A LOW HUM

We leave San Fran, and due to our really enjoying of the Non interstate drive the previous few days, we decide again to take the longer drive and head towards the coastline. The I5 above San Fran is actually quite decent…but yeah, still going the 101 is more stunning. Particularly when you get to drive through the Redwood Forest. We were staying tonight in Arcata, with some people I’d met on myspace. I had been trying to book a house party at a place in Arcata called “Das Gast House”, they couldn’t book us for a show, but I asked if we could stay there anyway and they were sweet as.

We take our time driving through the forests, marvelling at the massive trees, and choose of the two tacky “Mystery” tourist traps on the way “Tree’s of Mystery” and “Confusion Hill”, that we’d spend out hard earned cash on Confusion Hill. Its $5 a person, and we deliberated for quite sometime before deciding we had to do it. We discovered we needn’t of bothered when as soon as we entered the place the counter staff guessed we were a band and they told us how they let bands in for free if you give them a signed CD. How could we say no, especially when we saw a signed Bonnie Prince Billy CD on the pile.

It’s kinda like “Puzzling World” in Wanaka, you know, tilted rooms, chairs you can’t get out of, where you walk into a tilted room and your brain goes crazy trying to recompensate and does crazy stuff. You know its all just mind tricks, but haha, its still heaps of fun http://www.confusionhill.com/ and its always fun hearing the owners try to confuse you with their talk of unexplained phenomena.

Shortly after Confusion Hill you pass the location of the famous photo of Big Foot!

We get pulled over by a cop today, I coulda sworn the road we were travelling on was a 65mph speed limit, but I was snapped doing 68mph on a 55mph road. The cop informed us that even though 65 was the limit in California, 55 was the max limit in Oregon…I guess he’s had a few tourists make the same mistake, so he let us off. For some reason, the speed limits in Oregon are heaps less then anywhere else. I have no idea why, but that state is much more anal about speed the the rest of the US. 75 seems to be the limit in the mid west! However, they are also one of only two states to not charge tax on retail items…so we’ll let em off. (more bitching about taxes/tips soon)

Arcata is probably the only cool town between San Fran and Portland, it’s a college town and there are heaps of cool kids around. Our awesome hosts threw a little low-key party for us with a few friends and some banjo. We got shown the main street and taken to a choice little donut shop that’s open late. On the way back home after the donut shop, we see a whol bunch of kids watching a movie in an alleyway projected onto a wall, maybe 40-50 kids hanging out drinking and watching some political movie, we join them for a short while…but hear that a whole bunch of people have arrived back at the house we are staying at, so hurry back.

Das Gast House (myspace it) is a sweet spot and throw some mean parties, hopefully we can line up a show here next-time. They have an awesomely sweet red detonator 8-track player with like Led Zeppelin and Journey among their 8 track tapes..so, that was lots of fun. Haha, check out the “Slightly ahead of our time” on the bottom right of the poster.

Sadly left Bishop this morning, but was sent packing with care packages from the locals with some of new favourite Lemonade, books, food, drinks, vitamins, chocolate, batteries…dayamn.

Man, I simply cannot express how glad we are we came to Bishop. I’ve ranted enough over the last couple of days about the treamtment….but man…the views!! Sheesh… When I originally drove down from San Fran to LA on the I5 (the fast way), I was bored out of my mind…but driving inland and around is absolutely stunning. We’re driving through desert, we’re driving through snow, we’re driving by lakes, we’re driving through forests.

We got to drive by Mono Lake, a lake that along with “Groom Lake”, me and Nik have been pretty obsessed about for a while. Somebody from Bishop, recognises us 3 hours away in Mono Lake, crazy. We chow down on the bagels our bishop buddies gave us. We get our first little flurry of snow on this drive and were loving it.

PIC – Monolake

Man, San Fran is so sweet. We arrive around 6pm, thankfully we rocked up the carpool lane. Unlike LA where you only have to have two in the car to use the Carpool, in San Fran, you have to have three or more…so the carpool lane is pretty much empty, meaning in rush hour, we laughed at all the fools and drove on by….also, it means you don’t have to pay some of the tolls to go over the bridges….of which there are many. This was the first time on tour I really got lost. So many bridges I got confused….we drove over at least half a dozen before finally getting to the Golden Gate, which was fairly disappointing actually.

