Tuesday, December 16, 2008

We're opening for Of Montreal! ...and should we sell out?

Exciting! These guys are one of our favourites!! Check them out



And on a related note, we've been asked to license our name and likeness to Urban Outfitters (a really huge clothing retailer in the states). They want to sell 'Little Pictures' t-shirts. We'll get some money and some free t-shirts out of it, we've never been able to afford to do a run of shirts for selling at shows. Should we sign on the dotted line? Of Montreal did with this steak house ad, they even changed the words of their song:

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Our song was on the national weather report...

Haha, how strange! It was on in the background to the late night national news, on TV3. During the weather forecast. Surely they should ask us first? Anyway, awesome!



http://www.3news.co.nz/Weather-Music-17---21-November-2008/tabid/209/articleID/80316/cat/235/Default.aspx#video

Saturday, November 22, 2008

We're a finalist in an NZ video competition called Handle the Jandal

Every year the university radio stations (bnets) host a big video competition throughout NZ called Handle the Jandal. And they've narrowed it down to a top 15. And our video for This House Can Fit Us All made by Dan Dan the Sexual man is in the top 15!

So they're going to screen them all on the big screen at St James Theatre in Wellington, NZ on Thursday November 27. Can't wait to see them all projected up on the big screen! Lots of awesome videos:

Marco Vidaurre: The Ruby Suns, 'Tane Mahuta'
Vorn Colgan: Vorn, 'Get Better Work Stories'
Sam Muirhead: Brand New Math, 'Idiot Savant'
Ben Forman/Judah: Finnigan Deep Sea Regret, 'So Far So Good'
Daniel Batkin-Smith: Little Pictures, 'This House Can Fit Us All'
Campbell Farquar: Wilberforces, 'Tidal Waves'
Kent Griggs: Missing Teeth, 'Not For Me'
Jonas Besson & Paul Raine: Moon Balloon, 'Video Games'
Anton Steel: Reb Fountain, 'TAB'
Brian Hainsworth: The Short Shorts, 'You Don't Know'
Brian Hainsworth: Tommy Ill and Buck Beauchamp, 'Letters To The Editor'
Daniel Alexander: Fowler Denmark, 'Street Will You?'
Logan McMillan: Flip Grater, 'Ring Around The Rosie'
Thedownlowconcept: The Hot Grits, 'Headlights'
Curtis Baigent: The Bonnie Scarlets, 'It's Getting Me Down'


Little Pictures - This House Can Fit Us All from eep! productions on Vimeo.



Also, this video and song by Architecture in Helsinki is the best thing I've seen all year by far!!


Architecture in Helsinki - That Beep from helsinkids on Vimeo.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A tribute to one of our songs! :D

Someone linked us to this video, really out of the blue. Some random kids in some country (the states?) have made a little home video of them mucking around and set it to our music. Coooooool!

Friday, October 10, 2008

A video of us playing at Camp A Low Hum

Thanks Blink! We're sounding a bit rough but having a lot of fun :)

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

So we did this show in a moving bus...

For our album release of Owl + Owl in Auckland, we decided to play a show in a moving bus. We were actually having a little trouble finding the right venue, and we wanted to do something a bit special. Anyway, here's how it happened:

So we decide to do the bus thing a month or two out. We find this company in Auckland called Party Bus, who run a bus kitted out with a big soundsystem and a liquor license. They do chartered pub crawls. After a few emails we get them to agree to letting us host a show in there, and even get them to sponsor us with a cut price deal. So there you go, Little Pictures: sponsored by Party Bus. Of Montreal would be proud :D

Anyway, we drive up with our good friend Alistair, and head to the bus depot. The bus depot is out in the countryside, and it turns out Party Bus have like 50 buses out in this giant paddock.

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So we soundcheck stuff, and amazingly we're able to get it all running. We had borrowed a little battery power generator to run all of our stuff, and the bus company hardwires in our mixer into the bus specially for us. VERY nice of them!

