Little Pictures' Blog

We've moved blogs!

2009-10-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

We won't post here anymore. Go to littlepicturesmusic.tumblr.com from now on. See you there

Our first show in Amsterdam/Netherlands

2009-08-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

So we've been hanging out here in Amsterdam for 3 weeks now. Looking for job, a place to live, and finishing recording our new EP.

Last night we played our first show in Amsterdam, and it was sweeet! We played at the closing party of a big open air film festival called Pluk De Nacht. It was an extremely well run show, the people who put this on are pretty amazing. The room was packed with about 500 people! Everyone we met was really friendly, and we even managed to bump into a guy that used to work at Mighty Mighty, a bar in Wellington that we played at a bunch of time. Small world. Great night!

Here are some pictures:

Blogotheque

2009-08-08T02:34:00.000-07:00

We played Midi Festival in the south of France and it was amazing! Blogotheque were there and asked us to do a little take away show. Here's some of the footage! See if you can spot Piklet, Joe, guys from Dent May, guys from Jeffery Lewis and guys from Jeremy Jay. Epic jams

http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Midi_Festival_Jour_1___Dent_May__Francois_Virot__Little_Pictures____/

Baby moved to Amsterdam

2009-08-08T02:28:00.000-07:00

Yeeeah, we're living here. Sort of. We're in a temporary rental and looking for a permanent place and jobs. But we're here! And we're working on new recordings which are coming up pretty Millhouse.

Will post up tour photos and stories. Needless to say it was awesome, and we'll be touring Germany again in a couple of months.

Woah

2009-07-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

Man we suck at updating. We have so many pictures and great stories, all will be revealed soon!

For now, here are some awesome pictures from a garden party we played in Kassel, in the backyard of our excellent booker Volker, how cool are these? (heaps more if you follow the link)

http://longlivethequiet.com/magicgarden.html

Berlin show, at the Bread & Butter Vice Party

2009-07-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

We'll have blogs and pictures up about our Italian tour (which was amazing!!) as soon as we fix the camera (dropped and broken)! Until then:

We played in Berlin last night. There's a big fashion festival on in Berlin at the moment called Bread and Butter. We were playing at Vice magazine's party for the festival. It was a really crazy event at this big new half constructed hotel. It was an open bar and it was invitation only.

Everything was running really late and we didn't get to sound check, so our set was pretty bad, the worst all tour actually. Heaps of feeding back mics and stuff. The sound guy got mad at us afterwards for some reason too. I didn't quite understand why. Everyone was really loud and drunk. A guy tried to steal my saxophone after we played. People were trying desperately to get into the place, so the organisers had to barricade the door with upturned tables to keep people out.

It was WAY too much for us.

But luckily we met some really nice people, and some very kind people who said they liked our music. Two of these people were from a band we didn't know much about called Eight Legs who it turns out are really good. They'd played a show earlier in the day as part of the Bread and Butter festival and they said it was weird too. I'm glad we weren't the only ones who found it all a bit much. They offered to book some shows for us in England which was very nice of them.

We also met a couple of the other bands that played and they were really nice guys. One of the bands knew New Zealand band The Datsuns, which was weird. They actually sounded quite a bit like The Datsuns too.

Berlin seems like an awesome city! We met up with our lecturer and friend Geoff Stahl who's living there at the moment. It was great walking through the city, it's such a sprawling, massive city!

Anyway, it was a strange night but in the end it was all ok. The guy putting it on was fantastic, and everyone who was helping putting the thing on was friendly and nice. Every show on the tour has been really different, and this one was no exception.

Lonato, I believe in you. Also: MJ RIP

2009-06-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

So we just played in this really really cool bar called Locanda di Campagna just outside of Lonato, a little town in Northern Italy.

Because I got overexcited and dropped the camera lens first outside the venue there are no pictures right now... but hopefully we'll be able to upload some tomorrow. On a similar note, not a lot of blogging has happened about Italy, due to a combination of no internet, being really busy and extreme laziness. So I aim to fix that too in the very near future.

For now though, while it's still fresh (and so clean (no? too much? (too many brackets??))) tonight's show was really good. Once again, hospitality was amazing, possibly the best so far. The food we had tonight was definitely the best food I've had so far in Europe, and the bar brews it's own "crude" beer, which is very delicious. Our host Ruben kept offering us lots and lots of food and drink, and as well as that being awesome from a NOM NOM NOM perspective it also made us feel the most welcome we have so far at a venue. I had some reservations about tonight, just because the place is also a food place, and we've had some variable experiences at places where people are just hanging out eating at tables. But tonight people seemed to be properly into it, and there was a nice vibe.

Also we finally got to meet our Italian booker Alessandro, who has done a really amazing job for us. What a nice guy!

Now we're upstairs above the bar, where Ruben and his wife live. It kind of overlooks the bar's courtyard, so it's kind of like we're still down there being sociable and the like. This is pretty much my ideal venue situation - one where I can have a few drinks and talk to a few people and then move just 20 metres and sit alone on the net instead. My life is awesome.

Oh also, MJ died, how weird is that! Also Farrah Fawcett, but you know, not as shocking as MJ. Because I have no photos of tonight right now, here is a photo of MJ instead:

RIP MJ, RIP.

Reutlingen

2009-06-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we played in Reutlingen which is a small town in the south of Germany. It was another strange show, this time in a clothes shop. When we heard we were going to be playing in a clothes shop on a Monday night we were a bit worried..

But it actually turned out to be a really good show. The shop is really interesting. It's a store that sells hipster style clothing with a fair trade ethic. They've also set it up as a place for people to hang out in, selling drinks and stuff like that. And people do hang out in it. It's really cool, surprisingly cool for such a tiny little town.

The show itself was an early one, but a good one. The shop is tiny, and was full with the 40 odd people that came along. The promoter wanted us to play two sets, so we gave it ago. It was something we'd never done before. But it actually worked quite well, and we got to talk to people in between the sets. People bought our album, people seemed into it. It was a really good show, and I think the first time we'd ever played on a Monday.

