Having moved to 40% international content earlier this year, Kiwi FM is changing, and mostly for the better. The mid-June departure of Wammo (closely following that of fellow long time DJ Fleur Jack) will however be a considerable loss to the station, and a big disappointment for ‘listeners’ to his 7-10am breakfast show. A self-taught broadcaster, Wammo was an early embracer of audio podcasting and then a pioneer of online video broadcasting and YouTube utilisation – true life ‘radio with pictures’. After six years at the station Glenn Williams and his partner are heading off for the U.K. and Europe. He talked candidly with Richard Thorne shortly before turning of his microphone. ...more

His adopted artist identity points to him a behind the scenes kind of operator and, as Martyn Pepperell reveals, that does provide a neatly accurate assessment of Matthew Faiumu Salapu, a.k.a Anonymouz. With his own music production company, called Anonymouz Workz, Matt is credited as associate producer of DJCXL’s recently released ‘Represent’ album, is currently busy completing post production on Ermehn’s next, as well as promoting his own Hypnotics music collective’s newly released debut album ‘Give It Time’. At the end of NZ Music Month he was a key central co-ordinator of the APO’s ‘full orchestra meets hip hop’ Auckland Town Hall concert performance coined Remix The Orchestra. ...more

It’s a catchy enough name, but arriving as they did at about the same time, and from the same city as Bang Bang Eche, likely complicated things for upbeat Christchurch pop/rock exports Clap Clap Riot. Winning the MTV Kickstart competition just a few months after their 2008 arrival in Auckland helped them stand out, and fit in, but for all that it has taken four more years for their well-received first EP, ‘TV Knows Better’, to be joined by a debut self-released album. Mark Bell talked with Messrs Clap and Riot, guitarists Dave Rowlands and Stephen Heard, about counting down to ‘Counting Spins’. ...more

Collapsing Cities are back. Actually they’ve been home for a few years now, but come July they’ll be back with a follow up to ‘Disguised as a Mall’, their darkly-fun, juxtaposition-laden 2008 album. Richard Thorne talked with the Auckland cordon of Collapsing Cities about the more-of-the-same quirky new album they’ve called ‘Strangers Again’, as much for themselves as their audience. ...more

Iva Lamkum is hardly yet a household name, but with a particular dress sense and distinctive looks to match her striking voice, she is readily recognisable to anyone interested in the soul end of Kiwi popular music. Certainly she is an artist who, once seen performing live, remains etched in the audience consciousness – for all the right reasons. Sometimes being a recognisable face on our national live music circuit reminds the singer/guitarist of being a superhero, as she tells Martyn Pepperell. ...more

You’d be hard pressed to find any musician who wouldn’t feel enormous pressure trying to follow up an album as big as Ladyhawke’s self-titled debut. Try adding two years of touring fatigue to that pressure then see if it is possible to turn out a ‘big follow-up’ album. No surprise Pip Brown, a.k.a Ladyhawke, has titled her sophomore release ‘Anxiety’, and it should come as no surprise that it is big, strong and hook-abundant either. Auckland gig goers had got used to seeing a low-key Pip Brown around the city over the last year but now Ladyhawke is back. Jeremy Toy and his band, She’s So Rad, have just spent six weeks in the U.K playing support on her ‘Anxiety’ launch tour. The tour of typically 600-capacity venues, from Brighton to Edinburgh, came to a head in front of a sell out 2000-crowd at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. It was all-consuming of her focus, but afterwards, coincidentally on the occasion of the Queen’s Jubilee, the two finally found time to talk album business. ...more

Talking to NZM ahead of its release, James Milne described his last album ‘Chant Darling’ as being one of those cliched difficult second albums. Our April/May ’09 cover story writer Lydia Jenkin suggested it might better have been called ‘Chart Darling’, and although chart success may not have ensued, the album did subsequently win Lawrence Arabia the first ever Taite Music Prize, along with the 2009 APRA Siilver Scroll Award (with co-writer Luke Buda) for the upliftingly frivolous single Apple Pie Bed. Three years later he is back with ‘The Sparrow’, an album of considerably greater musical depth and complexity, yet of similarly beguiling, evidently-effortless charm. Milne/Arabia spoke with Tomas Nelson. ...more

Auckland duo Luckless have crafted an eponymous first album of brooding indie charm that hooks you in from the get go. With deliciously melancholy this debut from Ivy Rossiter, who wrote all the songs, and drummer Will Wood, pulls you deeper with each successive track. First single Hawks is a smoothed-out slice of dreamy pop rock emblazoned with Rossiter’s plaintive lower register and Wood’s crooning harmonies, showcasing an act that seemed, from the outside, to arrive perfectly prepared. Clovis McEvoy spoke with Ivy Rossiter ahead of the late-May album launch. ...more

Wellington electronic music producer/composer Module describes the songs on his latest album ‘Imagineering’ as soundtracks to strong visual concepts that play out in his mind. That sort of imagination has seen Jeremiah Ross, aka Module, carve out a career that has become increasingly hectic over the last six years, live performances in support of his previous double album giving way to a wildly successful role in online and video game soundtrack composition. Martyn Pepperell talked with Module about journeying across panoramic soundwaves on a musical boat through his imagination. ...more

In recent years the market for boutique effects pedals has grown exponentially, almost out of control. More and more musicians are looking for new and exciting effects pedals to help in their everlasting search for a signature tone. New companies pop up, all relentlessly offering their own version of a Fuzz Face or Univibe and it’s becoming hard to sort the pro from the amateur and know who to trust. NZ has long been home to some innovative leaders in the field, not least Paul Crowther and his world-renowned Hot Cake distortion pedals. Ben Fulton has been producing his own brand of boutique effects under the name Red Witch Analog for a decade and things are now really taking off. NZM’s Westley Holdsworth was more than happy to check out Ben and his seven sisters. ...more

With Kimbra racing into the Billboard Top 20 just weeks ago, it’s either an auspicious or a radically nervewracking time for Jane de Jong, another Kiwi female artist with vocal and stage theatricality in her veins and synthy pop in her heart, to be releasing an album. Growing up under the Parachute Music umbrella and performing as the fey Ruby Frost, de Jong is accustomed to both the big stage and the small minded, and she knows all about those inner challenges. Her album ‘Volition’ is a direct and carefully scripted resume of her artistic life to date, as she tells Westley Holdsworth. ...more

We have a full set of the locally crafted Red Witch Seven Sisters guitar effects pedals and we'll be giving away one a week from next Tuesday until the beginning of August ...more