mount pleasant music

Slave To Love

2012-02-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

Bryan Ferry got married probably about a month ago, I don't fastidiously pay attention to Bryan Ferry news, or any of the Roxy Music gang, hence the belated response to this - also the way in which this is probably the only time I am ever going to spend anytime thinking in depth about any member of Roxy Music that isn't Brian Eno, who I think about all the time. I wake up in the morning and I am wishing I still had Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, or that Brian Eno and I were hanging out, maybe going swimming or something. I wonder if Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry used to have some sort of competitive issue with the way in which their names are essentially the same except Brian Eno's is spelt correctly. If Bryan Ferry, while sleeping with his son's ex girlfriend, is sometimes still sort of troubled by it, the whole Brian/Bryan conflict, waking up late at night and just sort of lying there in bed, lying face up, intently looking at the ceiling and feeling that deep enmity like some heavy blanket being laid over him and suffocating him, feeling it so keenly and intensely. So yeah, that was the real point of this whole post buried in there. Bryan Ferry has got married to his son's ex girlfriend. There are all sorts of miseries a parent can inflict on their children and swooping on their girlfriends is probably right up there, its not enough that for your entire childhood you would be defined as Bryan Ferry's son, and obviously it could be worse - like Cliff Richard's illegitimate children, or having anything to do with Rod Stewart like as an Uncle or something, but even still there is this insiduous image of Bryan Ferry as a late night prowler, or worse at some dinner party when he was plagued by this profound sense of guilt as he was finally and irresistibly seduced the younger woman. What inspired this? Was it his collection of antique fabrics? Was it his late period work that elicited a deep emotional response? What is Bryan Ferry really like? Is he tender? Is he truely a slave to love? Only presumably his first wife and his new wife can really answer that question.

So yeah the son that he took the girlfriend off is pretty identifiable, probably always adopts the same sort of sullen pose when around his father, arms crossed with a vague attempt to smile but ultimately haunted by his fathers conquests. Still at least Bryan looks real happy.

Mount Pleasant Cathedral

2012-02-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

Released another Mount Pleasant release online, I think there have been more, but I stopped reviewing detailed information about the ouvre. Anyway, its pretty religious as an album. You can buy it at bandcamp or I can probably send you it if you want it.

2012-02-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

New music is probably coming really soon. but don't hold your breath, I really want a camera. If you have an unimpressive digital camera as in for taking pictures, please let me know. You could email me mountpleasantmusic@live.com, I would be so grateful. Sorry, really sorry about not writing, I had this idea for a film that was really powerful but it was basically just one scene with two brothers and it was unbelievably powerful but I need to find some Austrians. Also sort of finished an ep but feel real performance anxiety. Also balding.

north canterbury

2012-01-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

I remember going to this party with this guy Nick when I worked in the printing factory after breaking up with my girlfriend at the time. I didn't mind the job, it was okay up to a point and, aside from breaking about three pairs of headphones when they got caught on machinery or something like that, which probably would have been some sort of occupational safety hazard sort of thing but on account of me being the "bosses" son, or really the operations manager - the boss was this ex rugby player guy with a perpetual squint and an unforgivable sadness in his life on account of his sleeping with one of the sales team whom he had hired ostensibly because of her sales record but probably for her prettiness, and I mean she was pretty but it was on a relative scale she was a sort of generic prettiness, a local paper society page prettiness not a heart wrenching, soul consuming beauty that leads you to abandon your wife and children and move into a motel with the sales account lady who gave up on him after approximately two months later. I used to either get a ride home with my father, which would generally consist of business phone calls about pressing printing issues which were sort of the soundtrack to my childhood aside from all the Phil Collins records, or bike back to this girls place and lie on the bed in a singlet feeling really working class or something. Which I wasn't. I eventually got to the point where I felt a degree of understanding of this folding machine, as if I was increasingly coming to terms with my position as a "machine operator". I could adjust these knobs and put extra pieces of paper underneath the knobs to make the paper go through easier. This was the extent of my technical knowledge about the machine and mostly I was sort of lost at sea, or more appropriately lost in a pile of ripped up copies of the Shipping News, which I read religiously every Thursday night. On account of my being the bosses son, it wasn't really an issue really. I could basically make whatever mistakes I wanted. Anyway so Nick lived, like most of the people in the company, in North Canterbury which they were all pretty parochial about. One conversation I had with them, outside with a kind of collegial atmosphere around the air like a glade fragrance spraying out lavender every three minutes maintaining an overall ersatz interior lavender glade feel, four of them were proudly talking about North Canterbury, its many benefits and why it was better than South Canterbury. They are, for all intents and purposes the same place. The company had moved from a North Canterbury town to this sort of consolidated position between North and South Canterbury, in this industrial suburb constructed so rapidly that some roads did not have footpaths. It was also constructed so rapidly that it looked like some sort of Stalinist Five Year Plan push to modernity, all the buildings followed the same tilt slab, industrial chicken farm kind of approach. Not that this seemed to bother anyone really, nearby was one of the many "food bars" which provide diminishing returns of deep fried everything which managed to alleviate the misery. This was a five minute walk away but everyone just drove around to it, bought deep fried something and a sugar drink and came back to work and talked about how great North Canterbury was.

Nick didn't have so many friends it seemed, because he invited me to his birthday party. Sure we worked together, and of the team he was the closest to my age but that was about it. He would come to work with the red eyes of a "big night" in North Canterbury and proceed to go into the toilet, which was stained with printers ink- all along the walls a kind of black filth that made every trip to the toilet something special, and pop some pills for the working shift; for which he would walk around looking sort of wired and on edge, teetering on the brink of something. Once he was standing there while I was loading this machine up with some sort of advertising material for the Nelson Tasman Region, and he was standing pretty normal except his teeth were chattering as if he was really cold. Another important aspect of the factory was that it had no air conditioning in summer, or heating in winter so working there could be sort of gruelling under this tin roof in the summer where temperatures got up to the late 30s, according to my father who walked around with a thermometer and icecreams on really hot days. I mean the icecreams were a nice touch, but Nick's solution to it was just to pop some more pills. Admittedly the pills Nick was jacked up on were this legal form of pill that appeared on the market through an advantageous gap in the drug laws and were sort of like a muted down version of what was running the Nazi government during the last dying days of the Third Reich.1 But it was at least troubling, and he was a troubled guy I guess. Because a lot of the team came from the same town in North Canterbury, which looks like any other town in Canterbury, they all knew about Nick's mother. Not that Nick could blame his problems in life on his mother or anything, but when she ran off from Nicks father one day without a note or some sort of video message so that when Robert got home he could have put this VHS into his VCR player and watched a home video of the wife justifying her decisions and explaining the multitude of reasons she had up sticks and got with some Maori guy who lived in the same small town, it definitely created some mother issues for Nick. The team when talking about this, which they did in a fairly regular basis, allowed a small part of their deep well of prejudices to spurt out, the mother, also Maori, was too wild, or too lazy. It was pretty confused like most racist positions are. Everyone felt some degree of sympathy for Robert the father, this wiry little guy who was in charge of cricket in the town and whose house was described as the "boulevard of broken dreams." In fairness, the team also nicknamed me "Pixie", on account of me either looking like a woodland nymph or, more likely, being a homosexual. It wasn't just people with skeletons in their closet who got the affectionate attention of the team.

Maybe it was because I felt some sort of sympathy for Nick, maybe it was naivety. I brought along my friend Chris, who at the time - maybe he still does, I can't find the right time to ask, carried a fifty dollar note at all time to attract women when, this story was pretty confusing to me at the time as I have never carried around fifty dollar notes with express purpose of scoring with babes but he did, they hopped into a taxi with him to go home to his parents house in the hills and when the taxi pulled over he could pay with a fifty dollar bill, this would signal to the potential attractive woman that Chris was both debonair and rich. As at the time Chris was a definite virgin, this approach was not working so well. I thought that going on this Bus Trip birthday party would at least allow Chris some opportunity with a North Canterbury girl, under this misguided conception that their standards wouldn't be as discerning as the Christchurch girls Chris was plying his fifty dollar taxi chit trade with. We got out to the township on this real North Canterbury day. It was a long hot summer. I sort of feel all the best times in my cool life were in the summer time; lying in the sun, or walking around Riccarton Mall paralysed with suburban malaise. When we got to this rural arcadia, this promised Eden that had been sort of reverently spoken about - or at least contra punctum with South Canterbury, and I guess it was okay. It had this combination bar, bottle store and restaurant which is more than some towns. This was all it had though. It didn't have the benefit of a charming river, or any discernible charm. We went to the "boulevard of broken dreams" which looked basically the same as any bungalow in the town, but it definitely had this aura of bleakness, as if Robert had sort of given up. Inside the house it had the same sort of disheveled appearance as the outside, without the overgrown weeds and dead plants. Robert sat inside the house with a Victoria Bitter and embittered look. At this point, there were four of us at the party. Nick had invited his friend Levi, who was in love with Nick. This isn't just a hunch or anything, it wasn't in the way in which Levi looked adoringly at Nick, or punctuated every story with a reference to his best mate Nick. The guys were doing this thing I had done when I was twelve where you sort of asphyxiate yourself by getting someone to press against you and you get head spins. The sort of thing you grow out of at twelve. And watching Levi pushing against his friend, it looked a lot like love.

So Nick lived in this bedsit that sat in the backyard, amidst the unfinished go cart project and rusting unfinished engine part project and forlorn daisy bush; no plant more forlorn than the dying daisy, as the flowers go this brown death colour, also basically the entire plant, stalks and all, go brown. This is made worse by the way in which daisies are pretty hardy plants as far as flowers go, they don't compare with geraniums or anything, but they should basically just grow. This daisy bush didn't even get the dignity of being uprooted and disposed off, the cadaver maintaining the illusion of one day sparking into technicolour like early Soviet scientists trying their very best to reanimate Lenin or something. It was a pretty sad place. I really hate those bedsit places, they are no better than a shed. They also feature sliding doors which are the worst type of door, but made for a really poignant film featuring Gwyneth Paltrow which I guess you could sit in your bedsit and think about that, held under those smothering waves. This bedsit at least afforded Nick some degree of privacy, some escape. He had an anger problem, and this aspect to his character made him kind of sympathetic, like a hallmark movie flaw or something. But it would have required some character shift, some important event like saving a kid caught in an ice hole and coming to terms with his anger with the help of this kid. This never happened. The bedsit walls had holes in them, and they weren't from inadvertently putting skiis through the wall. Nick had this girlfriend who had a rabbity face and was conventional, in the way in which she was exactly as I had expected. One afternoon, Nick relayed this story as I ran the Müller machine and he fed the machine advertising material for Pegasus Township which never really realised its promise of the grand North Canterbury dream city of the future, he told me that he was "fucking his girlfriend while we were pretty drunk" and then Levi who was sitting in the room at the time watching them, which happened "all the time" and was really the key aspect of the story as far as I was concerned, was asked to "tag in" and "keep the job going." This final bit of the story was told with a cheeky wink, I felt such a sadness you know. God it was awful. Them in this little bedsit, listening to nu metal, grinding away with the broken walls and the sliding door and the broken daisy plant outside and all of this unbearable hopelessness. And meeting Levi, with his enthusiastic tagging after Nick, I saw him as such a confused guy, it was a sort of sweet naivety. It was also a really strange time.

Chris had realised we had made a huge mistake. When we got to the "local" there was some sort of party with all of his friends, but Chris and I both felt really out of place. Nick had managed to get about twenty people for the bus trip, which went around what seemed like five of the worst bars in the entire province. Chris didn't get any attention from any of the girls on the bus trip, I didn't get any attention from any of the girls on the bus trip. Some of the guys did, there was definitely this point in which some guy was standing and pashing one of the babes as the night turned in on itself and I sat in a window seat looking at the reflection of them pashing, his violent tongue doing terrible, terrible things. Not that we really wanted any bus trip romance, the girls weren't that personable. But they drank like they had some sort of sickness, this was all soundtracked by Disturbed and Korn on repeat. Noone really seemed that personable. Each of the bars seemed worst than the last, but they were probably all on the same level of shittiness. When we finally ended up in Christchurch, one of the guys got out of the bus with a bottle and bottled some guy within two minutes. This seemed sort of par for course. It feels like a long time ago now I guess. Nick was nonchalant about the party on Monday, he was a pretty nonchalant guy when he wasn't "buzzy" from all the pills. He was okay I guess, just a lil confused sometimes but then so was I.

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1 This is not to say that Nazi Germany didn't have a dedicated team of administrators, just to recontextualise a period in which both sides were doing "Crazy hours" and heaps of methamphetamine. Panzerschokolade or "tanker's chocolate", chocolate doused in methamphetamine, was given to tank crews to keep fighting the good fight or something. It apparently didn't work, because even despite large swathes of the army/bureaucracy getting a steady supply of Pervitin, the Germans still lost the war proving that drugs do not win major land wars.

