Oceanic psychedelic goodness
The Ruby Suns’ album Fight Softly is reviewed by Will Dean of the Guardian who gives the indie group four stars for their latest effort. Dean concludes: “Like a best-of 2009 mixtape, The Ruby…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Texan challenges
James Milne, who goes by the performance name of Lawrence Arabia, is one of a number of New Zealand acts playing at the SXSW in Texas this month. He talks to the Austinist about…
Hooligan comes clean
Otara MC Karlos Diamond, aka Mr Sicc, who performs at SXSW 2010 in Austin, Texas on March 19, talked to US music site Spinner about his musical influences — including Marvin Gaye, Prince and…
Kerretta play SXSW
Auckland three-piece Kerretta make their US debut in March with a show at this year’s SXSW, the festival also marking the release of their debut album, Vilayer. Drawing from influences that seem to…
Debut in Dayton
Pianist Justin Bird, 25, New Zealand’s young musician of the year in 2002, recently played a solo concert at Shiloh Church in Dayton, Ohio as part of the city’s final Soirees Musicales Piano Series….
Smokin’ in the US
Singer/songwriter Gin Wigmore makes her US debut in March playing a selection of southern tour dates with US band Citizen Cope. Auckland-born Wigmore, 23, will release her first full-length, Holy Smoke, March 16 via…
Sounds of old and new
The New Zealand String Quartet recently performed a programme entitled “East Meets West” at Ithaca College’s Ford Hall. The programme featured music by Beethoven, Shostakovich and contemporary Chinese, Japanese and Cambodian composers. Quartet member…
Seizing the Spirit
Crowded House are proving popular in the UK as a second concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall was added “due to phenomenal demand after tickets for the first night went on sale,” the Express &…
Further Accolades for Brown
Ladyhawke is up for another music gong this month having been nominated for a BRIT best International Female Solo Artist award. Masterton-born Pip Brown, 30, will compete with big name stars Lady Gaga, Rihanna,…
Likened to Lennon
Christchurch singer-songwriter James Milne, or as he is otherwise known, Lawrence Arabia, “can sound uncannily like John Lennon” writes Times Online reviewer Mark Edwards. “Exactly why Milne chose his pseudonym isn’t clear; this isn’t…
Tough cherub
Auckland singer Gin Wigmore, 23, is included alongside Little Boots, Peaches and Megan Washington in Australian magazine Yen, in an article called ‘All the Single Ladies’ , which says: “They may not have rated…
Boondigga takes on US
Wellington band Fat Freddy’s Drop recently played three sell-out shows on the West Coast of the United States. The seven-piece dub outfit has been together for nearly a decade, yet only recently released its…
Aotearoa soul infectious
“There’s a place far from Jamaica where old-school reggae still rules: New Zealand,” writes Cary Darling for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Such traditionalists as Katchafire and the Black Seeds, as well as more electro…
Together in recovery
Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox, a benefit compilation for the Auckland musician who suffered a debilitating stroke in June, has been released in New Zealand on Knox’s own A Major Label, proceeds of which…
Blissful ending
The Phoenix Foundation’s latest album Happy Ending has been given five stars by The Independent’s Andy Gill who says the Wellington sextet “are surely the most potent band to come out of New Zealand…
Arias for Chanteuse
Ladyhawke picked up two awards in the breakthrough single and album categories at the recent 2009 Australian Music Awards (Arias). The 30-year-old singer, originally from Masterton, performed her single ‘My Delirium’ live at the…
Walker the Idol
New Zealand-raised eighteen-year-old Stan Walker has been crowned Australian Idol winning a AU$200,000 artist’s development fund and a recording contract with Sony. Described as a soul singer, Walker, who is a shop assistant in…
Funksters Release Second
The Flight of the Conchords have released their second album in the UK, I Told You I Was Freaky. The Guardian’s Will Dean says “we told you they were funky” and offers readers some…
Big and buzzing in NY
