Top Ten Music-Related Things I Have Enjoyed In 2006
AuthorBea Turner
Author Archive: Bea Turner
BORN WITH a cigarette in one hand and The Trial in other, Bea meant to go on as she started. Music wasn’t her first love, but her first love ended in a fight over rightful ownership of a Velvet Underground LP and the kitchen knife, so she chose the kinder option and stuck with it. In her spare time she enjoys casting aspersions, skulking, and making sweeping statements. She never checks her facts: figures it’s a way to live a little, to have arguments with people, then meet them. She’s currently writing a collection of short stories inspired by Schopenhauer’s manifesto of suffering and the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. When it gets published, she’s pretty sure that boy will want to hold her hand.
I’ll get to the Rogers Sisters in just a second. Right now, I would like to take some time to alert you all to a New Zealand band that should you ever get the chance to see, you should go and worship.
The Raskolnikovs’ self titled debut opens with the most impressive imitation of Nick Cave. Exchange The Bad Seed’s organs for accordion, and what you have in the opener ‘Don’t Go Down’ is perfect Murder Ballads era Cave, from the hammered, stripped back percussion to the gothic orchestrations and Brett Moodie’s eerily identical baritone howlings.
One of my enduring and favourite memories of 2004 involves a shedload of pills and a ridiculous three-hour electronica/soul/jazz mash up audiovisual mindwarp courtesy of Mr. Scruff.
It’s that funny time of year; the Wellington spring. Hints and teases of warmer weather cruelly punctuated by biting southerlies, or like today, a total shitfest of rainy squalor. Every year we go through this: will we or will we not actually be blessed with the season the rest of the world calls summer?
“The best post-punk band to come out of Britain since Bloc Party”, proclaims the press release. Look, in my opinion, !Forward Russia! were trading in spheres somewhere far outside Bloc Party, and even my beloved Futureheads.
Radio Active’s annual Handle the Jandal awards ceremony was held at the Embassy recently, once again celebrating low budget excellence in local music videos.