Monkey Magic II is a CD and DVD (Monkey TV) showcasing contemporary independent New Zealand music to be released on the 19th May.

10 of the tracks on the CD are from artists signed to genre-defying indie record label Monkey Records including Tim Guy, The Hot Grits, An Emerald City, The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band and Káren Hunter. Also featured are four unsigned or self-released artists who are friends of Monkey - Haunted Love, Steve Abel, The Mamaku Project and Ragamuffin Children.

Monkey TV is a DVD featuring all the music videos made by Monkey Records since the year 2000 featuring some of New Zealand’s most talented emerging filmmakers and animators.

While perhaps not considered that commercially viable by the powers that be, independent radio has embraced and supported many of these artists. The Hot Grits have enjoyed several weeks at no.1 on student radio bFM with their first single, The Ballad of Joe Stalin’. ‘Werewolf’ by Haunted Love was voted Radio One song of the Year on Radio One last year and Cinema 90 by Onelung (here remixed by Sola Rosa) was the most played tune across the bNet for several weeks upon its release in May 2006.

As on the original critically acclaimed Monkey Magic compilation in 2004, this new selection continues to champion new and exciting music from Aotearoa and aims to introduce many of the artists featured to a wider audience In New Zealand and further afield. Many thanks to Creative New Zealand for their continuing support of Monkey Records which helped make this compilation and tour possible.

Monkey Magic II will be available at a special price and is being distributed by Rhythm Method.

MONKEY MAGIC CD TRACKLISTING:

1. Káren Hunter - Rubble
Taken from Káren’s fifth and most recent album, Rubble, Drunk and Disorderly is a twisted Tom Waitsean style ballad complete with found percussion sounds and dirty jazz horns, telling the story of a drunken night in Napier. One of NZ”s most well respected and enduring performers, Káren reinvented herself with Rubble following a period at jazz school and here she enlists some of NZ’s finest jazz session musos to help her out.

2. Tim Guy – Rescuer
A beautiful song and possibly the highlight from Tim’s sophomore release, Hummabyes, this track features his flatmates Anika Moa and Anna Coddington on bass and drums respectively and providing heavenly backing vocals. Tim Guy has managed to swim against the trans Tasman flow and left Melbourne for Auckland where he is beginning to establish himself as one of NZ’s most well liked and in demand singer/songwriters.

3. Renee-Louise Carafice – (I’m your) Bodhisattva
In 2003, on her 22nd birthday, New Zealand singer-songwriter Renee-Louise Carafice was institutionalized at Auckland’s Te Whetu Tawera with severe depression. As a means of coping in this challenging time, Carafice wrote an illustrated book of songs about her experiences, later referring to them as her ‘hospital songs’.
Two years later, Carafice won the Nescafe Big Break award for young people with vision, having submitted her music. With her awarded money she recorded her solo album ‘Renee-Louise Carafice - Tells You to Fight’ at Steve Albini’s legendary analog recording studio “Electrical Audio” in Chicago. Since then she has remained in Chicago to pursue her music career amongst her musical heroes.
‘Tells you to Fight’ will be released through Monkey Records in early August ’08 and shortly thereafter Renee-Louise will be undertaking a 20 date national tour.

4. Luke Hurley – The Sound
In 2007, twenty years after meeting Luke on the streets of Dunedin when he was a student, Monkey Records label manager, Nigel Braddock signed Luke for ‘The Best of Luke Hurley’. Luke has been making a living for 25 years busking on the streets in New Zealand and is surely one of New Zealand music’s unsung heroes. Luke claims that The Sound is the second best song that’s he’s ever written but we secretly think it could be his finest moment to date.

5. An Emerald City – A Thousand Stars at Night
A shimmering piece of Eastern pyschedelic beauty, this track is one of four precious gems off the debut release from An Emerald City, surely one of the most exciting and original bands on the independent music scene in NZ at the moment. Following a chance meeting in a K Rd op shop, Monkey Records signed this band based on their Myspace page without ever seeing them play live. The band plans to base themselves in Berlin next year.

6. The Hot Grits – Headlights
The second single off the long awaited Hot Grits debut album, it’s too Drunk to be this Early, looks set to repeat the bFM chart topping success of their first single ‘The Ballad of Joe Stalin’. This 11 piece afro soul band will no doubt go on to great things with their floor shaking funkadelic anthems. Keep an eye out for the video for this track, due early June.

7. Onelung – Cinema 90 (Sola Rosa remix)
The original track by Onelung was the most played tune on NZ independent radio in May 2006 beating out Gnarls Barkley (who?) and here gets the royal remix treatment from Sola Rosa with a bit of help from DJ Exile on scratches. Many moons ago Andrew Spraggon (aka Sola Rosa) and Kevin Tutt (aka Onelung) were in a guitar band together called Cicada but they have both since left that far behind and carved their own unique paths as purveyors of fine electronic goodness.