Auckland band Surf City played six shows in New York as part of the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon. The Washington Post’s David Malitz writes: “For a band with just an EP to its name,…
Taking home the loot
Masterton-born singer Ladyhawke has won six Tuis at the New Zealand Music Awards. Ladyhawke, aka Pip Brown, won the album of the year for Ladyhawke (Modular/Universal) and single award for ‘My Delerium’ at the…
Progeny of genius
New Zealand musician Liam Finn, 26, recently performed in Wisconsin at Madison’s Majestic Theatre with his childhood friend and current musical collaborator Eliza-Jane Barnes. In a review of the performance on Madison.com Aaron Conklin…
Homemade Impresses
Wellington reggae seven-piece Fat Freddy’s Drop is compared to 70’s funk groups the Average White Band and War in a Guardian review of their latest nine-track album Dr Boondigga & the Big BW. The…
Southern celebrations
Auckland-based singer-songwriter Caitlin Smith will perform at this year’s ASB Queenstown JazzFest, a 10-day live music celebration from October 17 to 26. A sensational line-up of more than 50 bands and 200 local and…
Westenra joins forces
Christchurch soprano Hayley Westenra, 22, will top the bill at the Royal British Legion’s annual Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on November 7, replacing glamorous Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins as the…
Beer for art’s sake
New Zealand singer Ladyhawke, 30 and painter/illustrator Sarah Larnach, 30, have redesigned labels for Beck’s beer bottles as part of beer brand’s Music Inspired Art project, labels which feature watercolours of a howling wolf…
Holy dedication
This month, Auckland singer/songwriter Gin Wigmore, 23, releases her debut album Holy Smoke which was recorded in Los Angeles with the American band The Cardinals. Wigmore is signed to Universal in Australia, where she…
Tui time at the Vector
Auckland band Midnight Youth and London-based Ladyhawke — aka Pip Brown — have both been nominated for a number of awards to be presented at this year’s New Zealand Music Awards held at the…
Family affair
Neil Finn, his brother Tim and sons Liam and Elroy are just four of the 21 songwriters, 14 backing musicians and a dog collaborating on the album The Sun Came Out just released in…
Massive comparisons
Wellington soul collective Fat Freddys Drop released their second album Dr Boondigga & the Big BW earlier this year, an album which according to Guardian reviewer Neil Spencer has an “infectious mix of retro-soul…
Badtown do Brighton
West Auckland six-piece ska-punk band Badtown sold their worldly possessions to tour the UK seaside city of Brighton inspired by the city’s own legendary punk rockers Peter and the Test tube Babies. Badtown’s bassist…
Sun out soon
Crowded House frontman Neil Finn has collaborated with the Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Radiohead’s Phil Selway and Ed O’Brien and new additions Wilco to produce a double-disc collection called The Sun Came Out, proceeds of…
Radio with Pictures
New Zealand-born DJ, radio host and television personality, Zane Lowe, 35, is piloting an initiative by BBC’s Radio 1 to make radio a visual medium, with Lowe’s antics being filmed by no less than six television…
American hoopla
The Datsuns are in the United States promoting their fourth album Headstunts — the first time the band has been in the country since touring with the Pixies in 2004. When The Datsuns blasted…
Interpreting Haydn
The New Zealand String Quartet performed two pieces by Haydn at Ithaca College in New York to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death in 1809. The group also played Janacek’s String Quartet No…
Energetic last dance
Wellington jazz musicians the Ford/Tipping/Wise Trio have released a “hard-grooving, impressively creative release” called After the Last Dance, which music site All About Jazz reviews this month. “Each tunes is thoughtfully…
Emerging from underground
New Zealand music icons The Bats and The Clean both release new albums this year and in “anticipation of this sudden surge in Antipodean creativity, rang up the Bats…
Hot in the Isles
