Land of the Long White Sound: day seven

Heyyy, it's the last day of May and the last day of NZ Music Month. If i was younger, hipper and had my wits about me then last night I could have gone downtown to catch The Phoenix Foundation sharing a bill with Disasteradio - that would have been very cool. However, I am not anything of the above (young, hip, or cool.)

Anyway, here's the last video of the series: another female artist, and one from the Twenty-tens just to show that I'm not as old and crusty as my previous nominations have indicated.  Perhaps I'm not pushing the boat out too far here as it's the theme music from a much-loved and missed local series, but here goes:


Thankyou, Ms Wigmore, that will be all.

...or will it?

The answer is no. For the next few months I'm going to be very busy on another illustration assignment (NOT Judges), meaning that regular updates on the blog will be a rarer thing. It also torpedoes my Mirky Dozen miniature project which was just getting a rather fine head of steam on it, but rest assured, come October-ish things will (hopefully) be back on track. In the mean-time, every Friday I'm going to post a local video as I've done this past week, for as long as I'm interested, really. All other business will be blogged as and when, but stay tuned anyway (even if it is for the Judges)

And wish me luck!

Land of the Long White Sound: day six

It's Friday! Friday night's alright for... blogging, I suppose. Shihad have better ideas, however, a night out in downtown Wellington with a hired car and their folks for a good old shindig. Deb's Night Out lyrically tells the story of a junkie friend of Jon Toogood's then-partner, who was unceremoniusly evicted from their house one wet night after showing her true colours. The video tells a different story, and it's one I love for it - so homely, so family. So Wellington - anyone who lives here now must struggle to recognise the much-changed or even vanished landmarks of lower Cuba Street and James Smith Corner, Courtenay Place, the golden mile.



Good lord it's hard to believe this song is nearly twenty years old. Crazy! Deb's Nght Out is off Killjoy, a stompy, highly regarded album in and of itself, and the of a crucial trio of albums that would develop Shiahd's sound from industrial metal through to the beginnings of a lucrative popular music period, culminating in their fourth album, my favourite of theirs, The General Electric.  

Killjoy has yet to grow on me, but I have always loved Deb's, the chugging rhythm, slightly-off looped drums and its growling background orchestral synth wash, very much indicating the broader influences that the band were going through at the time, including Bailter Space and The Skeptics. In fact, the video mix of Deb's Night Out doesn't fade out like the album track, but ends on the synths, recalling the coda to Skeptics' monumental Agitator. I don't think it's an accident.

Actually, this video, sourced from Juice TV (another much-changed Nineties phenomenon) cuts the end of the song off, and I can't believe this is the "official" version. Sort that out, Warners!!

Next time: let's end this on a high note. Oh My!

Land of the Long White Sound: day five

Time to get with this century now, but only just. Rhian Sheehan's space-themed debut Paradigm Shift from 2001 has dated a bit now, but it's still lovely mellow stuff, and is borne of a (then) real high in the local music industry. It's not Flying Nun, nor is it a major label effort, but comes from Wellington's small but significant Loop imprint. Really, tracks like this could be on a Chillout compilation and would just class the place up amongst the panflutes and whale songs. Waiting is my favourite off the album, with guest spots from fellow Loop-ers Lotus, Tehi and Darren Mathiassen. The video is very cool, too - love the flax weaving on a different planet.
Oh so nice to work to. But tomorrow night's a Friday, so I fancy another Night Out in Wellington before we wrap up this little tiki tour...

Land of the Long White Sound: day four

As I said in my last post - too many white boys with guitars n this series so far. Time to move over, guys...

Acoustic guitar, a choral synth backing, accompanied by a minimum of bass, striking percussion (rakau sticks?) and rounded out by an eerie koauau, Emma Paki's System Virtue is utterly unique, real shiver down the spine stuff, belying the actual optimism of the song. Paki explained it once simply as an inversion of the common complaint that "the system sucks", giving it a virtue that can only be seen through a positive attitude. Recorded by Jaz Coleman for free, it's matched by a video that could be Ans Westera portraits given movement; stark, monochrome images of rural tangata whenua. Real faces, families, homes, animals, bikes, moko, and the tino rangatiratanga flag. If there was one song which deftly caught and challenged with a  moment of local identity poised between the 'Ruthenasia' reforms of the National government's 1991 Budget and the cultural phenomenon of Lee Tamihori's Once Were Warriors, then this was it.There's even a shout out to the national anthem.



