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.