Blog Roddus

Blog Roddus
My Favorite Place

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Tiny Ruins - Blue Smoke - Christchurch 23 June 2017


Tiny Ruins is another of our local female singer/songwriters, along the lines of Nadia Reid and Aldous Harding. I had heard of her, again via the Counting The Beat Podcast, but hadn't really heard her music. She did come fairly well recommended and so I though I'd head along to Blue Smoke and check her out. The tour was kinda in support of a new album that is still being finished as we speak and several new songs were played this night, not that I would tell as I was not at all familiar with her work. I did have a listen to some of her more recent stuff on Bandcamp before I left the house and to be honest I wasn't all that taken with her music on first listen and started to have doubts about going, but I already had purchased a ticket so didn't want to waste it.
  Got to Blue Smoke about a half hour before the support act and the place was already mostly full. Unfortunately for these more laid back gigs, the venue leaves the tables spread around the floor and have a couch up near the front of the stage, I don't like this for gigs as it places too many objects in the way of standing space. It would be better if they either made it a sit down gig with more tables and seats for all or (for bigger numbers) just remove all the tables and seating near the stage end of the venue.
 My back, for some reason this night, decided to start making me uncomfortable as I stood with my drink and waited for the support act. There was no familiar faces at this gig for me tonight.
  The support act was going under the name Reb Fountain. She was solo with acoustic guitar playing a  folksy type of music as you do with that setup. She had a nice voice and the songs were enjoyable enough. It also turns out that She was a member of The Ravens and also The Eastern, both of whom I had seen at Blue Smoke several weeks back. I didn't recognize her though being back in the crowd a bit.
  My back was becoming less comfortable as I waited for Tiny Ruins to hit the stage and the wait wasn't too long as she kicked off her set with a solo acoustic number before adding a bass player and drummer for the next song and finally an electric guitarist for the third number, thus completing the band. It's kinda hard to describe the music but it was soft and laid back and I liked the occasional combination of the twin vocal melodies of Tiny and her female bass player, but overall I was really uninspired buy her set and got quite bored. The songs all sounded a bit the same and the band didn't sound all that tight, especially the electric guitar which seemed out of place at times. The gig was supposed to finish at 10:30pm but as usual the acts started a bit later than advertised and so were going to go over that time a bit but as 10:30 chimed, I had had enough, the physical discomfort and just not at all getting into the music I was hearing was enough to force me to leave the venue early.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

An Audacious Decade Festival - Live 1 & 2 The Auricle - Christchurch June 1-2 2017