Werner Herzog "Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices"

2012-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

On Cycling

2012-01-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

I put the bicycle outside, as it had been sitting unloved and unused against a wall in my bedroom all year. I had taken it out for one solitary bike ride and while it was sort of exhilarating and everything, it was by the same token really precarious. Apparently riding around on a bike with flat tires, makes you feel that at any moment the bikes tires will buckle and all of a sudden be filled with or consumed by visions of nursing the iron shell of a bike by the side of a road, weeping inconsolably or something. And it was admittedly an attractive bike, some sort of ladies child bike from the sixties. It felt as if it was moulded from solid steel or cast iron. It lasted all of five minutes outside the flat before someone took it, even though I put a note on it that said "this bike will be yr jumanji".

Poignant Frontispiece

2011-12-29T12:29:00.000-08:00

Madeleine was in my robe, all resplendent and holiday spirit, where insouciance is worn like her new Chanel perfume and she is so casual. It is a casual work Friday, but all the time. I probably should have bought her a plush robe for Christmas and then we could have doubled up and lived like we were at a resort even when just relaxing at home after a hard days work or something. Already the robe has at least one coffee stain on it, which is when the hard face of coffee stains starts to impinge on idyllic holiday dreams you know that it is "not" another day in paradise, even though Sade is seemingly playing all the time.1

Seriously, how elegant is Sade? So unbelievably elegant.

So I opened up the "New York trilogy" which is about the seventh book I have read on holiday because its like a curse when you read all the time, waking up and reading and lying in the spa and reading and lying in the sun, all the time reading. Opened up the book and there was such a poignant frontispiece, it read in casual handwriting:

Christmas 1990
Dear Stuart
Of course you realise you don't deserve this...
Lisa xxx
(The tantalising predicament of Lisa will soon only be fiction)

So many unanswered questions in this poignant frontispiece, obviously the two figures remain vague and obscured by their anonymity and reasonably good taste, hope Lisa was writing this frontispiece while relaxing in a tasteful early nineties living room. On a striped sofa in a faux tuscan living room. But what does this frontispiece mean, is this a break up gift? When Lisa refers to "this" is she actually talking about herself. And ultimately at a uk £3.99 r.r.p it wasn't exactly "breaking the bank." How coy is this Lisa? How perfect a couple, Stuart with his love of Paul Auster who "rubs stories together like pebbles" Independent , Lisa with her acid sharpness, can anyone deserve her? There are no easy answers to these questions.

1. Not trying to suggest that Sade wrote Phil Collins relatively moving song "Another Day In Paradise", relatively moving as in - not really shedding a tear over it but it "makes you think" about issues around homelessness or maybe issues around why Phil Collins needs to sing songs about Homelessness although it's probably better to be a preternaturally balding and increasingly middle aged multi millionaire selling more music than anyone else in the eighties, aside from Michael Jackson, with at least something of a social conscience. Although, a serious moment of self reflection occurred in this interview I read with Collins, where he regretted everything - sitting in his Geneva lakehouse, deafened and vaguely resembling a completely bald King Lear. Phil Collins is the King Lear of our parents generation. To wit, I was just trying to suggest that Sade is the archetype of relaxing-while-on-holiday music.

Christmas

2011-12-20T18:17:00.000-08:00

Mount Pleasant - Waiting for Christmas from Johnny Hall on Vimeo.

Yeah. Merry Christmas. Yeah.

2011-12-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

Have to say three concise points, no footnotes.

1. The best album of the year is actually Julia Holter's "Tragedy". It is really good, it basically sounds like the second side of David Bowies Low, but stretched out to a whole two sides of the vinyl.

2. I am on holiday now, so I won't be writing at all until at least January.

3. Released a christmas e.p. here. It has had a huge response, feel ever closer to retiring and living on a Pacific Island.

That is it for 2011 I guess, thanks for "being there" and also buying "The Aztecs", if you want to get a free cassette or something email "mountpleasantmusic@live.com", probably can "help you out". Seriously need to start posting more "pleasant music" for the large amount of hits I am getting from India looking for "pleasant music". So much festive cheer right now.

Best MMXI

2011-12-10T00:09:00.000-08:00

BEST SONG OF 2011

Yeah you did.

BEST ALBUMS

1. DESTROYER : KAPUTT

2. ZOMBY : DEDICATION

3. PANDA BEAR: TOMBOY

Even though the gang was real dismissive, its not even a grower or anything, it just is appropriate for the walk to work.

4. FORD + LOPATIN : CHANNEL PRESSURE

5. WITH MOTHS PROMISED OPUS

THINGS THAT WERE OKAY IN 2011

1. Tawa Intermediate school play "The Silk Road" and its eerie referencing of the Vietnam play in the film "Rushmore", also unbelivable amounts of dancing.1

2. Making dreams come true on the squash court. Backhand dreams.

3. Destroyer "Savage Night at the Opera" as a song title, and as an idea in general.

4. Watching the West Wing Seasons One to Four with Madeleine, it turns out Rob Lowe disappears from season four and the show is not really expressing it, but is really hurt by this plot development. So many emotions, but mostly regret.

5. Roxy Music Avalon following me around Wellington like a curse.

6. Nazi Tuesday, some real rippers but mostly really average films.

7. Massive commercial success, massive validation.2

8. Subterranean elevator, Whanganui.

9. This really serious boy in Sparkle Motion costume after five o clock at Victoria University, really worried that his Sparkle Motion team would miss their cue. It wasn't really cute, it had this unerring sense of middle aged fussiness/dull accountancy whit collar professional which was troubling for an eight year old, but it left a deep impression.

10. Two bottles of Henry Weston's Vintage Cider as a gift in one year, from separate people. Also two robes. Apparently cannot get enough of robes.

11. Not recording music all the time/Not listening to new music all the time.

NOT SO GREAT IN 2011

1. Backpack, low slung worn insouciantly with suit at AAAP conference. Worrying trend.

2. Endless orgies amongst Wellington friends, gets pretty stale.

3. Election 2011, even despite scoring the best try of my life on the day. It was so unbelievable.

4. Increasing inability to stay up past ten thirty.

5. Sam Stanley.3

6. Earthquake really messed up everything.

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

Madeleine

MOST IMPROVED SIBLING

Sophie

BEST WWII BOOK

"The Emperor of Lies" by Steve Sem Sandberg

BAD DVDS

1. American Gigolo

2. Blindness

3. The Hidenberg

4. The Aryan Couple

5. Kick Ass

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1. Tawa Intermediate's school play was in the Tawa Intermediate School Hall which was so unbelievably hot, I felt pretty sick after the show, this didn't detract from the show being really great. Everyone on stage was really enthusiastic apart from two kids, one of them a tall girl who looked like she was "really going through the motions" even though everyone else was at least pretending to care. It was pretty good. Like the most minimal effort possible, as if she had calculated the way to expend the least possible effort and was striving hard to exceed all her previous estimations. It was so good though.

2. Keep the dream happening, buy now

3. I keep my distance.

On television

2011-11-21T02:28:00.000-08:00

I went around to Tobias' and Gabrielle was on the computer looking at photographs of Polar Bears surrounded by horror movie levels of blood while finishing off other Polar Bears/ a horses head - an image that sort of made me feel sick to the stomach, but not actually.1 I didn't eat after it, but I wasn't really hungry or anything. It was also about eleven at night, so wasn't feeling overly peckish. Anyway, I have this vague impression that Polar Bears should be sort of not so blood thirsty, and more inclined to just sort of playfully roll around all day. As if they were you know, just playful lil guys messing around all the time in this endless bleak Arctic tundra that is dissipating, throwing snowballs at each other, just sorting out their work/life balance in the best possible way. I don't know, there was this news report on their situation, hence the photo search for Polar Bears, and they are looking unbelievably forlorn and shabby, just kind of loafing around with nothing better to do as their pristine ice lifestyle is turning into a walking nightmare, or sort of more into the end of the line for the species. It was sort of sad, but at the same time the report did feature heavily sedated Polar Bears getting airlifted by helicopter out of this godless icebound shack town in Alaska. If the entire news cycle was dominated by bears in big nets, it could really be something.

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1. Greater issues with that particular photograph mostly included the question: Why are there horses in the Arctic? There wasn't really an answer.

On masculinity

2011-11-14T10:08:00.000-08:00

When I was younger I looked in awe at my fathers sweating, as if by sweating so much that your entire teeshirt was rendered unwearable, like he had bathed in a warm salty ocean of sweat while fully clothed and had emerged with the clothes stretched taught and sodden over his body, was something like the pinnacle of masculinity. I think in this, my twelve year old mind was wrong. Now that I am also a sweating man I am vaguely disappointed that my sweat doesn't match up to my father, his shadow casting long and forebodingly over my self worth or something. Not that sweating profusely is a good thing, any more than not sweating and having a "dry sweat" which I presume exists is recommended. Imagine lacking body odour or sweat and how much better life would be, like that novel "Perfume" which my brother, also a sweater, was crazy about. Imagine the sense of superiority, the innate purity of your life.

Coming off the squash court, my father, like many men of his generation, was a man in control of the court but not his sweat. I pale in comparison. I sweat, but it lacks the heavy intensity of my fathers. I don't lose sleep over it, but I do dream that I am a pro basketballer.1

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1. Madeleine suggested that this all seemed really homoerotic/homopaternoerotic. I don't have any response. Won't stoop to dignify that with a response.2

2. If I did it would be "I ran the 1500m for the West side of Christchurch and sweated for my city."

On mysterious newspaper supply woman

2011-11-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

In continuing and necessary developments in the previous newspaper supply story, as I feel needs to be addressed and developed so to give a sort of fuller impression, yesterday the New Zealand Herald supply woman who supplies the New Zealand Heralds, all five of them, of which only three sell every day, came in wearing a "TRIP TO THE CAN" teeshirt. It wasn't explained, nor did I want an explanation. She is so beguiling.

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On work

2011-11-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

Angus this morning was there, as I was in the book shop, looking tired but the sun was , you know, streaming through the window like it had nothing else to do, like it was "nobodies business." We were just standing there minding my business, for me at 8.00AM I am mostly thinking about really great cereal I could be eating if I had thought ahead.

Little known fact, I am real crazy about cereal. Aren't you? I used to have this thing in which I had to try all the cereals in the cereal aisle, not obsessively, but mostly because you don't know what you could be missing? This is a lie. Ultimately its mostly just like different varieties of the same corn/bran base with variations of fruit/sugar; but there is always that elusive promise of something unbelievable. I mean who knew how great Pams Bran and Sultana was going to be? It is almost as great as the Homebrand Cornflakes used to be, I kind of feel the more the food resembles the texture of cardboard the better it is. I guess its a subjective thing.1 You know, taste. Anyway, all great things/hobbies come to an end, like my foray into model World War 2 airplane building when I was about age thirteen.2 Mostly that ended because of massive jealousy at my friends model airplane making ability. He is an accountant now. I don't really know what conclusions to draw from that.

This morning was in objective terms a pretty great morning, well maybe not like objective, maybe subjective? I don't know, I don't really have time to think about such things as I am living my corporate high flying dream. Life is real tough when you are chasing the big dollars, and by big dollars and I really talking about just above minimum wage. Which is okay you know? I mean I work hard and sleep real early or something. Anyway I was just "chasing up an order" or something, when the New Zealand Herald lady came in. Usually its this sullen guy who looks haunted by life's bad decisions. Always with a sort of pained expression on his never shaven face. Anyway today it was a different lady. Admittedly she might have been in all the time. Usually I am too busy "crunching numbers/figures"/ "making fiscal realities"/ sitting around with my head in my hands wishing for death. She came in and she was also really sullen, wore this shapeless patterned hoodie with the hood up dropped the four New Zealand Heralds off and walked outside. Didn't even believe in making any sort of chit chat, some sort of heresy or anything. I am okay with this, I have to call people on the phone all day. So yeah, if I could I would just be like whatever. So blase.

She went out to her car which was some sort of Mazda, real round and friendly coloured. Probably fifteen per cent friendlier than she was. She sat in the car and was like furiously cleaning a compact disc. So I walked past and walked to my office, because I have an office and eventually she drove passed me blasting the Cranberries hit single "Zombie" and like looking implacable, so determined. SO she was driving off and as I walked past at least the two people that were walking at 8.06AM in the morning were humming "Zombie."

This story was way better at the time.

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1. I am being completely serious. Really upset that they stopped making the Homebrand cornflakes. One of the breakfast cereal companies huge mistakes/the worlds great losses.

2. Real poignant reinvention occurred around about this time when I changed my room from hyper masculine airplanes of the world, you know like four page fold outs of harrier jumpjets, to posters of the movie Titanic and then like teen hits magazine. So bleak. It was like, crystallised in the awkwardness of teenage bad decisions like thinking that lene marlin was the real deal or something and taping Lene Marlin inclusive (not exclusive, would have been impossible/not that great) mixtapes off the radio and, you know, killing the music industry. Real hard to type this with the sound of my neighbour vomiting at 5.15pm in the afternoon. Unbelievable.

