​I N T E R V I E W
‘Screen Variations’: An interview with GROK about their new album
With Ian Duggan 

GROK took out Hamilton’s Contact 89FM Battle of the Bands competition in 1996, and released their debut album ‘Bubbles and Noises from the Aquarium’ the following year. Reforming in London in 2006, they released two further albums, 2008s ‘Ruined Music for Everyone’ and 2011s ‘Create a Diversion’, both featuring studio improvisations. Following a brief reformation of the original GROK in Hamilton in 2014, the again UK based band have just released their fourth album, ‘Screen Variations’. We talked to GROK’s Scott Brodie about the album, and their residency at London’s Genesis Cinema — where they have been providing the soundtracks for silent films — on which the songs on the new album are based.

HUP: The songs on ‘Screen Variations’ are quite different to GROK’s previous albums. On the new album the songs are more soundscapes, and lack vocals, as might be expected from a soundtrack to a silent film. Many of the songs start quietly, and then build in intensity, which I guess is reflective of the scenes they were associated with. What can you tell me about the songs, and how representative are the songs on the album relative to those that were in the original performances?

SB: They turned out not to be too representative of the original ideas. We listened to the original improvisations before heading into the studio and at times may have latched onto a motif that worked. When we were in the studio we improvised two versions of each song. We didn't really plan to start quietly and then go loud - it's the movie we are following. I think maybe just one song follows this arc; in the others it's more that the mood changes from synth based to bass/guitar/drum based.

HUP: What films were you asked to provide soundtracks for? Had you watched the films previously, or did you go in to each unprepared?

SB: The Genesis gave us a pretty free reign in the residency. We would watch a few movies and then suggest ones to do. We watch the movie once together - just to enjoy it. Then we watch again and break it up into 'songs'. In the past we would improvise over the whole movie, but we realised pretty quickly that there needs to be variation in instrumentation and differentiation to add interest, and to mark boundaries between the scenes. So, we think of these as songs. After we break the movie up into songs, we categorise the songs and the action. We create a little flash animation so that when we are playing and improvising we can see that some increasing action is coming up, or perhaps a plateau of gloom. Rob [Talsma] and Chris [Ayles] do this and we have a process now. It takes a bit of work to categorise, but it's essential to have these guardrails when you are improvising. Otherwise, you could be preparing for an ‘Explosions in the Sky’ type section, and suddenly you realise things changed to a pastoral scene that you just forgot about.

All the soundtracks we did are on the website, except for Mocny Człowiek' / 'A Strong Man' — a great silent Polish movie — and David Lynch's Eraserhead, which we did in March. We have a few more coming up. We are just confirming them at the moment.
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HUP: So, when you were doing the rerecording, were you re-watching the appropriate segment of the film again?

SB: Yes, we had the scene playing as well as the original flash animation running to see the peaks and troughs coming up.
 
HUP: How and when did you come to be involved with Genesis Cinema, and how did the residency come about?

SB: Rob's sister Amanda called in there one day and talked to the manager, who she had met before I think. We had previously only done soundtracks in pubs. We then went and had a talk with them. Following that, we played a couple of movies and they offered a residency, which was really great, but pretty full-on doing a new movie every month. We've been having a break this year. It was excellent - we learned so much. Our soundtracks are much more controlled now and we have added so many more electronic elements.
 
HUP: You look to be down to a three-piece now. Who plays in GROK now, and does being in a pared down line-up provide challenges?

SB: We have gone electronic... Chris plays guitar and has a hundred or so pedals over a two layer pedal board, and maybe three synths to go with that. He uses different ones each time. He has an MS20 and also his own drone synth machine that he designed and built, and many others. I have my bass with some synth pedals and a harmonic generator. I also have a Nord G1 modular that I use, with a Beatstep pro for sequencing. I have a Eurorack modular setup in a Doepfer road case: a couple of oscillators and voltage generators and sequencers along with some filters and other modules to mess with the sound. The modular is so much fun but difficult to improvise with. I need to have a few generative patches ready with options to change the sound based on the movie and the improvisation. Rob has his drums, a Novation synth, and a Roland drum pad with samples he's put in, and also a Volca sample. So, we have filled up the space by multitasking really.
 
HUP: Are the band still playing other gigs, or is silent films now your specialty? What is the future for GROK?

SB: We haven't played a 'normal' gig for a year and half (one completely improvised with our ‘wheel of chordal destiny’, to determine the key and lyric suggestions from the audience). We think we will do one shortly - we were talking about it. We will do a release party at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon in the next few months where we DJ songs that relate to films. We are also thinking about the next album, which will be completely electronic. No bass, guitar or drums. Let's see what happens.
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​HUP: Back on 2016, you reunited with the former members of Inchworm and recorded some new songs. Should we still expect those to see the light of day?
 
SB: Yes. It will see the light of day. We [— The NZ-based GROK —] also have an unfinished album from 2013, which we were talking about making into an EP recently. One of those songs [The Thrill of Caucasus] went on the HUP compilation [Life Beneath a Gravel Streak (2016)]. The other album is quite nice and raw it doesn't need too much. I would just need to redo the vocals. We think it will be called ‘GROK Make Music With Friends Vol 1’, opening the door to a series of future collaborations, maybe. When you work with computers all day you can't really face hitting Pro-Tools in the evening. That's part of why I love the modular stuff so much; you can plug in cables and twist knobs and don't need to look at a screen. If it's a cold winter - I'll try and finish GROK ‘Friends’ this year.

Harry and the Potters have recently released their fourth full length album, ‘Lumos’!

“Who are Harry and the Potters?”, you might be asking. Harry and the Potters were the first ‘Wizard Rock’ band, formed in 2002 by two brothers from Massachusetts, USA; Joe and Paul DeGeorge. Their lo-fi indie pop group, who perform songs about the Harry Potter universe, has spawned many others, including Draco and the Malfoys, Ministry of Magic, The Moaning Myrtles, The Mudbloods, and The Whomping Willows. I am not aware of any bands in the genre originating from New Zealand, however.

