Bill Direen - Darkroom - Christchurch - 20 August 2017

No sooner had we got back from our trip to Dunedin, unpacked the car, had some dinner and a shower and I'm back out the door and off into the city to catch NZ underground music legend Bill Direen at the Darkroom. There had been a documentary on Bill playing at the NZ film festival(I haven't yet seen it) and he had just had an LP reissue of a 2008 cassette release arrive in the country so I guess this gig was in support of those things. He did have copies of the record for sale at the gig.
 This time he was mostly flying solo playing songs from theatre productions and "operas" that he had written over the years. The night started with a film showing Bill preforming a bunch of songs live at various venues and at various time over the years that was a pretty cool montage. Then after a break he played the Theater Songs for about an hour or so, it was an interesting if idiosyncratic set and I enjoyed seeing this legend at play. Later he had his bass played join him for a few numbers including his most well known song from the mid 80's, The Alligator, and then finally and best of all, he was joined on stage by Steve Cogal from The Terminals for the impassive last song.

Mermaidens - Bennessere Studio - Dunedin - 19 August 2017

Had been keen to get back down to Dunedin for some time for another record shopping expedition and the wife was also keen to head down for the weekend to check out some of the multitude of large secondhand book stores down there, as well as doing the Cadbury tour while there.

 Arrived in town lunchtime Friday and visited a couple of required shops before booking in to our accommodation. Saturday was much of the same after the Cadbury tour with us having a busy day before tea and back to the accommodation. The wife was feeling a bit under the weather by this time, had apparently picked up a bit of a bug during the day so decided to go to bed early.

 I knew The Mermaidens had played Christchurch on Friday night and with Mrs Roddus drifting off to sleep, I decided I would take the opportunity to go check out this band on their Debut album release tour. I had actually listened to their record on Bandcamp a few days before and liked enough of what I heard.

 The gig was advertised door opening at 8pm, so I found a park near the Octagon and walked around to the venue to find a sign on the sidewalk stating that doors wouldn't open till 9pm. Headed over to The Dog With Two Tails cafe for a sit down and a coffee to find that they actually had some live music happening there so filled in the time watching this duo playing bass and ukulele and letting rip with some interesting sounds.

  The Mermaidens gig was on the fifth floor of an old building on Princess St, in a small room with a wooden floor and large glass wall and partial glass roof, there was no stage, with the bands gear just set up on the floor at one end of the room, it was an intimate space and the young folks of Dunedin filled the place pretty full.

  There were three band playing on this evening, the first being a very young local Dunedin band apparently described as a kind of surf band. Koizilla, I thought were a lot more than that, starting off their set with a jangly guitar intro to their first song before the bass and drums kicked in with a very impressive and powerful groove that really got my attention straight off the bat. This three piece had some awesome clout and great songs with the bass player and the awesome bass lines he played knocking my sox off. What an impressive little band and the drummer also impressed as he kept time so well with the bass player even though he was actually a stand in for the sick regular drummer.

 The second band was called Earth Tongue and actually consisted of the Singer/Guitarist from the Mermaidens with just a drummer. They proceeded to make a pretty dark noise that had an almost Swans like feel and a touch of a black metal vibe, although not quite that heavy. The Drummer did quite a bit of the singing which was actually more screaming but I thought their set really interesting and was pretty impressed.

  And so finally Mermaidens kick off their set, mostly playing the songs on their new album and overall playing a pretty enjoyable set. I was getting tired and to be honest lost interest a bit in what they played, it all sort of blurred together a bit. Their music is a good blend of slightly more adventurous indie rock and they played well but after the other bands I wasn't quite so won over. I did pick up their record though and on first listen it is a really good album.

Shayne P Carter and Band - Blue Smoke - Christchurch - 11 August 2017

Mr Carter has hit the road in part to support the vinyl release of his last album which came out very early this year. I had ordered a copy of said LP from Flying Out, and was still waiting for it to be shipped when this gig happened. Carter is a bit of an NZ music legend nowadays having fronted several seminal local band from the late 70's onward, mostly  Board Games, Doublehappys, Straightjacket Fits and Dimmer. I had seen Shayne last year at an excellent gig he did with another NZ legend, Don McGlashan.

  The support act for this gig was Christchurch's Les Baxters, whom I had also seen recently supporting The Terminals. Dave, from Galaxy Records is in this band and I had a chat with him and some of the band just before they went on. I like their sounds, slightly weird, slightly industrial,  slightly Techno, with one member playing a theremin can you believe.  I think about half the audience showed some appreciation of their set but I definitely look forward to hearing their record when they get it out.

  Carter hit the stage with his three piece band, counting himself, and proceeded to play a mostly rock type set of his music, as opposed to last years gig with Don which was more esoteric. Because I am actually not greatly familiar with a lot of his music, I didn't really know a lot of what he played but I certainly enjoyed what I heard, the man is vastly experienced and a great musician, played some mean guitar. He did a couple of songs on the Keys off his latest record that impressed even though it was quite different from his older material and then got back into the more rock stuff. It was a really good show even though I hardly knew any of the music, but for the encore he let rip on an old Doublehappys song that I knew especially from the recent Counting The Beat Podcast that I had been listening to , and they wrapped it all up with a blistering version of the first Dimmer single "Crystalator" a brilliant instrumental track that I knew but didn't know it was a Dimmer track, it was a fantastic finish to a fabulous show. The video below is of the aforementioned song live in 2009.