On the night of the show we turn up to see a bunch of people waiting on the footpath. We'd sold out the show in presales, which was a first for us, but we were still nervous as to what actually might happen. Well everyone's there early, our friend Andrew from cheeseontoast plays bus conductor, clipping peoples' tickets and so forth. People pile on with a TONNE of alcohol. As we pull out of the bus stop, unbeknown to us, a couple of guys from our NZ label Lil Chief Records turn up (we left slightly early) and run alongside the bus trying to get in. But no one saw them! We feel so bad for leaving Scott and Lawrence behind :(

But we take off into the night, and Andrew starts up his ipod DJ set through the Bus PA. We weren't sure what people would do on the bus. Would everyone just sit there awkwardly? Well, no they didn't. Everyone was drinking and chatting and having a good time. So we drive around for a little, and everyone gets to know each other. We were surprised, we had never seen most of the people in the bus before. Exciting!









It came time for us to play, but we were worried how it would work out. We taped everything down to the seats and the floor, to try and stop it all moving around. We knew the PA wasn't loud enough really, and with everything jostling around we feared for the worst... but it totally worked. In fact, some songs even sounded BETTER on a bus than in a venue (...). People were up dancing and singing along. We even had a go at doing "This Bus is Very Small". Worked pretty well :D We went over the harbour bridge and so on. Then we played our last song as we climbed Mount Eden, and just as we finished we pulled in at the top and everyone rushed out to the panoramic view of Auckland. Perfect!

It just couldn't have gone better. And all you other bands out there, play in a bus! It's a lot of fun :D

Tonnes of pictures here, thanks to Trousy and Ali:
http://flickr.com/photos/11474879@N00/sets/72157607429724387/

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Australian Tour was awesome!

So we did this tour a few months ago, but we've been so busy with recording new album stuff and Uni that we hadn't had a chance to do a write up. So here it is!:

We had an amazing time! We played 6 shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Hobart and with the exception of one show, each show had a great turn out and a great vibe! Marc from Popolice booked the whole tour for us, and played support for us at most of the shows. We can't express how awesome Marc is!

So we fly into Melbourne a couple of days early and arrive at Marc's house. He's booked our tour for us, and he's in a one man band called Popolice who are totally awesome, and he is an amazing guy. The second we arrive he offers us his room and his bed, opting to sleep on the couch. "It just makes sense, you guys are a couple and I'm just one guy, it just makes sense." Haha, see!

Our first concert was in Melbourne, on a Thursday night at a club night called 'Pogo'. This is the strangest concert I've ever played. The club night is held in a four story night club, complete with U.V. lights, the whole shibang. The club night is the most bizarre thing we've ever seen. It's sort of a hipster indie disco sort of deal, except the people that come are 18, or younger (illegally) and are totally wasted, spewing, but dressed in super expensive trendy clothing. I guess it's the whole 'indie kid' thing, except way way younger and very jockish and nightclubish. Anyway we pack in, and the people running the night are really nice, and they give us a whole bunch of drink cards, something we'd never come across before. Marc opened for us, and he was great, but no one was in the band level of the nightclub. Because the place is spread over four levels, everyone was hanging out with the DJs upstairs. And so when we played there were maybe 20 people there. Smallest crowd we've played to, probably. But it was still a fun night, and totally crazy to see these real young hipster types off their faces. Someone from the small crowd was actually yelling something about Mechano, which is an old band I was in. That was weird, I guess they used to live in NZ.