After the show the shop owner, promoter, and host Henrick took us to a local bar. It was this weird Irish pub that was packed full of people, and it was Kareoke night. This was the first time we really experienced any real sort of culture shock. People were singing these English language songs, and putting on their best American or British accents in an attempt to mimic the original performers. So strange.

Afterwards we went back to Henrick's place, and what an amazing host! He had this room set up for us with beds, internet, and a fridge full of beer, fizzy drink and food for us. We were totally blown away. I'm sitting in said room at the moment typing this out. It's 3 in the afternoon, we should really go and do our washing. Next stop is Italy.. Milano I think. See ya there

Showers in kitchens

2009-06-16T04:59:00.000-07:00

Further evidence at one of our booker's apartments:

Erlangen

2009-06-16T03:58:00.001-07:00

We had a few days off in our touring schedule, so our excellent German bookers found us a few shows to fill the gaps. This is one of those shows.

So we drove back to Germany to a town called Erlangen, to a venue called E-Werk. E-Werk is a giant cultural center with multiple stories, lots of different performance spaces plus community art spaces and stuff like that. A really great space actually.

The space we played in was this weird cafe/venue. It felt like it was lifted straight out of a tv show, like when people go to see a band in The O.C. or Gossip Girl or something like that. It was a seated venue, something we'd never played in before.

We opened for an 'alt rock' band, haha, we've never played with a band like that before. It's so so weird to hear German bands sing in English. Most of the time the people singing can't speak English all that well, and then they sing in a really strong American or British accent. I guess that's kind of like some bands in New Zealand. But it seems stranger here.

We met one of our booker's friends, who was hosting us for the evening. He's a VJ and has VJ'd some really huge parties. I found it all really interesting, VJing is such a new, emerging thing. He was saying he sees it as adding ambiance to a show or party. A sort of creative lighting director, or something. Anyway, check out some of his VJing installations at big parties, really impressive: http://www.myspace.com/schallbild

Anyway, he did some VJing during our set. He used little wirless cameras and some graphics, and it looked really cool :D

All in all, even though we were just tacked on at the last minute, and we were opening for a totally different kind of band, it was still heeaps of fun :)

Vienna and Austria - OH YEAH

2009-06-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

We just played this amazing show in Austria. In Vienna. It's a Tuesday night, the place was full of people. It was a community art space, under the train tracks in this old old building. An amazing space! People were so overwhelmingly friendly too.

And I didn't even know we were playing in Austria until the other day.

Our booker had given us a list of the shows, and this show was billed as 'Wien'. I figured it was another show in Germany. But no, that's my embarrassing lack of worldly knowledge in play there. It is in fact the German word for Vienna. Duh.

So we spent today driving from Germany to Austria. We got to see a lot of the Austrian country side and it's so so beautiful. Rolling hills, little ancient looking villages. All that good stuff.

Also, our host Manuel was amazing. People have been so welcoming to us, giving us their beds and food. So much more than we expected. Manuel gave us his living room, and even set the table for us for breakfast the next day. How nice is that?!

Something weird about some German and Austrian flats though. They're very tight for space, so they sometimes have the shower in the kitchen. Even in a really nice flat like Manuel's. It actually works pretty well, but seems strange to us foreigners.

Hanging out in Heidelberg

2009-06-09T01:25:00.000-07:00

We drove yesterday from Kassel where we did that rained out festival, to Heidelberg. We're not playing a show here for a few weeks, but it's on the way to our next show in Vienna, and one of our promoters, Santiago, lives here so we're hanging out for a day.

The drive was sweeet, nice and short, we saw a car that looks like a sneaker:

It was cool meeting Santiago finally, after sending him so many emails. And what a nice guy!

Anyway, we met him at his friends place, where a bunch of friends were having a BBQ. Everyone was nice to us, and people even spoke English to each other while we were around to make us feel comfortable. It's been so strange hanging out with people while they speak a foreign language, at first I find it really interesting but after a while it gets really hard to concentrate on what they're saying. Also, I feel like I'm the only person in the world who only speaks one language. What a douchebag. Haha. But the BBQ was great fun. They gave us totums, or power animals. Mine is Seal (fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me) and Johanna's is the disappointingly predictable 'owl'. Booo.

The ex-Dunedin girl we're staying with has been so nice to us. She gave us her bed and even bought us breakfast this morning! Considering we don't know her at all and only met her yesterday, how nice is that?!? Also, she mentioned Fur Patrol's song Lydia, another European Fur Patrol connection. Will this become a reoccurring thing? Is this a stupid thing to be thinking about? Yes and yes.

Our music equipment keeps on breaking. We knew this would happen, because we were only able to get these cheap electronic drum pads. I have to open them up after each show to solder them up. But they've finally started completely dying. But we'll figure something out.

Me fixing the pads after our first show:

And other parts of our gear have started dying. We're going to spend most of today trying to sort it all out. Fingers crossed it'll be ok! My Clarinet has started to squeak a lot too... probably more to do with my terrible technique than anything else.

Our bookers keep on adding new shows to the tour, so exciting! Couple more German ones confirmed, the less days off the better!

When Johanna posted about Wurzburg she didn't have time to upload images, so here are a few from hanging out with Frank and playing in Wurzburg:

Kassel

2009-06-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

After nearly dying on the roads of Paris we drove back to Germany again to play in a town called Kassel. Turns out that driving six hours a day and then playing shows and having 4 hours sleep for 3 days is actually pretty exhausting, and was possibly not our brightest move. Go figure. We were both feeling pretty wrecked on the drive through Belgium back to Germany, but not as bad as the night before. Also playing in Paris really perked us both up - although we were so tired, the playing part went really well, so that was encouraging. All the same, driving is hard work for Mark, and watching Mark drive/shouting at the GPS system/trying to use the stupid iPod FM transmitter thing is hard work for me, so by the time we arrived in Kassel we were feeling a bit droopy. We checked in at this hotel which the promoter paid for (that still really excites me, I love free stuff), and then found out that we were in seperate rooms. So then we became inflated with the spirit of rock and/or roll and decided to rearrange things and that's when shit got OUT OF CONTROL...