I got into Harry and the Potters, along with the rest of my family, only recently. This was firstly through rewatching the first few films with the kids (5 and 7), and noticing Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker fronting the ‘The Weird Sisters’, the band that plays at the Yule Ball in the ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ movie. From a search to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me (and finding the band also featured another member of Pulp, and a couple of members of Radiohead), I also discovered the world of ‘Wizard Rock’. After posting on Facebook about my discovery, I then learned that Julian from local bands The Scones and Bitter Defeat had not only seen the band play in Canada, playing with Draco and the Malfoys, but also owned the bands second album, ‘Voldermort Can’t Stop the Rock’. This CD has been living in our car stereo, on repeat, providing the soundtrack to every journey taken with the kids on board (as well as many without) ever since. 
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‘Lumos’ represents Harry and the Potters first new album in 13 years. Like their previous albums, the lyrics are written in the first-person, from the point-of-view of Harry Potter himself. Songs on this album cover material almost exclusively from the final book in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, while previous releases covered the preceding books. Overall, the songs on this album are more ‘hi-fi’ than the previous efforts, the brothers having clearly become more proficient on their instruments, and the tracks are overall varied in style. There appears to be something for everyone on here, as members of our family all have their own favourites. [continued below]

Kia ora koutou katoa! After a lovely wee hibernation HUP has emerged from its acorn-filled burrow and is ready to go for another year! In a somewhat lazy but ultimately genius move, HUP asked Nicola Edwards, bassist and vocalist in Repairs, and Harry Lilley of First Move, to question each other ahead of their show at Nivara Lounge tomorrow night, August 16th, with Flogging A Dead One Horse Town and locals Bitter Defeat. First up, Nicola put four questions to Harry...

Nicola: Congrats on your EP "Provincial Blight" which you've recently released! How has growing up/living in Palmerston North shaped your approach to writing music and lyrics?
 
Harry: Thanks! I think living in Palmerston North has imbued us with a kind of outsider headspace. We’re not Wellington, we’re not Auckland, we’re not rural really. Something in-between. From the provinces? In some ways its really cool, there are some incredible and way under-rated bands that have emerged from these parts, think Skeptics but also think of all the amazing hometown hero bands we saw growing up here. I feel like here we get this cool freedom to make whatever we want to and all the music community here are into it (or at least the idea of doing your own thing). Not being so worried about keeping up with the latest thing has been great for exploring music from the past and bringing the stuff we love to this band and our new songs. Fraser, Jono, and I are all interested in ‘politics’ and are cognisant of the tensions around us. There’s a continuous clash of old and new, country and town, progressive and conservative attitudes. The songs that make up Provincial Blight have been a great way to explore and express that over the last year or so.

Nicola: The first song off your EP is called 100 Percent. Using 100 characters, how would you describe First Move to the uninitiated?

Harry: We’re Aotearoa noise-rock from Palmerston North. We like big guitar sounds, tight rhythm, and space.
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​Nicola: You and Martin (Phillips, guitar/vox in Repairs) go back a long way, to his days in god bows to math. Is there anything about the musical direction he's taken with Repairs that surprises you?

Yeah! praise be to god bows to math (re-union tour one day please). When Martin told me he was playing with Repairs I was stoked with his description. Something along the lines of ‘gbtm but inserted some pop’. True to form everything I’ve heard since has been great and it’s been cool to see some of the old ideas and musical idioms infused with a dose of Nic’s thundering bass, healthy accent, and James’ pounding drums.

Nicola: Finally, Shellac, Bailterspace and Slint: steal riffs, steal production or steal members?

Wowee, that’s a good one. We could spin that so many ways. I reckon something like:

Bailterspace - I can’t get enough of the riffs (you can probably tell). Last night I had Capsul play through twice while driving home late.

Slint - Though their members may have slipped into a kind of obscurity since Spiderland, they played some incredible songs with an unparalleled tightness. Don’t ask me which members we’d pinch though, that’d probably change every time we talk about it (they’re all so cool).

Shellac - steal production. Do I really need to explain that any further? (actually don’t ask, the ramble would go on for weeks).

And then, it was Harry's turn to question Nicola about Repairs...
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Harry: Since the first (v. awesome) demos you sent through I’ve wondered how your song-writing works. I hear bits of everyone, but does someone write out the song or do you generate them collectively? 

Nicola: Our songs are a mixture of approaches! Sometimes Martin will have a partially or fully formed idea of a song, sometimes James or I will start jamming on a riff and a song will just “happen”. Other songs have been more of constant work in progress, where what we started with ends up being very different in both structure and in lyrics. Playing live can be a great way of testing songs out, and developing, tweaking and improving them.  

Harry: Tell us about three bands/artists you really admire and draw upon for Repairs that we might not have heard of?  

Nicola: Martin has a great playlist on Spotify called “Reference” which is a good starting point for getting an idea of tracks or artists that he in particular will get inspired by. Tropical Fuck Storm is a big one at the moment, as is Bench Press who just came over from Melbourne and all three of us can’t stop raving about! Ditto with Moody Beaches, who have been a bit of a band crush of mine since they played at Whammy earlier this year.
 
We definitely wear a lot of influences on our chests with our band t-shirt collections though. Plus we seem to be going through a period where working titles for songs are the name of the band that influenced that song. We have one called “Shellac” that we’re hoping to try out live for the first time at Nivara!
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​Harry: What was the last thing that any of you repaired?

Nicola: Not sure if it counts as repairing… James recently did some much needed maintenance on our car for us that we had no idea needed doing! (thanks James, you’re the best)  

Harry: I had the pleasure of listening to your latest release, a split 7” lathe with Flogging a Dead One Horse Town. Could you tell us more about the interesting concept for the split and how it all came together?  

