As we talked about in Various Artists #2 with Go With The Movers, the mid 00s was a boom time for local music. It felt like there was a new band popping up every week. The ground was fertile - there were places for them to play, sometimes quite a lot of people to come see them, Blink was hitting his straps with his A Low Hum tours (which probably served to unify bands and audiences from across the country with tours that might not have happened otherwise) and the popularity of MySpace and more widespread internet access meant that new bands from all points of the country could get heard sooner. Amongst all that, in 2007 Real Groove (RIP, and not to be confused with the zombified corpse of Groove Guide these days) had a bold editor - Duncan Greive - who'd give a fair shake to the new Paris Hilton album just as soon as a four track recording of something noisy and exciting from Christchurch. And I seem to remember Stevie Kaye foregoing sleep and food and oxygen in an effort to get tracks from unheard artists up and down the country and write about them.

I don't like NME - I think it overhypes a lot of terrible UK bands because they need a new flavour of the month. But at the same time, you have to admire their willingness to champion great local music (even if the greatness of the music sometimes feels self-generated by the magazine itself). If there's a band that's killing it and doing fresh new things, you'll hear about it - and the whole new genre said band is supposedly spearheading. Maybe things are changing here, or maybe it's a population thing, but it feels like we don't have that same confidence in our own culture until it's been validated by various outside sources.

So Awesome Feeling was really awesome. Months earlier it'd been Liam Finn on the cover, which wasn't so out of the blue given his pedigree, but still seemed kinda bold ahead of his album release and its singles. Then for the issue carrying the Awesome Feeling compilation it was So So Modern front and centre, which must have been a shock to large portions of the public, but was so warranted considering the live phenomenon they'd become. Though they pulled pretty great numbers for a local band, it wasn't about the numbers at the shows. In terms of transforming an audience and actually getting Aucklanders to dance, they seemed unstoppable. They weren't alone in starting to peak. Cut Off Your Hands and Collapsing Cities became NME darlings, Bachelorette signed to Drag City, Diasteradio would tour the world. On the second edition it was the same thing, Street Chant had a four track demo as Mean Street (shot to the compilers for hearing a great song under the tape hiss and thin sound), it featured Princess Chelsea before she became a YouTube sensation, there was High Stakes - who had a #1 dancehall single in Jamaca, and AFII was the first place a lot of people heard The Naked and Famous before they had a record breaking #1 NZ single and turned heads the world over. Here's former Real Groove editor Duncan Grieve talking about the comp after the jump.

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If you're like us and can't wait for the very impending release of Kanye West's new album Yeezus, here's some tidbits to tide you over.

As one of our favourite blogs The Corner writes, some of his new material is being projected and played at locations all over the world. Here are the times and locations for the projections happening in Auckland tonight.

The New York Times did an interview with Yeezy for their blog. It's fascinating stuff. He's as confident as ever, comparing himself to Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan and gets into talking about the minimal construction of Yeezus. Check it out here. It's filled with other must read material like him regretting ever apologising to Taylor Swift with quotes like this:

But has that instinct led you astray? Like the Taylor Swift interruption at the MTV Video Music Awards, things like that. It’s only led me to complete awesomeness at all times. It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is.

And over at the Wall Street Journal, they've got an interview with Rick Rubin about the process and how Kanye promised to "score 40 points in the 4th quarter" to finish Yeezus in time for release.

And with the news that the album's leaked, there's also a number of reviews popping up online as various music reviewers try to figure out their feelings for an undoubtedly complex album while itching to yell "FIRST". Naturally most of this writing is terrible. Do the right thing - buy it in a few days and make up your own mind at the kind pace a good record deserves.

Someone once compared basketball to jazz - looking to draw a parallel between the improvisations of each medium. But you'd have a hard job selling that to a lot of latter day fans. With LeBron James and the Miami Heat currently playing in their third straight NBA finals appearance, now is the perfect time to listen to the always excellent PNC and David Dallas on their collaboration Kobe & LeBron (hit play on the widget above courtesy of TheAudience.co.nz).

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At the beginning of the month, I wrote about plans to raid our awesome music collection and listen to a New Zealand CD every day throughout Music Month. Much, much music later, here are four favourites from the month's exploration, and some clips to brighten the leaden-skied Queen's Birthday gloom out there. Check them out after the jump.

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