Lost & Found

Black City Lights - now defunct - were one of the best, yet mostly unheralded, New Zealand bands/duos of the past decade. They've uncovered some lost recordings and uploaded them on Bandcamp. Lost & Found is a collection of early demos, unreleased material, instrumentals, and remixes. Also note that the Another Life album and the Parallels EP are still name your price downloads on the same platform. I’m going to write a little bit more about BCL in the near future. Stay tuned.

Gig Review: The Red Bull Sound Select presents: Madcap at Meow, Wellington, Sunday 1 March 2015

It takes a special type of party creature to attend Sunday night gigs. Especially parties that start at 3pm and finish long after dark, or well into the wee small hours. Luckily for Meow Bar and Red Bull, many such creatures exist on Wellington's live circuit, and last Sunday's Red Bull Sound Select showcase curated by Madcap was, by any measure, a success.

But for yours truly, on account of being a bit soft, the night was a little more abbreviated than it perhaps was for many others in attendance. I caught the full sets of Black City Lights and Race Banyon only, missing half of Eastern Bloc, all of Kamandi, and most notably, the entire set featuring overseas headliner Azizi Gibson. But it was Black City Lights and Race Banyon that drew me there in the first place, I timed it to perfection, and those two mid-evening sets were well worth the price of admission alone. I just want to write a little bit about that portion of the night (with apologies to anyone seeking a full review) ...

Black City Lights have long been firm favourites and this was the first occasion I'd managed to catch the act since Calum Robb and Julia Catherine Parr added drummer Caleb Clayton to transform from duo to trio. I was also conscious that this was just as likely to be my last chance to catch them live after last month's revelation that they'll soon be going their separate ways. With just two more live performances scheduled - one at Wellington's Homegrown this weekend and a farewell gig at San Fran later in the month - there was a sense of poignancy throughout the half dozen or so songs performed. It was something Parr noted herself on a couple of occasions. “Don't leave us" was the response of one keen fan.

 

Not that Black City Lights need a reason or any encouragement to go all dark and dramatic on us - that's long been the way Robb and Parr have rolled; it's a key element to their sound, and it's one of the reasons their loyal fanbase love them so much. Dark, heavy, and slightly foreboding is more or less BCL 101.

I’d like to have enjoyed a longer set and this one felt far too short but we got perennial favourite 'Give It Up', and the pretty special new(ish) Stone Roses cover 'I Wanna Be Adored' near the end. By which time Parr was preaching to the already fully converted.

If Black City Lights are sadly about to be consigned to the past, then the ever-improving wunderkind Race Banyon (aka Eddie Johnston) is very much one for the future. The now 18-year-old Johnston keeps getting better with every outing and on Sunday night we were treated to a solid 40-minute-plus set that immediately enthralled all in attendance with its room-filling layers of lush warm housey vibes.

Race Banyon continues to draw live inspiration from material off of the ‘Whatever Dreams Are Made Of’ EP but the nonchalant way he mixes things up as he goes about his work at least hints at a level of spontaneity not normally associated with live performance. My gig-going companion perhaps summed it up best when she suggested it was a little bit like intruding into his private world; that we were like guests in his room, and he was just digging the vibe regardless of what anybody else thought. But everybody loved it, and a sublime take on Drake’s ‘Hold On We’re Going Home’ was a fitting way to conclude a captivating set.

There is a very real sense that the sky’s the limit for this prodigious talent; whether he reaches for it while wearing his Race Banyon hat, or whether it comes under the guise of his other alter ego Lontalius. Whether it’s as a bedroom production whizz, or as a frontline performer in his own right, Eddie Johnston has it all in front of him.

And so I consumed ludicrous quantities of the sponsor’s product throughout the evening yet never quite felt energised enough to stay on  for the Sunday session climax … but that’s not to say I didn’t leave the venue with my glass more than half full, happy that I’d seen exactly who I went there to see. Another time then, Azizi Gibson, Kamandi, and co …

Reasons To Be Cheerful parts 1, 2, and 3 ...

Well it’s been a crazy couple of weeks here at the everythingsgonegreen mansion, and it has only reinforced my belief that nothing brings a family closer together than serious illness. Suffice to say I’ve seen more of Wellington hospital over the past week or so than I have over the previous three decades put together. In short, the blog has been a bit quiet while real life kicked in once again.

That’s not to say I haven’t been thinking about music, and I’ve certainly been listening to more than my fair share. They say every cloud has a silver lining, and if four nights in hospital was genuine torture for the teenager concerned (and it was!), it did give her old man the chance to “road test” some new music while pondering the fragility of life during those daily 100km-return trips to and fro.

So, new albums from the likes of Sun Kil Moon, Warpaint, and Dum Dum Girls will be reviewed here over the next couple of weeks. But in the meantime I wanted to make local (Wellington-based) readers aware of a couple of upcoming gigs featuring bands with a close association to the blog – three of Wellington’s finest ... all playing at Meow on Edward Street:

First up, this Friday March 21, we have blog favourites Black City Lights alongside Pikachunes, Beat Mob, and Groeni. The flyer says Black City Lights will play at 11pm, but get along for the support bands – I can highly recommend Pikachunes in particular – and then let Beat Mob take you further into the weekend after Black City Lights has done its always impressive darkwave thing. All for $10.

Then on Saturday 29 March we have hard-working local funkateers Bikini Roulette, a band that produced one of this blog’s favourite albums of 2013 (Erotik Fiction) with its heady mix of funk and old fashioned dirty blues. Lady Parts provide support – as it so often does – and although the name Steezin’ Hawkings is new one for yours truly, it’s certainly an intriguing name, and at just $5 on the door, what could possibly go wrong?