Everything we have done is considerably better than the next generation will do, they should be really worried that their lives won't match up to ours

2011-10-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

Went toy shopping yesterday for Madeleine's niece, for whom I would spend at least twenty minutes later in the day making a handdrawn card with a little squirrel holding a little acorn with a "we are nuts about you Juno." I know making hand drawn cards seems a bit twee or forced or something, but I am not exactly making a career out of it; all I am saying is it was a pretty good card/snappy punchline for the lil three year old. Anyway, Madeleine insisted upon some Sylvanian family toys, this absurd family of squirrels, hence the foreshadowing in the card. Sylvanian family toys make me uncomfortable.1 Ultimately, it probably has more to do with their over inflated price tag and unbelievably comprehensive range of accessories than anything else. When I was facing the indignity of being really young and getting condescending anthropomorphised figurines as presents, I was spared because I was a little dude who had like sunglasses and a sunhat I would wear backwards and wouldn't be having sex for another twelve thirteen years or something, so I filled my time with :

killer narratives involving the old west. Had a reasonably comprehensive collection of plastic cowboy figurines after watching the film "An Indian in my Cupboard" which apparently has Steve Coogan in it. Who knew? I mean I was seven at the time and wasn't really up to play with Steve Coogan's sort of failed career in Hollywood. I was older than Juno when I had my collection of Cowboy and Indian figures, but feel there was a considerably greater scope for narrative realisation with the Cowboy and Indian plot as opposed to some family of squirrels who ultimately are going to be kind of dull and woodland focused. I mean its basically self evident that my childhood was going to be way better than hers, what can really compare with hours of Ecco the Dolphin and Encarta 95? Sad that Juno's little squirrel family are a constant reminder to Juno that my childhood was at least 30% better.

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On a side note , how much better would the world be if signs were more playfully joking around? Like the shop Moore Wilsons in Wellington, would be definitely improved if it was at least in some places in the shop " "More" Wilsons " , double use of speech marks adding to the super lame pun. This would probably solve more problems than it would cause, including but not limited to : less street violence, more people stopping and just sort of chuckling to themselves. Also overheard in Moore Wilsons, in the homeware section which sort of looks just like any homeware section anywhere but had a real great selection of knives, but sort of feel like I am cheating myself out of a trip to Westfield Lower Hutt so I could go to King of Knives which the mall presumably has- I am pretty sure a King of Knives is a prerequisite for any proper mall; some lady was looking at the selection of bedspreads and was all condescendingly staring at her husband when he pulled out a bedspread and was like "I believe the word for it is 'foul' " Sometimes it would be really great to be middle aged, but only really for those times. My parents mostly fall asleep at like nine. As do I, and I really hate my life.

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Deeply concerned about my impending move to Nelson. While I was saying that my childhood was all better and everything, when I was about Juno's age I was attacked by a swan. Madeleine is all like "that is so funny!" Fact check, it isn't. So I don't like being around large birds, geese make me uncomfortable. Turkeys are also disconcerting, but that is mostly because they look like they shouldn't really exist. Same also for the Peacock. Anyway, apparently Nelson has some rogue swan on the loose. Will probably be my nemesis or something. Will haunt me constantly. This was going to be a little footnote about how Sylvanian families are real phoney. But I think that is pretty self evident. Also how Swans are real terrifying. Also geese. Maybe it is their cold dead unblinking eyes, maybe it is the untold violence they inflict every day? Such a bleak era.

On writing the best quality posts possible

2011-10-14T04:51:00.001-07:00

Madeleine bought me a robe so I don't constantly walk around in my underwear, which is a pressing issue in all of our lives. Mostly Madeleines. The robe is in blue and white stripes. Feel real debonair in it. Have started to dress more like I am a big success, feel like a massive jerk.

All the time.

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Also confused that I picked up two readers. Don't think anything that is happening is worth reading about. I keep waking up at six thirty.1 Sort of feel I should be making it "more about the music", maybe doing some mixes maybe reporting about local crime like the street hoodlums that "bottled" some drunk guy on Tasman Street tonight. Love this place. Love the edgy tagging on the beautiful brick maintaining wall, really incisive critique of "art fags."2 Love the massive vacant lot. Love the Tasman gardens facade presenting this Orwellian nightmare. See also the entirety of Tory street which links into Tasman street which has so much to give. This whole city just gives and gives and gives and gives.

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On mirages

2011-10-05T14:15:00.001-07:00

Some woman at work sent through this little heartbreaking email. She was like:

" I am emailing to enquire if you have any books on the science behind mirages, and how to make a mirage. I imagine you have quite a number of titles that will have some information on mirages, perhaps a chapter, but what I would like is a whole book."1

I did a cursory search, because there is nothing better than hunting for obscure requests and this was such an oblique request as ultimately mirages are just an optical effect not a real science. And you know, reading about mirages on wikipedia is a really great way to pass the day. There is one seminal work on mirages I guess. That is about the best I could find. It opened up a real Borgesian labyrinth, you know. Why did she wish to make a mirage? No one knows. If she could some how construct mirages where would she construct them. For what purpose? Almost had generations of pre Aristotelian science to draw on for those many books on mirages in this hidden library of mirages. As if this intangible request was actually acutely necessary or something, as if we could draw on our vast mirage section. That would somehow dissipate when we got close to it, and only appeared when there was enough heat and distance between it and us. I had beautiful crystalline visions, you know of some glass faced cathedral of mirage literature.

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1. This is basically what she wrote, it is not exact.

On predicting the future

2011-09-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

1. The future is going to look really similar to the movie "The Fifth Element".

2. Music will stabilise at a constant revival of 1998 club music.

3. The actor Ben Affleck will die.

4. Humans are going to be able to sort of just fly real soon. As in a dream, just sort of be able to walk outside and then start flying. Things will be way more dream like, you will be on a trip to Cuba in some sort of boat that seems really womb like, and put in lolly teeth, those lollies that are made to look like teeth, on your upper teeth and some stress ball that has a complete set of lower teeth and you put them both in and your face transforms into Groucho Marx for no apparent reason, as teeth aren't really his defining feature or anything- kind of find Groucho Marx's greasepainted mustache fills me with existential dread whenever I think about it, some sort of black insight into his soul or something . I don't know, makes Duck Soup and the other zany Marx bros adventures way more frightening. I think this is just a personal critique I have of Marx brothers films. Then for no real reason, as you were meant to be going to Cuba, also for no real reason, you are in the Grand Canyon and its okay because you are just sort of "going with the flow."

5. Anal tassles will be a big thing.1

6. Genetic engineering is going to start getting really great with like unicorns and dragons. I mean why the hell not? Seriously let down by contemporary developments in scientific research in this area. Consistently let down. Also the way in which cloned animals die, really disappointing. Only good thing going in science at the moment is the Hadron collider.

7. The Hadron collider may potentially spin out and destroy the world.

8. Everyone will be really confused about why Skateboarding was such a big deal, and we will be lumbered having to explain all about Skateboarding to "the kids" even though we never cared for it. This will lead to lots of bitterness and resentment.

9. Flying cars will never happen.

10. Mayans will literally raise from the dead and start their civilisation again. This may lead to the end of the world.

11. People will stop "caring" and just sort of "go with the flow"

12. There will be all these empty skateboarding parks everywhere.

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1. Madeleine's predictions are way cruder than mine.

On technology

2011-09-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

When I was in high school I took this typing class that kept changing its title. Every year, for the three years that I took typing for the easy grades to keep up with contemporary developments in IT the class title would update. This sort of happened throughout the school, so Woodwork became Hard Materials Technology - which seemed really counter intuitive as even though predominately we worked with wood in Woodwork, we did sometimes use more materials than just wood but never enough to justify the name change. I am pretty sure if I had continued with Woodwork I would have actually got to work metal or something like that. All I really remember, and it is a painfully vivid memory, is Timothy running through the classroom, bloodied hand clasped in blood splattered other hand screaming the teachers name after he worked his hand into a woodworking machine.1 We wore white short sleeved shirts with unfortunate lack of top button so they were permanently open and ugly, fanning out. Across Timothy's shirt was blood from his bloodied hand, it was also on his shorts and on the ground of the classroom. When a hand is caught in a sanding machine, an upright commercial sanding machine that probably shouldn't have been operated by thirteen year old children, it inevitably comes out worse off. He didn't lose his hand or anything, but it was real scraped up. Really confused as to why the course was offered, ultimately the Hard Materials classes would make cabinets and chairs and everything but at what cost?

Anyway, in that same year, I really mastered touch typing as much as I ever would. This never extended to typing numbers. I still am really ham fisted. This is the constant issue of my life at work.

Most modern keyboards, and by modern keyboards I am ultimately referring to laptop computers are limited in their scope and miss out the horizontal sweep of a desktop computer. Also the desktop computer can sometimes have those bleak ergonomic keyboards. The worst type of keyboard. I feel I should limit this blog to solely talking about really really really really dull topics, like keyboard design. I feel this will really expand my market. Just want to make it big in the tech market. Talk about the new Samsung Ipad or something. Anyway, as I lack the full keyboard I am now doomed when typing in big numbers which comprises like 50% of my job. I spend half my day trying to use the bankers keyboard thing. Where you rest your finger on the zero. Its so upsetting. Sometimes I dream long tortured dreams about that little number pad. And they haunt me all day.

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Got up in the morning two days ago and said to my girlfriend who was all sick and bleary and angry in bed as the morning sun came in like holy peals of angel choirs, like swimming in golden rivers of God's infinite grace and love, and I was all like "In the kingdom of the blind the deaf man is king" it didn't really make sense, but I said it with such conviction you know. It was like it really meant something. Apparently the expression is the one eyed man is king, but I sort of prefer my own take. Can't really remember the context. And I think context is everything.

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1 This is really a lie. In that year alone I was bench mates with Sarah, who played GD for the school Netball team and also played Rugby for the first XV which was a degree of progressivism from the school which noone was expecting. I had a painful and awkward adolescent crush on her, as she wasn't the ideal of beauty for anyone which was sort of a progressive move from me I guess and she was also like maybe the tallest girl in the year group. She also made a considerably better electronic game, which basically worked like the board game Operation, than me. Mine didn't work, but hers buzzed and lit up which led to some bitter rivalry. She started dating this guy Caleb at another table who was about my height, which really hurt my pride. He is married now, so it doesn't really matter and at the time we all sort of laughed at him for dating a girl like a foot taller than him or something. But my laughter was a more conflicted laughter. I continued for the rest of the year to make really abysmal wooden objects.

2011-09-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

So I was at this party in Christchurch, the party destination . The Ibiza of New Zealand. The Mexican escape to Tijuana. Technically, as Christchurch is so alive or something, I went to two parties but the one I felt really old in, really haggard. As if my receding hairline and mid-middle life crises were all paralysing me in one go. And I seemed so paralysed at that party with kids with expensive cameras photographing my eyes, and by kids I mean one precocious post teen photographing my eye. God knows why. At the real party of the weekend, the Gatecrasher club anthem, the climax of the Gatecrasher club anthem - where the drums do that electronic 1/16th beat crescendo thing, my brothers friend said he wouldn't have missed all of the aftershocks and all of the boredom in post quake Christchurch for anything because "there is a real sense of change in the city, everyone is way nicer to each other, so much more considerate." And this was a really nice sentiment and you know I want to have the best, and nothing but the best, impressions of the place. Holy revelations in the cherry trees lining Deans Avenue in full blossom, the daffodils coming up through cracks in the pavement on Memorial Avenue. Tears falling like Catholic miracles from statues, my hands bleeding in stigmata all as one holy moment. But as I walked back to the place I was staying, three keen Christchurch boys wound down their window and yelled "Fuck you faggot..weeeeeee" as the joy of that ecstatic release and the wind in their faces filled them with the compassionate post quake good feelings, as the suburban/quake malaise failed to impact on their saturday night and they went round looking for ways to prove that my decision to move away from home was a sensible choice. As if walking on a Saturday night makes you automatically a target or something. And I wanted to believe my brothers friend about this social change, but in a town full of jerks if you aren't a jerk you are doing something wrong. Fact.

On being a real big deal

2011-09-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

Featured in print, upside down jpeg means you have to print it off to read it unless you want to swap it around and read it, but then you have to go through all sorts of hassles and I mean not even I wanted to go through that sort of hassle.1 The article is real positive, because I am a real big deal? It was in the "bands to look out for" section or something, not giving up on my desk job. Ever.

I don't know, having a real good time making music with Jon Lemmon at the moment, we played this big show at San Francisco bathhouse for the St Rupertsberg ep release, and they were real great. They were a big band. Jon and I not so much. We just look so serious all the time.