Nicola: Initially the lathe cut was thought up as a way to support Peter King. But Martin was the one who came up with the idea of each band covering one of the other’s songs without ever having heard it first. So we sent Flogging the tabs and lyrics for Boxer, and they did the same for us with Shits – it’s been really interesting to hear the similarities and differences between the versions. We’re so excited to be doing the same concept with First Move for another split later this year!

Big thanks to Nicola and Harry for the Q and A! The show takes place tomorrow night, Friday August 16th at Nivara Lounge, doors at 8pm, first band shortly afterwards. Also playing are the wonderfully named (and wonderful sounding)  'Flogging a Dead One Horse Town' and Hamilton's lo-fi indie popsters 'Bitter Defeat'.
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​​I N T E R V I E W
‘Hope for the Best’: A Q&A with Yann Le Dorre of YOLK
With Ian Duggan

Another whose music we have been loving up here is Wellington’s ‘YOLK’, having featured a couple of his tracks on our Hamilton Underground Press/The Hum 106.7FM's Tekau Nga Waiata Pai Top 10; ‘Angels are Real and I Know Them’ in February and ‘Losing Day’ on our May countdown. On the back of a brand new release, 'SADEGO', we talked to the person behind the project, Yann Le Dorre, about the change from high-fi to low-fi between albums, his high musical productivity, and more!

HUP: I particularly like your ‘Bad Water’ album, released in November 2018, and especially tracks like ‘Angels are Real and I Know Them’ and ‘Your Independence Will Kill You in the End’, which remind me a lot of Australian band Gerling. Who are your influences?

Yann: Thank you! ‘Angels’ was written during a period when my son and I were temporarily homeless. A couple of friends really dug in deep for me so that song is pretty much a complete ode to them (shout out to Casey and Grace). Musically I had been thrashing ‘White Light/White Heat’ by The Velvet Underground, so the almost abrasive ‘pop’ style of the song could be attributed to that and the weird vocal treatment was reminiscent of ‘Sandy (Alex G)’. ‘Your Independence Will Kill You in The End’ began its life as this soft little country number but once again after White Light, I really wanted something completely overdriven with high energy. I thought it was a nice contrast to end the album on; you gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold. As far as general influences go, I am huge Neil Young fan, alongside Dylan, Springsteen, etc. ‘90s alt-rock is cool too; Silver Jews and Smashing Pumpkins (weird contrast) though local acts such as Womb, Seth Frightening, and T.I.M.E. have been huge inspirations to me also.
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​HUP: Your recent album, ‘Sadderdays’ (and new one SADEGO) is so different to ‘Bad Water’. ‘Sadderdays’, in particular, is super lo-fi, to the point of having the clicks on it at the start of songs, which seem to be where you have pressed record on a tape deck. Why the massive change in sound between releases?

Yann: ‘Bad Water’ was a very experimental album for me, not only in terms of instrumentation but also production. It was the first album I had gotten somebody else in to master. I wanted to get as close to high fidelity as my means (small bedroom studio, limited knowledge - hah) would allow. It was a very bright record but in hindsight, I didn’t feel it was a true representation of my ‘sound’, or what I want to sound like. ‘Sadderdays’ was essentially a rebellion against ‘Bad Water’. I wanted to throw the subtle nuances of hi-fi mixing out the door (as they were beginning to drive me insane) and just make something as raw as possible (within reason). My dear friend (New Zealand’s best kept musical secret) always recorded straight to tape through a Panasonic dictaphone he brought for a couple bucks at the op shop. While hitchhiking down south I was just playing his tapes all day, something about the raw quality of the audio just made it sound like god to me. So when the chance came for me to buy one it was a no brainer. The entire EP was recorded and ‘mastered’ in about five hours, all of the songs were intended to be throwaways so I felt like I didn’t really care too much about the production and the tape just made it sound super lo-fi regardless. I left the clicks in there because I’m lazy. If you listen closely on pretty much all my albums you can hear mouse clicks and spacebars, but it also just adds a nice Cobain home demo element to it.
 
HUP: Do you play all the instruments on the recordings?

Yann: Unfortunately, yes… I have a live band though consisting of some pretty competent musicians, Baxter Perry (STINK) on guitar and Josh Brown (Heavy Chest) on drums. I would love to record a live album but the allure of my bedroom can prove too strong sometimes, haha. However, Baxter and I have been trying and will eventually succeed in recording and releasing the songs we play together.

HUP: You have released five albums over the last two years. How have you stayed so productive?

Yann: Hmmm, it's kinda crazy when you put it like that! I’m kind of an O.C.D. songwriter. I'll write at least one a week and I get these ‘periods’ in my head where I feel the songs of a specific time are all meant to be together on an album. I record with these grand concepts as quickly as I can so I don’t lose any of the magic or excitement, in hopes of capturing sonic timepieces of my life. I firmly believe “we only leave behind what we create”, so it’s some weird cathartic madness I live by. I am planning to release two more full-length albums by the end of the year.
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HUP: What is your background? Have you been in bands previously?