Next night was in Melbourne again at a venue called The Tote. This venue is kind of like a much bigger valve, kind of scummy, but really cool. We played on a great bill with locals 99 and Handheld, plus a band from Tasmania called Viva Computer. We played second to a reasonably sized crowd, and everyone was really receptive. Lots of clapping and smiling. We then manned the merch table and sold a bunch of stuff. It was our first feel of really playing outside of New Zealand. We had so many warm comments, and met a bunch of the nicest people. People kept asking us about Camp A Low Hum, and this would continue throughout the entire tour. After the show we went back to this Warehouse. In Australia, a 'warehouse' is a converted warehouse fitted out as an 'art space' where people illegally live. So pretty much a giant party space. This warehouse was amazing! They had old school gaming machine, a million couches, heaps of band equipment, and a multi level open plan thing going on. They even had a cardboard cut out of Nick Cave! We chilled with him most of the night.

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We actually came back to the warehouse the next day, because a couple of guys we'd met at Camp A Low Hum lived there (Marcus from Bang Bang Aids, smoking hot bitch and Nat who did a bunch of filming at camp - both of whom were in our video clip), and were showing some footage Nat had shot. We had a great time hanging out and having a low key time :)

On Sunday we were invited to join a few people we'd met at The Tote for brunch. We were told to meet at this place called the Northcote Mall. Turns out it's this old persons mall. We ate in this weird caferteria place. The food was actually really cool. And we just sat there watching strange old people walk through the mall outside. We had brunch with Dan Lewis, Neil and Alexis. Neil is in a band called Crayon Fields, and Alexis is in a band called The Motifs. Both of these bands are amazing! Dan Lewis plays in noise bands and runs a booking company. Anyway, we had an awesome brunch with these guys, and we'd see them again at our last show.

The next show was down in Sydney. Now, we'd heard over and over again from different people in Melbourne that Sydney was really hard to play. It's apparently really hard to book a venue if you have no profile because there are only a handful of venues. And apparently Sydney crowds are scary and standoffish. This was not our experience! Sydney was a real highlight. We caught a bus from Melbourne to Sydney, it took 12 hours but it went overnight. I highly recommend this bus ride, it's really really cheap, and you can sleep the whole way! We played on a Wednesday at the most amazing venue. It's this little Italian restaurant. But on a Wednesday the guys who run Dual Plover take it over and put on a sort of indie music night. There are two rooms. In the front room this guy called Tom was playing his gameboy, playing chip tunes music. And then in the back room the bands played. There was no stage, and only half a PA. One thing we learnt to do on this tour was adapt to weird, low key, crappy PA setups. Most of the time we had no fold back, and pretty much no PA, but we were able to make it work easily, it's so good having such a simple setup! So there was no sound guy tonight, so we just sound checked ourselves by running back and forth to the sound desk. Popolice opened, and had brought a tiny little practice amp with him from Melbourne and he had endless trouble with it, it kept dying on him, although it sort of suited his noise rock thing. The show was actually a local band's EP release show, so we were kind of worried when we were told we'd be playing after them. This happened a couple of times, I actually think people thought they were doing us a favour by 'letting' us play last, when really we have zero profile and were just riding off other people's crowds. Anyway, there were a bunch of people at this show there especially to see us. I think we'd been blogged about a bit on Sydney blogs. Anyway, it was the warmest crowd ever, and we had heaps of fun playing in this weird little Italian restaurant, even sold a bunch of albums!

Thursday night we headed over to Canberra on the bus. We were playing another club night. This seems common in Australia, where a venue will have a different promoter running a special genre specific night once a week. We played a night called 'gangbusters' here at this funny venue in the city. It too had no stage. Except even more bizarrely the area where they set up the bands was sort of in front of this corridor that lead to the bathrooms. So while bands were playing, people were sort of walking through the band to get to the toilets. This is actually pretty awful, and really kills the vibe, for both watching bands, and for playing. They also played the most awful merry-go-round music over the PA REALLY loudly all night. We played last out of four bands, two of which were local. So the crowd progressively thinned out as the night went on. But still there was a decent sized crowd when it came time for us to play. But no one was really interested in us. This was sort of a first for us, we've had a pretty good experience with being able to engage an audience, but tonight it was not meant to be. There were maybe 10 people paying attention to us, while the others talked so loud it actually kind of drowned us out. But on the upside, the guy who runs gangbusters, Warwick, put us up at his place and he was an awesome guy! But I don't think we'd go back to Canberra again. The crowd seemed more keen for some angry bands, apparently metal's big in Canberra. Our friends and label mates The Brunettes have had a similar experience in Canberra apparently.