...Shit didn't actually get out of control at all, we just took the mattress from one room into the other room and shoved all the furniture around until we could put two mattresses onto the floor to make a double-bed floor party. How badass is that. Not very, if any (that's how that song goes, right?) We need to steal a car, kill a hooker and then snort coke of her/his naked corpse or something, then I'll feel better about being so boring.

Anyway, after that we went to the Frühlingsfest, where we played. It was this really cool community fair type thing, with music and performers and lots of different food and stuff. Super cool. Sadly for the organisers it was raining, which apparently has never happened before or something, so they didn't have the turn-out they were hoping for. But it was still really cool, and we're probably going to come back and play again next year apparently, so I'm looking forward to that.

Our actual set was a bit of a mess - we had some software issues and so we had to cut our set short and we felt a bit embarrassed about the whole thing. Also Volker who is one of the guys booking us shows in Germany was there (nicest guy EVER), and so we felt pretty bad about that being his first impression of us. But he said nice things anyway, and people seemed to like it, so we decided to cheer up a bit and go gorge ourselves on delicious Kurdish food and also all the candy in our personal (!) green room. Once again, blown away by how well we've been treated so far... I can't work out if we've just been really really lucky or if it's because we're foreign, but the hospitality at these European shows has been so amazing.

Also amazing was this band who played before us, who looked like they were school kids, playing some kind of radio rock thing. We were standing there watching them, and then the amazing thing happened - they sang a song in English, and then half way through they started saying over and over "the keyword is not the green, the key word is not the green, the key word is to share!!"* How great is that?? Pretty Great.

*I wasn't actually there when this happened, but Mark was so I pretty much basically totally was.

After that I decided to use up all our free food tokens at the baked good stall... and this happened:

All in all, a good weekend was had.

Paris

2009-06-06T00:13:00.000-07:00

Don't ever try driving in Paris. I managed to almost kill a few people...

We played Paris last night. It was a long drive from Wurzburg, Germany, along this highway that has toll booths all over it. We paid SO many tolls. The show itself was so so cool though, great crowd and it all sounded great. We played at this venue called 'Regines', which is 50 years old and was originally owned by this lady who 'invented clubbing in Paris'. It was a club night sort of a thing, but it was quite different to the NZ and Australian club nights we've played. For one thing, the people there weren't all really young. We've played in Melbourne and Auckland at these indie club nights where everyone is 18. It makes for a weird vibe. But this was different, a whole bunch of grown hipsters... really friendly crowd.

We played with a British band who were really friendly too. It was a shame we didn't get to see any local Parisian bands play, but we'll be back at the end of July after Midi Festival, so we might find a few.

There was a guy there taking pictures, and it turned out he used to live in Wellington, and play in Fur Patrol. Small world! Gonna go have a coffee with him later

The guys that ran the show put us up in a hotel in the middle of Paris, but we didn't have any time to check the city out. We'd only had 4 hours sleep the night before, and drove 6 hours... I've never felt as tired as I did last night. Between soundcheck and playing the show we went back to the hotel to have a rest and watch a bit of Dexter on the laptop. We fell asleep and when we woke up we were so incredibly tired and cranky that we kept trying to think up reasons not to go play the show. It all seems a bit stupid now. Hopefully I won't fall asleep at the wheel today! Got to drive to Kassel in Germany for another show. I think we've kind of over extended ourselves in these first few days... but it's so much fun!

Even just two shows in and I'm totally blown away with the hospitality we've received. Everyone we've talked to has been helpful and friendly, and the promoters have gone so far beyond what they need to do. And the crowds at both shows have been really great.

One thing I've noticed is that at both shows people clap for a very long time. Like, we finish playing and they clap and they keep going. I wonder if this is what happens all over Europe? A different culture of clapping. It puts my golf clap to shame!

P.S. I really want to move here.

Thanks for the first four pictures, steve wells:

2009-06-04T17:10:00.001-07:00

It was a long long plane ride, but here we are in Europe, yay! We arrived in Germany last night, at Munich Airport and then drove Würzburg. It turns out that driving on the other side of the road is actually kind of tricky, and we almost died several times... but after getting lost for about 2 hours we finally made it to this guy Frank's house, a booker who has very kindly hosted us for 2 nights.

Anyway, we're both feeling kind of ruined by flying, but it's still very exciting to be here. We played our first show of the tour a couple of hours ago, and it was a lot of fun. It's like 2am almost so this is just a mini update now, but before I fall asleep dribbling on the laptop here are a selection of key reasons this evening was good:

1) People came to the show
2) Aforementioned people seemed to enjoy the show/our performance/visceral groove of jazz that the sax injects into our set
3) We sold a bunch of merch - now we a) feel awesome like famous successful rock stars minus the fame or success or rock or stars and b) can afford to eat

and arguably the highlight of the entire trip so far: 4) we got lots of free food at the venue

This has never happened to us in New Zealand. Promoters seem kind of annoyed at us mostly, they never give us giant pretzels and candy. That wasn't even dinner, that was just the pre dinner snack. On reflection it's not actually as exciting as our (my) excited/retarded demeanour suggests, but hey, we're easy to please.

Driving to Paris tomorrow. Now we have a GPS so this time there will be no getting lost. I love you technology.

Moving to The Netherlands, and touring Europe

2009-05-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

We've got some big news, we're moving from Wellington, New Zealand to the Netherlands! We're actually on our way already, I'm sitting in LAX as I type, hooning their free net.

We're doing a 2 month tour starting tomorrow, about 40 dates in Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and France. That'll be the longest tour we've done by a looong way (we did 6 dates in Australia last year?), so it's our first proper tour I guess.

Johanna has a Dutch passport, her mum is Dutch. I've got a working visa. Johanna has a few reletives that we can stay with at first.

We're moving to The Netherlands to try and get a new perspective on everything. I love New Zealand, but I've been finding that lately I've started becoming quite cynical about a lot of stuff, particularly music things. So by dropping ourselves in the deep end I might be able to shake off those cynical feelings and get a new take on it all. Also, how much fun will it be to live in Europe? Lots!