Gave myself this real questionable haircut, really badly cut fringe. I was trying to pass it off, as it it was an "honest fringe". Its not, firstly, I mean what does that even mean? Self justifying a bad haircut is a real bad habit, just as getting a pair of scissors and cutting the hair in the first place is. Especially when I have no real talent in hair cutting. Sort of go through real unfortunate phases where I think that cutting my hair will be a really great idea. It isn't. Madeleine is doing her first heart surgery today which is a way bigger deal, and currently every one of her work stories is at least 4 times more exciting than my work stories. I can't compete with cauterising flesh, but whatever. Talking about selling books from web orders can be interesting too. I have started this wall at work with all the babies I know in my life. I am competing with the other wall with at least twelve babies sellotaped onto the wall, I have about four. I am not like a father or anything. Maddie is going to come home and will have seen a real live beating heart.

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1. I could have inserted it into "Paintbrush" but as I hate using the Mac version of Paint so much, and I really do hate it.2 Its right up there, along with being bored and sweating. Imagine how much better life would be if you were one of those people that had no scent. Apparently onions and coffee make you smell bad too. Life is so bleak.

2. Tried other free image software for macs, also really bad. ALso really dislike new Microsoft Word, and was all blissing out when they had Microsoft Office 2003. Pretty sad to be real excited about old Word. Real sad. At the same time, that new Microsoft Word is unbelievable. So horrific.

3. Found out that :

Office 2010 was given the version number 14.0, to avoid the version number 13.0 due to superstition and triskaidekaphobia relating to the number thirteen.

Kind of confused a computer company would feel the need to appeal to superstition, or whatever. Also architects that miss out the thirteenth floor. Triskaidekaphobia is really something you know. Also in Afghanistan, 39 is a really unlucky number. Sometimes this blog gets really trivial.

"if not I'll just die"

2011-08-27T16:27:00.001-07:00

While some losers are on this massive Hildegaard of Bingen front, placards and marches for her twelth century mystic visions revealing the divinity of life itself. So many people talking about her, sometimes hard not to walk into conversations on or skirting around issues about the golden girl of the dark ages. Her writing reveals so much, "the gleaming flames and beauty of the first fallen angel descending so that the countless number of sparks, shining the like the bright light of all his ornaments filling the world with light"? Whatever. Those jerks haven't seen the illumination of Hildegard physically getting a vision from God, depicted as a red claw descending from a gold leaf heaven and gouging into her eyes. What does that suggest? Way too many things. Speaks volumes, maybe even libraries.

This isn't "that" Hildegaard, but she serves the same purpose. This live version of "This Guy Is In Love With You", written by B. Bacharach maintaining his mid career form, falters on that big climatic chorus where the "I need your love" is underscored by a wall of strings and choirs that fill up all the air in the track. 1 Instead, Hildegaard is revealed fully; her frail vibrato running like a slide projection reel of photographs of her alone in dressing rooms smoking alone, sitting in hotel bars where brown suited business men with thinning hair smile at her but leave her alone, ever alone. Hildegaard in a promo shot Die mörder sind unter uns, Hildegaard in an Atlanta, Georgia motel room with divine illumination bleeding from the motel ceiling ventilation grilles as the wooden slat wallpaper is replaced by gold leaf.

Both Hildegaard's remind me of the procession in the painting of Dante, the procession of sinners in Hell, seeming so distant and far away. That sense of being in between worlds. My guy Dante, and by my guy I feel that Dante is my main point of reference for the medieval, the greatest and brightest. Dante prefers his illumination more informally, relaxing in the dream within a dream painting as a giant betwixt/between heaven, hell and Florence. Unless its just the perspective that is all wrong. And how Dante prefigured Borges's Aleph, the point from which one can see a silver cobweb in the centre of a black pyramid, an inner courtyard in Calle Soler with the same tiles he had seen thirty years previously in the entryway of a house in Calle Frey Bentos, convex equatorial deserts, the Hermocrates lying unacknowledged in the estate of Alioto Caopena, one time ruler of the Mediterranean island of Aegina and traitor depending on your reading, and simultaneously every letter on every page, the bridge made from the collection of the library of Baghdad leaching black ink away from the Mongolian invasion. The Divine Comedy expresses, above all, a belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.2 This is not how life works.

Madeleine and I walked back from watching the belated coverage of the Rugby game, because I think it is sort of required behaviour in New Zealand, I don't have any active disdain for sports which seems to be a position that a lot of people I know that are taking, neither do I have any active interest in sport. Walking back down Kent terrace which is a great big freeway stretching down the side of Mount Victoria with a central margin that contains not just a statue of the titular Queen Victoria but also the Graeco- New Zealand War Memorial, post modern in the style of the Portland Public Authority Building 1977. Really bad location, in a city where location is all "location, location, location." Fact. We walked past a group of bogan car gangswith young threatening kids in black teeshirts and their girls with blonde hair that had been straightened and looked dead, deader than normal hair, straightened hair looks so disingenous, its such a misplaced optimism in our ability to shape order, like ironing shirts and the Divine Comedy.3 Anyway, in my experience walking past car gangs would have at least elicited a "fuck you faggots" in Christchurch even if I was arm in arm with my girlfriend or something, maybe especially because of it. Instead we got a " hey, your girlfriend is really cute." Which is so true.

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1. Herb Alpert sings the original but is too much of a crooner to really give this track what it needs, which is discretion. It is all there in the line "when you smile" where he accents both the "you" and "smile" so it descends briefly into broadway camp/schtick/schmaltz. But I mean Herb has a limited voice and his real talent lies on the trumpet, so really I mean you need to take the song in its context in which its a stand alone single for suburban housewives. And in that context the song is gleaming like gold leaf.

2.Seung, T. K. (1962). The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan. Westminster, MD: Newman Press.

3. Its really strange that car culture from the fifties and sixties seems to have some sort of glamorous allure, with James Dean or whatever, Badlands et all stretching out into some comfortable distant memory where gang members drove off with melee weapons and challenged each other for road dominance through violence or just driving or whatever. Its a pretty comfortable image which has been readily mined by fashion/mass culture lately, our inability to look forward causing the past to draw heavier shadows over us, as if my childhood dream of the sun maintaining its position in the sky indefinitely holding shadows ever present and never changing, in varsity jacket has attained some validation by the mass kultur. Its there in Twilight's starring actors post teen insouciance, its there in magazines of sullen men with slicked back hair and nowhere to go. We seem incapable of glamorising the boyracer subculture however, as it seems trapped in its own particular stasis - where style ends roughly at the time of "Break stuff" by limp bizkit. So confused by contemporary New Zealand life and its multiple shades of meaning.

2011-08-26T05:28:00.001-07:00

Today had to find every book I could on the topic of anxiety and put them aside. Don't really know why? Work and life are so mysterious. There were only about eight books. And some of those were questionable, as in not exactly like "Anxiety: A Contemporary Reading" or "My Anxious Life." It was more like some books had sparse barren chapters on anxiety and I cautiously included them in the pile of anxiety books.

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The Aztecs broke even ?! Didn't actually look at my accounting, which ultimately has revealed something like a five dollar profit. Need some more suits, like physical suits to wear, to attract further investment in third quarterly sales. Dressing for business will ultimately lead to more business. Can you afford to not promote the Mount Pleasant album "The Aztecs"? My accountant says "No."

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2011-08-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

When I was younger and more impressionable, my parents had a fire escape strategy that was sort of implausible but also really great as an idea. My parents were definitely ideas people. Growing up privileged in Mount Pleasant had its perks -mostly pacific ocean views and long hot summers. Also that in the event of a fire trapping us on the third storey of the house, we were meant to open up the window in my sisters room, throw her bed out of the window and land on the bed and escape the fire. The plan was sort of hazy, and probably would have been improved in the event of a fire. However, I always sort of wanted to at least attempt the window leap onto bed as a hypothetical, even though it might have ruined my sisters bed. She had her room painted from a grey, to a gaudy pink which would have been the last wall paint colour from the house I would have seen when pushing open the window to escape from the house on flames, or not on flames if it was a trial run. The drop wasn't too far, but probably far enough that it could have resulted in, you know, a broken leg or something. Also as the pushing of the bed out of the window was never really explored, whether you could actually get enough velocity to propel the bed out of the gap in the window, whether the bed would clear the edge of the eaves and fall flat on the hillside garden below. These were unresolved issues within the fire escape plan. Had a reoccurring dream of flight as a child, in which if I ran as fast as I could I would be able to take off and fly low and fast, as long as I didn't have to repeat the trick in front of anyone. I think about that a lot. Sat up last night thinking about my parents sitting outside the home, on deck chairs on February 22nd. Thought about a lot of things.

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On the ever expanding universe

2011-08-23T02:51:00.000-07:00

The house is a labyrinthine mess of staircases that lead to nowhere, doors that open to walls, and exterior windows sitting uncomfortably in the middle of the house.

The second famed window is one designed by Tiffany himself for Mrs. Winchester. This window was designed so that when the light hits the crystals just so, the room will be filled with thousands of rainbow prisms. Sadly, due to the poor placement of the piece, this will never be seen. It is located in a room with no direct light, as well as being built facing a wall.1

So wrote a really long winded blog post, we are talking over a thousand words- that is like paragraph after painful paragraph, about how much I was reading into this building- which was heaps - lets just say if I see a flying buttress that isn't actually supporting anything, it definitely deserves a footnote. But then it got massively long winded and confused. All doubled back on itself. Aimed for "Borges" got "not Borges." So you could just read about the Winchester "Mystery" House, maybe try looking at some photos of the interiors or something. I don't know, maybe go for a walk? Try finding the Marika Papagika album, sounds real distant but intimate.

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1. Winchester Mystery House

2011-08-22T02:14:00.001-07:00

Worked 8.30am-5.30pm

Ate sandwiches on walk home - three vegetarian sandwiches. 1

Read "The Economist"

Kept real quiet when workmates where questioning why anyone wouldn't appreciate the Rolling Stones. Just wanted to be "part of the gang."

Felt for large periods of the day like I wasn't "part of the gang" except when eating croissants and consumed with internal happiness.

Also putting on a french accent when selling "pain au chocolat" but not "pain raisin", because most people are like 'can I have a swirly raisiny thing?"

Thought a lot/considerably about the word "avuncular"

Didn't complete crossword.

Looked at potential possum merino investments.

Had a minute long conversation with attractive older brunette and distinguished grey guy about the merits of biscotti. No one was a fan.

Had a much shorter conversation with less attractive and more older woman where the singular of biscotti is biscotto. It was informative.

Watched silent movie about Japanese internment camps.

Watched almost silent panned shot of empty mall with eerie non eerie mall music which was probably contemporary pop but now is probably post contemporary pop couldn't really tell.

Read about Me262s and the German operational jet fighter program.

Read about the career of Cuba Gooding Junior.

Read about Libya.

Watched an old news report about the Crystal Cathedral. Can't believe that place. 2

Was going to contribute 25 dollars to my brothers charity, but instead sat around reading about Nicholas Cages new disappointing looking film. I don't know if it is more disappointing for Nicholas Cage or Nicole Kidman. Or both of them in differing ways. Nicholas Cage looks like Colonel Gaddafi.

Cuba Gooding Junior makes me feel sad.

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1 Bread, Feta, Marinated Capsicum, Tomato, consistency : softer than should have been, that consistency that, as a child, would have probably thrown away, but now as an adult just ate silently and begrudgingly.

2. So corporate christian.

On the virtues of possum merino

2011-08-22T01:42:00.000-07:00

"Is that 'possum merino'?"

"Why... yes it is. Actually it's a possum merino nylon blend. Why do you ask?"

"Its just that I have the exact same colour jumper, just here."

"Incredible. It is the best isn't it."

"It sure is. I don't know why everyone doesn't wear possum merino."

"Yeah."

Would love to have more awkward conversations with middle aged people on the undeniable benefits of possum merino as a fabric choice, on how the possum fibre's hollowness allows more warmth, on how it is hard wearing and retains its softness. But most people wearing possum merino are wearing accessories, possum merino gloves or socks or hats, and it's not the same. I mean, it's an undeniably great fabric choice, but really I feel only a proper bond for people in possum merino jumpers. Pressing issues of my life this winter.

Centennial 200th Post

2011-08-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

Madeleine walked into the room smiling clumsily, with her teeth red with blood from her operation. Post operation, looking like a real diva. Regular "belle of the ball." She was real endearing while all morphened up, and I removed her trousers and shoes and put her into our bed. She kind of just flopped around and smiled a lot. Had nothing but jelly and icecream for dinner, like a child who won the lottery and could eat what she wanted when she wanted and had a real fancy chef coming in with icecream and jelly all the time. How much wish fullfillment was going on in the films "Blank Cheque" and "Richy Rich"?

At least 60% of the entire film. Fact.

Even now, Madeleine is eating icecream.