Yann: Well… it’s a long convoluted story, haha! I was born and raised in Nelson, went to a Pearl Jam concert when I was 15 and saw the video for [Nirvana’s] ‘Heart Shaped Box’ on C4 that same weekend, and I guess it was all over from that moment on. My uncle Bob Heinz (Christchurch Jazz master) brought me my first guitar around then and I haven’t looked back. I played in a two-piece acoustic grunge band (Selfless Selfish) for a couple of years just after high school; we were really. really raw. The birth of my son in 2014 forced me to change pace as the guttural screaming wasn’t really a pleasant thing for him to sleep through, and thus I began my journey down the deep hole of folk music. I was in enamoured by artists like Nick Drake and J. Tillman. Their super-soft delivery with this emotional intensity seemed to fit nicely into my pastoral life I had begun living at the time. I moved to Wellington shortly after and formed this crazy psychedelic punk band called LEFT; we played only one show and broke up but rocked nonetheless (ha ha). All the while I was recording and releasing albums under another moniker (Lightpaw), which was super introspective alt-folk - and though it was beautiful music, it felt pointlessly vague or too poetic for its own good. YOLK was a decision to cut the crap, shoot the shit, and bring all of my influences together. I wanted to try and write the real and just go nuts with the music. I don’t want to be held down by any genre constraints or whatever, so this moniker embodies that.

HUP: How do you see the music scene in Wellington at the moment?

Yann: The scene is always changing. It felt like a couple of years ago things were a lot more gothic sounding, whereas these days I hear a shit load of good times indie. Bands exist for a minute then disappear; the life span of a university student seems to be three years or so, which often translates into these groups of bands all playing together while everybody is at school and once that's over they dissipate into the void of real jobs or travel, etc. In saying that, it’s always a healthy and positive experience. Everybody likes everything and the bonds of fellowship seem to be pretty strong around here.

HUP: What are your aspirations for ‘YOLK’?

Yann: To keep rocking in the free world, release another hundred albums, play some shows, a tour would be cool? I’m happy to be heard, but I’d be here no matter what the weather. I don’t see music as some lucrative business and I am aware of the small niche in which YOLK appeals to, so to just keep trucking and stay alive is a fair aspiration. Hope for the best, expect the worst.

​Visit YOLK's Bandcamp HERE, and his Facebook HERE.

I N T E R V I E W
The End is Nigh: An Interview with Milpool
With Ian Duggan
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We have featured a couple of tracks by Dunedin band ‘Milpool’ on the HUP/The Hum 106.7FM's Top 10 over the last few months; Mydriasis was #7 in March and Ambulance Driver made #7 in our May countdown. We talked to guitarist Tom Monaghan about their evolving sound, the band’s future, and the ‘The Simpsons’ connection in their moniker. 

HUP: Tom, I was reading that you were leaving the country in May. But looking at your Facebook, you have still been playing the last few days! Are we soon to see the end of Milpool? Or are the reports of your death greatly exaggerated?

Tom: I am leaving the country in a couple of weeks, slightly later than expected. But yeah, we just finished playing our last couple of Dunedin gigs this weekend and will be playing our last two gigs in Auckland and Wellington on the 7th and 8th of June.
 
HUP: The band was aiming to do a lot of recording before you left, and you have just released another EP in late May called ‘BLOOD/​TAR’. Are there some more releases to come soon?

Tom: We're about halfway through recording our fourth and final EP, which should be released within a few weeks. After that we're planning to release a compilation album of the best tracks from the four EPs plus some new/rerecorded songs.
 
HUP: Do you feel your sound on ‘BLOOD​/​TAR’ has changed since ‘Down’, released in January, or ‘START’, released on October last year?

Tom: We recorded ‘START’ before [vocalist] Adelaide [Dunn] joined, and as such the songs were a lot punkier and noisy as I can't sing. After Adelaide joined things got a lot more melodic and atmospheric. Between ‘DOWN’ and ‘BLOOD/TAR’ we've gotten a lot more collaborative; most of ‘DOWN’ was written by Adelaide and I and then taken to Hamish and Josh to get fleshed out, whereas pretty much all of ‘BLOOD/TAR’ was written with all four of us jamming together. Adelaide also wrote a lot more of the lyrics on ‘BLOOD/TAR’.

​HUP: Are there bands that have influenced your sound?

Tom: International bands that we enjoy/have ripped off include Cate Le Bon, Hop Along, Women and Charly Bliss. Local bands that we enjoy/have ripped off include Koizilla, The Mint Chicks, Ha the Unclear and Wet Specimen.
 
HUP: The ‘Milpool’ name comes from a Simpsons episode, with Milhouse misspelling his name due to getting distracted. Who is the Simpson’s fan, and why did you choose this name?

Tom: I am the obsessive Simpsons fan - of the first eight seasons - and decided early on that the name was going to have to be a Simpsons reference. It was actually my sister Laura that suggested Milpool, and we felt really clever and original until we made the Facebook page and realised that there were ten other emo Bands also called Milpool!
 
HUP: How long are you gone for? Is it possible new bands will evolve out your departure, or will the band be sitting around awaiting your return?

Tom: Sadly, I am leaving indefinitely to go to Bristol with my other band 'The Rothmans', and I do not know when I'll be back. I imagine we'll keep making music under the Milpool name as soon as we're all in the same country again, however long that'll take. I know Adelaide, Hamish [Morgan; drums] and Josh [Howley; bass] plan to keep making music together under some new guise, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Everyone also has other bands on the go. Hamish plays drums in Marlin's Dreaming, Adelaide produces/sings/plays keys in Repulsive Woman, and Josh has been secretly growing a new band called G.I DRO. So, I imagine everyone will have a lot to do while I'm gone.
 
HUP: What is behind The Rothmans moving to Bristol?

Tom: It feels like it's time to leave Dunedin/New Zealand, haha! Half of us have British Citizenship and Bristol is a cool town, so it seems like the logical place to go.

HUP: A lot of Hamiltonians haven’t seen you before. What should they expect?

Bob: It’s pretty simple: I take a guitar and turn it into a party. There’s a lot of ways to do that, and I’ve figured out most of ‘em, ha ha haaa! Having fun with my guitar is the ultimate goal in every song: “This is a really fun thing to play on guitar, oh my god I love playing this thing on guitar! How can I make this thing more fun?”

