We're all very excited about the Laneway 2014 festival lineup, even with Lorde ruled out due to Grammy commitments. As always, Auckland Libraries has a number of the artists on CD. So if you feel like spending some of your summer getting better acquainted with the lineup, here's a list of direct links to all the Laneway artist albums in our catalog after the jump. 

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The Gramophone Classical Music Awards are always something to look forward to and this year’s awards presents another stunning line up of recordings for music lovers to celebrate. From an initial pool of 700 recordings, just 15 were chosen as winners of the various categories.

Auckland Libraries has all of these award winning recordings available on CD and they are well worth listening to! Some will be new discoveries for you, others are old favourites reinvented. Check out the full list after the jump and enjoy!

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Last night's NZ Music Awards were predictably dominated by our favourite teenaged, world beating pop star Lorde. Although her album was released too late to qualify for this year's awards, she took away Single of the Year for Royals, Breakthrough Artist of the Year, the International Achievement Award and the fan-voted People's Choice Award, not to mention her video for Royals won famed designer/director Joel Kefali another Best Video award. Being a library blog, special mention goes to one of her acceptance speeches, where she said:

"Thank you to my management, without whom I probably would have become a librarian, or something equally nerdy," 

Awesome. It's not a diss, she's spoken in interviews about the crucial role of books in her life, but lucky for us all she's found her true calling. Other highlights included the charming Lawrence Arabia winning Best Male Solo Artist, Aaradhna winning the Album of the Year (as well as Best Urban/Hip Hop Album and Female Solo Artist of the Year) for her soulful Treble & Reverb.

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Before USB keyboards and Ableton, before MPCs and synthesisers, there was the mellotron, and it was awesome. Using sounds recorded onto strips of tape, all rigged up inside a keyboard, it was a portable way that a keyboard player could call on the sound of strings, trumpets, or whatever had been sampled on the tape. In a similar (albeit analogue) way to a sampler, you'd push a key and get a sound. Unlike a synthesiser, the appeal was in the fact that the sound was a reproduction of the original, rather than an attempted recreation. It was the "must have" instrument of the 1960s and you'll hear it on stuff like the Genesis track Dancing With the Moonlit Knight.



Of course these days there's a ton of music software enabling bands to have the same functionality through a computer. But can you really beat the real thing? Nah. Mike Walters of Mystery Circuits makes unusual custom electronic instruments, many from modified toys or other items, and one of his creations was the glorious "Melloman", constructed from 14 Walkmen.

His work caught the eye of new folk maestro Bon Iver, who commissioned a custom version for himself. Check out the video below to see what he's in for. It uses a combination of sampled human voice and a synth sample to achieve an interesting blend. Look forward to hearing this ghostly tone show up a record down the track.

Getting a bunch of musicians to hand in tracks for a compilation on time already seems like a bit of a nightmare. Asking them to write brand new songs for a compilation seems far, far worse. Then again, perhaps if the recording and the mixing is free and being done by the same person putting together the compilation, the chances for musician procrastination are limited. Perhaps that's what made the daunting premise of A Very Little Christmas possible.

Dave Parker runs a pretty stunningly good recording studio out of his bedroom in Oratia. It's called Little Monster, and he's recorded artists like Ruby Frost, Artisan Guns, Great North, Watercolours and a whole lot more.

As he will explain, A Very Little Christmas covers the quieter side of that spectrum without specifically making a theme of it. Probably every one of the artists has played a set at Auckland's low key bar the Wine Cellar, but it's more just a loosely affiliated group of bands befriended by Parker and former Border Music rep, now Bones and Woods/all around good guy Marty Jones. And with one guy recording 18 bands in his bedroom using largely the same microphones, preamps, room and producer's instincts, it's only natural that the album would have a pretty cohesive sound.



It's also interesting to note that some of the artists would go on to recycle their Christmas tracks for later releases. The Gladeyes re-recorded their stunning Carols and Parties for Shadows Explode.

