Live Wires

It’s shaping up to be an exciting year for Christchurch three-piece The Transistors. On Monday they will take the stage to play one of the noisiest sets of the day at Auckland’s Laneway Festival – then in March they’re heading to the USA to tour with Japanese punk band Guitar Wolf.

(EMJ) Are you all still living in Christchurch?
(James Harding) Yep, we’re sticking it out down here, haha.

What’s the state of the music scene down in Christchurch, given that the earthquakes destroyed venues like Goodbye Blue Monday and The Dux and caused loads of people to leave town?
It’s definitely a bit thin at the moment. Things are picking up, but it’s slow. The Darkroom is having gigs every week and the New Dux is underway, which is great. I don’t think that many bands have bailed – things are slowly picking up, I think.

Are there many opportunities for bands in Christchurch or do you think it’s better to head north?
We’re still here, so I guess I can’t really say. For us personally it would be helpful to be in Auckland, as it’s where we record and play a lot of shows, but we also have lives down here. I get the feeling that certain bands move to Auckland because they think it’ll instantly get them more exposure or something, but I’m not sure if it makes a difference.

You’ve released an album and an EP. Tell me about your growth as a band – how have you evolved?
We’re writing better songs these days. People have been saying that the new songs are pretty catchy, which is nice to hear.

How close are you all outside of the band? Are you all best friends or do you more come together to make music?
We formed the band a few years after we became friends, so in a way we’re friends first and a band second, but since we practice twice a week, play shows and record together that’s when we do most of our hanging out.

Do you feel like there’s much of a sense of community in New Zealand for punk music such as yours? Or do you feel like you’re going about it largely by yourselves?
I think there’s definitely a sense of community in New Zealand music, I’m not so sure about punk music specifically.

Your style sounds very much rooted in the original street punk sound. What motivates you to make this kind of music/write these kind of songs?
We listen to punk music but we listen to heaps and heaps of other stuff and I think the other stuff has just as big an influence on us. Olly loves Minor Threat but one of his favourite artists is Bruce Springsteen, so I’d say we’re influenced by good bands and good songs more than any one genre. We’re just trying to make fun, energetic music and write awesome songs. That’s our motivation.

“We’ve actually just been asked to do a tour in the states with Guitar Wolf”

You’re releasing your new album Is This Anything? shortly. What can fans expect from the new record and how is it different from Shortwave and Flux Pentaphile?
I suppose it’s a pretty natural progression from what we’ve done in the past. I think the songs are better and possibly a bit faster.

How much does the music you make as a band reflect the music you listen to in your everyday lives?
I guess it doesn’t, really. We mostly listen to musicals – Hair, Oklahoma, stuff like that.

Live, you’ve played some pretty exciting shows. Tell me about touring with JEFF the Brotherhood and what you learnt from them in regards to DIY touring?
That was a really fun tour, one of our favourites. Jake and Jamin are awesome, really down-to-earth guys and their shows were fucking insane. To be honest, in terms of approach it wasn’t that different to any of the other tours we’ve been on. The only time we’re ever put up in hotels is when we play ‘industry’ shows; otherwise we stay with friends and generally keep it pretty bare bones.

Do you have any ambitious plans for 2012? Will you be heading abroad or staying in New Zealand?
We’ve actually just been asked to do a tour in the states with Guitar Wolf, which is going to be insane, we’re really excited about it. That’s at the end of March. Beyond that, who knows.

You’re playing the Laneway Festival next week and you’re possibly the noisiest band on the line-up. What are you looking forward to most about Laneway and who are you most excited to see play?
It’ll be cool to play to people who won’t have heard of us. I’m looking forward to seeing Opossom and Sherpa. I’ll check out Girls and Yuck and The Horrors, I don’t really know much about a lot of the bands but I listened to Washed Out and thought they had the most apt band name ever.

The Transistors play Laneway this Monday at 1.45pm on the Park Lane Stage

Posted by Nick Fulton under Christchurch, New Zealand
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Broken vista

At first a jarring, disjointed combination of jilted synths, aggressive beats and Jamie Stewart’s always-staggering vocals, eventually you’ll find yourself getting lost in ‘Hi’, the first song from Xiu Xiu’s upcoming album Always. Its video, directed by Jamie and David Horvitz, follows Jamie on a roadtrip through upstate New York, with footage of disparate events such as him biting apples still hanging on trees, scrawling lyrics in public bathrooms, shoving copies of Dick Cheney’s autobiography into a rubbish bin or setting his hand on fire. Interspersed with photos from the band’s recent tour and shots of photos in books, it has a disarming and surreal feel but is also at times quite humorous. It is essentially in the nature of everything Xiu Xiu produces: anatagonistic, confronting and dreamlike.