Lower Haight street is kinda the Cuba/K-road type area. man, we were there for like 30 mins, and i, no lies, saw at least 30 different people carrying guitar cases. Got our first case of celebrity today when the boys spotted Joel, ex-Brian Jonestown Massacre (Tambo player), man…pretty sweet spotting, though I guess you could just go see his new band anytime in SF…but yeah, we are small town hicks and seeing anyone half famous is awesome.

We were playing at the Rickshaw Stop in SF, a pretty sweet venue…like sorta San Fran Bathhouse size, which reminds we me forgot to go to a bathhouse…damn. We were a little worried about the size, especially when 5 mins before the band were going on stage there were like 5 people in the venue, but it was one of those magic shows where the venue starts filling up as the band starts playing…so halfway through the set, heaps of people were there. Kick ass set tonight and made some great friends, including Jesse, who got more then he bargained for when he came up to tell Over the Atlantic how much he liked them when we asked if we could all stay at his place, thankfully he was sweet as.

We ran out of time to check out the “Full House” house, infact we barely spent anytime in SF which was funny seeing it was one of the cities we were looking forward to most. We just had two monster drives either side.

When Jesse got home home we discovered his flatmates had just had a home delivery from San Fran’s “Green Cross”, a crazy home delivery medical marijuana service, check out their insane menu http://www.thegreencross.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5 includes the “Mac Daddy”. Haha. We just go to sleep while Jesse and his flatties watch Seinfeld re-runs on a bedsheet sized screen.

It’s so easy to see why Americans are so obese, man, fast food here is so cheap and soooo good. Everybody has $1 menus, like Mcdonalds where you can get a double cheeseburger or McChicken for $1, or a whopper junior at Burger King, and you can get really decent Burritos from Taco Bell for like $1.39. On the other hand, fruit is crazy expensive. We’re trying our best to eat healthy, but man, it’s tough. We crank the Taco Bell for the second time today. Trader Joes do these really amazing mixed nut “trail mix” kinda things that we are living on for snacks..not cheap, but they last a couple of days and rule, highly recommended. Its pretty easy to live on $10 a day for food, man, the US is so advanced when it comes to food…aside from fast food being cheaper and better tasting, the Microwave stuff here is amazing…you can actually get microwave pizza that tastes good! And like you can buy microwave meals that are really tasty for like $1 each. Buying some veggies and mixing them in with these is def a good way to go. We also have a power converter that can run off the cigarette lighter so I’m looking around today for a cheap Jug from Op-shops so we can boil water in the car and make soups etc…

We buy a box of cereal every few days and buy a little thing of milk each morning, usually costs less then $1 or so…we then find a random spot to sit down and have breakfast. Breakfast is actually turning into my favourite times of the tour. For breakfast after the SF show we actually went to a cafe in SF and when Ash and Nik walked in two schoolgirls went up to them and went “wow, you guys are so cute! Are you in a band?” . Its funny how much America loves “celebrity” and just by being a completely non-celebrity musician on tour you still sign autographs and people are so enamoured. The cafe even gave Nik and Ash some free Burritos.

Seriously….the above and below scenes are like 5 mins away from each other…sweeeet. Loving driving these dirt roads.

Woke up to hummingbirds at the fountain, hummingbirds are nuts. they don’t make any sense. Apparently everybody here is as obssesed with them as we were after seeing them. Peeps in Bishop plant particular flowers just to attract them, but they are awesome..so, I would too.

This was our first real day off. We had a couple of “days off” in LA, but basically spent 5-6 hours of each day driving around LA looking for cheap music gear and getting pissed off about the heat and the stupid amount of freeways. Being in like the capital of Rock Climbing in the US we decided to head up the Mountain and check that shiz out. Man, did we get high above sea level…by the time we had driven as far as we could we had reached like 9000ft above sea level. Thats pretty darn high, only a couple thousand feet shy of the highest point in NZ. We got out, messed around took some crappy photos, ya know, touristy crap. Pretty amazing geography…one second its burnt massive dry roads and boulders, next corner its snow covered mountains. Man…if you come anywhere near this area, you have GOT to come up the mountain…its only a 15-20 min drive from the central township and beautiful.