Dear Times Waste did likewise with her track The Drink, re-recording it and putting it on her sublime record Some Kind of Eden. 

Rather than the re-recordings being a slight on the original recordings, I tend to think of it as a desire to reframe a song in the same sonic context as a new album, and it's a reflection on the quality of the writing generated by the project that artists would come to see their Christmas songs as more than mere novelties. The constraint of writing a song to a specific topic and to a deadline can be a powerful tool for focusing a piece. There's any number of quotes about art and limitations, and these words from G. K. Chesterton serve as good as any. "Art is limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame." Here's David Parker talking about the compilation after the jump.

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Arthur Ahbez has just released his first album Gold. In his own words, he’s been “lost in the 1960s for nearly 10 years” and it shows on a record that shows a deep love for Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, Dylan and the Velvet Underground. All Things Musical sat down one Wednesday lunchtime to do a gmail chat with him about recording Gold, his creative journey over the past couple of years and finding an eight track tape machine in an opshop.

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The appropriate response to Hula Hope's charming debut album is this.



Formerly of the excellent, maximalist Wellington all-girl troupe St Rupertsberg and long-serving folksters UrbanTramper, Hula Hope has been playing solo for a few years alongside those projects and has finally released the above solo record all of her own.

Enlisting the help of two different young producers - Lehmann B. Smith (listen to his 40-deep record of his extremely short, extremely good indie pop songs on his bandcamp) of Melbourne and Dave Parker of West Auckland (download his lushly produced, all New Zealand collection of original Christmas songs here), Lamp is blessed with a cohesive amalgamation of 60s girl pop, modern indie pop and alt country. She sings with an unashamed local accent, trades quips with Steve Abel's powerful baritone pipes, and has epiphanies that a boy's refusal to wait for the bus with her is one of those minor details that sounds innocuous but should maybe be a dealbreaker. It's well worth a listen and if she charms you like she did me, you can buy it straight from her bandcamp site (or straight from the bandcamp streaming widget above).

All Things Musical isn't exactly a hard-hitting journalistic institution, more of a little side project in between shelving music scores, withdrawing Nickelback CDs and explaining to the odd patron the difference between "the internet" and "Google" (bless).

Fortunately there's much better music blogs out there fighting the good fight ever after the latest nail in the coffin of quality music journalism in New Zealand. One of the best is Russell Brown's Friday Music, which comes out weekly on Russell Brown's Hard News blog on Public Address. He's passionate and thoughtful and has an enviable awareness of a variety of music. I wouldn't say the same about Simon Sweetman's Off The Tracks, a spin-off of his Stuff.co.nz musings at Blog On The Tracks, but his writing does seem to attract a lot of readers. Those worlds collided this past Friday's post when Brown outlined his objections to a flimsy Sweetman attempted takedown of Lorde's The Love Club EP. Here's a taster.

"Sweetman thinks of himself as an iconoclast, and, yeah, it takes some nerve to denounce barbecue reggae in a Wellington paper. Someone had to. He can write well about the range of music he likes, and completely miss the point of anything outside that range. Too often, he seems to be merely seeking attention. But in this review, he writes like the troubled child he believes Ella Yelich-O'Connor to be. The one who needs to grow up isn't Lorde. I think it would be decent of him to apologise for parts of what he wrote."

Read the full post on Hard News for an excellently thought out rebuke to a rather thoughtless and insulting dismissal.

And while Lorde smartly ignores bad reviews (and finds others going in to bat for her...), elsewhere on the internet a local band is taking matters into their own hands. The Neo-Kalashnikovs took issue with reviews of their single Gorgeous Baby over at The Corner and took to the comments section to defend their honour. Context: the website has a panel of writers who offer their thoughts on local singles. While I can't say I always agree with them, more content focusing on local bands is a positive. And even if the reviews aren't always so, it opens up a dialogue. Anyway, check out the post and the comments here, and take a look at the video if you feel like making up your own mind or happen to be a really big Coronation Street fan.

Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire have released the first single from their forthcoming album, which is also titled Reflektor. Produced by James Murphy, he of LCD Soundsystem/DFA Records, it subverts a disco beat into something that's quite low key, while remaining very anthemic. It's great stuff and bodes well for the material we'll be hearing when they grace Western Springs Stadium for the Big Day Out in New Zealand this summer.

Auckland band Great North (or more specifically - their singer Hayden Donnell) are massive Bruce Springsteen fans. Having yet to be shoulder tapped by The Boss himself, they've taken it upon themselves to get the attention of him/his management or the tour promoter in another way. They're collecting signatures for a petition. Here's the lowdown via their petition site..

Great North frontman Hayden Donnell is a Springsteen fan. He yells the words to Thunder Road at traffic lights as fellow commuters stare, weeps on the couch to The Rising, feels unironic joy at the sound of a sax solo. Once, in a fit of madness, he bought plane tickets to see a Springsteen show in Hamilton, Canada. Please get behind Great North's bid for the second support slot for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at their Auckland show on March 1, 2014. Note: We don't want to replace Jimmy Barnes, just play before him. Or work out some harmonies to Working Class Man and play with him. Anything.

David Parker, Great North producer at Little Monster Studio, enemy: 7:17pm:
"One time I told Hayden I didn't really like Bruce Springsteen's music that much and so he put on a Springsteen album at full volume while trapping me in a corner and dancing up against me while I cowered on the floor. I am still traumatised by this event." 9:45pm: "I do not support this campaign, Hayden is a narcissist and you're all encouraging him."

Rachel, Great North band member, wife: Hayden has openly admitted that, while our relationship is fairly solid, he would likely leave me if Bruce Springsteen became available. I'm okay with this. Hayden deserves it.

Check out the petition right here and do consider signing it. They're a great band with a dream to open for their hero.

About to release a follow-up to their highly successful record Passive Me, Aggressive You, The Naked and Famous have released a single from the forthcoming In Rolling Ways. After releasing a series of EPs (and first appearing on Awesome Feeling - see our post on the 2007 compilation here), the band made it big in 2010, with their youth anthem Young Blood hitting #1 on the NZ singles chart and going on to chart in various places worldwide.

Hearts Like Ours isn't the immediate rush of Young Blood, but that would be asking a lot. It's still a dreamy, cinematic track that oozes youthful nostalgia. Pre-orders of the album are available on iTunes and the song was premiered by Zane Lowe at BBC Radio 1 in the UK last night. Check it out via the Soundcloud widget below.




Via Under The Radar

Check out Unknown Mortal Orchestra's flawless cover of (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay. The band is on tour this month and the Auckland show is reportedly just a few tickets away from selling out, so get in quick and grab tickets at Under The Radar.

Thursday July 18 - ReFuel, Dunedin
Friday July 19 - Kings Arms, Auckland
Saturday July 20th – Bodega, Wellington

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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Panther and The Zoo live at the Central Library

So it's the end of May - and that means the end of our scheduled run of Friday night concerts at the Central Library. Across the month we had Space Ventura, who recently featured on the latest edition of Awesome Feeling, we had Tui Award winners Great North, we had the charming Panther and The Zoo and we had the lonesome, folksy sounds of newcomers The Bonnie C.

It's been really great to see people turning out for these magical little shows in a place where perhaps you normally wouldn't expect to hear music...

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We dusted off the blanket fort again, Great North played in the library and it was really great. The wonderful Amanda Radcliffe from amandashootsbands.com showed up to document the night and here's one of her shots of a beautiful audience enjoying the band.

Massive thanks to Hayden, Rachel and Dale from Great North for making the time to play this show. You should really consider checking out their Tui award winning record Halves at the Great North bandcamp site where it's available to download at the very modest price of $10 or $25 as a CD. It's a pretty fantastic alt-country record and if you like anything in the realm of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Okkervil River, Dr Dog or Ryan Adams it's well worth your time.

