Blog : Choice Weekend In Auckland, Bro....

choice weekend in auckland, bro....

It won't just be the substandard quality of the korean food available in Brisbane that'll make you wish you were in Auckland this weekend, as many of auckland's finest experimental musicians take to the streets (well, the streeT, 'K' road, to be precise, and realistically, they will be confined to cafes, bars & galleries on the aforementioned road) for the alleluya noise festival (Details: http://www.halftheory.com/index.php?go=calendar&id=81 )  Highlights of the festival look to be performances by Sam Hamilton & Eve Gordon, whose 16mm film/ sound collaboration (seen recently at OFF in brisbane) has been going from strength to strength in the last few months, as well as sets by Tim Coster, Infinitismal (aka mhfs), Andrew Clifford,  Un Ciego & American improvising Tuba player Ben Klien.
Botborg & Abject Leader visited many of the establishments at which this festival will be taking place and can happily report that; a) the fried breakfasts & strawberry milkshares at Brazil are second to none (and really, when a nation makes a culture of treating it's live stock like this http://archive.wfmu.org:5555/archive/BL/BL_New_Zealand_Dairy_Ministries_-_Gentles_The_Word_For_A_Happy_Herd.mp3 how could they not be???).  Particular attention should be paid to the butterfried mushrooms. b) To the best of Botborg's recollection, the majority of the alchohol available at the wine cellar is homemade.  At least one half of Botborg was rendered very drunk by the homemade gin there on more than one occasion.  so, really, the best of Botborg's recollection probably isn't that good) c) while not stricly related to this festival, Botborg also ate much very, very fine Korean food, and went to one very authentic Japanese style ramen noodle kitchen, which although I forget the name or street address of, was fuckimg incredible.
What Auckland does lack, however, is a good record shop.  Richard Francis runs the closest thing they have to one, (almost NZ's answer to Synaesthesia) but he doesn't have a shopfront, this is a good first stop for underground NZ music. http://www.cmr.co.nz
Just because they haven't got any good record shops doesn't mean that they don't make any good music in auckland ...
Lets start with Tim Coster.  He's just put out an album on half theory.  It's choice.  Hear one track from it here: http://www.halftheory.com/_halftheory/downloads/Tim%20Coster%20-%20Landing.mp3  and then buy the fucking thing here: http://www.halftheory.com/index.php?go=shop&id=10
The ever reliable lens of Kath O' Donnell has captured some of these people in action, at some of the venues mentioned above.
see video excerpts of performances from....
un ciego: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=auckland%20AND%20subject%3A%22un_ciego%22
mhfs:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject:%22mhfs%20auckland%20artspace%20audio_foundation%22
and auckland electronic "supergroup" plains, featuring Tim Coster, Rosy Parlane, Mark Sadgrove (mhfs), Paul Winstanley, Richard Francis, & Clinton Watkins:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=auckland%20plains

(Note...plains seem to be reduced in number to just 2, and the last half of the plains footage (#'s 4-6 seem to be a duo by sam hamilton & mark sadgrove)

all this footage was taken & posted to the internet archive by Kath O' Donnell (aka AliaK). You can see the full collection of stuff she's posted there, including the archives of her old internet radio show of a few years back, "brizbeats" here: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22AliaK%22
thanks again Kath!

If you can't make the schedueled sound walk, or you got there too early and gorged yourself to the point of being unable to walk (sensible shoes or not) on a Brazil fried breakfast, never fear, for some lovely human being by the name of Grant Finlay has done a whole bunch of walking around auckland and pointing microphones at stuff for you.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator:%22grant%20finlay%22 (from archive.org)

The aforementioned Ben Klien was last seen by yours truly playing bizarre, hilarious tuba and banjo improvisations with NZ's Jeff Henderson in the stairwell of Newtown RSL during the nownow festival earlier this year.  Although he's got nothing to do with the festival in question, and doesn't live in Auckland, Jeff is still a top notch human being and we can take a couple of seconds to big him up here.  You can get two albums of Jeff's solo saxophone improvisations through NZ netlable postmoderncore ( http://www.archive.org/details/postmoderncore ):
get the intriguingly titled "A" here: http://www.archive.org/download/pmc045/pmc045_vbr_mp3.zip or the utterly fantastically titled "Fuck You You Bureaucratic Fucks" here: http://www.archive.org/download/pmc044/pmc044_vbr_mp3.zip (ps saxophobes don't really need to be afraid of these recordings....)

OK!!!
love to all in Auckland & NZ, esp Zoe, Andrew & Audio Foundation, Sam & Eve, Richard, Paul, Rosy, Mark & Tim, Rebecca, Lovely Midget, Jeff, & etc, etc....

Added by jpeatt on 2 May 2006