While fans wait for the band’s impending world tour and album, they can head over to their website and check out Jamie’s blog. Just the other day he wrote about sex chat rooms, and how screenshots of their various empty locations are potentially “the greatest performance art space in human history”. He continues, “It is touching and honest and terrifying and stimulating and enlightening and filled with a dear and challenging sorrow and humor.” Much like Xiu Xiu itself.

Always will be released on March 6, and continues the band’s long tradition of working with Deerhoof‘s Greg Saunier, who produced the album and contributed drums and vocals. John Congleton, who has also worked with Antony and the Johnsons, Marilyn Manson and The Roots, mixed it. If ‘Hi’ is anything to go by, Always will be considerably accessible work for the band, encouraging listeners to respond with its inviting lyrics.

Xiu Xiu’s website

Posted by Sarah Gooding under California, San Jose, U.S.A
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Scuzz Puppies

Controversial music critic Chris Weingarten called Pop. 1280 the “hardest working scumbags in the scuzzfuckery business”, when recently raving about them in the Village Voice and on Spin.com. It’s on Spin.com where you can listen to the band’s new album in its entirety, before it’s officially released on January 24 by New York label Sacred Bones Records. Titled The Horror, it’s a haunting hybrid of hatred and harassing post-punk. Violent guitars slice through layers of distortion and tin-pan percussion, while a creepy whisper of feedback adds a late-night deviance and a sick sense of perverted revelry. The album is thick and heavy, with a very dark, filthy finish, but while its grimy sound appears to be its most obvious attraction, The Horror has an oddly metaphorical core, consciously referencing the harsh reality of poverty in New York City. To put some of the band’s subject matter into context, you can read Sarah’s excellent piece written in 2010 reviewing the band’s 12″ record The Grid and explaining guitarist Ivan Lip’s connection with New York’s less privileged underclass.

After a couple of 7″ records and a 12″ vinyl release in 2010 Pop. 1280 seem ready to establish themselves in the scuzzy, grimy punk world, dominated by a growing number of artists associated with Sacred Bones Records. In 2011 the label released records by Zola Jesus, Moon Duo, Crystal Stilts and Psychic Ills, to go with previous releases by Nice Face, Gary War, Amen Dunes and The Pink Noise. Watch this band in 2011 as they climb the popularity ladder – you’ll hear more from them, I’m sure.

Stream The Horror at Spin.com

‘Like’ Pop. 1280 on Facebook

Pre-order The Horror from Sacred Bones Records

Posted by Nick Fulton under New York, U.S.A
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Super 8 Obsession

Auckland’s Autumn Splendour have a new video to share that was shot on Super 8 film and processed in Germany. We got the band to explain what they’re about and why they have an obsession with naming songs after themselves.

(EMJ) When did you start Autumn Splendour and has it always been the same line-up?
(AS: Natasha Cantwell) In the Autumn of 2009 Cait and I started the band with our friend Toby who has since moved to Dunedin. Ryan is our third bassist. He joined a year ago but he’s always been part of the Autumn Splendour gang.

What is each of your musical backgrounds?
(N) I hadn’t really played guitar before Autumn Splendour. We’re all pretty much self-taught on the instruments we play in this band. I like how it gives us an unconventional approach to making music. I have a pretty spazzy style, but I’m cool with that.
(AS: Cait Roberts) I learnt to play the drums by playing along with friends who were kind enough to be patient with me. Ryan helped me out quite a bit.
(AS: Ryan Perry) I started playing bass when I joined Autumn Splendour but have played guitar for 10 years.

What do you all do away from the band?
(N) I’m a fashion photographer and artist.
(C) I recently graduated as a psychologist but am currently unemployed.
(R) Writing a thesis on human nature (not the band).

Why punk music? What attracts you to fast, loud, aggressive guitar music?
(N) It was never a conscious decision; the music that we play is just what comes out when we get together! There are a lot of musical genres that I enjoy listening to but wouldn’t have nearly as much fun playing.
(C) I think loud aggressive music was a good way for me and Tash to vent our anger. Plus it’s just an easier style of music for beginners – which is what we were when we started the band.

So far you’ve been pretty active in Auckland, but what about the rest of the country? Have you visited many other towns and how was your music received?
(N) We’ve played in Wellington and Christchurch and we’ve generally found the student and independent radio stations in New Zealand and Australia to be really supportive. Our show at Mighty Mighty was heaps of fun. Wellington showed me a great time!
(C) I thought Wellington was a cool audience – they seemed really into our music and seemed less inhibited or something.

