HUP GOES NZ! (HELP!)

In just a couple of weeks time, HUP will turn six years old. Our metaphorical milk teeth will be dropping out of our musical mouths and we are planning to grow upwards and outwards and we need your help.

When we started out in 2015, our aim was to help nurture a local indie music 'scene' in/around Hamilton, by writing about locally produced music/bands and putting on events. That will be the case going forward and HUP will always have a mild bias towards searching out and supporting great indie music from Kirikiriroa and its people. The thing is...

We want to do that for the whole of Aotearoa too, and so, duhnuuuuh with the lowest key 'revamp' possible, HUP, (while keeping its name and url), is going to start to have a country-wide focus, not just shining a light on lil old Kirikiriroa.

Now, without being elitist or twatty about it, we are into indie music, and that means different things to different people. To us, it's the weird stuff, the cool stuff, the confusing stuff, the not-mainstream stuff, the 'I wanna be in that band' stuff, the 'oh my gaaaawd I'm alive' stuff, the really really reeeeeally good songs that give you goosebumps and were probably written in a spare room at silly times of day. We're not too cool for school (have you ever met us ffs?) but we know what we like. We don't want HUP to be like the other NZ music sites who publish every press release they receive - there's definitely a place for that and those sites do a fantastic job, but it's not us. We want to get a printed mag going again like the old HUPZINE from a few years back, but on a larger scale. 

To do this, (if you're still reading this by the way, very well done), we need more people all around the country with a love of indie/alternative music - regular contributors to create content (bleurgh!) worth reading/seeing - interviews/Q&A, music/gig reviews, photographs, record or guest  on podcasts etc - and write with a degree of personality about good music. You can choose what you do and suggest ideas, and sometimes we'll mail out with possibilities and see if you are keen. It doesn't even have to be under your own name - pseudonyms all good if you're not into coming out to the masses about your hobby gig.

HUP is not for profit and always will be so you'll want to do it for the love of it and hopefully the occasional freebee if anything comes our way, free entry to shows we put on/get offered, that sort of thing.

Reckon you'd be into contributing something at least once a month? Chuck us an electronic mail at [email protected]