8. Haunted Love – Werewolf
Haunted Love channel romantic stories of the supernatural through their favourite medium, Pop Music. Two girls, two guitars, a vintage casiotone and a 1970s living room organ “The Zachary Enchanter” make up the band. They sound like Bela Lugosi’s orphaned daughters getting tipsy on cherry brandy in a costume shop.
Werewolf was recorded at Radio One by Ashley Noel Hinton in 2006, a good deed which, as dictated by storybook lore, will not go unpunished. Werewolf was voted Radio One Song of the Year in that same year.

9. Steve Abel & the Chrysalids - Haven
Steve Abel is one of four artists to make a re-appearance on Monkey Magic II having been present on the original compilation in 2004. Here he returns with a track from his new album, Flax Happy, that will no doubt further establish him as one of our most unique and talented singer/songwriters – New Zealand’s answer to Leonard Cohen on a good day.

10. Ishta – Puti Puti Pai
A traditional Maori song by Sir Apirana Ngati gets a most unusual treatment here from ethnic groove band Ishta with an arrangement featuring sitar, tabla, flute, sax, didge, double bass and the heavenly voice of Josephine Costain. Over several summers the band toured NZ bringing their uplifting exotic sounds to festivals and summertime places as Golden Bay and Coromandel but unfortunately the band went their separate ways not long after this album was released. Recorded at Monkey Record’s studio in Karekare.

11. The Mamaku Project – Cirque Part II
Formed by two members of Ishta, Mamaku caused quite a sensation at WOMAD in 2007 with two packed out performances and enraptured audience members hanging out of trees trying to get a look at the band. With a European tour planned for 2008 and a second album on the way, expect to hear a lot more from this Pacific/French jazz/dub/middle Eastern influenced group featuring some of NZ’s finest musicians.

12. The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band – The Dance of Death
The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band have been creating quite a stir in their hometown Auckland (Prague of the South) with their irresistibly danceable mix of East European, Gypsy and Klezmer music mixed with rock, cabaret and metal. This original tune is one of their best and bodes well for their debut album due later in the year.

13. The Ragamuffin Children – Sea Shanty
Anita and Brooke moved to Wellington with the intention of becoming pirates. But after realising it was quite fashionable at the time they decided that they would prefer to be SERIOUS musicians. So they pawned their wooden legs and eyepatches in for a fiddle and an electric piano.
After many years singing seashanty’s and drinking whiskey, Anita has developed quite a lovely voice. Brookes many life threatening experiences at sea has given her an insight into lifes beautiful complexities which she now expresses through melodically written lyrics that flow like the tide…
The Ragamuffin Children like tea parties, living room concerts and singing about serious and sensible subjects such as war and poverty and also about whimsical things such as aliens and hot air balloon adventures.

14. Sleepytime – Triangles in the Snow
Sleepytime aka Johannes Contag has previously worked with the music group Cloudboy, with whom he produced two albums and did several live film/music projects. Most recently, Contag has released an album with Jay Clarkson (Over the Mountain) and an L.P. with improvised drone rock band Bad Statistics, which was published by Belgian record label Kraak. Sleepytime has released three albums through Monkey Records but this track isn’t included on any of them. However, it possibly may feature on the Sleepytime extremely limited edtition boxset due for release some time before the end of the century.

MONKEY MAGIC DVD TRACKLISTING:

1. Tim Guy – Cater for Lovers
This is a beautiful video built around traditional non-digital special effects of scale and perspective. It is the story of a shy girl and an artistic man who connect through her doll’s house which they are then transported into. Inside the doll’s house they travel through four different time periods: Edwardian, ’50s, ’70s and present day and explore how their relationship could have been. The video is reminiscent of the work of the French film director Michel Gondry (Science of Sleep) in how turns its back on high-tech effects for a more playful low-fi feel which perfectly complements Tim’s music. This NZ on Air funded clip, the only one in evidence on this compilation, is directed by James Solomon and stars Leisha Ward-Knox (daughter of Chris Knox) and Tim Guy.

2. Renee-Louise Carafice – (I’m Your) Bodhisattva
Renee-Louise: “One of my friends was really struggling, deep in this mess - a very melodramatic character who had a reputation for feeling suicidal whenever he broke up with a girl. To some extent everyone can relate to that hurt… his was just amplified and exaggerated. I was driving my car to this party house where I knew my friend was and feeling very strong feelings of sympathy for him, and of wanting to be a guiding light for him and this song came to my head, a very big song, full of instruments.”
This video was directed by Israel Alpizar who’s only twenty-one years old. He and Renee-Louise met when he came with some friends to her house for a party she was throwing, and Renee-Louise was tap dancing when he arrived. They just clicked immediately. This is Israel‘s first music video.

3. Onelung – Banana Jelly Tower
Originally released in 2006, animation whiz Kim Newall, has remixed this video with his usual trademark style of bizarre, quirky 3D characters and impressionistic hand-drawn water-coloured backgrounds. This is the first of five videos featuring music by Onelung on this DVD. Onelung aka Kevin Tutt has released five albums of quirky electronica in New Zealand (two of them on Monkey) but has largely remained underneath the radar although he has enjoyed some licensing success in Europe and South East Asia.