We caught a plane down to Hobart for the next night's show. Marc from Popolice had talked up Hobart big time. He's played down there a bunch of times and he loves it. The venue itself, confusingly called The Brisbane Hotel, was a sort of pub venue, it was pretty nice in there but also pretty big. We were on a bill of 5 bands, and we were playing second to last. We sat on the door that night, which we really like to do, but found that most people who came through the door were pretty quiet and reserved. The first band started real late, so we were a little worried. But no one left, not even before the last band even though they went on well after 1am. Marc played a really awesome set, and people were really into it. We played to sort of lukewarm applause. In fact, we had our first heckler in Hobart. Apparently there's this one infamous guy who comes along to heaps of shows and heckles the band. Anyway, he was trying to tell us that we were too happy. At one point we tried to get everyone to step forward towards the stage a bit, but no one would, it was really uncomfortable... But then after we'd played we went back to the door, and ALL these people came up to us telling us how amazing we were, and we sold a heap of albums. When we were on stage we thought it was going awfully, but afterwards we were glowing! Apparently Hobart has quite hard to please crowds, but it seems like we did pretty well for our first showing, we'd come back down! We stayed upstairs in the hotel part of the pub which was a novel experience. After being on tour a little while it was really nice to have a room you could go to to get away from it all. We're not really big party animal types.

We came back to Melbourne for the last show of our tour. We were playing at this venue that EVERYONE had told us was amazing, called Pony. They do this weird thing where they stagger bands throughout the night, so we were playing the 2am slot. Entry to the venue is free, and the venue pays the band a handsome guarantee. So we show up at 1.30am and the manager asks "So.. where's your sound guy". Turns out we were meant to provide one. Shit. So we start asking around trying to find someone to do it. In the end we roped in a friend we'd made at The Tote. He's the nicest guy ever called Dan Lewis (who we had brunch with). I think he might have been quite drunk, and he hadn't really done sound before, but he said he'd give it a go. We were kind of stressing out, because the venue is this real grimey bar, think a way scummier Valve in Wellington but a bit bigger. There were heaps of people there but everyone was really drunk. They were playing Rage Against The Machine over the PA and there were a bunch of people singing along and stuff. We were a little worried we were going to be booed off stage. Kind of like that scene in Blue Brothers, we needed a cage. This show was probably the most fun show we've ever played ever! Once we started playing, heaps of people came up from the downstairs bar. We played in this reasonably small room, cram packed with 150 or 200 people all cheering and clapping and yelling for more. Everyone was clapping along and going nuts dancing. There was even a guy riding a skateboard around at the start of the set before it got super packed. At the end of our set everyone was chanting for us to play more, and we could barely leave the stage, we had to literally push with all our strength through the crowd to try and escape the encore trap! Everyone was telling us how awesome we were and how much they liked it. It's awesome playing to a 2am crowd, everyone's drunk and friendly!

So we returned home VERY weary and sick and tired. But what an amazing time! We can't wait to do more touring internationally. We're in the middle of booking a US, UK and European tour for May next year where we'll be releasing our album in a bunch of different countries. We'll keep you in the loop!

Friday, July 25, 2008

More head scratching on buzzband-dom

I blogged this just yesterday about how much internet buzz we'd been receiving. Within 24 hours this blog BUZZGRINDER had posted a response. How exciting! I mean how cool is that? We live aaaaaall the way over here in New Zealand!