“They represent things Natasha or I have said, or stories about extreme behaviour.”

Auckland has a pretty solid alternative punk scene, have you played any particularly memorable shows?
(C)  I really like playing parties – so any house parties we played were memorable. There is less pressure and everyone is just having a good time rather than paying to see a band.
(R) My first performance was an impromptu set after The Crabbs at a house party in West Terrace. Memorably, Peter Crabbs introduced us as Awesome Blender.
(N) Pushing that over-eager drunk girl off the stage at Mighty Mighty was pretty memorable. I never know how far you can take things when you’re on stage. She was fine though, drunk people bounce back.

You released your first EP on 7″ vinyl. Have you recovered the costs yet?
(C) Gosh, I have no idea.
(N) We still have some available for sale. Once they’re all sold we’ll almost break even! It was never a financially motivated decision. It’s so exciting having your songs on vinyl, we just wanted to do it and make something we’d be proud of.

Are you about to release your debut album or another EP?
(N) Currently we’re just releasing singles one by one rather than as a whole EP or album.

How does your new music differ from what’s on your first EP?
(N) The EP is the first six songs we ever wrote, recorded only six months after we’d formed the band. We used to just write songs on the spot, now we spend a bit more time trying out different ideas.
(R) The new songs are darker and more aggressive. We’ve probably developed as musicians or something, but in the very least there is ever-increasing bass distortion.
(C) I think it has more depth to it – musically, that is. We’re more confident to try out different things now. I’m not so worried about playing my drums “right” like I used to be.

You seem to like using your own names as song titles, ‘Cait’ on the first EP and now ‘Natasha’. What do those songs represent?
(C) They represent things Natasha or I have said, or stories about extreme behaviour.
(N) All our songs are named after our friends, but I swear it’s only a coincidence that we end up recording the songs about band members.

When is Ryan going to get a song, and what will it be about?
(R) I have one! Everyone is going to get to hear a recorded version really soon that we did at the same time as ‘Natasha’. It’s about schoolyard anxieties and a fear of germs. It’s probably exaggerated.

You’re releasing your new video today. Tell me about it?
(N) We’re releasing a video for ‘Malcolm’, which is on the EP. My friend Tom and I shot this video before the band had recorded our new songs, but difficulties in getting the film processed in Germany has meant we’ve only just finished it now! It’s shot on super 8 (which I’m obsessed with) and features a wannabe Malcolm getting ready and hyped up for a night out. It was inspired by the gin drinking and dancing habits of my friend (who has requested to remain nameless) who stars in the video and references one of my favourite artworks, ‘Gordon’s Makes Us Drunk’ by Gilbert & George.

How can people find out more about Autumn Splendour and when can they next see you play live?
(C) : Come talk to us after gigs if you want to know more!
(N) We’re playing on Saturday, January 21^st at Bodega in Wellington with The Eversons and we’re currently organising an Auckland gig with Mean Girls in February.

‘Like’ Autumn Splendour on Facebook

Posted by Nick Fulton under Auckland, New Zealand
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Beirut
with
Tono and the Finance Company

Saturday, January 14, 2012
The Opera House, Wellington

Photos by Rachel Brandon

See more photos of Beirut and Tono and the Finance Company

Posted by Nick Fulton under Live photos
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Acid Garage

Knoxville, Tennessee’s COOLRUNNINGS just popped onto my radar with their new single ‘Spirits of the High’, a fuzzy psych-rock blow-out that channels all things from the Mothers of Invention to Wooden Shjips. The band began in 2009 when Brandon Biongo and Forrest Ferguson combined their solo-projects to perform live – they’re now a four-piece with Adam Cottle and Scott Kapuscinski. Together they’ve released two EPs, an album, and a 7″ under the name COOLRUNNINGS, each time evolving to become a more noisier, driving force. Their Fool Moon 7″, mastered at Abbey Road studios and released on British label Too-Pure is an outstanding highlight, full of psyched out synths, chugging percussion and hypnotic vocals. It was released as part of Too-Pure’s Singles Club series – a monthly 7″ release that eventually comprises  twelve 7″s per year and can all be purchased for a single fixed subscription price. The band’s back catalogue is well worth checking out as there’s something for everyone, be it the scuzzy electro-punk of their Babes Forever EP (mostly the work of Brandon Biongo) or the more energetic, artful pop of their debut full-length Dracula Is Only The Beginning. All can be streamed, downloaded and purchased in physical form from the Dracula Horse label website.

