Into Orbit With Trioka and Samsara - Churchills Tavern - Christchurch 22 July 2016

So I was just checking out the live gig listings on Under the Radar when this gig caught my eye at Churchills Tavern, where I had been on a couple of other occasions recently, and after doing some research into the bands and listening to some online music from each group, I decided I would be keen to go check it out. Into Orbit have a record out on vinyl from 2014 and so I ordered it from their Bandcamp page. I received an email the next day where one of the band suggested they could bring the record down with them from Wellington and they could drop it off to me but he soon realised that I don't actually live all that close to the city and so the other suggestion was they would bring the record to the gig and put my name on the door in lieu of the postage I paid and I could pick up the record then. This was agreeable to me as i was already intending to attend. The other two bands on that night were Samsara and Trioka, both local bands I think.

Doors opened at 9pm and I soon checked in that my name was on the door(it was) and the record was there(it was) and I stashed it in my car and went back into enjoy the night. As is typical of Christchurch the venue capable of holding around 300 people was mostly empty with probably about 50 people in attendance, that number including the members of each band.

 Samsara hit the stage about 9:30pm, a four piece of twin guitar, bass and drums, they played pretty straight ahead post rock, grungy stoner shit, or whatever you want to call it and they were really good and I enjoyed all of their short set of just over 30 minutes. Certainly had my toes tapping and head nodding as I was propped up by the bar near the mixing desk in this small venue. Nice reasonably clean sound and I do like their sound system at this venue.

 Inevitably, there is a lot of down time between bands as each group disbands their equipment before the second group starts to set up theirs. It must of been around 10:45pm that Troika hit the stage and this lot were a three piece, Bass, Guitar, Drums. Stylistically similar to the first group, As they all were this night, although these guys had a bit more of an experimental edge than the first band and the guitarist really attacked his guitar producing some real walls of noise with his fast high fret board riffing plus some nice soloing thrown in as well. There were some technical problems with his sound board of  effect pedals and he ended up disconnecting some of them during the first song. The drummer was also outstanding in this group and I was so impressed that I went and purchased one of their CDs after their set. They have two CDs out and are currently working on another, of which they played a couple of tracks, that really impressed, so i might have to keep an eye out for that later.

 The first two bands impressed me so much that I was thinking that Into Orbit are gonna have to be blood good to keep pace with their support acts. They hail from Wellington and as they hit the stage things were looking a little bare up there as they are only a two piece, guitars and drums. They were straight into it with some spacey jangly guitars that remind me of Explosions in the Sky and they were definitely the most experimental band of the night with their atmospherics interspersed with some pretty heavy guitar thrashing. They also had some second guitar tracks or loops or something playing along with the guitarist as several times he stopped playing and was bent down playing with his effects pedals while there was still plenty of sounds coming through the PA. Their set was intense and seemed quite short, was over before I knew it and although enjoyable, I was a little underwhelmed compared to the other two bands. I also thought there was a bit too much distortion with much of the more intense guitar playing so it came across a bit dronie. The drummer was very good though, I enjoyed his playing. I have since listened to the record and am enjoying that more than the live experience, far less distortion and even more experimentalism. Overall though I had a thoroughly enjoyable gig and it is impressive to see the quality of these local bands even though this is seemingly not a highly popular form of rock music here. 

J G Thirwell - Christchurch Art Gallery 30 June 2016

J G Thirwell, the brains trust behind the Foetus group of releases, i.e You Got Foetus On Your Breath, Scraping Foetus Of The Wheel and Foetus Interruptus, just to name a few, as well as other collaborations like Wiseblood and the Flesh Volcano, and other musical projects like Steroid Maximus and Manorexia, has been a musical hero of mine for over 30 years, although I don't possess as much of his recorded music as I should nowadays. I was surprised to find that he was finally coming to New Zealand to do something for us here.

The contents of the show were pretty vague when I bought my very cheap $15 ticket a couple of months back and being held at the art gallery and being billed under his own name instead of any of the other musical names he has used over the years, suggested maybe a non musical presentation, i.e, a talk or lecture or something.

I arrived at the Gallery just on the 8PM advertised start time and was ushered into a small auditorium/lecture theater. Taking a seat three rows back and near center I settled in and started wondering what was going to be presented. There were two small speakers either end of the "stage", a big projector screen on the wall in front of us and a small collection of electronic equipment on a table in center with a laptop and some bells and triangle in front of a microphone, which suggested were were in for some music even though it looked more like a lecture.

JG, appeared briefly a couple of times not taking any notice of us and doing things on the Laptop and other equipment and making notes before disappearing again.

Apparently the show was suppose to start at 8:30pm but it was nearer 8:45 when Jim finally cam out just after the projector kicked into life with a film taken from the front of a vehicle travelling down various large highways probably in New York, where Jim has been residing since 1983.

With his head down focused on the manipulation of his electronics, Jim presented us with an approximately 45-50 minute electronic pulsating soundscape of pretty cool sounds. Very experimental/avant-garde and a different and unique live musical experience for this scribe. I was trying to figure whether this was an improvised piece or more pre-constructed and the notes he had spread on the table suggested the later. This was confirmed after in a short conversation with the man himself at the end of the show.