Then I add some drums to it. With my drumming it’s electronic beats, but not a whole song programmed, so it can change at any time. Then I also play real drums on top of that. I’m trying to sound like two drummers, and one of my drummers is good and the one of my drummers is terrible and they absolutely hate each other! And I finger-pick on top of that and sing into a telephone in my helmet attached to my head.

The basic idea is I’m doing this fun thing with my guitar and making it as fun as possible until people spill their drinks and someone loses a shoe. If there’s one shoe on the ground, and it’s totally wet because of the puddles of spilled drinks, then I‘ve done my job right.

HUP: For a guy with no rhythm section, that’s a lot of work.

Bob: Yeah, who needs a rhythm section? They say drummers are crazy, guitar players are idiots and singers are assholes. And I gotta be all of ‘em.

I’ve been a one-man band for about 22 years now. I came up with a new way to play drums, a different way to play guitar and a different style of singing and I’ve kinda been sticking with it ever since 1996.

HUP: Is it possible to disguise how good you are at guitar by putting on a great party?

Bob: There’s no disguise. It’s all there, believe me. When I make a record, it’s all about the guitar. You’re not seeing me riding a boat, and I’m not making you drink out of a duck, it’s just guitar and drums. So the records are designed to put on at a party, and your party goes up a notch. 

Then I try to add to that in a live situation. But the guitar parts are all there and you will notice, if you’re at the show, what the guitar is doing, because there’s nothing else making any noise. You can’t be all jumping around and not playing anything. 

That’s probably why so many clubs are having me back, because it’s not just about drinking out of a duck or a dogbowl. The guitar part is in front of all that. I get invited back so many times because people are still tryin’ to work out what the hell I’m doin’.

HUP: Have you played Hamilton before?

Bob: I’m not entirely sure. I played a bunch of places with Cortina and I don't think Hamilton was on that list. This would have been 15-something years ago - and I wasn’t driving, so sometimes things got a little hazy.

I get a new stop almost every tour, I insist on it. All my agents know they gotta give me some adventure show, or things get weird.

HUP: You’re playing Raglan’s Yot Club, too, where you’ve been before.

Bob: Yeah, this’ll be my third time to Raglan. There are some places that will always be an adventure no matter how many times, and Raglan’s certainly one of those!

​HUP: The number of shows you play, like 37 dates already this year already, is ridiculous.

Bob: I’ve toured about half the year, every year, for at least 30 years. I’ll go back to the States and Canada in June and July, there’ll be Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam hopefully around November and back to Europe sometime before then, I think.

HUP: What happens to you when you stay still?

Bob: I do both. I tour for about forty days, then I usually go home for about the same amount of time and tour around on my motorcycle, drive my daughter to dance class, cook lasagne - I try and cover all my bases. I’ve been living in Melbourne for about 13 years now. 

There are a million places to play in Melbourne. It pretty much never stops here - there’s something going on all the time. In some ways I’m glad I didn’t grow up here.

HUP: Where did you grow up? 

Bob: I grew up in Tucson [Arizona, USA] where there was nothing to do and you had to make your own fun, which can go a lot of different ways. 

HUP: That’s why you start a band, right?

Bob: Yeah, man, when you’re bored out of your mind! There’s a couple of ways to invent something, and it’s either sheer panic or absolute boredom. And I’ve had a bit of both in my life.

Tucson’s funny, like when they write about me in the New Yorker they just assume I have two teeth because I’m from Tucson. I got all my teeth, we all got all our teeth! But New York City is like, “oh, Tucson, you must only have two teeth.” I don’t know if Auckland would think that of Hamilton…

HUP: Oh, yeah, totally. When you get here you’ll discover what the crowd is like at a rural supply village that outgrew itself.

Bob: Ok, man, well it sounds like we’re all kinda from the same place here. 

HUP: And you’re touring with Labretta Suede and the Motel 6... 

Bob: Yes. We’ve played together quite a few times. Every time I play with them, one of their songs, ‘Mexican Coke Bottle’, gets stuck in my head for weeks!

They brought me to New Zealand the last time, and I went all over the place with them. I returned the favour and they came to Australia. We played some fun shows in Melbourne and around Ballarat and other places near here. Tiny mining towns are my specialty.

HUP: When you record, do you play everything all at once like you do live?

Bob: I do most of it live, because as a one-man band I can slow time down, I can speed time up, I can take time out to dinner, I can buy a piece of cake and shove it in time’s mouth and shove some bubblegum in there and make time chew it all at the same time! I can do anything I want to time and this is the most addicting thing about being a one-man band. 

Being the complete master of time is the advantage of being a one-man band. So when I record, I can’t go back and adjust my acoustic sound to match up to my electric sound [Log’s guitar is equipped with two pick-ups] and get that kick drum slowing down at the same time. You have to do that live.

I will sometimes sing the song after the fact, but the music itself has to be done live because of the way I turn time into a rubber band.

HUP: I’m thinking of Bump Pow, Bump Bump Bump Pow which slows right down and comes right back up again.

Bob: The Bump Pow single I made with this guy in Spain. He had two kids, about 6 and 4, and he put Bump Pow on the stereo and the kids went absolutely ballistic! They broke a lamp! And he’s like, “See? This music is for children!”

I take that as a compliment. When I sometimes get to play for drunk people and kids at the same time, they do the same exact thing. When I’m playing guitar, I’m actually trying to become that 11-year-old kid I was when I started, like, “Oh my god, this is so fun!” 

Little kids just innately know what’s fun. If you put on a complain-y  folk song to a little kid, they’re not going to do anything. But if you put on AC/DC to a little kid, they are going to move. Kids innately know what’s a party, and that’s why I’ll test my songs out on little kids.

HUP: Is your daughter too old to be your song-testing kid?

Bob: My daughter’s 12 now, it’s unbelievable. She’s still my test kid on some of it, but she’s heard too much of it at this point. There was a time when I was playing a little too much banjo, and every time I picked it up she’d be like, “Papa, no!” 