Posted by Nick Fulton under Tennessee, U.S.A
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Success Is A Warm Tommy Gun

Starting the year with some hip-hop – this is about the best thing I’ve heard so far in 2012. It comes from an Atlanta artist named Bugus, who released his debut album 2020 in 2011 and he’s been winning some pretty decent praise from my favourite hip-hop blog, Earmilk. A true up-and-comer, 19-year-old Bugus is associated with the DIEMON label, who house a roster of young artists, including Russ and Musa SB. With a mature voice that sounds well-weathered in the hip-hop game, Bugus has the skills and will power to turn first-time listeners into believers. Blending the soul rhythms of New York giants The Roots and Ma$e with the awareness and sincerity of Chicago’s Common, Bugus has his influences down and his own voice well and truly focused. DIEMON released 2020 as a free download and they’ve just dropped a new Bugus track titled ‘Success’. You can grab both from the DIEMON website, along with a load of other free and legal downloads.

Bugus- Success: MP3

‘Like’ Bugus on Facebook

Posted by Nick Fulton under Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A
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Warped All Day

Take a ride on Cartoon’s magic carpet through an interstellar world of warped synths, squeals and relentless barrelling drums. Listening to the album 69er On A Magic Carpet is like being stuck in a remixed computer game, upside down. Dizzying sounds whir past at breakneck speed in an ever-upbeat utopia. In the spirit of Dan Deacon, Ryan Bennett’s energy levels remain high in a constant state of psychotic bliss. With chewy synths splitting the crisp cuts of seamless melodies it seems like he barely takes a breath throughout the entire album. An epic drum master from a myriad of bands, including Megaheroes, Ryan continues his effortless conquering of the skins with this frenetic attack. Enlisted to help with the album’s production were Luke Rowell (Disasteradio) and Jeremy Coubrough (Marineville, Signer, Orchestra of Spheres and founder of the Rampant Runes label) with mixing, Jason Post with mastering and Tim Shann with drum recording. The album was officially released on January 2 and screen printed cassettes should be available soon from Epic Sweep Records. Download the album from bandcamp now for pay-as-you-like and buy a sweet t-shirt!

Listen to Cartoon’s interview with Australia’s Noosa Community radio

Posted by Sarah Gooding under New Zealand, Wellington
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Ashes to Ashes

Formed on a Kibbutz in Israel, Yuck is a British band proudly rocking an American sound. They’re heading to New Zealand later this month to play at the annual Laneway Festival. Here’s a brief exchange we had with Yuck’s chief songwriter Max Bloom.

(EMJ) Hi Max. Where are you at the moment?
(Max) I’m just in London, at my house.

How long  have you been back home since finishing your last tour?
It’s been about two weeks now. I went on holiday to Stockholm for a week and I just got back yesterday.

You guys have spent most of the year over in the US, haven’t you?
Yeah, for the most part.

You’re signed to Fat Possum Records in the US. Do you think there’s much of a difference between the way your music is received in the US to the  way it’s received in the UK?
It depends. Different cultures, different people. America’s a bigger place so obviously there’s a lot more to cover. England could probably fit into the size of Texas, so it definitely requires a lot more work. I don’t know if the people who like our music in England differ to those in America.

But Yuck has quite an American sound, certainly when you hear comparisons made between your band and other bands, it tends to be American bands that people reference. Bands like Superchunk, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr.
Yeah.

Does that reflect a lot of the music you were listening to when you were growing up?
The bands that people often mention when they’re talking about us are the bands that I was completely obsessed with throughout the recording and writing of the first album. I didn’t listen to anything else because I was completely obsessed with guitar music. I guess it’s an album that’s born out of an obsession with stuff like that. It was kind of a period of this obsession, discovering what I liked and what I didn’t like, listening to various people playing guitar and feeling inspired to write music.

You were in a band called Cajun Dance Party when you were a lot younger, and that band has a very British sound…
I guess that was a whole different ball park. I wasn’t really writing music in Cajun, I was just playing bass. Obviously it was a really good time, and it was kind of fucked up because we were fifteen. We were still at school, it was a really fun time, but when we got a little bit older I felt more like I wanted to be in a band where I had a little bit of control over the creative effort. I wanted to be playing guitar and writing songs and my old band would not have been the group of musicians to do that with, so I formed a new band.