PS… any bands going from LA to San fran, don’t bother going on the I5 straight through, sure it will save you 4 hours or so, but man..its a hideous drive.. (just concrete, highways and fields) but going via Bishop…man, such amazing scenery I can’t describe and def worth the extra petrol money/driving…you won’t notice it! If the road is open, you also get to drive through Yosemite! (which we didn’t…but we got the next best national park)…and well..screw saving a coupla hours.

Basically just chilled out all day hanging out around Bishop, in the evening our new Bishop mates took us out to the local pubs to show us a true American pub, and except for a pub brawl, we got it all! Man. I couldn’t believe our luck, within 5 minutes of being in the pub “Sweet Home Alabama” gets picked on the Juke Box by some cowgirl who like starts slapping her thigh… then immediateley this awesome old man who plays the spoons came out from the shadows and started cranking some spoon solos. Awesome.

Our bishop buds made another crazy dinner for us, pulling out all the stops… We get an early night for a big drive to San fran and show the next day.

PS. Photos from around Bishop

Wow. What an amazing time! Now I’m no stranger to touring, and I’m no stranger to being looked after…but this…this was something else. So, you prob read in my last post about everything that was waiting for us when we got to the venue…but well…that was the start.

Tricia, Matt, Janet and Kate basically made this stay out of this world! After a cooked breakfast Tricia shows us around town, man, did we feel like rockstars, the first café we got to, there is a bloke outside who we start talking to… he not only has heard of the show, but is coming and had heard that we had done a show on Dublab! I mean, Bishop has a population of a couple of thousand people, we’re talking half the size of Motueka and the first person we run into has heard of the band. Awesome start. We get some coffees and after hearing the accents…”Oh..you guys must be that band from New Zealand”.

PIC – Us at the beginning of the Pot Luck dinner

We hang out in Bishop for a while, got some sweet scores at the opshop, thn went back and set-up the gear. The show was starting at 7:30pm with a pot luck dinner starting at 6:30pm, so we quickly set-up the PA so we could relax and hang with the locals. This was as classic a small town pot luck house party as you could imagine. The BBQ cranking, kids jamming on their ukeleles, everybody arriving with a dozen under their arm popping in the communal shared beer fridge, people laughing, awesome food…man, and all in Over the Atlantics honour… man, we were so bewildered. So amped to play it was crazy…no support bands (unless you count the kinds banging on the floor tom before the show) so looking like they were gonna have to play every song they knew. (pretty tricky for a band whose first live show together was only 8 days before)

Over the Atlantic live in Bishop will forever be one of my favourite all-time shows. I think the video footage below kinda sums it up, but yeah, people know how to party in Bishop! There were no holds barred…just everybody in the room dancing to every second of everysong. After a week of typical poor turnout, support band status, minimal dancing it was so amazing to have a show where it was all about OTA…and even though the show was donation based, the locals came to the party and got us enough money for petrol to get right up the west coast…and also sold around 20+ CDs and records.

After the gig finishes…and I’m sure it woulda gone longer if the band had known more songs…but haha, I think it had already been around a 90 minute set, including stretching out several of the songs anyway…everybody sticks around to party, there is some sweet campfire action going on outside and plenty of boutique beers and this RIDICULOUSLY amazing homemade lemonade, whipped up by Janet. I had at least 20 cups and coulda done more if I could fit anymore in.

After a few hours of post gig party and heaps of signed records..haha, rockstars… we looked at the clock and it was only 11:30pm..man, so sweet…a gig and a sweet after party and still in bed by midnight.

I’m going back to Bishop as soon as possible

So yeah. There is this one band in LA that I have been hanging out to see since we got here, I have been loving some tracks on their myspace and have heard heaps of people rave about them, so how stoked was I when I hear that No Age are playing a show at the public library? Not only that…it was free! And with Mika Miko! Another band I was really keen to see.