I learned to play banjo while running away from her. So I play running banjo now.

HUP: Is it harder to play running banjo or crowd-surfing-in-a-boat slide guitar?

Bob: The boat is much more prone to injury, and much more difficult, depending on the drunkenness of the crowd. People keep landing me on my head. C’mon people, you’ve got the choice of killin’ me or not killin’ me, hahahhaha!

HUP: You do bring your own helmet, though.

Bob: Yeah, they think I’m covered, they’ll make me live for days. Don’t you make me live for days, Hamilton!

HUP: Which leads to this question sourced from a fan - How many helmets you have been through?

Bob: The very first one, I tried to cut earholes in it and that was a disaster. The second I used for years and years, but the foam in it started to disintegrate and at the end of every show I was coming out all bloody. Now I’ve got two, a gold one and a silver one, and that’s it. Four. I have done a couple of one-offs, like when I wanna go purple tonight or whatever.

The faceplate can change, depending on damage and, umm, amount of spit.

HUP: Is it still easy to find telephone receivers to stick into the front of those faceplates?

Bob: Hell no, man! I’m old, and when I started doing this we used to have these things called payphones, hahaha! So when I started, you could just go up with some scissors and boom. Then one day I went to get one and the payphone cable was now metal. Do you remember that? I feel partially responsible for that change to payphones, but I didn't take that many. 

Phones were a dime a dozen, too. Nobody cared about them, so you’d get ‘em at thrift stores no problem. Now they’re all in antique stores for fifty or a hundred bucks. Buying a phone like I used to use because I couldn’t afford a microphone is now more expensive than buying a microphone.

HUP: Another fan question, from a guitar nerd: What is your tuning? Because it is looooow.

Bob: A lot of people ask me that. Think of an A or an E chord, then just put on big, bad strings and go way low.

I have two different tunings; both of ‘em are an open chord. One is like an open A chord, but the lowest string is a baritone string tuned all the way down to an octave lower A. It’s almost like a banjo tuning. A banjo goes donk donk donk donk...dink, whereas I go dink dink dink donk...whomp!

Now, I say it’s an open A chord, but I’m tuned down almost an octave from that, to C. So the whole thing is tuned way lower, but in the shape of an open A chord.

The other guitar is tuned to an open E chord, but again I’m using baritone strings and I’m tuned down to A on that one.

HUP: And that’s your bass taken care of.

Bob: If you finger-pick with it, which is what I do, then it sounds like there’s a bass player and a guitar player at the same time. That’s what I’m going for. So I try to sound like two guitar players, two drummers, and one guy who’s trying to sing through a phone.

HUP: Have you ever worried that the phone makes lyrics hard to hear?

Bob: For me it’s never been about the lyrics, but I spend more time writing lyrics than I do almost anything else, which is crazy. When I listen to AC/DC or the Rolling Stones, I don’t know what the fuck they’re saying. I’m listening to the guitar and drums. That’s what I’ve always listened to. But you kinda know what they mean, and some words you get, some words you don’t. 

That doesn’t mean that I don’t want my vocals understood, it just not up front. 

Auckland-based noiseniks Swallow The Rat is a band making big noises on the music scene both here in Aotearoa and beyond, with their delicious slabs of discordant post-punk. Having recently returned from the prestigious SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the five-piece band is about to tour Aotearoa in support of the release of their debut self-titled EP, and, happily, it all starts in Hamilton this coming Friday, April 26th, with a show at Nivara Lounge. HUP caught up with Austin-native Brian Purington (guitar) ahead of the show.

​HUP: First of all, congratulations on a pretty exciting few months! Playing SXSW is kind of a big deal…how was it in reality? It looked kind of hectic…did I read it was nine shows in a week or something?!

Brian:  Yeah, we played 9 shows over 8 days.  I think we had 6 shows booked when I flew over and added a few more last minute. We closed out the Shifting Sounds party and a band on the bill (Ex-Optimists) invited us out to Bryan Texas (about a 90 min drive from Austin) to play another show with them the next night.  So the following day after playing a house party in the late afternoon we headed out there, arriving around 10pm, played around 12:30am, and drove back to Austin after the show ended.  I think I made to bed around 4:30am...

HUP: How did you guys go down over there? Were there any stand out shows? Would you do it again?

Brian:  Believe it or not all of the shows were good but I would say the stand out gigs were our Official Showcase at Barracuda, the NZ Music day party at the Parish and the Shifting Sounds party at the Hole in the Wall. We were lucky enough to share the stage will a number of great band.  Everyone we worked with over there was super welcoming, supportive and seemed to have a genuine interest in what we are doing. I think we would certainly do it again if given the opportunity.

HUP: Congratulations also on the EP! Releasing it on vinyl is pretty special too, what can you tell us about that, how did it come about/where was it mastered/pressed etc?

Brian:  Essentially we were invited to play SXSW and didn’t have any merch to sell!  So I did a limited run of 7”s, which includes the 3 singles we have released thus far, on a label I co-run with a friend/collaborator back in Austin (Headbump Records).  The UK label, Reverb Worship, also did a small run of CDs for the release.  It was pressed through A to Z Media, recorded/mixed by Nick Abbot at Northwestern and Mastered by Alex Lyon at the Bubble.  All the artwork/design was done by our drummer, Hayden. We have a few copies left that we will be selling at our upcoming NZ shows.

​​HUP: How do you find the music scene here compared to the one you grew up with back home in the US? 

Brian:  I wouldn’t say it’s fundamentally any different.  It’s just much smaller and you don’t have the same volume of touring bands coming through New Zealand.

HUP: What are the plans for the rest of this year, any more writing/recording/shows etc?

