Last night I was over-tired and slightly grumpy. Then I stumbled upon this song and it removed the feeling in one of those lovely Grump-Be-Gone™ (now with bonus synth!) moments. The dramatic synth and dynamic between the male and female vocals are exactly the kinds of sounds I’m a sucker for. “In the Fall” kind [Read the Rest...]

Friday night was set to be all about The Verlaines at Bodega. It didn’t work out that way at all. Which was no fault of The Verlaines – we didn’t get that far. We arrived particularly early for some reason-or-other which subjected us to the support acts. This was unfortunate. They were Tono and Simon [Read the Rest...]

Last night didn’t start at all well on the show front. We started off at Bodega for The Verlaines but were so put off by the support acts we walked out before they even came on. Wandering down Cuba on the lookout for something else to do we noticed Tourettes was playing a, very poorly [Read the Rest...]

The awkwardly named oOoOO are awesome despite their clearly deliberate attempt to avoid word-of-mouth promotion and search-engine success. Actually, I emailed their label asking if I could buy their CD-R and given my only option was cash-in-the-mail they may be trying to avoid success altogether. Though ‘Seaww’, that you can hear below, is featured on [Read the Rest...]

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, which is “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.” You can find out more about Ada Lovelace and the day itself here. I pledged to write about a woman in technology, so I’ve chosen musician Imogen Heap. You may have read about [Read the Rest...]

We’re seeing The Verlaines live this weekend. Who are remnants re-lived from New Zealand music’s least-embarrassing moment in the sun – 80′s Dunedin rock. They’re not on Modular’s NZ Mixtape but with bands like The Cleans, The Bats, (not The) Tall Dwarfs they certainly could be. Put it down to their timezone advantage, but one [Read the Rest...]

Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors were definitely one of the bands I was most looking forward to in this packed summer of shows. Support was the trio that is Signer live. I’ve seen them support someone else at the Bathhouse recently but quite who slips my mind. The first few songs seemed a little complex for the [Read the Rest...]

There has been some form of “arts” “festival” in Wellington the past few weeks. This has primarily consisted of the form of art that one reacts to by stepping back from it and making appreciative noises, or by doing that 3-finger clap they teach you at primary school so as to not cause a ruckus. [Read the Rest...]

Sleigh Bells have been getting enough blog buzz the past few months without my help. But that isn’t the point of song-of-the-day and besides these guys really lifted my day on Friday. I can’t wait to hear their current set of self-produced tracks re-recorded, with some new as-awesome, on their debut album. Soon please? I [Read the Rest...]

A workmate spontaneously burst into singing the chorus from LL Cool J‘s 80′s classic at work on Friday. It seemed lost on a few of the younger members of the studio. I tried to point out it was reinterpreted by Notorious B.I.G. on his post-humous album – but it seems this didn’t spark any more [Read the Rest...]