San Francisco Bathhouse
November 26 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

Erase Errata are a San Francisco punk group, who sound very reminiscent of American punk legends the Minutemen. This is despite the fact they are an all-girl group and play songs which last a bit long. So they could be called The Twominutewomen. And like the Minutemen, their music escapes simply being called punk, it certainly has the urgency and relentlessness of the genre, but Erase Errata are also experimental, shifting, dense and musically fascinating. It was an excellent show, and certainly a bargain-priced concert.

By Nicky Hager
Craig Potten, NZ$35 | Reviewed by Danyl McLauchlan

THERE HAVE BEEN two broad criticisms levelled at Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men. The first is that it is a conspiracy theory of falsehoods and lies, the second is that if a book of Helen Clark’s emails were released it would prove similarly salacious.

The two theories seem to contradict each other – so it’s telling that they are being made by the same people at the same time who have not, as is often the way of these things, actually read the book.

Tony Lane’s paintings evoke the immaterial and the metaphysical. MARK AMERY surveys two of his current exhibitions, Metafisica at Mark Hutchins Gallery and Practical Metaphysics at City Gallery Wellington.

By Tony Thorne
Penguin, NZ$TBA | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

WE KNOW THAT the invention and swift dominance of the cell-phone has ruined certain words. We’re told now to Nt B L8 (rather than not be late) and expected to know abbreviations (or abs; isn’t it about time a word as long as abbreviation was shortened?) that seem quite baffling. But it’s not the cell-phone, blog or email that is at the heart of the problem. The problem is business. Office-speak corrupts the English language far more frequently and rapidly than a bunch of failure-to-thrive tweens could ever hope to. Yup, as well as buzzwords, there are bizwords that we must contend with. And to help us out – pointing at the absurdity of so many of these daft linguistic inventions – is Tony Thorne (lexicographer) and his amusing dictionary of cringe-worthy terms, Shoot The Puppy.

San Francisco Bathhouse
November 21 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

NEW YORK duo Ratatat have had some big props in their nativeland touring with the likes of Tortoise and Interpol, plus also Scottish lads Franz Ferdinand. They’re a mixture of electronic and guitar work (plus a bit of Mexican), and sound a bit like a contemporary version of influential New York duo Suicide. Their show incorporated the elements which have made their name (their recent album Classics is recommended if you’re interested) – cinematic music, no vocals and excellent guitarwork. They also play well with loud/soft dynamics too – and capture this better (as is usually the way) in their live performance rather than in their studio work. The music was also hypnotic and it would have been fun to shine a torch on people’s zombie-like faces in the audience.

ALEXANDER BISLEY talks to Jim Moriarty about saying no to Jake Heke, why Section 59 has got to go, Battalion, whanaungatanga versus The Lifestyle, and how theatre and the Treaty can empower all New Zealanders.

DAVID LEVINSON canvases Auckland’s contemporary art scene. This month: Martin Creed, Work No. 329 @ Michael Lett; Ri Williamson, Nomadic Operating Platforms @ Starkwhite; Simon Denny, Old Entertainment System @ Window.

Bowen Galleries celebrate 25 years in operation. MARK AMERY pays another visit to a Wellington instituion relishing its silver anniversary.

By Brian Sibley
HarperCollins, NZ$49.99 | Reviewed by Chris Knox

AUTHORISED biographies. They do have that inevitable bipolar kind of feel about them. Yeah, it’s great that the author has complete and unfettered access to the subject of his work, but damned if that doesn’t so often lead to the saccharine pits of hagiography. The sound of tongue licking arse can be most distracting.

Downstage
Nov 11-Dec 16 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

ONE OF THE most unhappy moments in the life of an audience member is when she realises that she is in fact an audience member, and she is watching a play. At least, this is an unhappy moment if she is brought to the realisation not through witty self-referential dialogue, or an engagement of cast with audience, but through boredom. She realises a certain drama is being enacted on the stage before her, and it seems far away and irrelevant, like television. There are many other viewers around who are sighing, yawning and/or laughing drunkenly. She wonders whether the party she is going to afterward will be much fun. The play unfolding on stage becomes almost a distraction to these thoughts.

WOMAD New Zealand 2007, at New Plymouth’s Brooklands Park and TSB Bowl from March 16-18, is highly recommended by Lumière Asssociate Editor ALEXANDER BISLEY. His picks include Nigeria’s Femi Kuti and The Positive Force, Tibet’s Gyuto Monks, Niger’s Etran Finatawa and Aotearoa’s own Whirimako Black. The full artist line-up is out late January 2007. Bisley recalls WOMAD 2005.

The 15th Wallace Art Awards present the best and the rest from this year’s entries in a travelling exhibition, currently showing at Pataka Museum and Gallery. MARK AMERY rummages through the pick ‘n’ mix.

San Francisco Bathhouse
November 9 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

FOR THE SECOND night in a row, San Francisco Bath House lay witness to the making of very loud noise, albeit in a lot more controlled fashion than Guitar Wolf the night before. Animal Collective, a bunch of American folksters, managed to out-sonic most bands around with an astonishing performance. While certainly, their sound could be best described under the folk moniker (you only have to listen to their acclaimed Sung Tongs), their music seems to incorporate most types of music from around the world – from Tibetan, African and Indian via the Beach Boys and Olivia Tremor Control. They manage to mix it into quite something else, and their live show was primal and hallucinatory.