Brian:  We just finished our debut LP and are looking to release it later in the year and that will be followed by some NZ/Aussie touring.  We are also looking to get back to the USA sometime early next year.  In the meanwhile we are working on some new material and hopefully get to recording it soonish.

Catch Swallow The Rat at Nivara lounge this Friday,  April 26th, with two amazing support bands – Taurangans Threat.Meet.Protocol, and Kirikiriroans Cartoon Villain.

HUP: As a co-host of HUP and The Hum 106.7FM’s Tekau Nga Waiata Pai Top 10 show, and as a frequent gig goer, we know you have a love of new music, and particularly that from New Zealand. How did your interest develop in garage punk/garage rock, freakbeat and psych from the ‘60s?
​
Phil: I grew up loving ‘60s music. Even in my teens I was all about the Beatles, then The Who, Stones, Kinks… and naturally dug deeper. I got stuck on the Velvet Underground for a good few years, then Beefheart.  In a previous life I worked in libraries, and an old mate Terry Bishop was the music buyer for Hamilton’s libraries. We’d pore over catalogues, and he’d turn up with all sorts of cool stuff, as many of us around in the 90s will attest!  One day Terry added an amazing compilation called ‘Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ´60s Expansive Punkadelic Garage Rock Instrumentals But were afraid To Ask’ to the collection, then a few more ‘60s garage and psych releases.  They didn’t get borrowed much and ended up in my collection, to which I soon added the legendary Lenny Kaye-curated Nuggets box set, and then there was no looking back.

​HUP: What are some of your favourite songs from this era?
 
Phil: Wow, hard question.

As actual songs, I’d list:
​
‘Gloria’, by the Van Morrison-fronted Them. The perfect song, and one that was widely covered by garage bands. At last count I have versions by well over fifty ‘60s garage bands; faves being Los Temperatios, Los Sharps, Los Young Beats, and Delfini from Zagreb.

The 13th Floor Elevators’ debut single ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ and ‘Slip Inside This House’.
​
The Who’s ‘My Generation’ – not so much the original, but weird covers such as Zlatni Akordi’s, an Italian freakbeat band called The Geordies, and Som Beat from Brazil. And Los Shakes’ Spanish version ‘el Mugroso’!

​HUP: How long has ‘Retrospect’ been going?
​
Phil: Somewhere around 7 years
 
HUP: How frequently do you make new shows? Are you still discovering plenty of new songs to play on the show? How often are you now having to repeat content?
 
Phil: Weekly. It’s produced and aired at Free FM before syndication across New Zealand, and via a handful of selected Canadian stations and one in California.
Yes, I am discovering new stuff all the time. It’s all about the hunt!  Just this week I’ve scored new stuff from [old] bands The Bojax, The Muldoons, The Bucket City Distortion Racket, a bizarre LP by The Four Skins, which seems to be a bunch of medical students [?] singing about STDs, and one useful track called LSD, and global garage tracks from Hector et les Mediators [French freakbeat], Norwegian band Firebeats Inc., and a psychedelic Czech band Blue Effect.
​
I have somewhere around 15,000 tracks to play with, so I only repeat things I really want to. I still have a backlog of 100 or so full LPs to sort through, yet to be played.

​HUP: What kind of following does the show have, and what sort of feedback have you received from your followers?

Phil: Social media makes all the difference – I share artist and song info there, and also the podcast links. That generates a heap of feedback from all over the world, and a bunch of stuff I can’t translate. Retrospect has over 7,000 Facebook followers and in a good month has over 10,000 podcast listens.
 
It’s cool having loyal listeners keep in touch. In fact, this month I invited one of the biggest fans to select all the tracks [episode 358] and co-host from North Carolina.
 
HUP: How much New Zealand and Hamilton content is there among the songs?

Phil: A fair bit, although a lot of the NZ ‘60s stuff is more soul or R&B rather than real garage punk. There’s a few good comps for sure [Wyld Things, A Day In The Mind’s Mind] and I do have a few faves including some early Ray Columbus material that is reallllly good, a super-obscure cover of The Who’s ‘I’m A Boy’ done by Wellington’s The Rising Sons featuring Denis O’Brien [owner of Slow Boat records and brother of RNZ’s Phil O’Brien], who doesn’t even have a copy. In fact, they hadn’t heard it for many years until I played it.
​
Not much Hamilton content. The few bands I do have are a bit ‘pop’ for my podcast, with one exception – the incredible ‘Belly Board Beat’ by local band The Music Convention! That’s totally WILD and someone should get the rights for their local government election campaign ads. LOL!

Retrospect 60s Garage Punk Show is available from:
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Free FM's website

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​I N T E R V I E W
Nod your Head and Shake it at the Same Time: an Interview with Peter McCall of ‘Fazed on a Pony’
with Ian Duggan
 
Dunedin’s ‘Fazed on a Pony’ released their fantastic EP ‘That’s How the Light Gets In’ late in February.  We have featured a couple of the tracks on our HUP/The Hum 106.7FM Top 10 of new New Zealand songs, including ‘Natural Toast’ - which made our #1 a couple of months ago. We talked to front-person Peter McCall about his musical influences, the artwork of the release, the meaning of the band's name, and more!

HUP: My first, second and third impression on first hearing ‘Natural Toast’ was how much the song reminded me of Pavement. I, and the other primary contributor here at HUP, grew up on different sides of the world, but we were independently obsessed with Pavement in the ‘90s, so for us this is a great thing! Listening to an interview you did on Radio One, you confirm the Pavement, and also Silver Jews, influences. How did you get into these bands, and why do you think Pavement still has such an influence on you and other bands 20 years after they split?