If you missed it then check out this video below of part of their library performance for the next best thing, or come along to see Panther and The Zoo performing in the library this Friday.

 Space Ventura playing in a blanket fort next to the music section at Central Library

Now more than ever, libraries are more than just books - they have to be. At Auckland Central Library we've been very lucky to have the support of local musicians during May now and in years past.

This year our Music Month program at Central includes a series of unique, special performances every Friday at 6pm from the rising talent of Auckland's music scene. Our first guest, this Friday just been, was the very excellent Space Ventura (you'll see them above).

Tomorrow May 10 we'll be dusting off the blanket fort at 6pm again and we're very honoured to host Tui Best Folk Album award winners Great North.


And on May 17 we'll be continuing things in a folky vein with Panther and The Zoo. Fronted by the charming Graham Panther (yes, that's actually his real name), they offer crooned, wry observations on life and memorable hooks. The performance may serve as something of a farewell for Panther as he's heading off to Australia very soon. Here's a recent video for their song Everything, Everyone.



Friday May 10, 6-7pm at the Central Library: Great North
Friday May 17, 6-7pm at the Central Library: Panther and The Zoo
All performances free and all ages.

It's hard to say exactly what hindsight will shine favourably on. One of the reasons I wanted to do some posts around local compilations of the last decade is because that time seemed like an explosion in local music. I'm not saying they're on the same level, but as the Gluepot scene or various Flying Nun bands were canonised, maybe time will look fondly on Eden's Bar and some of its luminaries.

Go With The Movers represents some figures from the Auckland/Hamilton/Wellington axis of that time. It's not exhaustive by any means - as Sam Walsh explains, it's a compilation built around degrees of separation. Pick three bands from the tracklist and it looks like a typical show that you might have seen Mole Music put on at Auckland's Eden's, Wellington's Bodega or Hamilton's Ward Lane in the mid 2000s. Also, many of the acts shared members, which goes to reinforce the idea that there's very few degrees of separation in New Zealand bands. Even if it seems really short at 12 tracks, the brevity helps maintain the cohesiveness and unity (despite the difference in sounds) the tracklist holds.

It's hard/impossible for me to be objective about this. Go With The Movers came out around a formative time in my musical life when I was young and idealistic and very excited about watching skinny dudes yell into microphones. But I think it holds up well. Probably better than any other compilation of the time it captures the sorta post-hardcore current that existed in the music scene at the time (I remember a Joe Nunweek article half-joking that perhaps so many Auckland bands were shouters/screamers due to the sorry state of the Eden's PA), and the sound of that blending with rock and roll bands as they shared bills.


The Vacants

There's The Blunts and The Popes of Del Ray playing Hamilton rock and roll straight and true, Amy Racecar and Connan and the Mockasins dialling down their energy for some warped ballads, The Vacants doing their grunge via Fugazi meets Joy Division kinda thing, Nova Echo's (most of who went on to form Cut Off Your Hands) post-punk blur of a track Cvision, This Night Creeps' daunting musical ability and The Batstorm channelling Blood Brothers styled hardcore.

At the time some of these bands seemed like the best in the world - which I guess they weren't, but the point was that they were here and you could see them. Watching shows as an idealistic young man I swear most of these bands were destined for really big things. Some have done some big things and others have have broken up or disappeared from view, and this snapshot is just a small piece of the picture of what was happening, but maybe we'll look back on what was happening and realise that there was a turning point taking place.


This Night Creeps as seen on the great Cheese On Toast TV show Something On TV

Here's Mole Music's Sam Walsh talking about putting together Go With The Movers.
Listening back to this compilation, what do you like about it?
I like how weird it is and because it was the first release I ever did it kind of holds this strange sort of sentimental value to me. I also like that my dad still plays it sometimes and knows most of the songs off by heart, its super cute. 