We'll miss all our friends in NZ, and it'll be really sad not to have all the people that have supported us. But maybe that change is just what we need? Who knows!

We're going to update the blog really regularly with a tour diary, so add it to your reader or what have you and see a little bit of what it's like to tour through Europe :)

Oh and check out how LA uses celebrity rape to market themselves. Genius.

We played a hip hop show

2009-05-17T23:43:00.001-07:00

Like I was saying in the last post, we pretty much exclusively share bills with rock bands. You know, bands with drums kits and guitars. This show was a bit different. We were invited to play with Tourettes, who's this excellent poet, writer and rapper. Opening the show was Tommy Ill.

There were no drum kits, no guitars. In fact, the other two acts just used their mics and had DJs backing them. And it was lots of fun. There was a solid turnout, people were really into it. And not one person had that look on their face like "WHERE ARE THEIR GUITARS DID THEY EVEN HAVE TO REHEARSE TO PRODUCE THIS MUSIC". Am I getting bitter and twisted about that? I think I am. I really need to relax, haha!

Anyway, the next day Tourettes and his friends who performed with him came over to my place to record a few verses for a mix tape we're putting together. It was a spur of the moment thing, so they did a few verses of their own stuff, which we're putting into some of our reworked stuff for this free mixtape. Anyway, they were a real pleasure to work with, it was interesting and exciting, and we'll do some more stuff with them real soon!

Us and Connan Mockasin and Liam Finn do Wellington and Auckland

2009-05-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

So this is the second half of our little four date New Zealand tour that we did with Connan Mockasin. This time we were joined by Sir Liam Finn, of international Letterman and Jools Holland fame. He played guitar and sang with Connan in the band for both these dates.

The Wellington show was at Happy, which is this tiny little folky bar down a back street. I really like it there. Johanna and I felt for the first time on the tour that we were pretty badly mismatched with Connan at this show.. People were there to see people strum a guitar and sing a harmony. You know, that sort of musicianship. And there we were using laptops and such what. It actually went pretty well for us and we had fun, even though we felt that people weren't too interested. Perhaps we should stop playing with rock bands all the time? Perhaps the expectations of the kind of labor going on onstage are too different. Aaaanway, Connan was of course fantastic. In his Snat suit and all, made by the lovely Thaana!

A week later the local University magazine published a review that SLAMMED us mercilessly. This is just one in a series of really rough reviews from that magazine. At one point the reviewer expresses surprise and disgust over hearing us layer an acapella from one song over our own song. Which comes back to that whole expectations thing (as if a mashup is something remarkable??). Anyway, Johanna saw that reviewer in the street a while later and the girl looked away awkwardly. So.. there. Hmm

The Auckland show was the weekend after. We drove up to Auckland with Thaana, with all the other guys up there already or flying or something. When we got there we went around to Liam Finn's parent's house where people were hanging out. I'd never been there before, and it's really really impressive. Liam's dad is of course Niel Finn (of similar Letterman and Jools Holland fame), and he's turned their inner city house into this big recording complex. It's amazing. The guys from Wellington band Family Cactus were up there recording something or other at the studio, so we hung out with them and killed time surrounded by Crowded House labeled flight cases, Wurlitzers, Paul Mcartney's old bass guitar, sensual studio mood lighting and more things like that. Even the studio's kitchen sounded lovely.

For this Auckland show Lawrence Arabia was joining in Connan's band, along with Elroy Finn (Liam's brother). Opening the show was The Family Cactus, and Bear Cat played too. It was a cool show, there was an appreciative crowd there and everyone had fun. Connan's set was a huge party on stage, partly due to the fact that the stage is teensie tiny. But also because the combination of Liam Finn, Lawrence Arabia and Connan Mockasin along the front of the stage is dynomiiite!

So that's our little tour with Connan. It was great to get to know those guys, and to see Connan play a whole bunch. Keep an eye on him, next thing you know he too will be of Letterman and Jools Holland fame. I kind of miss him already..

Going down south with Connan, and why you shouldn't play at Arc Cafe

2009-03-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a really great trip down to the South Island to play a couple of shows with Connan Mockasin and his great band Ricky, Will and Dan. Plus Connan's good friend Joseph aka The Snat. We drove down in the van and ferry together, had lots of good times.

We had to get up at 5am on the first day to get down to the Ferry on time. The car was packed to the brim with Connan and Joseph squished into the back with a whole lot of equipment. Took the 7 hour trip down to Dunedin, lovely drive.

Turned up to the venue in Christchurch, The Dux, to find that our show hadn't been promoted at all and that it clashed with an overseas band. But the venue still gave us some really nice dinner, and we set up all our stuff and the what not. In the end we got about 30 people through the door which was enough to feel ok in the venue, but made for a very small and low key show. But the people that did come were into it, which was great. We stayed at Ricky's parents place, and it was niiiice. Got a great sleep, ready to leave early the next day for Dunedin.

By this time we could see no promo had been done for the South Island shows, so we called ahead to our friend Matt. Matt saved the day on this show, I'll tell you how. The venue we played at, Arc, is not set up properly for live music. Even though they say they are, they're not. When we turned up, all the gear from last night was still setup on stage with all the mics and leads still set up too. Bad start. The guy doing sound was a guy called Tim, who is apparently the resident sound guy. It was clear from the get go that he didn't know a whole lot about sound, and was possibly also a little bit slow. Connan and his band started setting up, using Arc's Dick Smith $15 mics. But the sound guy couldn't get the PA to sound ok. It was all distorted and awful. Half the speaker cabinets weren't even plugged in. Ricky asked Tim the sound guy whether maybe people from last night unplugged half the PA or something, and wanted to go ask the bar what had happened. But Tim the sound guy told us he did sound the night before and that he doesn't know whether stuff was plugged in or not... how could you not know?? He indicated multiple times that he didn't really know what he was talking about.