Peter: I had a friend in high school that was into a lot of 80s and 90s guitar music and was always trying to get me to listen to bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slint, Dinosaur Jr, etc. He must have given me [the Pavement album] ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ on USB at some point and it probably sat on my computer for a couple of years before I listened to it. When I did finally put it on – one summer afternoon back at my parents place, cleaning my old room – I listened to the first half thinking that I didn’t really get it. Then ‘Here’ came on and I just thought it was the best thing I’d ever heard. It was sad, catchy, nostalgic, clever, messy and mysterious. I suppose it expressed something, or a combination of things, that I’d felt but never heard before.

After that, Pavement was really all I listened to for a long time, searching out every b-side and live clip, learning their songs (there’s an amazing website called slay tracks, which has tabs for every Malkmus song, including Jicks stuff). I found the Silver Jews through the Malkmus connection, around the time they put out ‘Early Times’. David Berman has his own thing going on and is one of my favourite lyricists. ‘Starlite Walker’ is, to me, a perfect album.

I think what I find compelling and inspiring in Pavement and in the Silver Jews are their contradictions – that the music can be ironic and sincere, epic and pathetic, tight and loose, often within a single phrase. It’s profoundly pathetic country music that makes you want to nod your head and shake it at the same time.
 
HUP: It isn’t just the music I love with your EP; the art work, featuring ponies galloping in front of a mountain range, is also fantastic. Who painted it? What else can you tell me about it?

Peter: My partner, Rosa, did the painting of Aoraki with galloping horses in front of it. I think it was initially a somewhat ironic attempt at making a stoner art poster – with all the bright colours and cliché beauty of mountains and water and horses running. She had it at her brothers flat and would go to his place once and a while to hang out, adding a bit more to it each time. Eventually her nephew, two at the time and completely obsessed with horses, saw the picture and freaked out – started jumping on it and kissing all the horses - so she finished the painting and gave it to him.

Around that time I had decided to really lean in to the pony vibe of the band and thought it would make a good cover. However, what you see on the EP cover is me holding a photo copy of the image sticky-taped to another piece of paper that has the band name added. It was the stencil for a screen we made up to print t-shirts with. While making the t-shirts I realised I like the look of the stencil more than the original art. The orangey-brown paint around the top of the mountain is paint-stopper from the screen. [continued below]

HUP: What is the scene like in Dunedin currently? Are there still good numbers of people – and students in particular – interested in live, original music? What other bands from down there should we be checking out?

Peter: It’s hard to say, really. From what I can tell, there’s the student scene, which consists of a few student bands that play pop music and draw huge crowds, and then there’s everyone else, who sometimes get a great attendance and sometimes don’t. I don’t go to as many shows as I used to and would not consider myself an authority on the state of any scene.

Some of my favourite current Dunedin bands are Wet Specimen (led by Lucy Hunter of Opposite Sex), Tiny Pieces of Eight, Koizilla, and the Rothmans.
 
HUP: What are your aspirations for the band? Should we expect more songs soon?

Peter: I don’t have any careerist aspirations; I would just like to keep going for as long as it feels good. I’d like to put out a full length, which will be the next project and one I’ve started working on. We’re taking a short break from playing to write. Hopefully we could have something out by the end of the year, maybe sooner.
 
HUP: What does the band name, ‘Fazed on a Pony’, mean?

Peter: I’m not sure, but perhaps Malkmus or Berman could tell you. It was a phrase written on the insert from ‘Early Times’.
 
HUP: You toured the release of ‘Light Gets In’ in January, including Auckland, but you had no Hamilton date included. Do you think you will make it up here at some stage?

Peter: I would’ve loved to have played Hamilton and hopefully we can at some point in the future. It was the first tour I’d organised so I tried to keep it simple – we also all have jobs and had to do it over a couple weekends. Perhaps next time we can take some time off and go to a few more places in between the big cities.

Trepidations play at Nivara Lounge this Saturday, March 23rd, along with Bruises and Nagasaki Tan. HUP caught up with Will Saunders (guitar) to shoot the proverbial shit. Here are some Q's and As to those Qs...

​Who are Trepidations and from where do you hail?
Heath on drums, Jared on bass and Will on guitar from Auckland where we all ended up one way or another

How long have you been together, and have you been in any bands previously?
About a year now and yep we've been and are in bands from Royal Falcon through to The Quick and the Dead, Bearhat and The Lowest Fidelity

You have a cool song out on Bandcamp, I Can't Go On - any more releases imminent?
ta very much! ...That's the first demo recording we did and we will have an album out later this year with any luck

How does the songwriting work in the band? And where does the inspiration come from?
Originally I wrote some tunes and asked Heath to play drums - then we cajoled Jared into whacking some bass on top - after rehearsing a few times we just started making more sounds and songs up as we went along. 
Inspiration now feels a bit like we're swimming through a stream somewhere between Can't Buy Me Love, Helter Skelter and improvised sound - the water wings are slightly deflated, we only have one flipper between us but we're splashing away optimistically!

You're heading to Hamilton on Sat March 23rd - tell us about the show...
The fantastic bruises organised the gig so we are stoked to be able to join them - they have four twisted tunes out now on bandcamp so I'm looking forward to kicking out some jams with them and Nagasaki Tan. This will be Trepidations third show.
​

​Have you played here before in any other bands, or do you know any bands here?
Hamilton is a first for me gig wise so hopefully it won't be the last... Royal Falcon must have swooped through at some stage!

Some less important information about the band...

Who is the most likely member of the band to get arrested? And what for?
We're all pretty straight arrows here at Trepidations - but I wear two pairs of glasses at once sometimes and you know how these things can go occasionally...

Who is the best cook in the band?
Heath - black beans maestro that he is

Which Trepidation is the sportiest, and what do they like playing/doing?
Jared probably. No idea which ones but he's definitely proven a good sport all round I'd say!

If you could plan a gig anywhere in the world with 3 bands dead or alive, where would it be, who is playing, and what are we drinking?
Pyramids, MC5, Dead Moon and Syd Floyd. Drinking in the wonder of it all...