It was interesting that BUZZGRINDER was saying that internet buzz doesn't lead to very good album sales. I find that really interesting because I wouldn't automatically assume that internet buzz would have much to do with album sales. So maybe some do associate the two? In New Zealand an independent band (like ourselves) would do well to sell 500 copies of their album. And that's doing well! So record sales perhaps don't mean the same thing to us as they do to people in the states?

We've just found all the lovely things people have been saying really encouraging :) We understand it doesn't make us rich or famous. Does anyone really think it would?

The reason we have all this internet stuff about our band is sort of two fold. I mean obviously we just love doing it, it's heaps of fun, we like it. But secondly, we live in New Zealand! We have ZERO connection as a band with the world outside of NZ on a daily basis without all this stuff. It's been so great to be able to talk to a bunch of people from all over the world :D

And on a slightly side note, at the bottom of the BUZZGRINDER blog post was a comment saying "Ah just like life, a music carear can be disappointing." Aww! Don't feel so bad! We're not disappointed, we hope you're not either :D

NZ Radio National interview us

The lovely Kirsten interviewed us on New Zealand Radio National, here it is:
Little Pictures Session

Le blogs

So like Mark just said in the last post lots of blogs have been writing about us, which is all a bit exciting. Reading what people have to say about our music has been (mostly) really nice, if not only a little bit self-indulgent. However, unfortunately for me and my lack of fluency in languages other than English, Dutch (mark says: what a bragging-guy) and like 8 words of Spanish, it's been down-right tricky to find out what people who dont blog in English are saying.

In my hour of need, I turned to trusty babel fish translator. It turned this into this:

Ben yes A music which is played with a finger on the moog who sings himself without course of song and which requires 2 euros d' investment and 2 people that made of the good L' album of Little Pictures has just left to Lil' Chief a small happiness

So yeah. Make of that what you will. My favourite bit is "the good L'album"

If anyone reading this is a nifty translator of French or Spanish all input would be welcome!

Anyway, bed now, I am Le tiiiired.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Are we a buzz band? I'm so confused, what does buzz mean?

All this blogging attention has been really lovely! Our album's had so many nice reviews and heaps of people from all over the world have said such nice things about us! :)

There's a popular website that collects data and posts from every blog and puts together a 'most popular artists' list based on that. It's called Elbows. We've been climbing up Elbow's list of most blogged about artists, at the moment we're at number 24. This is awesome! Pretty much every other artist on this list is very well known and established, so we feel super excited that we're featuring on this list! Also, another similar website called Hype Machine has us in their top 20. Exciting!

So thanks so much to all the bloggers blogging about us, we really really appreciate it!
































A blog posted on us the other day, with the title "Buzzworthy or not?". It was a pretty critical blog entry about us, but at the end they come to the conclusion that yes in fact we are buzzworthy

It feels great to be buzz-worthy! ...I think?

Included in a popular podcast :)

We've been included in a pod cast called 'Best of Myspace', which is in the top 10 most downloaded pod casts on itunes. Exciting! Inclusion was by vote, so thanks to everyone that voted for us! Here's the press release sent to us, go and download it!

"we've launched the latest episode of best of myspace (37) which features DAN BLACK, LITTLE PICTURES, FAVOURS FOR SAILORS, DINKY LOOP, THE LOST LEVELS, THE RUBIKS, MOSCOW FLYER, NATHANIEL HO HO AND THE CLICK CLACK BOOM, TEN CITY AND PAUL DAVIES.

the cast is available as an mp3 or as an enhanced, chapterized cast, plus you can benefit from our widget, facebook application and group.

So now you can paste the widget anywhere, join the facebook group, load the player into your mac dashboard and have it play like a radio would.

You can also nominate bands through the form and subscribe to the feed.