San Francisco Bathhouse
November 8 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

CARNAGE. That’s the only way to describe this gig. The mosh-pit was a maelstrom of writhing bodies, the band donated half their sweat to the sticky floor afterwards, and the bouncers got frantic as crowd members stormed the stage to torpedo back in, while speaker systems billowed smoke. Anyone who witnessed this rock n roll depravity went away exhilarated – when The Ramones blared on the stereo after the set had closed, Joey, Johnny and co sounded like they were playing with Zimmer frames to an old-folks home. This was music played fast and loud and without pretensions to ambience, subtlety or exploration.

Media Release
Multi-award winning performers, the world’s hottest tango music ensemble and virtuoso musicians are among the stellar line-up of artists heading to New Zealand for WOMAD New Zealand 2007.

The programme for WOMAD New Zealand 2007 was launched by Prime Minister Helen Clark at Parliament on October 31st, and includes more than 300 performers from 16 countries.

Jazz Festival 2006, The Front Room
November 8 | Reviewed by Patrick Fitzsimons

The Geri Allen Trio, one of the title acts of the Wellington International Jazz Festival, gave an inspired performance on Wednesday night at the Front Room. The house was filled with a typical Wellington jazz crowd; the people who say Oh Yeah as though they were playing, the people who tap your chair from behind as if to let you know they can keep time as well as any drummer and the people who clap thirty times during a drum solo but not once for the piano one because they're not sure if it’s finished. They’re a goodnatured crowd, regardless, and ready to appreciate. The show began when she spoke. She sat herself on her stool, turned over her shoulder and said “So...” And it was the voice that we wanted, effortless and American. “I gotta feel your vibrations tonight,” she told us, and people seemed willing to oblige.

Jazz Festival 2006, The Front Room
November 7 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

THE Wellington International Jazz Festival had its headlining act last night, where blues legend Billy Boy Arnold took the stage. Having started off playing with Bo Diddley in the 50s, Arnold has certainly had time to hone his craft – he’s gained international renown for his harmonica playing, which he learned off another blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson (he just knocked on Williamson’s door as a kid). While his career went on hiatus for a couple of decades (where he became a bus driver and a parole officer), he came back to a vengeance in the 90s, and stands tall as a blues legend.

Bodega
November 2 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

THIS WAS essentially a Battle of the Bands type contest, where some well-known bands from around Wellington came in to try and sell themselves to university Orientation organisers from around the country (and thus guaranteeing themselves a national tour during peak-student-drunken time). But instead of the usual amateurism you see at most battle of the bands-type competitions where there’s actually nothing worth winning other than being able to proclaim yourself king of the world, here, there were some great performances.

Beginning an ongoing series, The Lumière Reader asks a diverse range of writers and readers about the book that got them into books.

SIOBHAN HARVEY: I was 16, and had opted for an English Literature and Creative Writing A level class. The teacher, whose name escapes me, informed us about our core texts for the year. It was pretty traditional stuff, covering the cornerstones of ‘English’ Literature – Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Hughes’ (ed) The Rattle-Bag and a Kingsley Amis novel. In addition, my teacher offered us a list of ‘suggested reading’, titles he drew on from memory as though plucking each of them out of the ether. Strange that I can’t recall his name, but I can still recall most of the books on that ‘suggested reading’ list. Cry The Beloved Country, View From A Bridge, The Grapes of Wrath: the list went on and on. In spite of his thoroughness, I imagine my teacher had little hope that we’d read any of his suggestions (though, in reality, I think most of my fellow students dipped into one or two of the books on the list).

Martin Thompson’s drawings at the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery are mesmerizing in their wild geometic beauty, writes MARK AMERY.

Downstage
Oct 18-Nov 4 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Nga Tangata Toa is a Viking tragedy recreated in the world of Mãori. Playwright Hone Kouka, struck by the similarities between the Vikings and Mãori, has reworked Henrik Ibsen’s play The Vikings of Helgeland into a twentieth century Aotearoan tragedy. In Ibsen’s play Kouka saw the opportunity to bring to the stage Mãori characters never before seen in mainstream theatre. For this reason Nga Tangata Toa certainly has a unique poignancy. Its characters are both stereotypical and of-their-own-genre. Its dark and archaically vengeful narrative has classical undertones that mark it as different from traditional Mãori folklore.

Downstage
November 4, 9am – 4.30pm

‘WHAT IS the future of Mãori theatre in Aotearoa, New Zealand?’ asks leading Mãori theatre collective, Taki Rua. Is it to have a national Mãori theatre? An iwi-based theatre? A drama school like Toi Whakaari where students korero Te Reo? And, has the integration of Mãori playwrights into the mainstream been at the expense of political, indigenous theatre? (Well, that particular issue isn’t listed in the programme, but let’s hope it’s included in the discussion).

Media Release
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the annual, ten day Wellington International Jazz Festival, which opens on Thursday November 2nd (tonight) until Saturday 11th, brings outstanding international acts to the capital and draws from a buzzing musical hive of local talent.