Daily News Channel
RISE Skillet (Warner) As politically conscious as Skillet try to be, they have a tendency to ruin a potentially good lyric such as “sometimes it’s crazy to fight for what you believe” with a fade-out kiddy chorus that’s just plain corny. Likewise Sick Of It
Simon Gooding and Brendon Morrow already knew their way around the studio as session musicians for other bands and had already mapped out their future before they ever met. While studying audio engineering at SAE in Byron Bay, Australia, they shared a cramped dorm room, and discovered a mutual love for Radiohead, The Beatles and The Mars Volta and when they returned to Auckland, The Map Room was already half born.
LOST SONGS Jan Hellriegel (Rhythmethod) Acting spots in Xena and Shortland St, backing vocals for The Muttonbirds, Facebook posts about making hot chocolates with Dave Dobbyn – you simply can’t get more Kiwi than Jan Hellriegel’s resume. That she also produced a couple of damned fine 90s albums in It’s My Sin and Tremble and trod the same boards as Jeff Buckley, puts her at the forefront of a period of Kiwiana which doesn’t get much replay these days.
INFORM EDUCATE ENTERTAIN Public Service Broadcasting (Southbound) The novelty of mixing soundbytes from archival British propaganda material and public information films could so easily fall flat as a musical project but the curiously named J Willgoose Esq and Wrigglesworth, the electronic duo behind PSB, have the sonic nous to “teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future”. The late Margaret Thatcher features prominently on both the title track and Theme From PSB, while the strongest two tracks – Everest – a dazzling synthesizer soundscape about our own Sir Edmund Hillary’s climb to the top of the world, and Night Mail, which blazes with punk fervor and blazing guitars showcase the expansive compositional skills that PSB use to give the past meaning in the present.
Green Day front man, Billie Joe Armstrong, lost it on stage at a recent performance at the I Heart Radio Festival where he first didn’t want to sing an old song and second became perturbed that his time on stage was running out. Not Justin Bieber Billie Joe Armstrong is not Justin Bieber, that’s clear […]