Finally, all best of myspace podcasts will now live at

www.bestofmyspace.co.uk

so - here's your various links - please use at will.

link to widget:

http://www.clearspring.com/widgets/485ffc225ed893f7

link to facebok app:

http://apps.facebook.com/bestofmyspace/page

link to facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/#/group.php?gid=16635059094

main site, and mp3 blog:

http://www.bestofmyspace.co.uk



enjoy

g"

Monday, July 21, 2008

Wow, so many blog posts about us!

We've been getting blogged on a heap of different blogs. So many people saying so many nice things, it's so exciting! The vast majority of these are form the states, but they're from all over too. I'll post a whole bunch of them here:

BIGSTEREO - http://this.bigstereo.net
IHEARTCOMIX! - - http://iheartcomix.com
Welikeit.indie - http://blog.welikeitindie.com/
the culture of me - http://feeds.feedburner.com/thatdudejeff
IMAGEYENATION.COM - http://www.imageyenation.com/
B-electro - http://b-electro.blogspot.com/
Street Tone - http://streettone.blogspot.com/
East Coast Overdose - http://eastcoastoverdose.blogspot.com/
IT'S THE MONEY SHOT!! - http://itisthemoneyshot.blogspot.com/
SYDNEYSOUNDER - http://www.sydneysounder.com/
Athens66 - http://athens66.blogspot.com/
Undress Me Robot - http://www.undressmerobot.com/umrpress
Mesh UP - http://andyzeo.mypodcast.com/
East Coast Overdose - http://eastcoastoverdose.blogspot.com/
Nerdy Frames| READING OUR BLOG WILL GET YOU SUED! - http://www.nerdy-frames.org/
PUSHER - http://pusherblog.com
nickjamvendetta - http://nickjam.blogspot.com/
moreforeplay - http://moreforeplay.blogspot.com/
Andy Zeo - http://andyzeo.com.br/
Danger!! High voltage!!! - http://izumrudova.livejournal.com/
Grey Gardens - http://somegreygardens.blogspot.com/
Leo's German Connection - http://leoolofsson.blogspot.com/

Also, here's a video of us playing live at Whammy Bar up in Auckland a few weeks ago. Awesome fun!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Playing live on radio

Ahh I'm sorry we've not been writing more updates! We have a big one on our Australian tour coming real soon!

In the meantime, here's a video of us playing live on radio. We were down in Christchurch last week playing our album release show, and we went into local radio station RDU to do a short live to air. It was heaps of fun, and one of the DJs filmed it on their cell phone We played a cover of a Buddy Holly song called Everyday.
Enjoy!


Monday, June 23, 2008

Our album is available for pre order through Lil Chief!

Thaaaaat's right! Our debut album 'Owl + Owl' can be pre-ordered from Lil Chief RIGHT NOW. It's 11 tracks of sweet bedroom pop tunes, love songs and synthesised delight!

Click below :)

http://lilchiefrecords.com/store.html

NZ$23 postage included
USD$13 postage included

They'll ship all orders on the 1st of July! :)

We're heading off at 4am tomorrow for Australia

Just thought we'd keep a little travel blog for our Australian tour. We leave at 4am tomorrow for our first ever international band experience, exciting!!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Australian Tour!

We're going on tour to Australia!

It's our first venturing out of New Zealand. We'll be playing most of the tour with the amazing Popolice.

He just got a big ups on the Cut Copy site! That's just how cool he is

Hope to see you at a show!


26 JUNE - MELBOURNE - GEDDES LANE (Pogo) w/ Popolice

27 JUNE - MELBOURNE - TOTE w/ Viva Computer (Tasmania)

02 JULY - SYDNEY - CONSOLADOR DE DOS CARAS w/ Popolice (Melbourne)

03 JULY - CANBERRA - BAR 32 w/ Popolice (Melbourne)

04 JULY - HOBART - THE BRISBANE HOTEL w/ Popolice (Melbourne), Vivids, White Woods and Drunk Elk

05 JULY -MELBOURNE - PONY (2AM slot)

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Our very first video clip

Today Dan finished our very first video clip. It's for our song "This House Can Fit Us All" which is the first single from our upcoming album.

