Niko Ne Zna are New Zealand’s very own Balkan Gypsy brass extravaganza. Formed in Wellington five years ago, the band has been stunning audiences ever since with their exuberant, dynamic performances. Comprising trumpet, saxophone, accordion, trombone, sousaphone, drums and percussion, Niko Ne Zna are a truly authentic ensemble. They can roam while playing, and enchant the audience into dancing, singing, clapping and stomping all night long.

The band consists of some of Wellington’s finest instrumentalists who come from a wide array of musical backgrounds that unite together to produce a cocktail that will make your ears rise to attention and your feet move in a frenzy. Their music is high energy with dark undertones and sexy gypsy style. Niko Ne Zna are a world class act with exotic tunes, fantastic grooves and exciting solos.

The band have played extensively in Wellington with performances at The Wellington Fringe Festival, International Jazz Festival, Cuba Street Carnival, Wellington Summer City Festival to name a few and have been a staple of the Wellington music scene with regular performances all over city.

“It’s easy to forget where you are when you listen to these hypnotic melodies. It’s like being dropped amongst the hot and spicy lands of a country far away – to a place where you can free yourself with these infectious and wild beats that take their influence from the gypsy-soaked Balkan States.”  wellingtonlivemusic.com

Cinema 90’s story begins in 1999, with Auckland based producer Jamie Newman creating electronic dance music on a basic tracker program on his home computer.  After having dj’d electronic dance music of every genre (house, techno, electro, breaks, trance, dnb, hip hop and downbeat) since 1996, his initial direction in writing music was very much four-to-the-floor focused.  In 2001, under the moniker ‘dj me’, he released an ep of tech-house and breaks entitled ‘Shake Your Shit’.

In 2003, after music equipment began to seriously dominate his apartment, Jamie set up a studio in central Auckland, under the fledgling community radio station Fleet FM.  With the constant thoroughfare of artists, musicians and creative types, Jamie fast began incorporating live recording into the mix.  With this change in process came a different style of music, heralding the beginnings of a sound now recognizable as Cinema 90.  Fusing elements of hip hop, electro, soul, electronica, house, downbeat and folk, Cinema 90’s focus is on quality music without the limitations of an umbrella genre.

Six years and three studios later, Cinema 90 is releasing his debut EP through Auckland based record label Monkey Records with distribution by Rhythm Method. The first single from the ep is the feel good summer song, Sunny Day Juice, featuring an outstanding main vocal/rap by T-Minus. Second single is ‘So Sweet’ featuring Karin Betley and Billy Fluid.

While references may be made to Massive Attack, Tricky and Moby and the ep exhibits an unabashed homage to 90’s trip hop (hence the 90 in the moniker perhaps), this is music for your heart, soul and ears and this release seems sure to mark Cinema 90 as an artist to watch.

Since their inception in late 2005, Auckland band An Emerald City have strived for musical experimentation and liberation. Organic instrumentation and sounds of the east meet psychedelia with guitars and violin are at the centre of this original and unique 6 piece.

The summer of 2007/2008 unleashed an array of summer performances that included the likes of: Soundsplash, Rhythm and Vines, bfm’s Summer Series and Shore Sounds. Womad saw An Emerald City perform to over 1200 people across their two performances. This is also where NZers and the world got their first opportunity to purchase a slice of An Emerald City – their debut self titled ep – if you missed out, never fear, now is your chance to get a piece of this truly original band.

The 4 track ep features two of the bnet favourites ‘Qing Song’ (also featured as Karen Walker’s opening track at New York Fashion Week this year) and ‘A Thousand Stars At Night’ recorded at Clockwork Studios in Auckland with Nick Taylor. The ep also includes 2 new songs ‘Mr. Finn’ and the new single ‘A Question’ recorded at Roundhead Studios with Liam Finn and Jol Mulholland. The sriking original artwork is by Mr. Will Handley.