The other guys were keen also, so we after packing up all our gear we head to town and find a sweet parking spot…sure it cost $15US for 2 hours…but it was sweet.

We’d talked to a few people in LA and they had never even heard of a show happening at the library, let alone with two of the most buzzed about bands of the day. It was pretty easy to find where the show was happening, a big stream of indie punks was easy to follow. Luckily we managed to be among the first 250 people there and got in and got seats in the auditorium.

After a silly long wait..what for I have no idea since the room was totally full…and with an unbelievable 5! Uniformed officers on duty in the room. Why aren’t they off fighting real crime? Don’t they know indie kids couldn’t even get violent if they tried. After about 30 mins, which was actually pretty cruisy since we all had nice seats, Mika Miko came on, and they were great. Just exactly what you’d expect to hear from a group of young girls on Kill Rock Stars… party disco punk, you know it. They were all great musicians which kinda gave them an edge and their drummer was awesome. They had a double vocal thing going on, a sax and started a conga line around the auditorium for their last song. They were really fun, and everybody in the room was smiling…kids were dancing and a sweet vibe was set.

PIC: Mika Miko (other photo is of No Age)

You could totally feel the anticipation for No Age’s set. Set in a totally unique environment, there were at least half a dozen “official looking” videographers and as many again photographers, you just totally felt we were about to experience something special….and boy did we! We witnessed 30 minutes of the most special boring garage rock crap I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it…its like each song had 20-30 secs of awesomeness just to be killed by 3 minutes of crash heavy drumming and rock riffing, you know…I’m all for bands not sounding like their recordings (haha…Over the Atlantic live are ridiculously different from their recordings) but, man…where was the experimentation? The only thing remotely alternative about their performance was how they had heaps of effects pedals and didn’t use them. A beautiful drumkit…but after about 20-30 minutes staring at the drumkit and debating whether the guitar tone of the average coporate tool fiddling on an electric guitar in a guitar shop was better of worse then the boring band we were watching we decided to bite the bullet and walk out.

You could tell we weren’t the only ones bored out of own minds. Several people had left and the looks on the kids faces said it all. I guess I should take it easy since one of the guys was sick…but man. I’ve seen band members on their deathbed do the business time and time again…

Haha. I have a distinct feeling these guys will prove me wrong…but I saw Death from Above in Sydney a few years back (which was amazing btw), and No Age just seemed like a very average wannabe version of that band.

So after the show, we headed outta town, saying goodbye to LA, we drove through downtown LA, Skid Row (Rhys wanted South Central, but I was too scared, so Downtown was all he got) and boy was it depressing. There were bums and rubbish everywhere, there was a bum actually bent over in the middle of the road tying his shoelace who wouldn’t move, so all the traffic had to go around him.

What did bums use before shopping trolleys?

So, we get the hell outta LA, and head east, towards our next destination BISHOP! This was perhaps the show I had been looking forward to most of the entire US visit, a friend Tricia contacted me a while ago and offered to put on a house party, being all about partys in small towns…I immediately accepted.

An amazing drive through the desert took us to High Sierra (Check Ghostplane song) and the town of Bishop. The house we arrive at was next door to a very ominous looking trailer park and the guys were thinking I had been pulling their legs about having a friend live here, but we arrive on Tricia’s doorstep to find dinner waiting, a box of books donated from the local independent book store, vouchers for coffees from the local Café, a donated PA, staging, lighting, and the makings of a pot luck dinner party before the show the next day!

We could believe our luck! All getting our own queen size bed each, we get down to business sleeping asap.

Pretty predictable title i guess…Fridays show was pretty ace. Again playing AFTER the headline act which was kinda weird. The show was with Don Cavalli, this band from Italy and wow…man, the room was packed with greasy italians with quiffs….looking straight out of a James Dean film. After he finished, the room pretty much emptied out of the muscle shirt wearing, with sleeves rolled up (with cigarette packets tucked in) dudes and our friends and their friends and people we’d met around LA and some randoms cruised in. Was a nice little group of people that got to see a damn fine show.