I was lucky enough to catch an impromptu performance by Paki in Marion Sqaure during the Wellington Fringe Festival, ooh - circa 2002? Brilliant stuff - unaccompanied with only a mic'd up acoustic and an open sky, she was the real deal.

So, whatever next? Ditch the guitars, maybe?

Land of the Long White Sound: day three

Back to the Mainland, as promised, and back to Flying Nun bands, for the moment.

The Terminals are a less-celebrated Nun band, perhaps unfairly, but their sound is maybe less accessible that the then-poppier likes of The Chills, Able Tasmans, Straitjacket Fiots, bats or JPS Experience, each a stablemate of the time. Based in Christchurch the sound of the Terminals evokes the emptiness of the Canterbury plains and Uncoffined, their full-length debut is filled with great, echoing, jangling high-tension balladry. Like the [Wellington] Avengers they had a stab at Episode Six's Love Hate Revenge, while album closer Lolita and Mothlight are other favourites.

The album's title track has a stark, reverberating Western edge, a sound not really that common for Flying Nun's artists, though the nearest equivalent is an easy pick, guitarist Brian Crook's later outfit The Renderers (with wife Mary Rose). I caught them at a gig in Dunedin's Empire and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Roll video - deliberately lo-fi, and with a coin-spitting cautionary lesson for young players. Some day one hell of a Western is going to be made around this song, I swear.



Hmm. Still, too many white guys with guitars so far. Next time: a change of gear...

Land of the Long White Sound: day two

If you're looking for aprimer on New Zealand punk, there's pretty much one album that's king above all. Mine was not initially that album, but the later double-disc compilation of music from around the same era by many of the same bands, the Propellor Records late-Eighties release It's Bigger Than Both Of Us. Fantastic stuff, but it only tells part of the story, and is self-consciously a retrospective made at a time when Kiwi music was beginning to find a place in the national consciousness in quite a new way. No, the seminal album is a single disc from an earlier, murkier time, neary ten years older than Bigger, it is of course AK-79. I recently reacquainted myself with it on CD, and I never owned it on vinyl. Feel my burning shame.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Scavengers:



The Scavengers were very definitely on the melodic end of the scale with Mysterex, and as much again with the equally-great True Love, which was a rare thing being a Kiwi single covered for an Australian audience (The Marching Girls doing the honours.) Certainly ther's an element of influences being well worn here - I can hear some Buzzcocks for one, but I don't care. It's ours and it works, and while NZ Punk was a late-arriving, short-lived thing it was a genuine organic reaction which made an impact, and that's really all it's about, really.

Next time: Back to the Mainland!

Land of the Long White Sound: day one

May is New Zealand Music Month, and I'm nearly a little bit late to the party for once. For maybe a good ten years I'd mark the month by committing to buying an album from at least one local act (I think the last time I did this was two years ago, with an iTunes purchase of the 3Ds compilation), but I have of late been remiss.

  My disgrace then becomes your viewing chore for the next seven days: a daily clip picked by me from the archives (NZ On Screen, or if my memory's a little better and social media comes to the party, You Tube) redolent of local music from the past fifty years.

I wanted to kick thing off with something from the 60s, but wouldn't you know it - most of the big numbers or personal favourites are typical of many of the standards of that era in that they were reworkings of international ditties (stand up She's a Mod, Western Union, Love Hate Revenge, How Is The Air Up There?), so straight to the Eighties we go and so a somewhat predictable choice but a personal fave: Pink Frost by The Chills.

It's cold in the Monkeyhouse tonight, and it's snowing in Dunedin as I type this, which seems almost perfect. Roll the clip!

As locals may know, Pink Frost is largely shot in and around Lover's Leap on the Otago Peninsula, a wonderfully isolated place with, apparently, a deserved name and though it's obviously degraded video here, the picture quality fits the setting and the song perfectly, picking out the skeletal pines and brittle waves of the South Pacific below, while later on Martin Phillipps' sinister scarecrow is all flickering eyelids and paleface makeup somewhere nearby - Waitati? Aramoana? I could seriously do all Flying Nun songs this week - hell, I could easily do all Dunedin bands this week, but I promise I won't. Next time: Auckland!