Like you say, you and Daniel Blumberg were only fifteen when you were in Cajun Dance Party. How is it now, touring and playing with people in other bands who are much older but perhaps less experienced?
Although I was in a touring band before this band I feel like starting Yuck was a little bit like going back to square one, in the sense that we were in school then and that meant that we couldn’t do any touring, we couldn’t do all the stuff we could do if we were out of school. We didn’t do much touring, we only released one album – it was something that we made when we were fifteen and that’s all we have to show for ourselves really. It wasn’t like reality, we didn’t actually do much. The amount of work we’ve all put in to this band in the past year is not comparable to anything with my old band.

Yuck’s a far more grown-up band then?
Yeah maybe, I guess you could say that insofar as we’re older people. It wasn’t necessarily the band I wanted to be in for the rest of my life, Yuck is.

The formation of the band is quoted in most press is dating back to 2009, but do the foundations of the band go back much further than that, especially considering that you and Daniel have been friends for so long?
I’m really not good with dates, but I think late 2009 is when things got started. Me and Daniel were writing together before that point. We spent a year not really doing much, just writing and recording music in my bedroom and stuff. But once it got to the stage where we had a large amount of songs to deal with we thought, ‘Let’s start playing live now.’ That’s when we got in touch with the other guys (Mariko Doi and Jonny Rogoff).

“The bands that people often mention when they’re talking about us are the bands that I was completely obsessed with throughout the recording and writing of the first album.”

You’ve played live quite a bit now. You had your first major tour with Times New Viking?
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if that was a major tour, but I guess it was. It was just a situation where we travelled around the UK in a car and slept at friends’ houses and kind of got paid nothing, but I guess that was our first kind of tour.

And you’ve since toured with Unknown Mortal Orchestra?
Yeah, lovely boys.

Is Laneway your first run of festival dates?
Yeah I think so. In the summer we usually do things like a gig a week or whatever, but this is the first thing of this nature that we’ve ever done, definitely.

Have you played a few smaller festivals in other parts of the world?
We’ve done a couple of American ones and a couple of European festivals. I guess we’ll do a European festival this year, around Germany or somewhere.

So who looks after that side of the band’s affairs?
We’ve got an agent in America.

So you don’t look after much of the managerial side of things, bookings, etc?
I don’t think we’re the kind of band to let other people do those things, because, like, our situation with our English label and our American label is that we make sure we have control over everything. We make sure everything goes through us and that all the decisions are made by us.

I want to ask about that band being more of a live band than a studio band. Your records sound like they may be recorded live rather than tracked. Is playing live your priority?
No, I think with us recording and playing live are two very different things. The way we write and the way we record are very dependant on the way a song will start in my bedroom, where we have a studio. I record a rough demo and I might have the bare bones of a song or whatever and record it on the spot. The album wasn’t recorded like that, it was done in tracks. We spent a lot of time, when we were kind of developing our songs and stuff, developing our sound and deciding on things we liked and things we didn’t. We’d have to trial it again and again, seeing what worked and what didn’t and that’s how the album is recorded. Playing it live is something completely different, especially on this album, because some of the tracks are just mine and Daniel’s take on the song entirely and that’s all you’re hearing, whereas when it’s live obviously there’s four people involved, and the way we play live is really different to the way the album sounds. Things are different just because of the way you’re feeling. The album was recorded quite a long time ago, so the way we were feeling then might be different to the way we’re feeling in the moment, standing on stage.

So have you got some new material to play live and then record as well?
Yeah, I think the recording will come first, just because I’ve been meaning to do that. It’s getting there, I have an idea of how I want it to sound.

Yuck play the Laneway Festival on January 30 at Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter

Purchase Yuck’s debut album

Posted by Nick Fulton under England, London
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Sicilian Sleep

Juxtaposing a stout middle-aged man going for swim with shots panning over paintings of stately European mansions and fires amid snow, Cool Rainbows’ video for their first single sure makes an impression. A gentle, shuffling beat and warm atmospheric sounds make an idyllic bed for Djeisan Suskov’s gentle voice to coast along. From his roots five or so years ago in post-punk scene-stealers Nova Echo to the more recent pop of Trees Climbing Trees, Djeisan’s latest project takes a lighter, more ambient route. Little Chief signed him in March and he’s such a studio-bound perfectionist that it took him ’til 10 days ago to release his first single. But it’s proof that hard work pays off, as ‘Southern Summer Sun’ is a polished piece of pop bliss. The more embellished sound with quaint instrumentation including deft little touches of guitar and swaying melodies made with unusual sounds is testament to his sophisticated talent. The song is available for pay-as-you-like download and will be on his upcoming album Whale Rocket.

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Auckland, New Zealand
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