This is where it gets really bad/funny. We go to set up our stuff but there are no DIs. Lesson learned, travel with DIs. So we set up on the floor next to the mixing desk. This works really well actually. Also, there is only one mic stand in the whole venue, so our friend Matt comes through and brings some stuff in including a guitar amp, mixer, mic stand and mics. Thanks Matt!! So we're sound checking our gear and the PA is really quiet and super super distorted. You couldn't really hear any music. It was ridiculous. But eventually we get it sounding ok (read: still distorted and awful) and decide to start the set. There are like 100 people or something in the venue, thanks to Matt's last minute promotion efforts on student radio. We start playing but things are freaking out, all distorted, really full on unlistenable. But we struggle through, make the best, people are still into it. But Tim the soundguy just stands there drinking beer, not trying to fix it. So we get our friend Matt over to fix it up, and he does a good job. Tim the sound guy then tells our friend Matt to fuck off.

And then Tim the sound guy just walks out, in the middle of our set with poor sound. I've never seen anything like it. Ricky goes out to find him, and he's sitting out in a booth in the cafe part of the venue with his head in his hands. Ricky asks him if he's ok, but Tim the sound guy ignores Ricky. So we finish off our set, Matt helps out heaps and it ends up being workable. So Tim the sound guy comes back in to help set up for Connan Mockasin. But he seems incapable of patching a mic to the mixer and making it work. So Connan comes up to him and asks him what's happened. I mean, there are now more than 100 people there to watch the show. Tim the sound guy says he doesn't even want to be there. So Connan says that he can go. So off he walks into the night. Sound guy-less, I take up the role of sound guy and get the Mockasin's stuff going. The PA is so broken that only Connan's vocal mic can go through it, and even then it's distorting heaps.

Connan and the guys play a really great set, everyone's into it, it's an awesome show in the end after all the fiddling around. Everyone comes together to make it work out, especially our friend Matt. Awesome! Here are a few videos from it:

Also, here's a video of Matt, our friend who helped out so much. He was having a GREAT TIME:

On the same night in Dunedin the Little Bushman are playing over at a different venue. Connan and the guys are friends with them, so they call them up and Little Bushman offers Connan a slot playing after them. So we pack all the gear and drive across town to the other venue. There are lots of people there and Little Bushman are just finishing up. Connan sets up and they play a great set to a really appreciative crowd. Johanna and I get up on stage and have a play with them, and so does Warren from Little Bushman. Everyone has a really good time.

But that's not where the evening stops. Connan and his band decide to head off into the night to have a few drinks while Johanna and I go back to Matt's place to rest up for the 13 hour trip the next day. I text the address of where we're staying to Connan in case they need somewhere to sleep, but Connan says that they'll be able to sort it. Then we get this phone call at 5am from Connan. It turns out that they spent an hour wondering up and down the street looking for the place, and then when they found it they went into the upstairs flat. It was unlocked so they let themselves in. They crept through the house and found an empty room with a mattress and decided that was where they were meant to be. But then they had a look through the flat bills and couldn't find Matt's name. So they started getting worried. Then they heard someone stirring in the other room. Ricky peaks his head in to this stranger's bedroom to try and say hi, but at that exact moment Joseph aka The Snat lets a huge fart loose. The group explode into whispered laughter and have to run out of the flat in order to not wake anyone up. In the end they find the flat, get the keys off me, and decide the sleep in the van.

The last day was Connan's 26th Birthday. So we got him some pies and hotdogs. We spent 13 hours traveling home, talking crap in the car, debating the musical merits of backing tracks and all the rest. The ferry crossing on the way home was super intense, with huge swells. We all got a bit seasick so went up to the decks to pass the time. Here's what happened:

The trip ended up being a lot of fun. Will, Ricky, Dan, Joseph and Connan are all really great guys with lots of interesting things to say. Everyone pulled together and helped each other out in Dunedin, and turned a terrible show into an excellent show. Will even took us over to his friend's place to find a DI.

I was pretty nervous about playing in front of Connan and his band. These guys were all jazz school guys who were really into performing music really well on their instruments. While we use backing tracks and samples, a completely different logic of musical thingy thingy. But they all said nice things to us in the end, which was really great.

We've still to play a Wellington and Auckland show. I think Liam Finn will be joining us for these shows. Should be lots of fun. Will keep you posted!

-------------

EDIT: As an after thought, to Arc's credit they did make us dinner for free which was really nice of them. And they made us free coffees in the morning when we came to pick up the gear which was super nice. But they need to sort out their sound stuff if they want to be a viable option for live bands. The space at Arc is really nice, but the gear is all broken and poor quality. And that in house sound guy was a joke. Not in a mean way, just in a 'hey man why don't you walk out on us mid set' kind of way.

Selling out to Sprite?

2009-02-15T22:55:00.000-08:00

A month or so ago we got this weird email from Sprite. You know, the soft drink? They wanted to include a song of ours in a ringtone website they were making. They were offering us no money. Here's what's wrong with this offer:

-They claimed it was a 'not for profit' thing, and that's why they weren't offering us any money. WTF? It had Sprite's brand name all over it. Do they think we're retarded?

-Which band in their right mind will associate themselves with the Coca Cola Company for no money? It doesn't make any sense

-Along with the email they sent us, they accidentally sent us some past correspondence they'd been having with other Sprite manager people. It read something like

Goon 1: "Haven't had much luck in the states or UK"
Goon 2: "Don't worry, you can expect Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines to be paths of less resistance"

Dear Sprite, next time you ask us to associate ourselves with some random giant company, please offer us lots of money.

Offical Little Pictures Erotic Fan Fiction Contest

2009-02-12T01:23:00.000-08:00

That's right, it's finally happening. Still think we're cute now, huh, huh??

Well yeah maybe, but all the same it is my deep, deep pleasure to officially announce the inaugral Little Pictures Erotic Fan Fiction Contest.

Credit for this idea goes in part to Cheeseontoaster and sex entrepreneur Andrew Tidball, who's unceasing advocacy for a Little Pictures 0900 LIL SEX hotline has been inspirational, and also to notorious Christchuch yrgoldenage blogger Jonathan Phillips.