4. Luke Hurley – The Sound
The Sound was directed and shot by acclaimed cinematographer Simon Raby who is well known for his work as DOP on NZ feature films such as ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Heaven’ and ‘The Ugly’ as well as directing for television shows such as ‘Rude Awakenings’ and ‘Amazing Extraordinary Friends’. The video was edited by Anina Zamani who has won three awards at Cannes for her editing work for short film and commercials. The video features 15 year old Zippy, an upcoming model whose career has just taken off following her being signed to the prestigious Wilhelmina agency in New York. Luke Hurley is seen in one of his favourite busking spots outside Foodtown Balmoral on Dominion Rd, Auckland.

5. The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band – The Dance of Death
This video perfectly captures the raucous, intense energy of the BBB Band and the vodka-soaked, madcap antics of their lead singer Benka. Filmed at a Gypsy Party at Auckland’s infamous Big House, you can practically see the sweat flying as the audience is whipped into a frenzy by one of the most exciting and original live bands in New Zealand at the moment.

6. Onelung – White
White features Matt Gibbons and Jesse Steel, two dancers heading out on the town to do some street performance with their trusty ghetto blaster. It is Christmas Eve 2006 in central Auckland and there are a lot of anxious shoppers running about scarcely paying attention to Matt and Jesse and their ‘Dance With Us’ sign. After some rejection and much hi-jinks along K Rd and Queen St they eventually find some new friends to dance with and the video ends with all the drinkers in the Occidental coming out and dancing on Vulcan Lane.
This video celebrates the special friendship between the two main characters and is an observation of how people react when asked to participate in something a little out of the ordinary. The fact that Jesse has Downs Syndrome is also challenging for passers by who may not be used to meeting people with this disability. Both Matt and Jesse are experienced contemporary dancers and good friends and have danced together before in several productions with New Zealand’s acclaimed mixed ability dance troupe ‘Touch Compass’.

7. Káren Hunter – Perfect Jump
A perfect summery song, the video features an office-bound worker who flees his humdrum existence to make the Perfect Jump into a nearby swimming pool while Káren and band are playing poolside. This video is sure to strike a note in every 9-5er prone to gazing wistfully out at blue sunny skies while chained to their desk in front of a computer. Perfect Jump can be seen as a metaphor for making a change in your life - daring to abandon the comfort of the everyday for a leap into the unknown. Perfect Jump is one of three videos on Monkey Magic directed by James Solomon who has also directed clips for Hollie Smith, Batucada Sound Machine and Tim Guy.

8. Onelung – Far As I
Animator Kim Newall obviously lives in a parallel world where trees sprout heads and strange creatures with tongues for feet perform ritualised dances in mysterious chequered rooms here perfectly synchronised to the chaotic funk fuelled electronica of Onelung.

9. Tim Guy – Summer Breeze
One man, a ukelele, a harmonica, four beautiful girls and a scene stealing dog called India spend a quintessentially Kiwi afternoon at the beach in this charming low-fi video directed by Monkey label boss, Nigel Bradddock (making his directorial debut) and shot by acclaimed documentary maker Briar March.

10. Peachy Keen – Not Your Kind of Girl
Peachy Keen shone brightly as New Zealand’s finest noir lounge pop band for a brief while before things became somewhat less than peachy and the group disintegrated in a Fleetwood Mac ‘Rumours’ type scandal. This, their second video, was directed by theatre director Natalie Hitchcock and scripted by award winning playwright and lead singer of the band, Kathryn van Beek. Peachy Keen’s first video, Big Truck, was filmed as part of the 48 hour film competition in 2003 but has never been shown outside of the competition.

11. Onelung – The Royal Loop
Well there’s this puppet see and he wakes up and goes for a walk through the neighbourhood and on the way he imagines himself as various characters and maybe he has a somewhat psychedelic experience and then he arrives at the venue and plays with his band, The Lost Socks to an audience of socks and then he ends up with some rather buxom groupies at the end only to wake up again and wonder if it was all a dream…

12. Hummel – Littoral
Beautifully shot video, filmed in Wellington, it’s a poignant commentary on aging and the human spirit shot by Kate Logan. Hummel aka Andy Cummins sometimes plays with Age Pryor and has recently released a new ep with his teacup folk band Rosy Tin Teacaddy.

13. Onelung – Nu Scientist
So there’s this scientist and he’s experimenting in his lab one Sunday afternoon and he comes up with something which makes him feel pretty weird so he goes for a bike ride past a few windmills and all sorts of crazy things start happening…
The first video ever made by Monkey Records, this cost the princely sum of $168.50, mostly spent on research.

14. Sleepytime – Triangles in the Snow
A beautifully minimalist video for a hypnotic yet uplifting track that rounds out the Monkey Magic viewing experience. This video was later extended into a 49 minute film to accompany Sleepytime’s album length piece ‘The Twilight Drone’.