The venue Echo Curio is a gallery, BYO, and really choice to play at. I’ll upload some photos soon…but its a really good option for your first visit to LA. The owner treats you well and its very easy to play and in the sweet part (echo park) of town. Over the Atlantic debuted live their track “Echo Park” at the show as well..and it was amazing..def one of my favourite live songs of the set. The neighbour of the dude we are staying with came to the show, and she loved it…I kept looking over at her and saw her biting her bottom lip, with eyes closed, swaying her head Stevie Wonder styles… man, I love LA!

PIC – Over the Atlantic at Echo Curio

I had my first real encounter with the “industry” I’ve come to hear about with a record label boss coming up to me at the show telling me how much he loved the band and he really wanted to hear more. He runs a pretty awesome label…so it was really nice to hear..and i think a testament to how crazy good live this band is….man, if only we can manage to get a show with some large audiences…

Matt (MC Stormtroopa) Schuerich whipped us up an illustration in a couple of hours that we got turned into a stamp… we picked up some white cardboard CD wallets yesterday and are stamping them up and adding some subtle colour with coloring in pencils for a special tour only EP..featuring a couple of new songs, and a couple of tracks left of the US/UK release of “Junica”.

Seeing No Age and Mika Miko at the Public Library tomorrow and then heading up to Death Valley…excited.

Nik also did a photoshoot for his Psychic Powers project which is with LA based Alejandro Cohen, they are really amazing: www.myspace.com/psychicpowers and a 7″ on a rad US label coming out soon. Check out “Frozen”, I used an alternate version on one of the A LOW HUM singles club discs…but yeah, check the version on their myspace page.

OTA’s first show (organised the day before) on tuesday was mainly just being treated as a practise…haha, and OTA were asked to play last, which means basically the only people who stuck around after the main band played were our few LA friends and the engineer and dude who runs the venue, which was kinda exactly what the band wanted..seeing it was only their second show together and a chance to work out some songs. The show ended up being very fun and thankfully the people we care most about in LA were there and really enjoyed it heaps. Afterwards we went out to a jewish 24 hour restaurant after the show, which was apparently where Guns and Roses used to hang in the 90s. It was a pretty awesomely kitsch place…as is all of LA, which basically 90% of which appears to have been built in the 70s.

Even though there were maybe only half a dozen people at the show, word about how awesome the band were got back to the bloke who runs the music section of the LA times, who emailed me the next morning. Its looking like the actual proper LA show tonight should be really awesome. The myspace page has been recieving quite a few enquiries about it..

Marion of Squaregirls, one of the few there, runs an awesome blog and made a small mention about it:

http://squaregirls.blogspot.com/

On wednesday we cruised down to San Diego, unfortunately we didn’t really get to spend much time in SD as we didn’t have any accom sorted, so had to go back to LA after the show. The SD show was pretty av (as we expected) but the venue loved the band to bits….and really wants them back and offered to organise a big show for them. Again played to a small crowd..but a very appreciative one…this was def the gig that made me realise how amazing this band is live…and got me really excited and energized about the rest of the tour. I was standing close behind a few people watching and as the band finished, heard them say “wow”… haha, a very nice sign!

Now the exciting news!!

PICS: Dublab Live to Air

Yesterday, Over the Atlantic, thanks to Alejandro Cohen (the other half of Niks other project “Psychic Powers”) works at an amazing online streaming radio station Dublab. www.dublab.com hooked the guys up with a live pre-record yesterday to be made available on their website streaming and as a podcast (avail free through itunes also), these podcasts recieve around 200,000 downloads…and the most amazing bands have done them! but….. the really exciting news!! this afternoon Over the Atlantic are getting filmed for a new LA project called “Vision Versions”, its a project where a director takes a band to a unique LA location and films them playing different versions of their songs…man…they have filmed like 4-5 in the series so far…which have been – TV on the Radio, Belle and Sebastian, Health, Why? and Ariel Pink! Man. So ridiculously honoured to be doing this. The project is launched online soon…and its seriously awesome, they showed us some clips. I’ll write a note on this blog when they are online. Ale and John lent all the gear the band are using, a really nice acoustic guitar, a drum machine and casio keyboard…the band were practising last night and its sounding pretty interesting.