Now something a lot different. Some may remember, earlier in the year I traveled down to Dunedin for a festival of sonic art "music" call Lines of Flight. Four events of soundscapes, drones, free jazz, experimental sounds and other unclassifiable noise and even music. It was something very new to me and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. After doing some reading of a book about the local sonic arts scene in New Zealand, I discovered that there is an organization in Christchurch called The Cantabrian Society of Sonic Artists, incorporating the Borderline Ballroom managing committee, and they have a small venue in part of the same building as The Darkroom, where I see lots of gigs, and hold sonic events there. The society is a little past it's apparent peak at present, losing their last venue after funding cuts from the city council and events being a little less frequent than they had been, but I had found their Facebook page and so was able to discover that they were to be holding the Audacious Decade Festival to celebrate ten years since the formation of the society. Looking at the performers list I saw a couple of names from The lines of Fight festival and one artist of whom I have a vinyl record that I really like, as well as the legendary Roy Montgomery.
  Unfortunately the first night the two live events of the festival occurred on the same night that another band I really like was playing with a couple of others across the road and I already had tickets (see last post). The fortunate side of all this was that the Audacious Decade event started a couple of hours earlier that the other event so I got to see the first three acts, including the one I most wanted to see that night.
  So first night starts with Adam Willetts. The Auricle is a pretty small room and on the first night there was very little seating and not much room for an audience with all the electronic equipment spread round the room waiting for each performer and so performers and listeners milled about around the door and hung out in the foyer as Adam stood near the center of the end of the room and proceeded to blow gently on some sort of flute. This was pretty esoteric and minimal and really didn't get my attention all that much and I was quite relieved when he finished. My memory, with so much on in two nights, is already getting vague as to what I saw in what order, but I think next was Motoko Kikkawa and Joanna Osborne, on violin and Cello respectively. I had seen them at Lines of Flight and so knew what to expect and I think I enjoyed their performance even more this time although  I believe it was a bit shorter. Joanna provides the backing drone and other plucking over which Motoko played her violin in a semi classical avant garde style and intones some Japanese speaking quietly into a mic. Nice set.
 Already Alzheimer's must be setting in as I don't seem to remember much about what I saw next, but I think it was Moths +. I do remember someone bashing away on a drum kit semi randomly and a couple of others on electronics and was there some Brass? Why can't I remember, sorry to the artists, I do remember enjoying somewhat what I heard so It can't have been bad, but I may have been thinking about my other gig across the road and weather I was gonna get to see Bruce Russell do his thing as that was the highlight of the night for me. Between sets, I checked in across the road to see what time the first band was to play and figured I'd be OK as the sets at the Auricle were pretty short this night and so headed back over in time to catch Bruce's set. I also had seen Bruce Russel(leader of the legendary Dead C) at the lines of flight and I definitely enjoyed this performance better. Bruce is a very busy performer as he is constantly pushing buttons and plugging in cables and moving his guitar to and throw towards his amp to effect the feedback of the drone he set up. I noticed more sonic variations to the drone this time and he did some interesting things like rolling a small steed tube along his guitar strings and tapping the neck end of his guitar in the floor among other things. Great sounds and a nice way to finish my evening there before heading over the road for the other gig.
  The next night and they had my attention for the whole evening. I arrived at the 7:30 start time and found a lot more seating had been installed for this evenings festivities. The first presentation was to be at 8:00PM. On this night, I had not seen any of the artists before but I knew of two of them. Kraus has a couple of records on vinyl one of which resides in my collection and I really like it's fried version of krautrock and Roy Montgomery was known to me but not all that well.
   First up for the night was Poltroon, Drums and sax, at Lines for flight there was a similar set up called Sewage who played a great set of free jazz, this wasn't as wild as that and I didn't think this performance had a jazz feel to it but it was entertaining, especially watching the drummer when he was banging his cymbals upside down gently on his drums while his mate was wondering amongst the audience with some sort of ghoul mask over the end of his sax.
  Kraus up next and for this set he just played a very accomplished guitar piece with interesting tones and sounds and without all the electronic accompaniment he has on his record. Very talented young bloke and I had a nice chat with him after. Looking forward to his next record he said he was working on. He has a lot of recording out but most are only on cassette.
  Roy Montgomery holds a very important place in NZ music history as one of the members of  The Pin Group, the very first band to release the very first single on the now famous Flying Nun Records. The Pin Group was fairly short lived but Roy has gone on to a long career as an underground musical legend in New Zealand. I don't yet own any of his music but that must soon change. Roy, sitting on a low stool in the middle of the room, his guitar almost facing directly my chair where I'm sitting against the wall, gives a short introduction about how he usually creates his music at home with his guitar plugged direct into an 8 track consul and using headphones to hear the sounds he creates. He says he doesn't usually use an amplifier and the piece he is about to play is a work in progress. He also points out that Pat(Kraus) is a much better player than himself and modestly states he is a fucking useless guitarist. From my perspective this proves to be false as he sets up one of the most wonderful guitar drones I have heard and throughout the piece embellished it with wonderfully subtle variations that kept me enthralled throughout. Just like Bruce Russell the previous evening, a master at his art.
 Omit was next with quite a large table of electronics feed into the multiple small wall speakers dotted evenly around the room, he proceeded to present a most interesting and enjoyable collage of electronic sounds quite often accompanied with a regular pulse or beat or other regular electronic sound. I really enjoyed his presentation.
 Regressor was the last act of the night, a younger fella, who apparently is active in the management of the venue or something, he gave a small speech with a lot of aggressive swearing as he introduced his girlfriend who did a short sound piece before his own set in which he produced some interesting and somewhat aggressive electronic sounds while throwing pieces of furniture and things then stripping down to his waist before finishing his set but tipping up the table with his gear on it and ending with an exclamation of "Fuck It". The sounds he made were fine but I'm way too old now to be impressed with the rest of the shit. The applause for his set was somewhat muted compared to earlier in the night.
  Overall I had a most enjoyable couple of nights and heard some really interesting sound art and was pretty impressed with the number of people there, especially on the second night.

Hiboux - Triumphs - No Broardcast - Space Academy - Christchurch June 1 2017


Ended up attending two gigs this night, susch is the number of interesting events happening lately. I missed several other gigs recently through them either being sold out, clashing with other gigs or just too many for me to travel all the way to the city for every night.
  This gig attracted me because of Triumphs, of whom I have had their first LP for some time and I really liked it. Hiboux were the headlining act as it was their tour supporting their new CD and No Broadcast were also a local band who had been around a while and have a couple of CDs out.
 After watching half of the other gig I was attending across the road, I wandered into Space Academy around 9:30PM just as No Broardcast hit the stage. A three peice, they had a great heavy sound with the lead singer and guitarist coaxing out some more experimental walls of sound in amongst their Muse inspired rock songs. I thought the singer wasn't to bad although with all the reverb and echo it was hard to hear much clearly. I enjoyed the set and also the CD EP they gave me which I listened to the next afternoon.
 Triumphs are a two peice heavy instrumental rock band hailing from the southern metropolis of Dunedin. I waas excited to see them as I have really enjoyed their debut LP, which came out on the fabulos Monkey Killer Records in a limited edition of 100. Therefor it was surprising to see they still had some copies for sale after 18 months since it's release. Just shows how low key these great bands are. They were the loudest band of the night but with just guitar and drums it made it much easier to hear what was being played buy each member with just the two instruments, of course the guitarest had a plethora of effect pedals at his feet and created an excellent wall of noise. I think most of their set was from their upcoming new album as I didn't recognise any of the tunes but they were great numbers with some impressive riffs and I definatly enjoyed them the most this night.
  Hiboux  were a five peice, two guitars, bass, keys and drums that played an instrumental form of "Post Rock". Their set was OK but I wasn't particulary moved or electrified by their music and with so many instruments through the small PA it became all a bit murky. The Music was OK but not really all that inspiring for me.