Altmusic - New Zealand

Chris Watson at the High Seas - 7th Oct 2009

2010-01-14T12:11:00.003+13:00

Chris Watson is a heavyweight in the avante garde world for his work with field recordings. A founding member of late '70s techno and synth-pop innovators Cabaret Voltaire and, later, ambient-industrial fusioners the Hafler Trio. In something of an odd switch, Watson left the music industry behind in the 1985 to work as a sound recordist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He quickly branched out into production for film and television and has since handled field recording for a number of nature programs and documentaries, including David Attenborough's "The Life of Birds" which won him a BAFTA for best factual sound in 1998.
In 1996, after collecting hundreds of hours of location recordings from less accessible regions of the world, Watson returned to music production, releasing his first-ever solo album "Stepping into the Dark", on the Touch label. Actually a compilation of recordings of natural settings spanning from Inverness to Kenya to Venezuela to Cumbria, the release was lauded internationally and received an Award of Distinction at the Prix Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. His second album "Outside the Circle of Fire" was released in 1998 and "Weather Report" from 2003 was listed amongst the Guardian newspaper's "1000 albums to listen to before you die".
In 2006 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Technology degree by the University of the West of England "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to sound recording technology, especially in the field of natural history and documentary location sound"

Performing here with Richard Francis and Rosy Parlane.
Many thanks to Jen French for documentation of event

Oren Ambarchi, Sign of the Hag, Our Love Will Destory the World, Ladieswear Landscapi. Hole In The Wall, Wellington

2009-08-25T20:11:00.015+12:00

Photos by Lucy-My-Control

Sign Of The Hag

Our Love Will Destroy The World

Oren Ambarchi

Ladieswear Landscapi

Oren Ambarchi and Expansion Bay at The Dunedin Public Art Gallery

2009-08-14T10:51:00.002+12:00

Photos courtesy of Markus Gradwohl

Oren Ambarchi et al, Artspace - May 22nd 2009

2009-08-11T15:47:00.005+12:00

Oren Ambarchi

Photos courtesy of Jen French

Roy Montgomery

Alex McKinnon

Roy Montgomery, May 23rd 2009. Artspace

2009-08-10T18:16:00.002+12:00

Grouper at The Whammy Bar

2009-08-10T16:30:00.002+12:00

Pumice at the Whammy bar

2009-08-10T16:20:00.002+12:00

Gudrun gut, March 4th, 2009. Altmusic

2009-08-06T14:19:00.002+12:00

XE - Rachel Shearer, Guy Treadgold, Sean O'Reilly, Dean Roberts

2009-08-06T13:36:00.002+12:00

Tenniscoats Feb 21st 2009

2009-08-05T12:19:00.002+12:00

PUMICE.GROUPER.CJA/SMOKEHOUSE.DUNEDIN.CHICKS HOTEL

2009-04-01T16:52:00.007+13:00

Chicks Hotel, Port Chalmers.
Photos by Markus Gradwohl.
http://www.drachenwerk.at/markus/

Pumice

2009-03-30T13:57:00.002+13:00

Stefan Neville’s Pumice work throughout its ten year plus existence, remains as one of the most relevant and prolific in the New Zealand experimental music scene, and undeniably significant in the psych/outsider/free folk scenario. Although Pumice has always had charm in the ways of ramshackle pop and dusted lo-fi noise excursions, his work has shifted into different sonorities and styles from the mid nineties to the present time.
photos courtesy of Jen French

Thanks to Lucy-My-Control for her photos of the Wgton gig

Auckland - March 12th, Grouper and Pumice

2009-03-30T13:50:00.005+13:00

Grouper (Portland) is the project of Liz Harris. In a short space of time, Grouper has become the name on the lips of the underground music world having captured hearts worldwide with her distinct blend of noise, ambience and a dream-pop sensibility. She submerges her songs in a shimmering haze of hiss, looping chorals and decomposed guitar feedback, but somewhere in there you can hear the ghosts of My Bloody Valentine or possibly Slowdive.
photos courtesy of Jen French

Thanks to lucy-my-control for the wgton photos

Mr HayDay

2009-03-30T13:43:00.002+13:00

Imagine the Teletubbies dropping acid while locked in a studio created by imaginative movie director Michael Gondry and you come close to just how infectious Mr Hayday is. Full of synth riffs, wonky squelches and electronic experiments that will put a smile on your face and a skip in your step almost instantly.
Photos courtesy of Jen French

Disasteradio

2009-03-30T13:39:00.002+13:00

Consisting of just one man, Luke Rowell, Disasteradio is a warped combination of 80's synth pop mixed up with the latest electro sounds of today.
Since befriending the first family computer (the Commodore 64) at age 6, Luke has been fascinated with the possibilities of synthesizer sounds and pop melody. Somewhere in a bedroom deep in the Hutt Valley, Luke Rowell and Computer, better known as DISASTERADIO, have put together around 150 songs on 6 albums and sometimes leaving said bedroom, touring nine times and taking in close to 200 shows.
Photos courtesy of Jen French

Auckland - March 4th at Cassette

2009-03-30T13:29:00.001+13:00

Gudrun Gut, Disasteradio and Mr Hayday
Photos courtesy of Jen French

GUDRUN BUT (BERLIN)
Gudrun currently runs the Berlin-based Monika Enterprise Label, was an early member of Einstürzende Neubauten and most famously founded the 1980s band Malaria!
Gut became practically a thread unto herself in Berlin's underground art and music scenes. She explored cross-sections of new wave, techno, spoken word, multimedia art, and experimental rock in bands like Mania D, Matador, and Project Miasma. There have been film scores, radio plays, videos projects, gallery exhibitions, remixes, a record label, DJ gigs, and the eclectic, collective radio show "The Ocean Club".
Featured in prestigious UK magazine ‘The Wire’ recently:
“This is a story about a’ geniale dilettante’; a punk and a No Waver and an early adopter of computer pop; a girl from German heatherlands who moved to Berlin to become one of the city’s central figures – feminist agitator, festival organizer, entrepreneur. Plus of course musician, performance artist, DJ, radio presenter, club organizer, cultural ambassador and label owner. She has done all of this largely by maintaining her independence. Not in the rejectionist strain that characterizes knee-jerk American individualism, but rather by creating and attending to niches and spaces of possibility in the interstices and the margins.”

Auckland - Feb 21st at the Cross St Studios. Tenniscoats and Xe

2009-03-30T12:56:00.003+13:00

Tokyo's Tenniscoats centre around the duo of Saya and Taskashi Ueno, a married couple who have been making music since 2000, and together run the highly regarded Japanese label Majikick Records.Tenniscoats manage to reign in the sounds of the avant-garde and knit them into accessible and wonderfully listenable vignettes in which you find yourself going back to again and again. Their starting point is pop songs, but with a staggeringly free approach: psychedelic folk tunes, complex instrumentals and short pop jewels side by side, everything is possible
thanks to Jen French for photos

The first performance of the new group Xe, comprised of Rachel Shearer, Sean O'Reilly, Guy Treadgold and Dean Roberts.
Voice and data, negative realm. Ice crystals in the morning sand, pacific endless and awake on the other side of awake. Black holes are friendly, space between stars is not. Historically, about songs about cats coming in from the hailstorm, about hailstorms themselves, and one endless smoke. About hands full of noise to give to silence, stacking pebbles in a bell. About the hammer, the pick, the glass and the stairs. About single tone, dry reed, thin cipher oppressive sky. About post dangerous lifestyles, pre extinguishing blips along the event horizon