PICS Below from”Vision versions” shoot

So yeah. tonights the first “real” show of the tour. Playing with Don Cavalli from France, check out that band on Myspace, they are pretty damn awesome.

We took a short cruise around Beverly Hills the other day…holy crap, haha…what a bunch of rich tossers, we checked out Santa Monica and also Venice Beach….I was really dissapointed to see only one topless muscley dude ot Muscle Beach. Hopefully the next visit can be more like in the movies.

so…I drove the length of the US over two days this week. Driving from Vancouver to LA in 2 days saw me drive pretty much the entire West Coast of the US, I timed it with passing through Olympia and picking up Heather Barnes (also happens to be visiting the US) and taking her and Onyx (of Polka Dot Dot Dot) down to a Panther show in Portland, which was heaps of fun…man, Portland is so amazing I can’t explain, I can now totally understand why so many amazing bands from the US are from the Northwest. Olympia and Portland are basically one giant Cub Street/K-Road. We visited a bar that has like 100 old school video game machines, all in awesome condition…played WWF, Paperboy, Tron!!!, NBA Jam and so many more.. Disasteradio would be in heaven…man, Tron the video game is beyond explanation.

The views from Portland-Arcata are pretty spectacular…but from Sacramento south, which is the bulk of California, its pretty crap, just highway after highway and stretched out industrial plains.

After the epic drive i decided to drive into LA around 5am since i figured trying to drive in around rush hour would suck…man, I am so glad I did…even trying to enter the city at 5am is hellish. I mean, you’re driving on a 5 lane highway at 5am in the morning and its PACKED, for like an hour…does like half of LA work in a bakery or something? why do all these people start work so early?

I get to the airport and sleep in the carpark for 5 hours before OTA land. After an excrutiating wait for them to pass through customs I meet them to see that they didn’t bring anything with them except a snare and some cymbals, We’ve got two days and bugger all money to buy a drumkit, bass amp, guitar amp, bass guitar and guitar.

We head to LA central and drive over to John Girgus’s house. One of the two guys who basically saved our asses and made LA awesome instead of crapsome. John just decides to vacate his apartment for 5 days leaving it entirely to us, so amazing, and means we can spread out and treat the place as our own. John calls a few friends and also jumps the band on a last minute bill the next night at a gallery playing with “Georgie James” (a band on Saddleback – Bright Eyes’ label). We then have a day to try and buy an entire backline….we straight away get onto “craigslist”, the US trademe, except even more awesome and track down a $100 peavey amp..haha, man..most bands absolute nightmare, but exactly what we were after. We pick that up, then go drumkit shopping, and buy the cheapest kit we could find…$200 for a complete kit..haha, its so rangi, we pick up some cheap guitars a $100 guitar amp and we’re set. A full backline of gear for less then most would spend on one guitar.

We buy the last piece of gear about 45 mins before we had to be at the first show….man, anything you’ve heard about how sprawled out LA is, is an understatement. Its ridiculous. It seems everytime we go anywhere we transfer through 4-5 different freeways and spend 30-40 minutes driving anywhere….its like getting to any part of LA is like driving from Wellington to Paraparumu

THE ENRIGHT HOUSE – DISASTERADIO – SECRET KNIVES – BLINK’S TRAVELS

THE ENRIGHT HOUSE

Enright House Acoustic Tour with Special guest Shaun K Anderson!