"We started meeting all these super rad people who were just as hyper as us about what they were trying to do and so there was this really lovely connectedness and kinship."

Compilations document a certain musical moment. Can you paint a picture for me - what was happening in music at that time? And what did you want to preserve from that time?
It was made over a time when the bands I was playing in and the bands my friends were playing in were touring and putting on crazy amounts of shows. From that I/we started meeting all these super rad people who were just as hyper as us about what they were trying to do and so there was this really lovely connectedness and kinship. It was a really fun time in my life and I think for a lot of the other people involved too. Its pretty old now but I'm still friends with most of the people on the compilation and I think that kinda sums it up in a way.

Can you tell us about the moment when you decided this was something worth doing, and what was your initial concept for the compilation?
When we started working on Go With The Movers I guess we were trying to capture some fragments of that hyperness and energy. I wanted to start a label and thought that a compilation would be a good first step. Me and Adam (McKay - My Business Bro at the time) talked about it on a tour once and I think and he came up with the name way before we even figured out how we'd do it.

What did these artists have in common that made them belong on a compilation together?
I've always liked doing projects that mix genre and audience and have always tried to do that with shows so it was basically the same sort of thinking. A mix of bands from different cities playing different styles of music but who had played shows together or were friends and stuff. I hadn't toured down South then so it's all North Island bands which is a shame but at the time that was really all I knew. The kinda concept for it was four bands from Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton, each representing a different sort of "genre" (i don't like that word but I can't think of a better one) of music from their city. It was based around the idea of "degrees of separation" and trying to showcase the "connectedness" of what was going on. I guess part of the mixed genre thing was to appeal to a larger audience and also to make it a bit more interesting as a "collection" if that makes any sense.

Did it seem to springboard anything for any of the artists involved?
I'm not sure about springboard and I didn't have a clue about how to promote or sell a record so it kinda just got made then floated around but I like looking back at it and seeing that most of the bands are still making music in some form or another and many of them have gone on to do some pretty rad things.

Tell us about your favourite track on the compilation.
Without sounding like a total butt-head I honestly really like all the songs on it.

Not counting this one - what's your favourite compilation?
I haven't listened to them in awhile but I was pretty obsessed with all the Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph compilations that came out in the early 2000's. Like the Punk O Rama's and Fat Music For Fat People and stuff.

Is there anything else interesting that you can tell me about the compilation and its creation?
I wrote this super dorky manifesto-esque piece about music and the compilation inside the sleeve which is probably really silly sounding now. I also spelt "Moccasins" wrong which has bummed me out for ages. 

Who did the artwork and where can we find their stuff?
[This Night Creeps vocalist/graphic designer] Luke McPake did the artwork. It was one of our first ever collaborations together and he got super conceptual on it which was really rad. He made all the bands take a photo of themselves in a bathroom, in front of a mirror holding a flower in one hand, closing their eyes and there was some soap or something and I think it had a door in it and then he morphed all the pictures together. You can find his video stuff on Vimeo here.

Tell me about the FIRST compilation you ever owned? I think mine was Rhythm Volume 16 and I wish I still had it. 
The first compilation I ever owned was a chunky double disk of 50's and 60's hits that my uncle gave me for no real reason. I was only like six or seven so I can't remember the name of it but it was this mental bright pink colour and every now and then I try and find it again if I got to a record store but know I never will. My favourite song on it was Leader Of The Pack by The Shangri La's which I still think is one of the greatest songs ever written. I would play it over and over again and dance around to it and it got super scratched and worn out but never skipped or died. I have this really vivid memory of the girl who used to babysit us putting it on and laughing at me and my brother as we sang the lyrics and jumped around the lounge to Great Balls of Fire. I don't know what happened to it, I guess my mum threw it away to save herself from the mayhem it caused.

If your interest is piqued it's well worth tracking down a second hand copy of Go With The Movers at Real Groovy or borrowing the Auckland Libraries copy from here.