Yay!!


Little Pictures - This House Can Fit Us All from eep! productions on Vimeo.

The video was filmed at Camp A Low Hum '08 and features a tonne of different camp people dancing and singing and having a gooood time. To celebrate we'll be holding a competition. To enter, simply name as many people in the video for "This House Can Fit Us All" as you possibly can, and email your list to lotsoflittlepictures@gmail.com. The person with the most correct answers wins the very first copy of our upcoming album 'Owl + Owl'!! The competition closes Saturday, the 21st of June. Get naming!

We are having a release party to celebrate the release of the video. It's in Auckland on Saturday the 14th June at Whammy Bar w/ guests Brand New Math, Moron Says What?!?! and Bionic Pixie. See you there!

cheeseontoast

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Christmas FEEDBACK

Haha we just found this on youtube. It's a video of us playing in Wellington around Christmas time last year. They put up all these stage props like stars and tinsel and stuff and it all looked great. They even had projectors showing 3D movies and gave out 3D glasses at the door, was pretty cool! Except there was this one big cardboard star on Johanna's microphone stand and it made the mic feed back HORRIBLY. It was actually one of our first shows as a duo. Enjoy the FEEDBACK!!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

We're in Real Groove Magazine/Compilation

That's right! We were included in this month's Real Groove magazine and they put one of our songs on the compilation, it was "I Wish I Could Keep You".

Click on the article to read it. Our friend Matthew Crawley was hired to write the article, so he sent us a wee interview. We answered the interview in the third person because it's confusing when there's two of us both say 'I' and 'me'. Anyway, he ended up constructing the article almost entirely out of our quotes, VERY cheeky! We love it!!



Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Selling our equipment to tour overseas

We've been booking our Australian release tour over the past few days and it costs LOTS. Not just a few hundred bucks, but LOTS and LOTS. So we came to the sad realisation that we need to sell some music equipment to fund our tour.

NO, NOT THE MOOG. PLEASE ANYTHING BUT THE MOOG!

So I'm forced to sell my 1975 Moog Micromoog. It sucks, but it needs to be done. Mourn with me:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Music-instruments/Pro-Audio-DJ-Equipment/Synthesisers/auction-149354193.htm?p=17






Thursday, March 27, 2008

Support slot for Ratatat

Yaay, we've been invited to support Ratatat for their Wellington concert on May 1st at Bodega!

If you haven't heard of them, Ratatat are a great instrumental band that combines hiphop beatmaking with rocknroll guitars. Really cool:

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Our EP has sold out

No more left! We printed a special edition handcrafted version but they're all gone too, thanks to all the people in Christchurch and Dunedin who bought them!

We've made these cool little Floppy Discs. They're All hand decorated and lovely. What they have on them is a download link to our EP, so it's like being able to buy a digital copy, but in real life! Confusing, but amazing. We actually left them down in Dunedin but once we get them back we'll put them up on our page :)

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Live video from Camp A Low Hum

When we were in Dunedin lovely mr Rok Px, a photographer and handicam addict punk gentleman, came to the show and gave us a CD with a video on it of us playing at camp. Thanks so much man! Here's a snippet:

Christchurch and Dunedin were awesome!

We just got home from our small South Island tour and we had great fun! Our second show in Christchurch went really well, the Dux de Lux is excellent



The next day Joe drive us down to Dunedin. Joe is the nicest guy out, and the only gentleman we know to carry his laptop in a hardcore pelican hardcase. Christchurch band Bang! Bang! Eche! also drove down with us. Those guys are awesome, here's a mini video of how awesome they are:



It's a lovely drive down to Dunedin (johanna gets angy.. again!) hehe



When we were down in Dunedin, we stayed with my long time friend Rory. Check out his classic dunedin student flat!



