Bannerman is a project that was brought to life in the bedroom of a Western Springs flat in 2005 by Richard Setford. Six years on, with an EP and LP under his belt, the music of Bannerman has become known for lyrically ambiguous songwriting and atmospheric alt-folk. Setford has found a busy niche within the local music scene where he seems content to dwell and has recently released his second album ‘Dearly Departed’. Westley Holdsworth managed to track down Setford for some low down on his new album and to find out more of the story about that video. ...more

Bic Runga first emerged in the ’90s with a run of incredibly successful singles and albums, including her breakthrough debut release ‘Drive’ and the follow-up ‘Beautiful Collision’, which spent almost two years in the local charts. However, after the release of her more introspective third album, ‘Birds’, her energies went into motherhood and her career effectively went into hiatus. Gareth Shute met up with Runga to find out about the making of her new album, ‘Belle’, and how she got back into the creative mode by working an unlikely set of collaborators, including new partner Kody Nielson. ...more

She’s New Zealand music’s current blazing femme fatale, self-proclaimed as having “a pistol for a mouth”, already famous for her habit of wearing her lingerie out, and proudly making her own road “with some gravel and some wine”. With her first album recorded (and supported) by Ryan Adams’ legendary Cardinals band, and now a second co-written with two US music industry heavyweights, Gin Wigmore seems as charmed as she is charming. Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand it is all work, or realise that writing good music is, in fact, a difficult job, as she tells Karl Puschmann. ...more

With their recorded output of two EPs (‘Lovers +’ in 1992 and 1996’s ‘Gospel of the DNA Demon’) and two albums (‘Hateman In Love’ from ’92 and 1993’s ‘Drinking With Judas’) unavailable for love nor money for over 15 years, the five members of Hallelujah Picassos have finally decided to set the record straight and claim their rightful place in the pantheon of Kiwi music history with a re-mastered 18 track re-release of their choicest cuts – ‘Rewind the Hateman’. Mark Bell met up with Harold ‘Roland’ Rorschach and Peter McLennan at his local watering hole to get the skinny on Picasso’s dub things, and to discover why they’ve chosen this moment to re-introduce their unique sound to the music listening public. ...more

Home Brew arrived as an internet phenomenon, developing a cult following that has seen them playing shows everywhere from the wilds of Waipu Cove to the nightclubs of Melbourne, and have gone on to become one of the most enduring local hip hop acts to emerge in recent years. Their previous independent releases; 2007’s ‘Home Brew Light’, ‘Last Week’ from 2008, ‘Summer Ale’ and ‘Taste Test’ (both in ’09), have all been EPs. Scheduled for December – but headed for a likely early January release – the currently self-titled double-album has separate sides for the humorous and heavier sides of their music, as well as being deliberately self-contradicting. Gareth Shute caught up with main man Tom Scott, and beat-maker, ‘Haz’ Huavi, to learn more about their musical origins and scope out what new directions their music is taking them in. ...more

The second release in a planned series of artist/producer collaborations (all the mode this year it seems), ‘The Concept EP #2’ is an unlikely mix of electro-pop, digital funk and jazz from the soul-voiced L.A. Mitchell. Vocalist and keyboardist with Christchurch band Dukes, a regular in Fly My Pretties’ casts and, through shared management, a member of Dave Dobbyn’s band, you’d think she was busy enough. But Ms Mitchell is also busy working all sorts of angles to get her own songwritng and solo career more firmly established, as Ren Kirk discovered. ...more

While loitering round a diary on the battered mainstreet of Lyttelton, over a scoop of chips, a piece of fish and a hot dog, Adam McGrath of The Eastern got the nitty gritty from Lindon Puffin about his stepped-up third album ‘Hope Holiday’. Turns out the quintessential lonesome southern troubadour found a fresh creative muse amid some very good musical company in an Auckland basement studio. ...more

There’s talk of a new Motocade album waiting in the wings, for a time when the stars and the band members re-align, but in the meantime the band’s guitarist Geordie McCallum has slipped out his own recording entitled ‘Layers’, under the band name of SinSin. He talked with Richard Thorne about the EP’s decidedly low rent and drawn out recording process, video making frustrations and good fortune, and about finally getting his own band together. ...more

Acoustic alt-country meets hip hop in the debut release of Sons Of The Easter Rising, ‘Parihaka’, a 15-track album of social commentary and at-times strong political messages, covering historical to contemporary issues in Aotearoa. The music and lyrics come from prolific singer/songwriter Tommy Benefield, he of Tommy and The Fallen Horses. Employing an eclectic mix of instruments, arrangements, attitudes and genres, Sons Of The Easter Rising have forged an album that stands apart from its contemporaries in numerous ways – but is it all that serious? Ren Kirk talked music and politics with Tommy Benefield. ...more

A foreign import to Taranaki from Ireland, Craig Radford first started out as a solo acoustic musician. In 1985 he became the founding member of Sticky Filth, a project that, little did he know, was all about longevity. 2010 was the planned date for the band’s 25th anniversary release of ‘Fourth Domain’, however fate intervened. Craig and guitarist Chris Snowdon both had serious accidents three months apart, which meant the release had to be put on hold. A year later, and still recovering, Radford met with Taranaki music scenester Anand Rose to talk about the iconic stature of his band and brand. ...more

The disappointment of a four album deal being quietly torn up and the grind of relentless touring through some of the UK’s less appealing towns would have been enough for most young bands to call it a day. Having been given an astronomical budget to make an album that was produced by Ian Broudie in one of London’s finest studios, they had also sung karaoke with The Hives in Tokyo, talked guitar pedals in London with Muse and shared the stage with a who’s who of modern rock bands – Oasis, Muse, AC/DC and REM to name but a few. As their own rock’n’roll dreams faded to a grim and soul-destroying reality The Checks would have been forgiven for drifting apart, seeking new projects, slinking quietly home to Devonport and finding a new quieter life. But, to their enormous credit, the five high school pals have stayed together. Spend time with them and you are struck by how little they brood on the past, how strongly they give off the feeling that their best is very much yet to come. Ben Martin caught up with Ed Knowles, Sven Pettersen and Jake Moore in their Auckland HQ to talk about their new album ‘Deadly Summer Sway’. ...more

Most bands release an album, tour the country a few times and then maybe look to have a go overseas. Not so the Golden Awesome – their first album ‘Autumn’, an atmospheric blend of psychedelia and shoegaze, is being released in New Zealand this coming January 2012, but they’ve just returned from a tour of the U.S. and are only now gearing up for a four-stop tour back home. Alistar Wickens caught up with Jo Contag, Matt Steindl and Justin Barr at the Southen Cross bar in Wellington ahead of their tour and album release. ...more

As the singer, songwriter and, let’s face, it glamour side of Lucid 3, Victoria Girling-Butcher has become a familiar face on the local music scene. The charming and musically clever band graced NZ Musician’s cover back in 2004 and steadily built in profile, but by the third album’s release in 2007 seemed to have lost interest, and a solo career for Girling-Butcher inevitably beckoned. That it has taken until now for her first solo album, ‘Summit Drive’, to arrive doesn’t reflect any lack of motivation, drive (!) or songcraft, but rather the trials and tragedies that can challenge all of us in our adult lives, as Laura Dooney found out. ...more