Ladyhawke played to a packed audience, including The O.C. A-lister Mischa Barton, in the John Peel Tent at this year’s Glastonbury Festival on June 28. “Pip Brown and her band played a charged set…
Rising Star
Christchurch-born singer Boh Runga is the “next singer-songwriter to keep your eyes on” according to music site Top40-charts, which goes on to describe LA-based Runga’s latest solo album Right Here as “strongly reflective of…
Heavenly Pop Hits
Morr Music, an independent record label based in Berlin, Germany, has recently released “a double-disc salute to New Zealand’s ever-influential ’80s indie pop scene”. The album, entitled Not Given Lightly – A…
With breath for peace
Richard Nunns, an authority on Maori traditional instruments or taonga puoro, performed the Gillian Whitehead composed “Hineputehue” at Luther College, Minnesota with the New Zealand String Quartet last month. Dunedin based Whitehead wrote “Hineputehue”…
Out on her own
Annabel Alpers has put New Zealand on the tech-pop map writes Guelph Mercury reviewer Jake O’Connell. Recording as Bachelorette, the Christchurch musician’s first album for the American Drag City label is a pop treatise…
They’re Rock n’ Roll
The Flight of the Conchords near the end of their 2009 Spring US tour with a pit stop in Las Vegas, playing at The Joint and reviewed by the local paper, which says the…
Dunedin’s Sound
“There’s something about the antipodes that irritates Britain,” reckons Chills’ frontman Martin Phillipps, on the phone from Dunedin to the Guardian’s Martin Aston. Phillipps tries to explain why New Zealand’s 1980s music scene, one…
Sound stunts
Cambridge-formed rockers The Datsuns have released their fourth album ‘Head Stunts’, an anagram of the group’s name, in the United States where they are currently on tour. Writer Hannah John wrote at the online…
Ladyhawke’s in Vogue
Pip Brown aka Ladyhawke, the former-Wellingtonian and undisputed queen of the synthpop revival, is profiled in the April issue of Teen Vogue, as one of “five musical acts who will be in heavy rotate…
Professionally talking
The Flight of the Conchords are touring the United States donning “unwieldy” robot costumes and “playfully insulting” theirenthusiastic heckling audiences. At New York City’s Radio City Music Hall by the end of Too Many…
Parisian Hang-Ups
Phillipa ‘Pip’ Brown, 30, that’s Ladyhawke to her fans, is interviewed in Paris, where outside the French capital’s “cavernous Nouveau Casino venue, the line of ticketless opportunists snaking into the fading light speaks for…
Cheap sticks
Wellington-based percussion group Strike is in Singapore to play as part of a New Zealand festival. Strike met at Victoria University, when they were mostly playing chamber music, and now are a group of…
Musiq Makers Win
R&B group Nesian Mystik have won the “Best Kiwi” category at the Australian MTV Awards on March 27. The four other New Zealand acts nominated were: Ladyhawke, Cut Off Your Hands, P-Money and Goodnight…
Love, Hope and Light
Whangarei-born, country music superstar Keith Urban, 41, is interviewed by The New York Times’ Alan Light about his latest album, ‘Defying Gravity’ — his first since his admission to the Betty Ford Center. Urban,…
Cold Comparisons
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like being in Iceland, or something. …
Cold omparisons
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like being in Iceland, or something….
Tackling Genres
New Zealand band Cut Off Your Hands is interviewed by American indie music publication Sentimentalist Magazine before the four-piece played the United States’ largest music festival, Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009. Their debut…
Natasha Likes It
Natasha Bedingfield, 27, the UK singer who has sold over ten million records, is currently back in New Zealand — the birthplace of her parents — finding inspiration for her next album, which she…
Not Quite the End
When Tim Finn and Split Enz supported Skyhooks and AC/DC at Sydney’s Festival Hall in 1975, they were booed at by teenager Magda Szubanski. “Years later, Magda admitted that she was booing us —…
Hands Play San-Fran
Auckland-formed indie band Cut Off Your Hands are touring the United States promoting their 2008 debut album You and I. “Pause a minute while taking in the dreamy, vigorous Brit-pop of Cut Off Your…