If you were one of the lucky who caught the Enright House’s acoustic set at Camp A Low Hum ’08, you would have understood why it went onto be one of the most talked about sets of the entire festival. CDs sold out, people gushed, new fans were earnt and a tour plan was hatched.
Joining the Enright House on this sojourn through the heart of the mainland is the wonderful Shaun K Anderson! Man, you are an crazy fool if you miss out on this show. With them playing incredible spots like Okarito, Karamea and Stewart Island! Why not tag along on a few? What a great opportunity to go to Stewart Island, man, I am so jealous…
The Enright House + Shaun K Anderson Tour

* Th. 24 Apr: The Penguin Club – Oamuru
* Fr. 25 Apr: Arc Cafe – Dunedin
* Sa. 26 Apr: The Glue Pot – Invercargill
* Su. 27 Apr: Wharfside Cafe – Stewart Island
* Mo. 28 Apr: Old Schoolhouse – Okarito
* Tu. 29 Apr: Saracen’s – Karamea
* We. 30 Apr: Drifter’s Cafe – Granity
* Th. 01 May: Yaza Cafe – Nelson
* Fr. 02 May: Hot Mama’s – Motueka
* Sa. 03 May: Dux De Lux – Christchurch
for details: theenrighthouse.com

THE SECRET KNIVES

Secret Knives – The Wolves EP getting Amazing feedback!
And clocking up a F*^load of downloads.
The downloads of the new EP has totally exceeded our estimations with crazy amounts being downloaded…40% of which are coming from the US due to some rave reviews on some sweet blogs and listings on important sites like Textura, Advance Copy etc..
If you haven’t downloaded it yet (for FREE!!)..what are you doing? Go here:
http://alowhum.com/free/secret-knives_the-wolves.zip

Check out what people have been saying.
“This shit is amazing and you need to stop whatever you’re doing right now and listen to it”.
Plastic Explosives

“Over the last few weeks I have been returning again and again to a stunningly good EP, The Wolves, from Wellington band Secret Knives. This is one of my favourite NZ releases of the year”
Counting the Beat

“check these guys out.”
We are Dreamers

“Secret Knives are super duper fantastic. Fans of Death Cab for Cutie and Over the Atlantic should delight in Secret Knives’ catchy, idyllic, indie lashings.”
Einstein Disguised as Robin Hood

“Free music is tough to come by (legally). Good free music is an anomaly.”
Nate and Melissa

DISASTERADIO

Disasteradio is taking a break from shows after a mental summer of touring but is playing a very special show in Dunedin organised by our good friend Mr. Aaron Hawkins. Check it.
madbeef presents

BASEMENT CUTS
Friday May 16th

Refuel

Dunedin
Basement Cuts welcomes A Low Hum legend and New Zealand’s greatest party starter Disasteradio to wrap up the first half of 2008’s Basement Cuts calendar. Established in the year of our lord 2007, Mad Beef’s Basement Cuts parties are about playing sweet tunes to sweet people. No drunken kids getting angry on worming medication here! With DJs as diverse as Manuel Bundy, O.G and Soane making their way down in the past year or so, Disasteradio is the first FULLY LIVE dance experience we’ve brought to the bunker that is Refuel. Can it get any better than balls-out eighties synth-pop, garage rock covers and head-banging electro greatness?

ME?

Well…I’m currently in Vancouver hiding out at Sallys flat. Her landlord doesn’t want me here, but I can’t afford to go elsewhere, haha, so I’ve been confined to her room for the past three weeks. Its been good…means I’ve actually got some editing done. Over the past couple of weekends we’ve been on a few roadtrips… over the Rockies! Up to Whistler, Vancouver Island etc… some good times on the cheap. I am starting a blog with a few tales of my journey, interlaced with my thoughts on camp ’08 and ’09 and the main reason I’m here…. The Over the Atlantic tour! The first show kicks off on April 16th…and we got heaps lined up, I’m looking really forward to seeing so much of the US and Europe, its gonna be fun!!
Anyway…if you wanna check out my ramblings/photos from my travels, just click on “blog” above from April 14th.
Over the Atlantic are playing ONE going away party/fundraising show before they leave, its at Room 101 (Bodega) in Wellington on Friday 11th April. $10, with special guests Little Pictures. Please support the show..haha, we have to find a way of eating for 4 months on this tour and have no funding, so money desperately! Needed.

Chur.
This typing is really loud and Sally’s landlord might hear…so I better go.
See you soon