Former Street Chant frontperson Emily Edrosa releases her long-awaited debut solo album today. In honour of its arrival, we asked her to explain what inspired Another Wave Is Coming. 1. Mould I spent the four years that I lived in LA drying out, literally. When I lived in the Grey Lynn flat where Street Chant … Read more
Miss June’s Bad Luck Party was recorded literally between hospital shifts, and their summer schedule includes both festival dates and their frontwoman’s graduation from medical school. We sat down with the band to ask just how, exactly, they’ve survived so far. The first years of life for Tāmaki Makaurau pop-punk quartet Miss June have been … Read more
Before Rachael King was an author and a puller-together of literary festivals, she was a bass player in a heap of bands. At the start, she was a schoolgirl rocking in the Battling Strings, opening for the Chills and other 1980s Flying Nun bands, including Straitjacket Fits. Reading Shayne Carter’s memoir Dead People I Have … Read more
Flying Nun’s rightful place in New Zealand history has been secured with the acquisition of the legendary label’s master tapes by the Alexander Turnbull Library. If Alexander Turnbull was around these days, he’d be your classic bearded, single-origin-coffee-and-fancy-toast-loving Wellington chap. Had he been at his peak in the early 1980s, on the other hand, he … Read more
Dream pop is the genre of the moment in the worldwide indie scene and New Zealand is no exception, with acts like Fazerdaze and Yumi Zouma gaining huge international audiences. Back at home, the associated sound of shoegaze has made a return, with a raft of new bands emerging onto the live scene. Gareth Shute … Read more
Tonight, the Headless Chickens will be presented with the Independent Music Classic NZ Record award for Stunt Clown at a ceremony for the Taite Music Prize. Hussein Moses digs up the inside story of how the band first made their mark on New Zealand music. There was a lot that stood in the way of … Read more
Over the past two years a movement of Dunedin bands have played sold out gigs in all the major centres, riding a wave of hype unseen since the glory days of Flying Nun. Don Rowe kicks off his shoes and gets into the thick of it. On a peerless afternoon in late January, 250 people … Read more
The Spinoff and Spark proudly present Pod On The Couch, a weekly podcast exploring music and the people that make it. This episode: Henry Oliver talks to Russell Brown about Grant Fell. Spinoff Music editor Henry Oliver talks to Russell Brown about his late friend Grant Fell: artist, filmmaker, magazine publisher, promoter and member of Headless … Read more
Music editor and former member of Die! Die! Die! Henry Oliver talks to his ex-bandmates about making music together for nearly 20 years. I met Andrew Wilson and Michael (we called him Mikey) Prain in the summer of 2003-04. I’d seen their old band Rawer open for Trans Am, if my memory serves, and they … Read more
Mark E Smith, the singer and poet who led The Fall for over 40 years, has died. In this excerpt from his 2016 book In Love With These Times, Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd recalls the band’s tour of New Zealand and the controversy surrounding the live album Fall In A Hole that was recorded … Read more
Alan Holt remembers Celia Patel, better known as Celia Mancini of King Loser, who died yesterday. Last night I learned that my friend Celia Patel had passed away. If you do not know Celia she is best known as one of the driving forces behind the band King Loser. She was a force of nature, … Read more
Thirteen years after she would walk past him every morning on the way to work, Kiran Dass talks to Matthew Bannister of Sneaky Feelings about the band’s return and its place in Flying Nun folk lore. With their bright ringing guitars, melodies, and soul-kissed pop songs, Dunedin’s Sneaky Feelings seemed to be outsiders among the diverse Flying … Read more
Simon Day talks to Grayson Gilmour about spatialised audio, his Silver Scroll nomination, and new album, Otherness. Grayson Gilmour has been recording music since he was a teenager, but it has taken the arrival of his 30s for him to make peace with the direction of his career. On his eighth solo album, Otherness, released … Read more
The Spinoff and Spark proudly present Pod On The Couch, a weekly podcast exploring music and the people that make it. This episode: Henry Oliver talks to Ben Howe about Record Store Day and selling LPs to teenagers. Spinoff Music editor Henry Oliver talks to Ben Howe, founder of Arch Hill Recordings, managing director at Flying Nun Records and … Read more
Tonight the Taite Music Prize will present The Clean with the Independent Music Classic NZ Record award for their 1981 EP Boodle Boodle Boodle. Hussein Moses talked to the band and those involved to dig up the inside story of a record that became a New Zealand indie music legend. It was a defining moment … Read more
The Spinoff Music critics on Aldous Harding’s new single (and video) ‘Imagining My Man’. Henry Oliver When I first heard Aldous Harding’s ‘Horizon’, I was stopped cold. I’d listened to her album Aldous Harding a few times on its release but hadn’t kept up with her output (the primary medium of which seemed to be YouTube … Read more
Auckland and Brooklyn-based dreamy/electro/synth/pop band Yumi Zoumi bid farewell to summer with an exclusive mix for The Spinoff. Seasons don’t change much in New Zealand comparative to other places. You could be forgiven for missing the subtle changes in the weather, but you would really have to be trying to miss things if you couldn’t feel … Read more
While walking through the Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa exhibition at the Auckland Museum, Henry Oliver thought to himself: which decade had the best music? Rather than telling you his answer, he’s asking for yours. Final Round: which decade is definitively The Best? First, the results from last week’s vote: Top seed, the 2000s, continued it’s … Read more
Every Friday, ‘The Album Cycle’ reviews a handful of new releases. ALBUM OF THE WEEK Syd – Fin Last week, Syd – of Odd Future and The Internet fame – released her solo debut, a digestible 12 tracks called Fin. It’s R&B sex-mix fodder in the vein of Aaliyah, D’Angelo and, more recently, Solange – … Read more
While walking through the Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa exhibition at the Auckland Museum, Henry Oliver thought to himself: which decade had the best music? Rather than telling you his answer, he’s asking for yours. This week, round two: only the strong decades survive. The votes are in, the first round is over. Time to … Read more
Graham Reid takes The Chills on a tour of Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa exhibition at the Auckland Museum. A little more than 24 hours before they take the stage at Laneway under a blazing blue sky, five very weary Chills arrive at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. They’ve been up since 5am and are … Read more
While walking through the Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa exhibition at the Auckland Museum, Henry Oliver thought to himself: which decade had the best music? Rather than telling you his answer, he’s asking for yours. We, as both high-functioning mammals and low-functioning music fans, love to categorise things. Years, decades, generations, eras and genres are … Read more
Russell Baillie investigates The Features, the short-lived Auckland post-punk band whose 1979-1980 output has just been re-released. When it came to nailing the ‘post-‘ to punk, there was no shortage of New Zealand groups swinging the hammer. But among those banging that hyphen into place hardest and earliest were The Features. The Auckland band lasted … Read more
We indulge our gadget-curious side at Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa There’s no shortage of weird and interesting stuff to be discovered at Volume, the New Zealand music exhibition at the Auckland Museum. There is, of course, handwritten lyrics, posters, t-shirts, records … all the things you’d hope to see at a popular music exhibition. … Read more
An essay by Gary Steel on the hits and myths of Flying Nun, as chronicled by the record company’s founder Roger Shepherd in his new best-selling memoir. Flying Nun. Was there ever a record label that was more famous than any of its acts? It’s the home of the “Dunedin sound”, The Clean, The Chills, … Read more