Have I mentioned I love the XX?

I love the XX. It’s no secret I’ve been in awe of the XX for a while. They’re ultimate badarse.  No surprise then that I was gutted beyond gutted when I missed their Auckland gig early his month.  Surely if there’s any band that can overcompensate whatever Florence Welch can come up with,  it has to be the XX. The way they do it, it’s quite impressive really.

Afterall every now and again everyone needs a  little break from the overbearing smugness and frankly, tedium, of  Florence’s extreme note-producing abilities. You know what I’m talking about. To be honest I’m not even entirely sure why I dislike her. I just do.

Granted You’ve Got the Love is an awesome tune on its own but somehow the understated, disinterested elegance of the XX just makes it that much more brilliant. Another song by them that I quite like is Islands. I’m going to be a little bold and even say that it might probably be the most subtle romantic song ever. Ever.

However, the one song I just can’t stop listening to at the moment is:

NZ Music Month

A repost from May:

It’s New Zealand Music Month, while local gigs quadruple and local albums get the big push, Megha Kehar finds out how our Kiwi musicians are going globally.

Sitting around in her K Road flat in central Auckland, bassist Mailee Matthews is eagerly waiting for May 11 – the day she and her band Charlie Ash take off for an action-packed six-week tour of the UK and Europe to exhibit their Kiwi talent and win some new fans.

“We will be playing festivals and going to a few shows. One of them is Great Escape Festival in Brighton. It is like the European version of SxSW,” she says.

Charlie Ash will also be supporting Kiwi rising star and “old friend from Wellington” Ladyhawke at sold-out shows in London’s iconic nightclub KOKO. “It will be great. She is quite inspirational. She is obviously from New Zealand and is doing an incredibly amazing job.”

Matthews says she looks forward to meeting Ladyhawke and catching up. “I’m looking forward to it. Our hotel is right on the beach and it’s gonna be quite cool”.

As for the gigs, Matthews says a dose of Kiwi helps.

Concord Dawn

Concord Dawn are a formidable drum and bass band from New Zealand. At its core is New Zealander Matt Harvey (aka Matty C) who is now based in Vienna. When the band first formed in1999, it consisted of another member Evan Short (aka Kiljoy).

Around that time they were massively influenced by a relatively new genre of music called jungle, which led them to experiment with it and churn out some of their own tunes. They later went to an audio engineering school together where they worked on newer, more sophisticated tunes.

The duo played the underground music scene for awhile, featuring heavily on student radio stations all across New Zealand.

However it was not until 2000 that they were signed to local electronic music label Kog Transmission. In July that year they came out with their first album titled Concord Dawn. The album, which was followed by a New Zealand-wide tour, was a huge success, with drum and bass lovers embracing it wholeheartedly.

Concord Dawn haven’t looked back since then. Soon after the tour they released their second album named Disturbance which lived up to the quintessential high octane electronic sound that Concord Dawn had come to being associated with.

Disturbance won the Best Electronic Album and Best Independent Release at the 2001 bNet Music Awards.
After a brief sabbatical, the duo returned with their third album Uprising in September 2003, which raked in accolades from not just the local fan base but also international audience. This saw them get signed to UK-based electronica labels and booked for their first overseas gig.

Their fourth album Chaos by Design was released in 2005 and keeping up with its predecessors, it kept the heavy praise coming in. Concord Dawn won several nominations, including Best International Act at the 2009 UK Drum and Bass Awards.

Concord Dawn are also known for their energetic live performances. In New Zealand, they have played every major gig including Big Day Out. They have also played extensively in Asia, America US, Europe and Canada and Australia.

Catch up

What’s the haps, kids? Oh no, that so doesn’t sound like me. Perhaps if I said it enough times?

Soo I’ve been away from my blog for ages but if I tell you what I’ve been up to, you might possibly die of envy. I’ve been in New Zealand for about seven months, studying to be a proper “hack” and doing all sorts of odd jobs — from waitressing at a feral diner in north Auckland to acting as a blood-thirsty Roman for a Gladiator-style US television drama.

With such a luxe life, blogging obviously had to take a backseat. So right now I’m going to resist the urge to indulge in some defensive, self-deprecating humour, and get straight on to what’s been happening on the music end.

One of my fave jobs here so far has been writing for a student mag (no, not at the university I attend).  What a defector!

Every fortnight, I profiled a Kiwi music band, wrote a feature and a wee coloumn called newsbot — a news roundup from the perspective of a self-obsessed, obnoxious robot .