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In business news, got interviewed by Radio New Zealand and it is up here with me being self effacing and edited. Also interview with Rip It Up Magazine, New Zealand's only remaining music magazine that isn't free but the interview can be found here. Basically the end of promotion for the Aztecs. Didn't really recoup printing costs on the album. So bleak.

Why not buy the album? I bought a ticket to go to Christchurch which, you know, is going to be the holiday of the year. Really want to "make good" on my brother's investment in the album, and throw down five hundred dollars on his bedroom floor and be all nonchalant about it. Just blasé as hell, like its no deal rather than like "that is five months of saving" thanks to my real successful savings routine essentially boiling down to me spending everything on delicious food. He said the album is a "grower" which is muted praise and what he wanted to say was "buy, buy buy."

Buy buy buy buy buy

On leather glove's implicit evil

2011-08-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

This guy walks into work, trying to act all casual and everything. And I didn't suspect anything, he wasn't wearing, like some guys, a trench coat which has sort of morphed into young urban professional wear in the intervening years between today and the First World War, even though as a sartorial option it looks kind of fussy- like double breasted peacoats; I am digressing because could probably talk about issues pertaining to winter wear for at least the whole of this post. The guy pulls out his wallet and takes off his black leather glove to go in to get his eftpos card.

I think as soon as you decide, at whatever point you are in during your life, that a leather glove is a "good idea" you are running into some sort of massive brick wall of a mistake. Blinded by the conception that leather will be technically warmer than wool and that black leather conveys instant suavity and panache, the unfortunate buyer becomes for all intents and purposes instantly threatening.1 The leather gloved hand implies all sorts of things, mostly a darkly lit room with a swinging lightbulb and some guy casually "havving vays of making you talk." The guy seemed really nice and all, well innocuous as every one is when purchasing a stabilo boss highlighter, but it really made me think about the banality of evil, of normalising the unthinkable.

The wikipedia page on Arendt's term, the "banality of evil" is, in case you hadn't looked it up, really politicised. 2 Not in a bad way, just in a discreet way. While the thesis refers generally to the Holocaust, thereby implicating specifically Nazi Germany but in some extents the other Totalitarian nations complicit in the Holocaust- Pax Germania and the Soviet Union. The accompanying photograph in the article is of a US State Department facsimile requesting autopsies of victims of medical experiments during the Holocaust. The photograph raises the issue of US complicity in the Holocaust, or at least some degree of benefit, from the war crimes of Nazi science. In fairness, it is a subtle point in the article that isn't explored. But I guess you don't really expect Wikipedia or this blog to go into details on post war issues with the normalisation of evil, especially when it questions America's conception of itself as the "good guy" in a "good war."

Yeah but leather gloves hey, really evil right. I don't know probably got too serious in that later section.

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1. Am not really sure if the brick wall metaphor has enough foreshadowing for the next sentence formation of leather gloves as "instantly threatening". I am hurtling deep into cliche territory, like implying that wearing brick gloves is like swimming in shark infested water or something. Leather gloves are a pit full of bears. It is probably too early to be writing. One day I will be a really great writer, potentially.

2. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by sociopaths, but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

On Storms

2011-08-15T02:20:00.000-07:00

Stormy nights remind me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book not one of the sixteen film adaptations of the book, and it is a really stormy night tonight. Its stormy like the film "The Perfect Storm", except instead of mountainous CGI waves, it's just sleet and rain. "The Perfect Storm" on dry land would definitely have been a less exciting movie, full disclosure I remember nothing about the film except the climatic scene in which the boat goes on this really big wave, a wave so large that it is almost inconceivable. The sea is mysterious. I feel Bill Paxton might have been in the Perfect Storm, but solely on the fact that from about 1996-9 Bill Paxton was a real big deal on the summer blockbuster circuit, see also the inexplicable career of Shia La Bouf.1

Even fuller disclosure. When I was 13, I had three full distinct posters from the film Titanic in my room.

Bill Paxton was in Titanic. Connection? Not really. I really feel his career took a dive when he didn't star in Dante's Peak. When I think of Bill Paxton, he is staring out of a window into a stormy sky and ruing so many decisions in his life. And I think about Bill Paxton way too much.

Every day, Bill Paxton. Brooding.

Today at work found a book that cost 75 dollars, it was a small facsimile of a Mary Shelley tour diary on her grand tour with her beau Percy Bysshe Shelley- fact check Percy - Bysshe isn't a real name.

Also, while on the Romantic poetry theme/late eighteenth century hearthrob blog theme - (essentially turning this blog into a Smash Hits circa 1784) what is with Percy's weak lip structure?2 Also real pale complexion - slight ruddiness so gets at least some degree of approval, also have you read "To a Skylark"? It's powerful/transformative. Also weird collar, trying to look "romantic", ends up looking undressed. What is this painting for? It seems too impoverished for a proper portrait, it almost seems like a snapshot.

Madeleine read through this blog post and was all like "I look like Shelley", by "I" she was referring to herself, I look like Byron - obviously. But Maddie has way better lips. Otherwise its a moot point.

He looks so serious. So inscrutable. Still sort of ambling along on this blog post really ultimately thinking about how great Titanic/ Water themed movies are. Also movies with sports in them. And talking animals. Playing sports? While in water?

Honestly, life doesn't get better than this.

1 Posthumously, as in when looking back on the great lull of 2008-2018, Shia La Bouf will be a real "you had to be there" sort of thing.

2. Not even really sure if Smash Hits is a girls magazine with teen pop sensations in it, pretty sure my sister used to get them though with 5ive on the front cover. What happened to 5ive? They grew up or something, times changed. Do they regret their decisions in life? Maybe it's too soon to tell.

Unbelievably Exciting Things That Happened In The Weekend

2011-08-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

1. Went food shopping and the checkout assistant kept giving me knowing looks, and then was like "are you working today?" I looked at him sort of confused, and then he was like "You don't work here?" I looked at what I was wearing, and what he was wearing. Lets just say, I am never wearing my blue button down oxford and grey business pants again to New World. Grievous error.

2. Got locked out of my house and constructed an elaborate and effective shield around my food shopping that I didn't want to carry around because food shopping is heavy. Shield was a large piece of cardboard that used to be the cardboard that encased our new heater. The heater it turns out isn't really enough to combat the icy temperature. The food shield was to protect the food from the marauders and thieves that are apparently marauding the neighbourhood, and necessitate locking the door even when we are inside the flat.

3. Nothing exciting actually happened this weekend.

Unbelievably exciting things that could have happened this weekend

1. Spending spree! Spent all my savings on consumer goods/nice shirts. Benefits would include at least twenty new shirts.

2. Belich hunting, gone in search of the elusive New Zealand historian James Belich.

3. Ironed every item of clothing in my room with the fancy iron I purchased as a real romantic gift for my girlfriend.

4. Gone out and bought other really romantic gifts for girlfriend, mostly a food processor. If had gone ahead with option 1), option 4) would be impossible. Its important to balance possibilities with realism.

5. Walked as far as I could possibly walk away from Wellington, with no turning back and abandoned everything for a life on the road. Life would be tough but maybe more rewarding.

6. Stalked the marauders in our incredibly unsafe neighbourhood, engendered some social change by highlighting the negative impact said lifestyle was having on the local community, and more personally, me being locked out of my house for at least a half hour. Became best friends and always hung out with marauders, accepted into their close knit society.

7. Stared admiringly at new social realist sculpture of rugby all weekend. Would have really learnt something. Maybe.

8. Finished off eighth Mount Pleasant album.

9. Hung out with the editor of the New Oxford History of New Zealand, maybe go to Te Papa and then a dinner or something. Could have gone to Bad Teacher. Maybe gone out dancing.

10. Slept all weekend. Probably impossible.

So many options, so many great blogging opportunities in Wellington. Life really is better in the big city.

On oxblood

2011-08-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

When my sister came to visit, she got out of her flight attendant uniform and put on her oxblood trousers. Fact, this season's oxblood trousers are last season's trousers. Such are the whims of fashion, currently oxblood seems to be dominating the colour war for alternate colours of trousers. I mean, obviously, black is really winning but among the potentially limitless other colours available, the trend is for the colour that most resembles cattle getting slaughtered.1 Not that oxblood is by any means ubiquitous. My sister was striving not to stand out amongst Wellington's icy street cool cognoscenti or something, but to still to look great- which she did. But then my sister is a really pretty girl so what does it matter? Anyway, oxblood is a real big deal. As are these sort of cape things in which girls can insert their arms. I saw one today and thought the girl looked like she was in a fantasy film or something. I don't know what is worse, my naivety in regards to capes or the garment itself?2

Fact, oxblood is a pretty horrible concept for a colour. Also on colourlover.com, because these sort of sites exist, only twenty one people like it.

Sophie and I saw "Meeks Cutoff" which I liked and she didn't like, we also had Pizza which we both agreed was pretty disappointing. Thanks a lot Rydges hotel chain. Also the curtains in the room were unbelievably garish and ugly. Maybe okay for a middle age couple trying to spice up their increasingly dull sex lives through role playing some sort of escapist fantasy through sex in a fancy hotel, but can these curtains really save a marriage on the brink?

Probably not.

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1. Probably best to not Youtube Cattle slaughtering, it is worse than you can imagine.

2. Definitely the garment.

On Madeleine

2011-08-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

At six forty five am my girlfriend, Madeleine, walked to work at the hospital where she will undoubtedly have to perform something terrible on someone. Being a nurse seems pretty average, but it does mean that she got to see the personalised plate "U2rox" on her way to work. Absolute perfection.

Eroica

2011-08-02T01:53:00.000-07:00

I always think of Beethoven as an older man. When I write "I always think of Beethoven" I am referring to times when I am thinking expressly of Beethoven - not as a general, catch all phrase that expresses my deep and impressive infatuation with my pal Ludwig; as in "I am always thinking of Beethoven." I am not. Anyway, Beethoven apparently had a bad boy stage or something, it is all news to me.

Beethoven as the pin up of the Romantic period, the best period. What happened to "Romanticism"? What happened to sincerity? Why did that neck scarf lose it's relevance as an essential of male attire?1

I don't have answers. I do have way more to write about Beethoven though. My girlfriend is all unimpressed with everything I am writing at the moment, but whatever. It's real insightful or something. Insight No. 1. She is really into Napoleon- aren't we all. There is a little plate of Napoleon on the mantlepiece, because our master bedroom has a mantlepiece. The faux classical fireplace to which the mantlepiece is covering? topping? has a board covering the grate and is painted white, but it still looks "okay." Also is coming away from the wall.

Beethoven was writing the Eroica all about Napoleon apparently, and the Eroica is really great if you haven't heard it. It is really evocative and sincere and Romantic. Its probably the most "Romantic" of all the works of the "Romantic period". According to Ries, who was Beethoven's assistant and pupil, Beethoven was sitting around all crazy about his man Napoleon, as we all are, when he found out that Napoleon was going to become an Emperor. 2 What happened next?

This happened.

"I was the first to tell him the news that Buonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, "So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!" Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor. The page had to be re-copied and it was only now that the symphony received the title "Sinfonia eroica."

Serious business. So intense.

Feel really bad for Ries as even the Naxos website, Naxos is a Classical music imprint, feels sympathetic to him. Ries was said by Beethoven to imitate him too much, which seems like a bit of a jerkish thing for the maestro to say. Basically nipped Ries post-Beethoven career in the bud, always in the shadow of his friend/tutor. I mean, granted, Beethoven had his own issues but still.

Seriously, so many things to say about Beethoven, but so little time.

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1. Seems really unfair for people with weak chins to be denied this possibility. Solves a multitude of problems, my friend Willem suffered really bad shaving rash, this neck tie solution would have solved that problem straight away. Plus would have looked really great. Fashion is so cruel.

2. Ries is, if the engraving of him is to be believed and I am not going to argue with the historical likeness as there seems no particular reason why the likeness wouldn't be as accurate as possible, not wildly attractive. Words like "swarthy" come to mind, real apparent eyebrows, real violent little face and Lindsey Buckingham hairstyle. But then Beethoven has his periods of looking puggish/puckish.

On the virtue of ruddiness

2011-07-28T17:57:00.001-07:00

When did ruddiness stop being an attractive physical attribute? Why are there no ruddy stars anymore? I spend most of my days waiting for ruddiness to become the new big thing, sitting on the cusp of that wave. Feel really embarassed in public, playing big shows etc. with a ruddy face. I doubt if I could confirm that ruddiness will be a big deal in 2012, but it could be. It was in 1785.

Washington literally had the pick of all the ladies he could get in polite Virginian society, everyone wanted to dance with him or something. He also was way taller than everyone else. 1
This is basically how I live my life, except I am not as tall. You know just sort of regular. I am a regular guy. Man this is a great blog post. Just going to write way more about myself in future. Currently reading a book about Washington, listening to Ravel. Livin' It Up.
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1. Also check out his incredible paunch. Things were so different in the eighteenth century. His clothes, instead of concealing that paunch, accentuate it. Making virtue of it, how virile he is. True story, Washington wasn't virile. Such a deceptive guy.