 And finally, at the same venue, on Friday 11 April, we have the much anticipated return of Vorn, whose 2011 album Down For It did so much to restore my faith in local music with its spellbinding mix of quirky pop and humour. This is an album release party for More Songs About Girls And The Apocalypse (is it really album number seven?) and support this time will come from Warwick and the Wankers, and NEVERWOZ. Just $10 on the door.

So that’s three reasons to be cheerful; three potentially great gigs in the next three weeks, all at Meow, ten acts for a combined total outlay of just $25 ... quality.
 

Oh, and since we’re counting reasons to be cheerful, I’ll add reasons four and five right here and now; reason number four is that said teenager’s illness was finally diagnosed and she is now out of any immediate danger and is happy to be back home – massive love and respect to her for her bravery and maturity in the face of considerable adversity. While reason number five is simply that this blogpost is post number 200 for everythingsgonegreen ... a small milestone that even your humble blogger never expected to reach.

Gig Review: Black City Lights at Mighty Mighty, Wellington, 24 January 2014

Last week, the owners of Mighty Mighty, one of Wellington’s best loved music venues, announced that the bar will close in May of 2014. From all accounts it is simply a case that this is “the right time” to move on, the bar having already outlived the use-by date initially assigned to it.

Having just blogged about the closure of another Cuba Street stalwart, the San Francisco Bath House, it was with some sense of poignancy that I found myself up at Mighty Mighty last Friday night. I was there for Black City Lights, a Wellington electropop duo, who shared the bill with Kariiiba and the late night DJ antics of Shocking Pinks.

I managed to catch up with one half of the duo, Calum Robb, prior to the gig, and he seemed like a genuinely humble guy – professing a love for the music of Kate Bush, and of the Eighties synthpop that so heavily informs the music of Black City Lights, before confessing to being a little taken aback that someone had paid $50 on Bandcamp for their album, Another Life, when it’s just as often available on “pay what you like” terms. And I’m pretty sure he agreed with my contention that the duo is bigger in the USA than it is in its “home town”, but we didn’t really go into it too much.

Opening act Kariiiba, entertained the steadily growing crowd with a heady hybrid of warped R&B cut-ups/sampling and innovative vocal FX (including his own). This was textured genre-less tech-noise, some of it quite beautiful noise, yet it was only when he’d warmed to his task sufficiently to start rapping that we saw hints of what direction his unique approach to music production might take in the future. One to keep an eye on.

Naturally enough Black City Lights stuck largely to the tried and trusted material from Another Life, album highlight ‘Give It Up’ arriving three songs in and proving especially popular with the mostly youthful dancefloor throng – it provided one of the most unlikely hands-in-the-air dancefloor singalong moments I’ve seen for some time, as it happens.

There was a pretty decent mid-set cover of the Delfonics’ classic ‘Ready Or Not, Here I Come’ (a track perhaps best known for its Fugees or dub appropriations) and a couple of other new songs were given outings, but mostly this was about giving a clearly revved-up crowd exactly what they expected.

Vocalist Julia Parr has a great sense of drama, not so much in terms of stage presence, which does have a quality all of its own, but more so in terms of vocal nuance and an ability to bring out the best from Robb’s dark electronic musings. This was one part Kate Bush – one part John Foxx-era Ultravox, and a whole lot more besides. There is something distinctly gothic about the music of Black City Lights, and that inherent sense of melodrama translates well in relatively intimate live settings like upstairs at Mighty Mighty.

The set was rather short, and the brief encore, if I can call it that, felt a little forced and obligatory. But it was a sticky night and extremely hot up on that small stage. Parr seemed to be struggling just a little over the final stages, and it’s fair to say I was a little worse for wear myself.

I’d spent the best part of four hours prior to the gig drinking alone, just killing time – trying to convince myself that it was great to have some time alone to kill – so by the time the BCL segment of the night was over, I started to contemplate the 50km-plus journey home.  I didn’t stick around for the Shocking Pinks DJ set ... effectively the international headliner portion of the night. Had it been a Saturday night I may have been up for it, but I already felt sufficiently blown away by what I’d just seen, and I left the soon-to-RIP Mighty Mighty feeling pretty lucky to have experienced what amounts to the best live – and original – darkwave-pop New Zealand has to offer at the moment.

And who could ask for much more than that?

Black City Lights play Meow, Wellington, on Waitangi Day, 9pm (doors open 6pm) in support of Daedelus ...

Album Review: Black City Lights - Another Life (2013)

Earlier this month Wellington’s own Black City Lights released its debut album, Another Life, on the Brooklyn-based indie label Stars & Letters Records. Ironically enough, that’s Brooklyn as in NYC, not the central Wellington suburb of the same name.

Black City Lights is the youthful duo of Calum Robb and Julia Catherine Parr, and Another Life is also available as a name-yer-price download on Bandcamp. You may have to be quick though, as the BCL Facebook page suggests it’s available in this form only until “the end of this week”. You can get it here:

Black City Lights - Another Life

So far as New Zealand music in 2013 is concerned, this album is one of the best I’ve heard, and when it comes to name-yer-price downloads, well, it really does represent quite exceptional value. This is dark synthpop at its finest, regardless of where it might have been conceived or made. Another Life is a great listen, full of beautifully crafted electronic gems.
 
Currently on tour in the US, having previously supported Grimes, Robb and Parr have serious talent, and the album is a follow-up to the 2012 EP Parallels, released on the same imprint. Make sure you get in quick ... but even if you miss the name-yer-price deadline, I still strongly recommend that you pick up a copy in whatever form you can.

Here’s a sampler track from the album – 'Give It Up':