videos. And touring will really be so much easier! We didn’t really want to last year but this time I’m so excited!

NEW ALBUM: ANOTHER ETERNITY OUT NOW

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TIM GRUAR

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING was there!” Didn’t Ed (Hilary) say that!” Yep. Just before knocking the bastard off!

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The album covers a range, each with their own accompanying film footage – fashion, the great British postal service, TV and economic ruin in post-war Britain, all topics close to our collective memory. But by the album’s end, it was nearly impossible to see where they could go next without re-treading the same ground.

The answer, it turns out, is space. Still a closely guarded secret (at the time of writing, at least), Mr. Willgoose gives me sneak peak descriptions of the material. He has an obsession with the early race between Russia and the USA to get to the moon and beyond and was keen to create a more the thematic approach to the exiting stories of early space travel.

J. WILLGOOSE, ESQ ON PAPER, ENGLISH duo Public Service Broadcasting sound like a bit of a gimmick – cut ‘n’ paste samples from historic propaganda flicks and military archive footage; add BBC plum-in-mouth announcers and blend it all with guitar riffs, keyboards, MPCs and live percussion to craft a collection of vignettes of significant world events like the Battle of Britain and climbing Mount Everest. The PBS Motto: “To teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future”. It’s the beige corduroy concoction of one J. Willgoose Esq and Wrigglesworth, drummer extraordinaire.

Talking to the outfit’s leader and chief, J. Willgoose Esq, I asked him how he came up with this idea. “Well, I’d been in a few bands over the years but nothing really happened,” he tells me over the line from London. The cellto-cell connection makes his public school boy vocals sound like the thin, reedy radio announcements of the 1940s.

“I was about to pack it in when I saw these propaganda films on the web and just started playing around, for myself, really.”

Willgoose’s great-uncle George, who died at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940 aged 26, provided inspiration for one of the tracks on what became the aptly named The War Room EP. “We got the chance to perform amongst the

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Spitfires and Hurricanes at the Imperial War Museum. That was an opportunity to play The War Room all the way through.” You can still see the mix of archive footage and Willgoose at his table of gadgets mixing music with black and white footage of bombed out homes, artillery factories and aeroplanes heading for a dogfight – “Red leader, red leader. I’ve got bandits in sight, wot!”

“We collaborated with the BFI (British Film Institute) on a number of tracks on The War Room. ‘Spitfire’ is actually from a doco (London Can Take It) hosted by the rather flamboyant Lesley Howard. I also adapted from a 1941 film by (American war correspondent) Quentin Reynolds, about the Blitz...” Cue radio crackles and tuning in knob adjustment: “This is the music they play every night in London: The symphony of war!

London raises her head, shakes the debris of the night from her hair, and takes stock of the damage done.” Cue static.

Much of The War Room was reworked for their debut album Inform-Educate-Entertain, like the leader ‘Spitfire’ but this time the net was spread wider. Close to Kiwis’ hearts is the track ‘Everest’ made around the 1953 documentary Conquest of Everest.

The new album The Race for Space “starts with that famous speech of Kennedy’s: That inspired the USA interest in the space race, despite them falling behind. “We have a ‘Sputnik’ song which is all bleeps and bloops. I wanted that feel Major Tom has, that uneasiness felt by venturing into the unknown in this futuristic tin can death trap.

But there’s also a sort of tingling excitement about the as to the possibilities to come.” He also tells me about the track that will capture the organised chaos of the NASA space flight centre. “I didn’t want another ‘Houston, we have a problem’ scenario. This one is about the mission to come. In the film you can see how many people it takes to do this. All the bodies monitoring stuff and (twiddling knobs).”

The Space Race is definitely a subject too big to be tackled properly, Mr Willgoose admits, “but we wanted to give it a good go – I wanted to capture that ball of emotions and wonder and urgency of that time – those first steps out into the great unknown: the dangers, the excitement, believing that anything is possible.”

Yep, we are clear for take-off.

SEE THEM LIVE: PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING AT WOMAD 2015 FRI 13 MAR – SUN 15 MAR TSB BOWL OF

“I was quite inspired by sheer drama and poetry of the narration in the film. Those lines: “Two small men carving steps in the roof of the world”. It’s full of those. And the very dramatic statement: “Why climb? Because it

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