THINGS THAT ARE REALLY SOMETHING

2011-07-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

Viking Sagas.

Economic History.

Cliffhanger ending to Season One of West Wing, almost as good as that season of Shortland Street that ended with a character hanging off a cliff. So unbelievably great, felt like my heart would break.

Pizza.

Utilising smiley faces in business emails at work. Feel real "urban professional" whenever said event happens.1

Feeling "urban professional." Walking to work with other "urban professionals". Seeing older "urban professionals" with tousled hair. Insouciant hairstyles.

How in Viking Epics people break the narrative by knocking out a really great/obtuse poem that kind of gets lost in translation but is still really amazing.

The song "Hey Moon" on the John Maus' album "We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves", easily the best title of any album this year, definitely on a top list of Moon songs, including Moon River, You Me and the Moon. Using the moon as an extended metaphor is really recommended in songs or just in general.

Taking time out from "blogging" to come back strong, feel like Sonny Liston. All the time. As I am typing.

Apparently Pina Coladas are the national drink of Puerto Rico. Which is, you know, news to me as I didn't think nations had favourite drinks, in the same way that nations don't have hobbies.

Zomby "Where Were You in 92?", both hardhitting as an album and a relevant question.

That scene in Harry Potter VII Pt II where it cuts to wounded Voldemort. Wish the camera had held on that little moment forever. Would have been a pretty succinct closing sequence.

Trying to promote my album. Its going really great.

The Hair of the Kings of Leon and how in ten years its going to looks sort of embarassing unless we really are in "hyperstasis"

Destiny's Child.

The song "Absolutely Everybody" by Vanessa Amarossi or something, so much truth in the lyrics. Also/especially breakdown in the song, followed by build up with just wailing horrific female diva vox. Unbelievable.

Our neighbours downstairs who I only ever hear screaming or fighting. So much life. So real.

Buying flowers for my girlfriend and walking down the street feeling like a massive asshole. True story. Even though its a really nice thing to do, like going to get flowers or whatever, the public nature of the gift kind of ruins the good intent. Feel real embarrassed, like I feel embarassed playing live. Feel like a real jerk all the time. Also feel like a jerk on the phone, my workmate described me as losing my personality on the phone or something. So grim.

Lack of "Faux Tuscan" in Wellington, sublimated into this pomo Colonial bullshit. Seriously bleak six story villa hell heap in Aro Valley, with concrete base( like all Villas right?) with in built garages. Unbelievably phoney.

Also inexplicable continual investment in apartment construction for what must be zero return ever. Real great false economy.

Some customer bought that book "How to Talk to Girls" written by a seven year old which is troubling enough even though it offered salient advice and almost impossibly great marketable potential, it still has really insidious undertones and a terrifying back cover with the kid looking all slicked back and able to score with girls even taller than him or something. No one bought "Revolutionary Road" which I replaced the "How to Talk to Girls" with. Even though its way better than "How to Talk to Women". Even though it contains dialogue like "Tell me the truth, Frank.Remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is, however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank.They just get better at lying." It doesn't even have like Leonardo Di Caprio/Kate Winslet on the front cover. Definitely film adaptation book covers ruin the book for me.

Rob Lowe

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1 It happened only once. It left a sort of sour feeling in my mouth and looked really ugly, a little digital smear.

Mount Pleasant Slipped Era

2011-06-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Video directed by Hamish Parkinson, in Christchurch New Zealand and Akaroa New Zealand. Seriously missing Hamish, such a great guy.

2011-06-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

#86 - Most Discussed (Today) - Music - New Zealand
#61 - Most Viewed (Today) - Music - New Zealand

Hitting the big time.

The Aztecs

2011-06-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

Album released June 10th, Digital/CD

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The album is finally up on bandcamp for download/easy listening/easy purchasing of a jewel case? when was the last time you bought a cd. make it "today"

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click here

2011-06-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

Interviewed by Under the Radar in anticipation of the release of the Aztecs, which you can read here. Also they are streaming the album, so you can listen before you buy or something? Streaming here.

Slipped Era

2011-04-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

NEW SINGLE FROM "THE AZTECS"

2011-04-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

Jon Lemmon mastering the album. He is pretty particular, as far as production goes. Also has a map of the world from the USSR on his studio wall. We worked about fifty hours on the album. I mean to be honest, a lot of the time I wasn't really doing much. They, and by they I mean Albert, Jon, Mike, Caitlyn and Sarah, had a copy of the London Review of Books from January which was a real time filler.
Used at least ten guitar boxes. Went "real well."
I would say the album is finished now and it has at least three radio friendly singles on it. Which is more than normal. I started the album in January 2010, so it is a relief that it is over. Just want to make songs like "American Boy (Featuring Kanye West)" all the time. The song promises a lot, like within the first minute Kanye states "This is the number one champion sound" also "[Estelle and Kanye West] the hottest in the world right now." Technically, song only peaked at eight or something on the charts but still, real great track. Apparently derived almost completely from Will.I.AM solo record. Probably not exactly a recipe for a great track, you know like traditionally. But slays it on that jam.

My friend Hamish Parkinson, who has been doing better than most of my friends with his projects - as in just got, well not "just" but basically "just", got named The Award for Best Production Comedy for his play Square Eye Pair . Anyway, he made this music video for my track "Bathysphere", definite brooder anthem circa 2009. He is writing here at the moment too, worth reading.

So also, heard good news from my family who seem to have done okay and everything is going real well. Sam Ellis, of my other band, Canterbury Rams, has moved to Hamilton and has a new job and seems to be going okay as well. Really miss that guy. All the time. Feel real bad because I had his drum in the garage of my flat but couldn't get to the flat post quake so its basically lost. And by basically lost, I mean real lost.

2011-04-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up real early, like six thirty early, and looked at photographs of "previously lost buildings" as opposed to "currently lost buildings" of Christchurch, the Venetian Gothic or plain faced brick. And over hearing Madeleine's, who was dressed immaculately for the morning in my american eagle flag mountain tee shirt with the white stitching, conversation to her sister, and her (Madeleines) smile and her laugh are impossible you know. Ineffable in her absolute divinity. And being in the same city as most of your friends is a good idea, the political lunches with Tobias- local sports bar "Lovelocks" becoming a "potential hotspot", and not just for the texan tuxedo betting man- later saw a texan-tuxedoed man embracing another texan-tuxedoed man on Manners Street in a scene evocative of the film/book "Brokeback Mountain" but less poignant, and definitely more enigmatic. At least Lovelocks suffices as a "top spot" to watch the NRL which is probably the most exciting of all sports to watch, even though more screens are dedicated to golf which seemingly is played competitively/professionally at all times in the globe. And by more screens there are at least fifteen television screens on the walls in the place as well as heaps of framed Jack Lovelock pictures (but confusingly, no Jack Lovelock memorabilia; as if Jack Lovelock memorabilia is rarer than you would imagine -which presumably it is, even though Lovelocks is the only sports bar in the world dedicated to the New Zealand former sporting icon/possible Brooklyn Underground suicide victim/possible dizziness near tracks victim and would be the conceivable location for a least a framed cigarette card of Lovelock from Germany currently retailing on New Zealand trading website "Trademe" for $9.00 NZD, (a cursory internet search reveals that Timaru Boys High School has most substantial remaining Lovelock memorabilia, including a full bronze and "the" oak tree gifted by the Fuhrer at Berlin Olympic Games; although apparently was given by members of the Nazi German Olympic Committee not the actual Fuhrer, nevertheless representing a substantial and questionable gift from Nazi Germany which was subsequently returned and planted in Timaru Boys High School and has subsequently been used by South Canterbury oak tree fans for cuttings, an act which clearly ignores the moral and ethical issues that the dissemination of Nazi oak trees across South Canterbury represents, considering as well that "Nazi Oaks" in Europe are being chopped down; "If I have the choice between improving the traffic situation in our town and hosting a memorial to a mass murderer, then I choose the former" states Maria Kurovska, Mayor of Jaslo, in reference to Jaslo's Nazi Oak inhibiting traffic on a major road)

Really confused by the mass appeal of golf, even though golf courses are immaculately maintained which is at least some sort of benefit and there is the occasional golf course in the middle of the desert, as in the PGA Tour when it moves away from either coast and into the "Golf Heartland", as deserts become the big ticket item of 2011. I mean obviously I like deserts as much as the next person, those evocative scenes in "Leaving Las Vegas" when they, and by they I am mostly thinking about Nicholas Cage as I am at all times, leave Las Vegas were real powerful, and you know The English Patient was all extremely evocatively desert based in the film which was probably it's major selling point as the male lead in the book looks like "some sort of burned saint", but in the film looks like a severely prostheticised so that he looks like a burnt Ralph Fiennes, not so much "saintly" just mostly similar to his makeup in the Harry Potter series except less mobile and more charred fleshy looking - as if Chris Columbus (who incidentally has a real great name but questionable as well, I guess at some point the temptation in the Columbus family grows too much, probably every third generation) prior to casting was watching the English Patient and solved his casting issue right there and then, but who knew the book "The English Patient" would be so po-mo about the desert? The desert becomes some sort of ocean they traverse across, swimming in sand. Ondjate is so zany. It sort of works I guess. Not so sure that Golf should really be played in the desert, especially considering that they are diverting rivers to water grass in the desert that is ostensibly only for retired wealthy people to play a game that is only marginally interesting; interesting from a well maintained grass and well groomed cream slack wearing, argyle jumper wearing, expensive cologne wearing male identity projected onto the landscape as a sort of pinnacle of masculinity sort of way. Currently I feel casual a lot of the time, casual shorts, Kevin Kline's south of France/nice retreat outfit in "French Kiss" (inescapably mediocre, one star); and I enjoy autochromes, and I enjoyed Xerxes and Beethovens Piano Concerto in Cm, and I am really thinking of Trapped in Paradise as the next Nicolas Cage movie night movie- even though I feel anxious about it, and I felt anxious about Birdy which was only sort of justified.

Niccy Nic Cage plays Al, the best friend you always wished you had, in this evocative and Peter Gabriel scored (?!) - and by Peter Gabriel scored we are talking Gabriel 3 and 4, not So which is a shame but you know if you are all over the Fairlight synthesiser you are going to be falling in love with this 1984 Alan Parker film, who you know, two years before had directed Pink Floyd's "The Wall" which was ruling, and probably better than Birdy, well definitely featuring more animation and if animation is the arbiter of what is great in a film then The Wall is better, but then so is Balto and Anastasia and both those films were crappy and thats not just a subjective opinion that is plain fact. Anyway Cage is best friend to Matthew Modine who was a contender in the eighties, sort of like Josh Hartnett, Modine now currently slumming it on prime time in "Weeds" and in Transporter II,Harnett, now currently weeping somewhere and thinking long and hard about pearl harbor and what "could have been"; in saying that Cage has his periods of being down and out- that Witch Mountain thing - inexpressibly bleak. Modine is a war veteran who believes he is a bird or something, Cage is going to be all supportive. Film got the Grand Jury prize at Cannes, which is more than Kick Ass which was probably not as bad as some Cage, but certainly could have had either Modine or Hartnett in a title role in the film, it was you know "not very good"

Where as I know Trapped in Paradise is going to be unrelentingly awful, like French Kiss. At least Majed maintains his unbelievable level of sensitivity and emotion in his Facebook messages to me, concise but so poignant. He wrote "I miss that life with you" on a photograph of my mother, but he is probably riding horses now in the Arabian desert. Because most Saudis that I have met have a real great relationship with the desert.