Entries can be as short or as long as you like, and are due by Friday the 20th of Febrary.
All entries will be displayed on the Little Pictures blog, and the winner will recieve a MYSTERY PRIZE, and also a "sex cake" (open to interpretation).
Crude MS paint sex drawings with a Little Pictures theme will also be accepted.

Example, courtesy of Big J Philips:

a lil pics romance novel

mark removed johanna's (pronounced yo-hanna) brasierre, the bed felt moist as they rolled around together locked in an embrace that felt like it would never end. "i wish I could keep you" Johanna (pronounced Yo-hanna) softly moaned into Mark's ear, "under my bed". Mark came.

Thanks Jonathan.

Send your entries to johanna.calvi@gmail.com

Camp photos

2009-02-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

Oooh I found two more photos! The top one is my favourite

The person who took these (thanks Rose!) also implied that our costumes encourage bestiality... For the record, they don't! Mark is a teddy bear, and they're clearly asexual, and I'm pretty sure that Bavarian-styled story-book dolls can't do that stuff, so there.

Saxophone bear + alpine doll

2009-02-10T20:49:00.000-08:00

So this is the one and only photo I've been able to find of us playing at camp so far...But it is a polaroid so maybe it counts for two in coolness. What you can see here is Mark + bear suit + saxophone, and that little bit of brown and red coming out from behind the tree on the left is my dress... There's no photo of that, but this is the dress I wore, so I pretty much looked like this:

There's a lot of awesome hidden behind that tree.

Anyway if anyone has any other photos don't hold back!

Camp A Low Hum 09 was AWESOME

2009-02-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

We had so much fun playing at Camp A Low Hum this year. We played in the forest, and I played a saxophone solo and I was pretty much this guy:

We tried out a few new versions of old songs, plus some new tunes. We did a couple of mashups which was new for us and was fun. People got dancing in the forest. Thanks so much to all our friends and everyone who came and saw us, we really really enjoyed ourselves :D We even played that Weezer cover, which came out ok in the end.

But man Camp was great. Particularly loved Bonaparte and The Show is the Rainbow. Awesome international stuff. Go see them sometime!

There's heaps of video and photo stuff of us playing so I'll get it up soon :)

Little Pictures - Buddy Holly (Weezer cover)

A music software maker gets mad at YACHT - my thoughts

2009-01-30T13:44:00.000-08:00

So here's what happened:

YACHT admits in an interview that he cracks software. He names Analog Industries as a brand of plugin that he's pirated. Analog Industries finds the interview and posts up on it's blog a response to the interview.

http://www.analogindustries.com/blog/entry.jsp?msgid=1232741050559&page=5#replies

They call him an idiot, pretty much.

Then YACHT responds with a sort of apology in the comments of that blog post.

Then Analog Industries comes back with a big blog post refusing to accept his apology.

Then Pitchfork blogs about it and says "Moral: Don't steal stuff. And if you do, don't tell the Internet about it."

-------------------------------------------------------------

So here's the problem with all of this. Every musician steals software. And if they don't, it's because they don't understand how to. The reason they steal it is because it's expensive, but easy to steal. So understandably Analog Industries is pissed off with YACHT, but they almost seem surprised.

Worst of all is Analog Industries' crass, personal insults to YACHT. On their blog they adopt an informal 'cool' style of discourse. But they go on to say stuff like "annoying hypocrisy of the whole light and happy rainbows trip you're on" and "While it may be the charge of the Hippy Dippy Light Brigade that information wants to be free, etc.".

It sounds to me like YACHT really got to them. On a very personal level. They're not just like "you stole our software, and bragging about it is a stab in the guts", they're more like "OMG YOU SUCK YACHT I HATE YOU YOUR MUSIC ISN'T EVEN ALL THAT GOOD LOLOLOLOL".

What YACHT did in that interview was give a little insight into the way in which lots of bands make music, what Analog Industries did with that info was a little embarrassing.

Screw you Analog Industries. Learn to internet.

Jo: "Screw you Analog Industries", "Fuck you Apra"... Gee whiz you're an angry-pants this week... I think the internet is making you cranky, maybe you should take some time out...

People making videos of themselves dancing and singing to our songs

2009-01-28T17:05:00.000-08:00

It's pretty crazy and cool to find this stuff. Here are some youtube videos I've come across of people dancing and singing to our tunes. By the mos disturbing/amazing one is the one in which someone draws a face on a pillow and forces it to dance. Pretty degrading to the poor pillow. Anyway, check it out

And here's one we've blogged about before:

Stupid copyright law

2009-01-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

I know we just posted about this the other day, but it makes me so darn mad that I just wanted to say something more.

I was just having this very very annoying conversation with someone I know who I won't name here, but rather just refer to as Mr Law Student. Sidebar: I hate most law students. Except for our friends Vita and Alistair. You guys are ok. Everyone else though.

Anyway, Mr Law Student and I had this very irritating uh.. discussion where he went on about how copyright laws are there to protect artists and downloading music for free is just like stealing from a shop etc etc (I think he's seen too many of those terrible piracy ads we have here in NZ..."you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a book, you wouldn't steal a pie... internet piracy IS stealing").

Unfortunately, while he's both annoying and wrong, his stupid law student skills made him good at arguing, whereas when I have arguments about things I get flustered and forget all of my key points. So, afterward I went to the fine Creative Freedom site and as well as getting a sexy banner for our blog, I found a little article which nicely sums up how a lot of music-y people I know feel about this stuff. Enjoy :)

"The Internet has created new opportunities for artists: new opportunities to reach fans and new opportunities to earn a living. In the past, artists like us had to reach fans through companies that relied on old technology. These companies are now being forced to find new ways of doing business but instead of embracing the Internet they're fighting it.

They fight progress by demanding changes to Copyright laws. In effect, they say, "lock down the Internet so our 1960s way of doing business can still work in 2010." In doing so, they erode civil liberties and hold back the discovery of the new business models. They want to control the Internet just as movie companies wanted to control the VCR when it was first released. But, unlike then, courts and lawmakers are not safeguarding our interests.