I wrote a few music reviews as well, some alright and some worse than doped-out Sonic Youth at a concentration camp in Somalia.

Even though it was hard to balance all that with my intense journo course, I really enjoyed it as it gave me a chance to meet some very cool people.

I will soon be posting some of my work here, so I have something to show for my AWOLness.

In other news, I’m currently interning at Yahoo! Xtra. I’ve never interned before so this is awesome and slightly nerve wrecking.

In fact I was so nervous the night before it started, I could hardly get any sleep. Weird, cos I managed to sleep perfectly okay before I flew out to NZ in Feb. But I soon realised I had no reason to be so anxious. Companies love interns!

Everyone at Yahoo has been so nice to me, that as a sign of appreciation I even did what every intern worth her salt would do — I offered to make coffee! But everyone was way too nice to accept that.

I’ve got another week there and I’m so not looking forward to it ending. So far they’ve given me two new albums to review — Dimmer’s Degree of Existence and Tahuna Breaks’ Black, Brown and White. Appararently Tahuna Breaks are currently topping iTunes New Zealand chart. AND I’m interviewing them tomorrow. So excited!

Aaah I’m so going to have another sleepless night!

No Subject

Apologies for no recent ramblings.

As it goes, Laidbackness currently lacks inspiration but hopes she’ll be back as soon as she finishes chasing the rabbit through the burrow.

Oh and she’s yet to get over Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.

Iain Petrie – I’ll Stay By You

Thanks to Mikey Serpico, we have a great review of Iain Petrie’s album I’ll Stay by You. Petrie’s music is as laid back as it can get. It’s a perfect listen after a hard day at work, when all you want to do is relax while having a quiet drink.

It’s like retro but the problem is… it shouldn’t be

Containing much ranting, moaning and complaining

Loaded with expectation-plus, I went to see DJ Suketu play at one of the ‘best’ clubs of NCR last Saturday*.

My friend Ashish, who was here in Delhi on a flying visit from Mumbai, is a big fan of Suketu, and therefore, he thought it utmost important to make another friend’s and my attendance mandatory at the said event.

However after the first couple of minutes and intensive stare-downs from blinged-up and unattractively hirsute men, I knew it wasn’t going to be anything special.

My fears were confirmed when I realised the stuff being played by the opening DJ wasn’t doing anything to uplift my slowly waning (and massively-diluted) spirits.

REEVE CARNEY live at The Roxy 2/6/08

When it’s all sci-fi, red pill, blue pill, things fail to amuse as frequently as they used to back in the days, unless we’re talking Nicolas Sarkozy and the “man-eater” OR music.

A case in point: the prolific and may I say extremely handsome Reeve Carney. The first time I heard Carney, the visual disconnect in terms of what I expected and what I received was just amazing. I mean, at the risk of stereotyping let me say this, I generally don’t expect quality, deep stuff from good-looking people. In a way that’s a bit unfair too. They have the best of both the worlds. Think male of the species of Norah Jones. I’ll reword it better when I’m slightly more awake, but you get the idea.

And he’ll be playing at The Roxy, CA this coming Wednesday, February 6. Don’t miss him, if you’re in or around that area. I really do hope he plays Forget about You.

———–

Steven Harlow Productions and the Roxy Theatre Present

CARNEY with Blackcowboy, Lukas Haas, and Biirdie

    The Roxy

    9009 West Sunset Blvd

    West Hollywood, CA

    8:00pm – $10 – all ages!!

    Tickets

Team Stevie Wonder made it to Kathmandu in 15 days! Alive!

Andy and I (Stevie Wonder Driving School) made it to Kathmandu in 15 days time and we are so damn pleased with ourselves!

There’s loads to tell but the highlight of the entire run was this amazingly bad crash we had on the 11th day — I drove into the back of a parked lorry at 45 kmph! Our rick was absolutely twisted and mangled. I thought GAME OVER!

Currently roughin’ it…

I’m currently away from home…roughing it in some random place somewhere in India with roid raged Andy. At the time of writing this blog, our team, Stevie Wonder’s Driving School, has travelled about 1500 kms, covering three states in 5 days in a ridiculously breakdown-prone mode of transport known as auto-rickshaw. Had loads of fun getting a little more than slightly drunk on the New Year’s eve, crashing into the team parked right in front of us on the start date, ramming our auto-rickshaw into a pole, overtaking gigantic trucks on national highway, going on two-wheels downhill, handling breakdowns, giving random village people free rides in our auto-rickshaw…

Current location: Tuni, Andhra Pradesh