NZ Trio- -Spiral - Live at The Piano - Christchurch - 9 August 2017

The NZ Trio is a classical music trio on Piano, Violin and Cello. I had got their last CD and their collaboration CD with Mike Nock, both on the excellent Rattle Records. I generally am interested in these type of things only if they are preforming New Zealand composed music, or something more contemporary, that might be familiar to me. This recital had works by two NZ composers, McLeod and Holloway, and Bax was a 20th Century composer. The Beethoven didn't really interest me but I would listen as part of the overall experience.
 The Piano is a brand new Music and arts complex built in the center of the earthquake ravished central city and is a wonderful venue for this sort of thing, the city is starting to get more and more first class auditoriums since the destruction of so many buildings back in 2011.
  Mrs Roddus attended this presentation with me and I was hoping that the modern stuff was not to outlandish for her, although the Beethoven would be more her cup of tea.
 We seated three rows back and center and waited for the show to commence. Just past 7PM the Trio emerged, took their places and proceeded to play the three movements of Arnold Bax's Trio in B flat Major, c.21'. As a fairly modern piece it was fairly melodic and it I find it so much easier to listen to this sort of music in a live setting and watching the musicians playing. I enjoyed the first presentation and was intrigued as to what the NZ section was to be like.
  Jenny McLeod has been around the NZ scene for many many years and I had one of her compositions on an early Kiwi/Pacific record from the 70's and also her latest CD on Rattle Records. Her piece, Seascapes, was composed in 2015 and was an interesting and enjoyable piece of music.
 The third piece was a world Premier commissioned by the NZ Trio and composed buy a young fellow called Samuel Holloway.  They warned us before preforming the piece that it would be a little different. The composition was broken up into three parts with a long pause between each, the piece was a bit avant garde and reminded me of the excellent Besser and Prosser recording I have from Kiwi/Pacific from 1986, but I found it a bit harder to stay with this piece and also struggled to hear the differences between each section, still this more challenging music is what I am into and it was so cool to be at a world premier of a piece of serious music.
  I have quite a collection of older classical music from the 18th and 19th centenary that had been given to us from various sources but I honestly find it difficult to actually sit down and listen to it, but it has been an interesting contradiction in that I noticed that in all the classical/compositional  concerts I have so far been too, it is the oldest pieces that  have enjoyed the most and this presentation of Beethoven's Piano Trio in E flat Opus 70, No.2, c.35' did it again for me. The Trio played the piece with much gusto and it showed me just how effortless it appears for Beethoven to have written music so complex but with so much melody.

Steve Abel - Blue Smoke - Christchurch - 30 July 2017

Steve Abel is another local New Zealand Singer Songwriter whom I had heard via the "Counting The Beat" podcast of New Zealand music. I liked the song I heard on that podcast but hadn't got around to buying his latest album, "Luck/hope" which was released on vinyl last year. He has several other recordings on Bandcamp, dating back to 2006 that I am not familiar with.

 This was another of Blue Smokes Sunday Sitdown gigs with admission being koha(a donation). The stage was bare this time as Steve just played on his own with acoustic guitar and the crowd was small but appreciative. He has a great voice and good stage presence and I enjoyed his craft very much. He played two sets of his modern folksy tunes without me losing interest throughout. Another quality NZ voice to add to the likes of Nadia Reid, Aldous Harding and Delaney Davidson(who was in the audience and knows Steve quite well by the looks). Glad I attended and picked up the LP while there.

All Seeing Hand - The Darkroom - Christchurch - 22 July 2017

The Darkspace III gig was all set to be a pretty impressive night with myself having great records by at least half the artists. Alas the torrential rain that soaked the middle of the South Island, causing quite a lot of flooding, disrupted the travel plans of quite a number of the acts to the point where the organisers cancelled the gig.
 I was resigned to a night at home(at least I could watch the Rugby) but messages on Facebook suggested that at least All Seeing Hand had made it out of Dunedin and were driving up for the gig and local act Fran confirmed they would still play at the Darkroom supporting All Seeing hand when they arrived. All Seeing hand was the band I most wanted to see and so I set off for the city, hoping like hell they could get through the flooding.
 I arrived at the darkroom just past 8:30pm with Fran going through their sound check and not many punters yet arrived. It was quite a long wait before they actually took the stage with All Seeing Hand only just making it to the City. My addled memory is already a bit vague writing this report almost two weeks later but I remember enjoying Fran playing their set with Base, Drums and Keys I think. They had a really fat bass sound and the female bassist was also one of the bar staff.
  All Seeing Pretty much pulled into town and straight away were setting up for their set as soon as they arrived. A three piece with drums, electronics and a Throat singing lead singer, they dressed pretty weird and were bloody full of energy, bouncing round the stage and making a wonderful racket with their almost classifiable music.  They are one of the best bands in NZ at present and although their set was quite short, it was very impressive.