It's time for artists to stand up and say: enough! The greatest problem that we artists face is obscurity, not piracy. America's record companies have resorted to releasing malware and suing people without computers, alienating fans rather than figuring out how to turn them into satisfied customers. This cannot continue.

The Internet offers enormous opportunity for New Zealand's artists to break out of obscurity and sell directly to millions of waiting fans. But if the record and movie companies get their way, snooping on innocent people's Internet connections and acting outside the legal system, we risk training fans to have the same cynical attitude in return: "to hell with them".

We don't endorse counterfeiting, mass duplication stores. These people hurt artists, robbing us of legitimate sales. But when an individual fan wants our work enough to go through the hassle of finding a way to pirate it online, we see that as an opportunity. It's an opportunity to meet the fan, to connect them to the artist, and ultimately for the artist to be rewarded for their work. This opportunity will be squandered in the world of restrictions, distrust, and civil rights abuses that the middlemen companies want to institutionalise."

– Nathan Torkington, Musician and Technologist
December 2008

I love the internet and the internet loves me

2009-01-26T17:18:00.000-08:00

So the other day I was sitting in class with my laptop, googling my own name to pass the time (Shut up, it's not lame, everybody does it...Right? Right??), and I came across this nice little article about us in NZ Musician Magazine. I hadn't seen it, because well... who reads hard copy magazines these days? Not me. Anyway, it's kind of sweet, and it features a stellar nerdy quote about technology from yours truly. Yay. I google myself and I love computers. My life is GOING OFF. Also they made a photo of us look purple, and that pleased me. Anyway this is a terrible post so yeah... Enjoy.

Nocturnal Couplings
Author: Stephanie Gray

Lil' Chief Records are riding a wicked west coast swell at the moment, their established acts attracting attention and critical acclaim all over the northern hemisphere. Now, as Stephanie Gray reports, the notoriously incestuous label have widened their pop gene pool with the addition of nocturnal synth + vocal couple Little Pictures.

With the intensity of young love Johanna Freeman sings: 'I wish I could tie a string between me and you / I'd pull on the string whenever I felt confused.'
There is no doubt she's singing to boyfriend and bandmate Mark Turner - the song is from a debut album that is as much a dedication to their togetherness as it is a well-crafted collection of electro-pop.
When the 20 year-old Wellingtonians play I Wish I Could Keep You live Mark triggers samples of Johanna's vocals, sneaking them in between words as she sings, to an effect that Johanna confides she finds a little creepy.
Creepy maybe, but it's a charming technique that had a house-full of Dunedin indie-kids jumping up and down with synchronised 'hip hop hands' recently. More than an enjoyable way to stay warm down south, this is a response that Little Pictures have come to look forward to from the Mainlanders.
"I like the South Island because it's less intimidating - more like our tour in Australia," says Mark."People are excited about you being there," Johanna adds.

For that reason the twosome tour out of town as much as their university timetables allow - a mission made easier by the fact they can fit all of their gear into one guitar case. It's the touring musician's dream - to fly unhindered by excess baggage and, as a couple tuned into each others energy levels and emotions, free to do as they please. But it hasn't always been so - until the middle of last year Little Pictures was a three-piece, with friend James Halborow adding drums.
Quietly but assuredly Johanna and Mark started planning for the breakaway two-piece electronic act they would call Owl + Owl, in allusion to their nocturnal tendencies. They kept the act's original name in the end, tucking 'Owl + Owl' away as a name for the album that has now followed their self-released EP 'You and Me and My Amplifier'.

Having shaken off the shackles of a drum kit, Little Pictures shaped their new sound around the monophonic tones of a Moog synthesiser, programmed beats, a glockenspiel and his-and-hers vocals. They then stripped back even further by sampling the Moog - the legendary brand's latest Little Phatty model - into an electronic sampling pad. It's a minimalist set-up that keeps people guessing. As does the way in which Mark triggers samples - joyfully thwacking the inconspicuous black pad with drum sticks next to Johanna who, in gaps between glockenspiel and singing, blows shiny bubbles that float across the ubiquitous divide between band and audience.
"It's exciting to play with stuff that people don't necessarily understand. People see me hitting the pads and there's always a musician in the front row who will come up and ask if I'm actually doing anything," smiles Mark.
"It's fun to make things more mysterious," Johanna adds.

Because it's Mark that holds the sticks, people wrongly assume that he's the songwriter - much to the annoyance of both. They are equally infatuated with technology and pop culture, happily trawling blogs and forums and working their experiences with, and knowledge of new media into their university assignments.
"Lots of people like to talk about gear, but I'm more interested in the social shaping of scenes and looking at how people use technology," Johanna explains.
To fine-tune Little Pictures' sound and style they looked into what other musicians were doing, watching YouTube clips to suss instrumentation. With refreshing honesty, they admit to culturally sampling and taking others' arrangements for their songs.
"We can't sample in the way DJs like Girl Talk can, so we try to recreate things we like," says Mark, who like Johanna listens to a lot of hip hop, and grimier artists like Dizzee Rascal. Being the nice young stars they are, Little Pictures give as much as they take - uploading their mp3s as free downloads and sending a cappella tracks to anyone keen on remixing.
"We'd love it if someone downloaded our song and borrowed a riff or a verse and built a new song around it. So our stuff is there for the taking," Johanna offers.

This is an ethic that Lil' Chief Records must be comfortable with; 'Owl + Owl' was released by the Auckland pop label after co-owner Jonathan Bree saw the band performing at Camp A Low Hum last summer.
"We were quite surprised at his interest, because Lil' Chief has The Brunettes and The Ruby Suns - these lush bands with layers of sound," says Mark.
Clearly the label do like what they hear and are propelling Little Pictures into the wake of those acts, with an American tour taking in Seattle and Portland among other cities.
There's a video clip online of a beaming Johanna and Mark reading aloud the email from Bree asking them to join the label. Recorded late at night after coming home from a gig and logging on to find the good news, the video nicely sums up the zeal and techno-savvy that shines through Little Pictures' music.