Rose Quartz Christchurch Fundraiser

2011-03-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Bro's Shea and Richard at Rose Quartz are doing their bit for disaster struck hometown CHCH NZ, with a compilation featuring Thurston Moore, Grouper, Sun Araw and Mount Pleasant among others. Download and donate to the New Zealand Red Cross please. Thanks everyone for yr messages of support btw.

via Rose Quartz

2011-03-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

really sorry, but THE AZTECS release has been protracted again. tentative release date : May 2011

2011-02-24T02:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to go home to my family home smashed up, broken up like that graham greene short story or something. The bike ride home across the city was bleak enough; it seemed all the city I could see was in confusion, upended in its crammed streets with sewage spilling out through ducts across streets that had in places been torn like paper. Not everywhere of course. Outside many homes people stood or squatted in confusion. Some were packing their cars and planning their immediate departures, some seemed blasé, many were weeping. How can you account for all the people? The man smoking a cigarette as he walked into a gas leak, the child screaming for his mother outside Linwood park. People weeping and embracing and confused and scared and all the while black smoke poured in the distance from the city. And there in the city, the office workers with blood pouring over their office worker shirts and the curious lines of people in single file running out of the square seemed so awful and terrible and you know beautiful, because it was both terrible and beautiful of course. That could have been the worst thing about it for me, as I ran up into the Regent building I felt both acutely aware of the situation and divorced from it. Lit in the gloom the building had its last performance, cinema four's triumphant ceiling collapse- it's own vile display in splintered wood and masonry and insulation and plastic flapping and intricate and ugly and definite. And as I ran back up to the projection room for the first aid kit, I didn't really think of anything other than the horrible fear. And wanting to weep. The man's body felt so damp you know, the smell of the blood was so unfamiliar and he was in so much pain but he could stand and we lifted him out and out. And it was terrible and so bleak and awful, and you didn't know if the building would fall or anything but we had to try get the people in the elevator out. Even though we couldn't and the phone network was down and they didn't have a torch even though we work in a cinema and it is like essential or something. And I am lying in bed and it keeps running through my head, buildings collapsed, the terrified man running down and telling us that a man was trapped in cinema four and he looked so paralysed by fear and everything was so confused. And getting to my parents house to find it ruined on the inside, but it being fine because as I dropped the bike my parents were there and we were all together and embracing and safe and warm. And of course, I had the guys blood all over me but he looked like he made it and the people got out of the elevator or something, thats what Sandra said. She said go home, and I did. Past the Cathedral and its dead bodies, past the First Trinity Congregation Church with its failed bracing and its lying all over Manchester street, past the Christchurch Club collapsed in on itself, past the people and the fear and the broken streets and home. And I didn't want to see my home ruined and I didn't want to see so many things.

please help by giving what you can to the red cross

black, victorian

2011-02-18T21:22:00.001-08:00

I chose to make the most of the slipped era, the long straightening silence between us formed at distance and indices at separate points of the arcade. Which is understandable of course, in your minor perfection in that one corner of the hall lined with it's patterned floortiles and bicycles. And I should have been embarrassed in that discomfort, but it has become so regular. An unending series of brief non encounters and mistimed glances. It is the same when I walk past the house on Madras street, sitting ungainly on its corner. Unprepossessing and painted brightly like Victorian houses were. I mean this was always the aspect denied by such house owners, how vile the aesthetics of that age were. Brocaded in chintz and emancipated by a room impossible to move in; crystal glass set, walnut side table dressed in lace cover, patterned carpet, patterned wallpaper and patterned clothing. And of course, I have grown to despise so much. And I had nothing but the best intentions, and you had your best lace on as you do. Queen Victoria in mourning.

The Queen turned mourning into the chief concern of her existence the next several years. The Prince's rooms in their residences were maintained exactly as he had them when he was alive. Her servants were instructed to bring hot water into his dressing room every day as they had formerly done for his morning shave. She had statues made of him, displayed mementos of his around the royal palaces, and she spent most of her time secluded in Windsor Castle or in Balmoral up in Scotland, where she had formerly spent so many happy times with her husband.

2011-02-17T05:05:00.001-08:00

Oh yeah, there is a new single, "Safer", on "Bandcamp" from the new Mount Pleasant album "The Aztecs" which you can buy for $1 USD, this is aside from the other single that you can buy for $1 USD, "Florida"; like two people did buy that single. Two really great people. I sent a pretty like genuine thanks letter to the first person, but she hasn't replied yet.

Album will be completely released, for purchase on:

March 16th.

And I am really proud of the new album, and even my sister Sophie who has been like casually dismissive of my music sort of likes the new songs. So I am definitely appealing to that post teen girl market. The best market.

2011-02-09T13:14:00.001-08:00

new single at www.mountpleasant.bandcamp.com

I spent six months on this single. jesus.

2011-01-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

listened to this on repeat at work, the electric counterpoint as opposed to the different trains which is a bit too much to take in. its made for pat metheny who did some like layered recordings of twelve guitars and two basses for this composition. really great.

Mount Pleasant- The Cold War

2011-01-03T02:40:00.000-08:00

Discarded spectral pop for the new year. August-January 2011. No songs really reference the Cold War as such, it's not a "big deal".

Download

MX: year in review/self takes

2010-12-31T15:36:00.000-08:00

Just chilling with the cat in New Brighton, real great bedroom in the way it overlooked a rundown shed and I could listen to like the hum of the computer in the living room at all times. Don't really know what the cat's name was. Also like incredible never ending supply of peaches in about February which I ate with everything. Roast vegetables and peach. I liked it; Hilary, Amy, and Sam didn't.

Keeping it real at Galway Avenue. Real nice curtains.

Bleak Winter at Galway. I didn't really heat my room. Would sometimes sleep in my clothes to stay warm like in Russia. When I say sometimes, I mean most times.

Just loving my job all the time.

Chilling in Auckland in possum merino jumper. Best purchase of the year. Sort of confused why everyone doesn't invest in one, like really luxurious feeling. Inescapably luxurious.

max, great hair, great teeth.

post traumatic cup of coffee.

new house, new cat. lime walls, big mistake landlord.

another sweet self take.

floor fillers

2010-12-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

Hard hitters from 2010, slugging it out real hard. Also just like individual tracks not a mix which is better because you can just skip the chris brown if you have an issue with him. It's tough though because like that "Yeah 3 X" song is pretty unbelievable. Also like really hate the new Taylor Swift album btw, as far as disappointments go its like the rest of Liz Phair's/Courtney Love's career. I am still sort of optimistic that she can make it as a Kelly Clarkson singles player but not as an album artist like that ke$ha album, which was suprisingly better than than expected but its going to be a huge sophomore slump on that one and design wise is easily the ugliest pop album of the year, excluding the R O K K S T A R Taio Cruz album cover. Also good is the album "Cerulean" by Baths, out on Anticon, and this Night Slugs Comp which I could have put heaps of tracks on but put the Jacques Greene.

D O W N L O A D

mount pleasant- too television

2010-12-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Rex Gibson, from Melbourne, made a video for this song off "The Flood", from some old VHS footage or something. Its hazy and seems like childhood I guess which was basically what I was going for in this song. I don't really know Rex, but he has made a feature length film and I have a song on the soundtrack which is exciting, right?

BEST OF 2010

2010-12-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

B E S T A L B U M

John Roberts "Glass Eights" [Dial]

Sounds crystalline.

B E S T S I N G L E

Taio Cruz "Dynamite" [Universal/Island]

He speaks with a really polite accent as well so covers all his bases. I don't think he really wants to be a pop star, more like a business man but as long as he keeps the hooks coming, I don't really care.

B E S T S L O W B U R N E R

Enrique Iglesias feat . Nicole Scherzinger "Heartbeat" [Universal]

Such a killer jam, really breaks up the monotony of commercial pop radio. It's not as great as the German band H U R T S (capitalisation mine, but sort of necessary) breakthrough single "Wonderful Life", but I don't know whether me liking that is solely for the super serious way in which they are expressing their feelings or their really sharp european aesthetic. They are so morose in that video which is great, they also have a completely sincere Christmas single on their website, the main line is "All I want for Christmas is New Years Day" which, I am not going to lie, is a really crap sentiment. Anyway, Enrique had a pretty great year with that kind of shoddy hit with Pitbull, so the more sedate collab with the Pussycat Doll's Scherzinger, who sort of puts on an English accent (?) and while this song edges towards blisser anthem, it never really swells enough.

B E S T W I S T F U L E V O C A T I O N / C Y N I C A L M A N I P U L A T I O N O F A D O L E S C E N T L IF E B Y A N O L D ER R E C O R D I N G A R T I S T

Katy Perry "Teenage Dream" [EMI]

I have been waiting my entire life for this single. That build up before the chorus (!). I mean it lacks the artlessness of "Firework" which really should be my pick for her single of the year, because it is "amazing"; but my love of that single is based solely on that "boom boom boom shining brighter than the moon oh oh." And aside from the way that the video for "Teenage Dream" sort of just looks like a jeans advertisement and the song isn't as hard hitting as it is in my head after listening to it. Doesn't do anything to lessen my love for the song, also her topknot in the video? Pretty dreamy. Even though they are literally everywhere like what like that short cropped at the back haircut and then permed out on the top was for women in 1992. Still a killer signature look. Album is really not that great though, I thought Katy Perry had matured as a songwriter and had turned out some Aguilera "Beautiful" like sentiments, but turns out she leaves the "I Kissed A Girl" novelty pap for the filler, including a song called Peacock where she wants to see yr peacock and you shouldn't be a chicken just let that peacock out.

M O S T P L A Y E D S O N G

A.R. Kane "A Love From Out of Space" [Rough Trade]

Killer jam from like 1989, sounds like what music will sound like in five years. The two guys from A.R. Kane are now corporates, but its not a deal breaker. Especially with songs this good.

B E S T A L B U M B Y A B E V I G O D A

Abe Vigoda "Crush" [Bella Union]

(Sort of implies that I am a real big Abe Vigoda fan, where really this should be a best Bruce Springsteen rerelease because that Darkness on the Edge of Town Boxset was pretty impressive but like Darkness is a a great album and it was difficult revisting all these sort of happier tracks. N.B Taylor Swift's album, real disappointing apart from that December ballad and the first single "Mine" which was the real deal). This latest album from Los Angeles Latinos Abe Vigoda is real great, sounds like what Blink 182's career projectory should have run like: great first album, killer second, fourth incorporating broader eighties influences into this dense post tropical punk thing. Lead guy has developed this croon which is you know, real great. I think it could have been recorded by another band and some of the hooks could have been more apparent, but I don't know why this album didn't get more popularity?

B E S T O L D E E N G L I S H S P E L L I N G B E E A L B U M

Rangers "Suburban Tours" [OESB]

Liked this album, but not as much as I like Usher "DJ's Got Us Falling in Love", which is symptomatic of how American rnb has clutched onto european club music as its salvation but also just like a serious floor filler. I don't even know what "dance dance dance like its the last night of yr life" actually means, but I hope to find out.

B E S T O U T K A S T R E L A T E D A N D R O I D T HE M E D A L B U M

(Video Embeding Not Allowed, whats the deal Janelle? If it's good enough for Enrique)

Janelle Monae "Tightrope"

Everyone loves this song. Generally appeals to mass likeability are fraught with issues (see the career of Train/Maroon 5), but this is just all up undeniable in the same way that Cee Lo's "Fuck You" isn't, in that he sort of sounds like Sugar Ray if Sugar Ray had listened to more Stax records. I think I would have liked her album "The Arch Android" more if it had not been a concept album, like that Kanye album. It just ends up being unnecessary and skippable, like that Nicky Minaj faux english accented intro to the Kanye album and I mean Nicky Minaj does the best thing on that album in her verse on the song "Monster" and aside from that has a real killer track about heroin on her album in which she duets with Kanye and its pretty sick, "Blazin' " (Great title right?). As an album, The Arch Android is also like pretty dense and overlong, and I don't know whether that really is the best even though its like reflection of the death of the album. Whatever.

B E S T C O N C E R T

Luxury with Fabulous Diamonds

Two beautiful and elegant Arthur Russell songs by HSP king pin Shannon with Fraser on hypnogogic synth. Slayed Fabulous Diamonds, who were still pretty good.

B E S T F I L M

"White Material", sort of kept lingering like Madame Bovary. And you know, being a projectionist means you see a lot of films. The best film on general release was either "Dear John" (which was great, apart from the war scene which was like really bad made for television but obviously the budget was pretty low, but Tatum and Seyfried ( the pairing that Heigl and Duhamel should have been, and really, let's not lie, Gyllenthall and Hathaway) completely had that hallmark movie acting thing down like the film was almost as straight up as "Eight Below", like everything was tied up and it all worked really succinctly in a way that love stories really should and if it is judged solely on its merits in that the film went the distance, sort of makes me rejustify my affection for "Every Jack Has A Jill" which no-one agreed with me on) or "Animal Kingdom" which was also pretty great, real good use of Air Supply "I'm All Outta Love" with brooding synth underset.

B E S T T EL E V I S I ON

Mad Men [AMC]

Richard Marks was all like, "nah its sort of overrated" but he is wrong. About so many things.

B E S T G I RL F RI E N D

Ella, only lasted one month and a bit of fighting but she still came out on top. Probably her rap ability.

B E S T SI BL ING

Andrew, on the strength of his fourteen (and counting) photo albums from his European trip with the best flatmate ever Richard Flett. Sophie definitely earned more money than both of us, but clearly I am going to have a first quarter boost with international sales of the Aztecs.

B E S T S H O E P U R C H A S E

I would go with my soft black leather lace ups, but they were like difficult in the shop as I tried them on and they were fine but in reality I should have got a smaller size. Its a really difficult task buying shoes sometimes, not as hard as going for shirts but I mean with shirts you have a pretty fixed idea in your head of what you want (button down, no detailing, good fit, no synthetics). And I have basically destroyed the lac ups, two holes formed in the inadequate sole after about nine months of walking in them, although I did take them up a mountain which might not have been the best idea but was certainly "Best Road Trip" of the year, plus really great cheese up there. I thought when I bought my Clarks Desert Shoes that they would be the best purchase, but in a beige its a tough shoe to pull off in anything other than blue denim. Also, in other sadnesses of the year I lost my favourite pair of shoes and you can't really replace a favourite pair. All up, the year in shoes has been pretty abysmal. Even my Hush Puppy Desert shoes have seen better days, and I barely ever wear those. Real grim times for shoes in 2010.