All in all the trip was heaps of fun, thanks to Joe, to Bang! Bang! Eche!, to the Insurgents, to Chris, to Haunted Love, to the O'Lovelys and a special thanks to Rory and to T'Nealle for giving us their beds!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Little Pictures go to Christchurch!

So we flew down to Christchurch yesterday, and it's lovely down here!



We played last night at this place called 'Yellow Cross' which is in this bizzare section of the city called 'Sol Square'. All the bars and shops are owned by the same person, and were all built at the same time, but they've all been artificially ages and have themes like 'the funk club' and 'the mexican bar'. It was like disney world! Here's a video of the weird stage that's three meters tall!



Tonight we're playing again in Christchurch, at the Dux, it's a really lovely old pub with friendly regulars, free drinks and a really nice vibe :)

Sunday, March 16, 2008

We're featured this week on cheeseontoast

Cheeseontoast is a New Zealand indie music site, and each week they have three musicians do a 'what are they listening to'. Here's a screenshot of it, and a link to the real thing!

www.cheeseontoast.co.nz

We just got signed to 'Lil Chief Records!! Just then!!

Wow!! We're so excited! 'Lil Chief will be helping us release our album 'Owl + Owl'. They're an awesome label, housing bands like The Brunettes, The Ruby Suns, Lawrence Arabia, The Reduction Agents, Voom and a whole heap more!! We just happened to have the handicam right by us...

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Hannah's 21st Birthday

So, our good friend Hannah Simon had her 21st birthday last night. Her band 'Holiday With Friends' played and we played too!

Here's Holiday With Friends:




And here we are playing This House Can Fit Us All (from our upcoming album):




And here we are again playing Tips For Domestic Bliss (also from our upcoming album!)

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Special Edition pressing of our EP

So today we pressed 15 special picture discs to commemorate a very awesome music festival we played last month, Camp A Low Hum. They're all hand printed, with different designs on them.

DSC_0955







It's the last pressing of our EP, 'you + me + my amplifier', so once these 15 are gone there will be no more EP!

alowhum + Craftwerk Tour

We just uploaded these videos from a tour we did last year of New Zealand. It was organised by Blink ala 'alowhum', a featured a touring alternative craftmarket called 'Craftwerk'. This was when we were a three piece and had a drummer, we miss Trousy heaps!


We had traveled all night after playing a show in Dunedin, to get to Christchurch:


Teasing Heather, who runs Craftwerk:


One of the bands on tour with us, Thought Creature, sells out to Grain Waves halfway through


Also, Though Creature loves Hanson:


Johanna is Dutch, but she's not fooling anyone:


Our ex-drummer is a hot and spicy man:


Blink drove and we slept!


We all spent WAY too much time in the van:

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

We just finished recording and mixing our album!!

Yesterday we put the finishing touches to the album, it's very exciting! Here's a picture of the lonely corner in which we recorded the whole thing (it's my bedroom!):

























The album's called 'Owl + Owl' and it's 13 tracks long. It has the four tracks from our EP 'You + Me + My Amplifier' slightly reworked, plus a heap of new songs. Here's the track listing we're looking at doing at the moment:

1. Hello!
2. I Wish I Could Keep You
3. Eliot
4. Hopeful and Hopeless
5. Owl + Owl
6. Tips For Domestic Bliss
7. I'm Not Scared
8. Tiny Gaps
9. Kaleidoscope
10. You + Me + My Amplifier
11. I am a Camera
12. This House Can Fit Us All
13. Goodbye!

Now we're starting the process of getting together the artwork and some label support, which is all looking very positive :)

It was a bit of a nightmare getting all the recordings together because we used four different recording programs. We started using Pro Tools but then it died on us so we started using Ableton live but we weren't happy with it so we started using Garage Band but it was so limited and so we started using Logic 8. So in the end we had songs in aaaaaaall those different programs, oh dear! But we figured it out in the end!

We should have everything done in the next month :)