Strange new NZ copyright laws mean the end of music blogs

2009-01-22T14:36:00.000-08:00

NZ has just passed a strange new copyright law. I know that sounds boring, but it's really extreme. It means that if you are suspected of downloading something illegal (i.e. anything form a music blog, unlicensed youtube video etc) then you can have your net disconnected. No trial, no need of proof, just suspicion.

You can report someone to their internet service provider, and the ISP is required under law to disconnect that person's net. On the spot.

The worst thing is that they are doing it to 'protect artists' rights'. Well we're artists, and this is a huge punch in the guts. Fuck you APRA and RIANZ (two big musician representative groups) for supporting this. You don't care about us at all. I'm really disappointed.

You can sign this petition: http://creativefreedom.org.nz/petition.html

Please do, and spread the word about this strange, over the top new law.

Lil' Chief Records has a blog

2009-01-12T19:03:00.001-08:00

Lil Chief are our NZ label, and they've got this new blog that the artists from the label are posting on. Pretty cool, keep your eyes peeled:

Lil Chief Blog

Our song is playing on Air France flights (oooh)

2009-01-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

So we just somewhat belatedly remembered that we were asked last year if we would let our song "This House Can Fit Us All" play for about a month on an Air France in flight radio channel thing...this goes in the same category as having shirts with our faces on them in Urban Outfitters... novel, but also slightly confusing! Here's the song:

Little Pictures - This House Can Fit Us All

We did a Weezer cover for a compilation, download it here

2009-01-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

We were asked by Buffet Libre to take part in their next compilation, REWIND. They asked us to do a cover of a song from the 80s or 90s and we chose Buddy Holly by Weezer. We chose it because it's awesome, and because it reminds us of windows 95 (remember how they had the video included with windows 95 to show off window's multimedia abilities?)

They've got like 50 artists to contribute including Au Revoir Simone, Little Boots, The Ruby Suns, The E.L.F. so we feel pretty chuffed to have been asked

So here it is. It sounds like most of the stuff from the upcoming album we're recording, with sort of hip hop beats, biggish instrumentation, and lots of boy/girl New Zealand-ese singing. Hope you like it!

Little Pictures - Buddy Holly (Weezer cover)

Camp A Low Hum + February touring w/ Connan Mockasin

2009-01-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

Thought it was time to tell everyone that we're playing at the ultra good times festival Camp A Low Hum. We had the best time last year. Awesome crowd, but most of all awesome people to hang out with and meet. Such a nice little community. Can't wait!

We're playing at 12:30 on the Sunday on the Nice Stage.

We're also doing a New Zealand tour with Connan Mockasin. His new video and album is awesome! Check it out, and we might see you there :)

Little Pictures and Urban Outfitters

2009-01-07T19:06:00.000-08:00

So we decided to sign the T Shirt contract with Urban Outfitters. They're going to do a run of shirts featuring pictures of us on them.. how weird is that? It's all on a pretty small scale really, but it's still exciting.

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

2008-12-16T17:43:00.000-08:00

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:

Our song was on the national weather report...

2008-11-23T02:54:00.001-08:00

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

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

2008-11-22T14:33:00.000-08:00

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.

A tribute to one of our songs! :D

2008-11-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

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!

A video of us playing at Camp A Low Hum

2008-10-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

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

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

2008-09-23T14:10:00.001-07:00

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.

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/

Australian Tour was awesome!

2008-09-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

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.

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!

Yay photos, yay facebook

2008-08-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

This is kinda oooolllld news, but I put up a bunch of photos from our super fun album-cover-making-CRAFT-DAY that we had a couple of months back. It was me, Mark, and our long suffering and talented friend Dan.
ANYWAY, I put the photos up on my facebook , and I'm faaaairly sure that my profile and the photos are all public so check em out! Or like, be my facebook friend or something lame like that. You know it's real once it's on facebook, or something. Etc etc.

I <3 the internet

More head scratching on buzzband-dom

2008-07-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

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

Le blogs

2008-07-25T03:09:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-07-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2008-07-24T05:30:00.000-07:00

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"

Wow, so many blog posts about us!

2008-07-21T05:48:00.001-07:00

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!

Playing live on radio

2008-07-16T20:33:00.000-07:00

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!

Our album is available for pre order through Lil Chief!

2008-06-23T04:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-23T04:22:00.000-07:00

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!!

Australian Tour!

2008-06-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

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)

Our very first video clip

2008-06-11T04:32:00.000-07:00

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!

"Change your album cover!"

2008-05-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

So the other day we got an email from our label telling us that they didn't like our album cover because it was too similar to another release they put out last year, and because it's too bland. So Johanna had ANOTHER craft day, and what she came up with looks great!

On the same day the pad controller thingy we use live broke. It was just a stupid cheap-o pad so I decided to buy something a little more durable this time. Well in the end I found one of these. It's so tiny, and it's actually a sampler itself. So I spent the day sampling my Moog into it. Productive day indeed!

Christmas FEEDBACK

2008-05-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

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!!

CRAFT DAY! Making our album artwork

2008-05-06T03:47:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of weekend we've been making our album art work for our upcoming debut album Owl + Owl. Well actually, Johanna's been making the artwork! And our friend Dan has been helping us out

It's turned out really nicely, we're all set to release the album on the 9th June, hurray!

We're in Real Groove Magazine/Compilation

2008-05-06T02:21:00.000-07:00

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!!

Selling our equipment to tour overseas

2008-04-08T21:28:00.000-07:00

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

Support slot for Ratatat

2008-03-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

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:

Our EP has sold out

2008-03-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

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 :)

Live video from Camp A Low Hum

2008-03-23T18:53:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-03-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

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!

Little Pictures go to Christchurch!

2008-03-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

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 :)

We're featured this week on cheeseontoast

2008-03-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

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!!

2008-03-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

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...

Hannah's 21st Birthday

2008-03-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

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!)

Special Edition pressing of our EP

2008-03-12T04:57:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-03-12T04:49:00.001-07:00

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:

We just finished recording and mixing our album!!

2008-03-04T00:54:00.000-08:00

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 :)