B E S T W E E K E N D

Shea, Richard, Jon + Lori Watt/Salem Live on Youtube

mount pleasant - christmas single 2010

2010-12-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

Split Christmas Single for 2010 with my pal Tobias.

Download

Polish Women

2010-12-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

NEWS

Spent the day listening to that Glenn Gould interview disc as part of the Glen Gould box set that I am slowly working through, it really takes months to get through and much longer to understand, I mean obviously the works are enjoyable first time, but when he starts being all negative towards his earlier more pianistic works in that interview you are all like "what?!" and he even does like explanatory piano figures for the interviewer who laughs at all Gould's jokes, and Gould had this extremely mannered and proper buttoned down yale accent just by the way. Which is okay, I mean Gould was a pretty interesting guy. Hated performing live, like explicitly says that he dislikes anyone that regularly attends concert performances. But yeah I am definitely really appreciative of that box set. I don't know what I will finish first: Roberto Bolano's 2666, the Glenn Gould or The Aztecs. Of the three, at least I made some more progress today on The Aztecs, real bliss pop evocation shuttered onto the Phil Collins sample for the redux of "Florida". Probably doesn't work on the album, anymore than Toby's "Blitzkreig Summer" does. Its not a real big deal though.

Anyway, so I was looking at the internet for Polish women, and found this amazing photograph. Real great right? Like it stopped me completely, real nonchalant Polish fashion. It was from an article about Polish female/women composers

During the course of my research I also found that recordings of the music of Polish women composers are rare and written information in English practically non-existent. Unless some changes take place their music will suffer the same neglect and over-sight in the annals of western culture that has plagued Polish women composers in their native country for years.

The article is filled with useful information about women and classical music in Poland, if you are into that sort of thing. Mostly I was into the aesthetic of the women, but the article seems to suggest classical composition has sort of ended in Poland since the seventies? Who knows?

Like so much is great in this photo I can't really believe it.

Mount Pleasure - Double Blissers

2010-12-10T23:36:00.000-08:00

New Mount Pleasure, but not really club banging or anything. Real lazy summer evocation.

Download

2010-12-09T15:19:00.000-08:00

the aztecs is getting ornate.

clare wieck

2010-12-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Dream pop from real christchurch outsider music, she has like eleven fans on facebook. I mean this is a pretty great jam with a bridge and everything (?!), if you have facebook you should probably click like on her page. Clare Wieck is a really uncontrived person, and really doesn't want to perform live which is a shame because she also has "the voice" and "the hooks", you know? Like it sounds really controlled and elated, but this song doesn't really seem to be trying to be anything but likeable with it's little highlife licks and driving toms, and background dream vox. Like when a song reminds you of like fleetwood mac backing vocals - like tango in the night era (the best era?), the magnetic fields (basically this song sounds like that world love song on 69 love songs which is okay as far as references go even though when I asked her about it she didn't really know the magnetic fields and I was like we should probably hang out and then she said we should go to some music networking thing in the city to build music networking skills and it was sort of intimidating- not that she is personally intimidating just the conference) and cocteau twins (but like blissed out cocteau twins); it basically slays completely. And also, she is a really lovely person which comes through in the song I guess and her cupcake concept which I think was Johnny Hall's concept, which for me is sort of questionable with that sort of cutesy cupcake culture but its no deal breaker. She has this german boyfriend as well who seems pretty nice, like real gentle and sentimental maybe? We danced to prince in the summer at her sister's wedding and it was nothing but the best times.

2010-12-04T12:05:00.000-08:00

Mount Pleasure, Teen Chills MMX

2010-11-28T12:34:00.001-08:00

new three track single maxing it out to taio cruz and teen bliss pop, mount pleasure as club filler unlikely and unable. promoting definite trance anthem as the only projected future, glacial synths and gurgled vox slugging it out like sonny liston/cassius clay. also features giles on saxophone so three track is laying every card on the table.

Download

2010-11-23T01:10:00.000-08:00

bream slaying it here with the most delicate of touches, impeccable gainsboro suit and casual seventies balding to complete the evocative mood of bach's fugues transcribed for classical guitar.

2010-11-22T22:32:00.001-08:00

sonny liston. breaking my heart every time.

2010-11-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

WILLIAM'S BIRTHDAY PARTY

1. SAFER (BROODER MIX)
2. FLORIDA
3. AN INTERNATIONAL
4. LIKE HIBYA STATION
5. SLACKER AMIGA
6. LUXURY CUT
7. POST GENESIS PARTY

2010-11-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

IX

susie came round
and is vulgar and loud and coarse
and wept in front of my parents
i was asleep though,
because the book about paris in the wartime
has too much written about duff cooper,
first viscount of noritch
and not enough about simone de beauvoir.
apparently duff cooper has a much more interesting life than the book is willing to explore
"they were the flowers, but i was the tree"
explained his wife to the children about all the viscount's extramarital affairs
and the deaths of all of his closest friends
and his medals.
susie is losing her children.

2010-11-09T00:10:00.001-08:00

IV

when I was walking home I walked into a prostitute
I didn't actually walk into her
but she loomed close and her eyes looked so diminutive
as if they weren't really there.
she was extremely close and it was quiet.
I was licking my lips.
which was "unfortunate";
implying firstly that I was interesting in pursuing her in some sort of business deal involving sexual intercourse
(!)
secondly that I was depraved
(!)
thirdly that I had a dirty mouth.
(!)
I started humming to myself after I walked past her.
that two seconds seemed to go on FOREVER

mount pleasant secrets

2010-10-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

Playing a show with "Secrets" at Bar Antonio this Wednesday if you are in the city? It is all on.

2010-10-26T12:39:00.001-07:00

precious taft

2010-10-22T04:18:00.001-07:00

Mount Pleasant- Slppd Era

2010-10-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

galway ended all amicably, but shareen said she really hated this video. she said she got bored I guess, but she does have a copy of a mt pleasant cassette in her car so she makes up for it. and I have like I think every single one of richard's black teeshirts. this is a new single from my new album of religious songs about the aztecs and religion. also about nostalgia. hoping to release it before christmas.

desktop clearout

2010-10-07T13:13:00.001-07:00

maya lin carmen sandiago aesthetic
portland post modern temple graves
phillips family male reunion
slapstick modern

film festival

2010-10-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

Curating a film festival takes only about a day. I attempted to go for a miami vice modernist graphic treatment, but utilising both fascist fonts and the most corporate typeface I could for the title. It is a free festival and if you like architectural films, its some sort of dream. If you don't like architectural films projected onto interior walls or suburbs, the film festival will be unsuitable.

ghetto harmonising

2010-09-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

2010-09-20T06:17:00.001-07:00

jason priestly, 15/09/10

2010-09-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

played four songs.

bliss cutters

2010-09-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

jason priestly, live performance

2010-09-14T05:21:00.000-07:00

"teen blisser's richard marx and jonathan phillips blank gazing is more telling than anything else; all shimmering guitar lines evoking beverly hills cop II soundtrack and suburban mall kultur. briefly curated house show and byob lifestyle block, galway avenue becomes the only vital location for outsider gesturing this spring season. marks' solo work as "with moths" reveals a muted grunge spirit, slimed out in spectral delay and moevot cues, which is denied in the breeze fm meets lo wave project with mount pleasant's jonathan phillips. these bros know how to have fun, but mostly it seems sort of tired and in a "getting too old for this sort of shit" way, like huey lewis and the news."

funeral jam for helen shapiro

2010-09-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

2010-09-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

2010-08-30T02:48:00.001-07:00

diamond eyes

2010-08-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

Bar Antonio Friday 27/08, went well. I played two new songs and went for a fifties aesthetic, sans haircut after cutting it really short and unappealing.

Swimming (With Moths cover)

Waking/Waiting

Hot Rod

Noise

Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen)

Summer Cut (abortive attempt)

Infinite Aztec

I'm On Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Otherwise, everything is going well. Got mentioned on this website, this website and this website. Also;

Making some bands as well, with Richard, Dave and Hamish, and listening to this A.R. Kane band a lot, but really wanting to sound a lot more like this . In other news, Darian and Lucy have written some careful music , found out about this pop band KLF which was definitely worth the extra long wiki entry here and here . Taylor Swift is releasing a new album, and Bruce Springsteen has some sort of super lavish six disc Darkness on the Edge of Town release upcoming.

chillers anonymous, friday 27th august mmx

2010-08-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

diamond tinted kevin costner ritual from "local kid made good" j. phillips as mount pleasant, and flashy teen beat from r. marks as "with moths" . plus drinks are like really cheap so everyone is winning, but mostly bar antonio. music finishes before ten.

later skater

2010-08-19T04:47:00.000-07:00

PHOTO FROM TOBIAS'S FACEBOOK

J. Phillips (left) T. Brockie (right)

PHOTO BY RICHARD FLETT

Played a show in my bedroom with Tobias. Tobias played guitar through a practice amp/pedals, and I played drums as best as I could, which suffice to say isn't that great, especially when the drum kit is all half falling off itself and all. My room is sort of large enough for shows. Tobias had his back to the audience throughout the five songs we played and I really can't play the drums. Tried to do this visual effect with lighting and everyone came into the room and it was pitch black and then we started the show and then I turned on the lamp but it only sort of worked.

Previously, I played a show with my friend Sam Ellis, who looks like:

in all colours that aren't featuring in richard's photographs of the show. Anyway, we played as Canterbury Rams and it went really well, even did a springsteen cover to show the audience where we stood on the springsteen v. other music dichotomy. Sam has a Canterbury Rams jacket, its red and has black lettering. I bought a Mount Pleasant jacket for two dollars, which was the greatest deal of my life. So now we are basically set to become the best band possible.

Oh and mount pleasant/with moths definitely playing another show at antonios in the city. Hopefully its going to be just like that photograph.

2010-08-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

slayers

2010-08-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

Both these videos were made by the inimitable Joseph Harper who does much more than most people at this location. In person, Joseph Harper exudes a sort of effortless charm and charisma, he keeps saying how people mistake him for Cary Grant. The resemblance is very apparent.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FEDORA LOUNGE

Incidentally, Cary Grant slays it everytime.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SOPHIA JENNY

rulin

2010-08-04T05:01:00.001-07:00

antonioni

2010-08-03T04:51:00.000-07:00

WITH MOTHS

MOUNT PLEASANT TECHNICAL ISSUE NO 1

MOUNT PLEASANT

BAR ANTONIO 23/07/10

PHOTOS COURTESY OF RICHARD FLETT

blue era

2010-07-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

photo by SHEA BERMINGHAM

photo by RICHARD FLETT

The show at Bar Antonio went well. The bar is the smallest bar in the city, comfortably sitting six people. Twenty people fit in the bar and there were about fifteen outside, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Richard played a really good show, and mine sometimes went really well. Local saxophonist/physicist Giles said the good outweighed the bad which is basically the ideal ratio. Phidias. Golden rectangles. How two people is probably the right number for a show. I tried to play the complete "Dissolute/Dissolute" album which really went pretty well considering how incomplete the attempt was live. It took the promise of the title track and really realised it, which was something. The photos don't really relate to this post, but they have a pretty good general aesthetic and purity of form.

2010-07-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

With Moths- Sleep

2010-07-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

Richard Marks is the camper on the left. I made a music video for him. Sure I mean the references aren't the most oblique, but I was under a short timeline. So basically it was like use Vertigo and extend it out with some classic Japanese ghost movie footage. Richard Marks records using the same equipment that I do, but his work seems more measured and appropriate.

for more with moths

2010-07-16T05:54:00.001-07:00

2010-07-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

Played a show with these bleached rockers in Auckland. It went really well for them.

Back Back Row

Sweet rocker's motorbike.

Back Row (with performance ratings)

Jonathan Phillips (Mount Pleasant) 2/5, Shea Bermingham (DJ Beverly Chills/Rose Quartz) 4/5 , Joseph E. Harper (Comedian) 5/5 , Richard Marks (With Moths) 5/5

Front Row (with performance ratings)

Darian Woods (Wet Wings) Lucy Bottingshire (Wet Wings) 4/5

1/7/10

2010-07-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

so much existential dread.

microsoft dream

2010-07-05T15:52:00.001-07:00

2010-07-05T15:15:00.001-07:00

2010-07-05T04:14:00.000-07:00

live footage

2010-07-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

Mount Pleasant - Street Heat (Live) from Johnny Hall on Vimeo.

2010-06-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

Monday 29/06/10

Played a show. It went really well.

2010-06-22T04:25:00.000-07:00

"street punk aesthetic coalesces into ambivalent west african jams. bring a plate."