An Emerald City is: Ede – lute/sitar; Reyahn – drums/tablas, Sam – guitars, Reuben – guitars, Felix – violin.

Reviews

“This extraordinary four-track EP by an Auckland band which is long on instrumental elegance and very short on pretention is a diamond, and like a precious gem you can turn it many ways and appreciate different refractions.
These swooning, grand and widescreen instrumentals have something in common with the great US band Explosions in the Sky but they also have a more exotic element through the presence of violin, cello and what sound like discreetly placed sitar and Chinese lute.
The pieces sway into each other, have a definite hypnotic and ambient quality, but also thoroughly engage the attention.
Astral, epic, allusive, soundtracks for imaginary movies . .
Say what you will, but don’t ignore it.”
Graham Reid, Elsewhere

An Emerald City’s epic, haunting sound is captured on the four tracks that this ep offers. The intense combination of guitars, drums, lute, sitar, violins, tablas, and some sand, cask wine and flying carpets, creates this instrumental music that makes you feel like you are sitting on a lotus blossom, watching Saraswati ride a giant swan, whilst massaging you with her spare hands. Oh, and there’s a bit of Celtic psychedelica thrown in there too, notably on ‘A Question.’ ‘A Thousand Stars at Night’ will take you to the desert, and ‘Mr Finn’ has a lullaby-like opening that will send you into a dream of kilted warriors riding bareback through fields of heather. With so many instruments one may wonder how this doesn’t sound like a brown stew. I don’t know but I assure you it does not! Each instrument is crisp and audible, one complementing the other. Overtop, the violin sings melodically. Why take illicit substances when you can listen to this?
**** (four stars) Susan Strongman, Groove Guide

One night during the recent WOMAD festival, I was sitting at a hotel bar tending a glass filled with ice, when I heard the most incredible sound – the violin is something else in the hands of Felix Lun, of An Emerald City. He was keeping up with the Romanian gypsies, which is saying something. Felix and his raggle-taggle bandmates have created quite something with this EP – intertwining the mysteries of the east with a Canadian apocalypse? What a debut!
Matt Crawley, Eavesdrop

An Emerald City radio interview

The artist, Meera Raghu, was spiritually inspired after listening to divine melodious songs called Arka Geetha, composed by Srinivas Arka, a renowned philosopher, author, inspirational speaker, developer of meditation method called Arka Dhyana and founder of global spiritual organisation Centre for Conscious Awareness. Being a musician and Veena artist, Meera, through her inspirational experience, selected some of the songs of Arka Geetha, which are based on Lord Ganesha and the Philosophy of Life, and created musical notation for rendering them on the Veena. Meera enthusiastically worked on the songs and recorded them with Tabla player Basant Madhur and Nigel Braddock of Monkey Records at his recording studio in Auckland in May 2005. To her amazement, the whole recording went off well, continuously and smoothly, without any obstacles like retake or editing. This was an extraordinarily unique experience for the artistes. This CD album is really special as the songs have been presented to this world by Divine guidance through the musical instruments of the artists.

The Artist: Meera RaghuMeera is a musician proficient in South Indian classical music called Carnatic Music, and in the art of Veena playing. Veena is a very ancient musical instrument and is used mainly in Carnatic Music. She has given many performances in India and overseas, mainly New Zealand, having lived in Auckland for more than a decade.Meera has a Masters’ degree in Physics and post-graduate diploma in Computer Science. She has been working in the computer field in the areas of training and software development in India & New Zealand.She had been imparting training in Veena playing to students and guiding them for music examinations conducted in Auckland. She was also invited to be an examiner for the Carnatic music examinations held in Auckland and Melbourne, conducted in affiliation with Academy of Fine Arts, London. Meera has obtained training in Arka Dhyana, a fine-tuned intuitive meditation method and specialized in it through workshops in the UK and India. She also imparts training in Arka Dhyana. Please visit the following websites for more information: www.srinivasarka.org, www.arkadhyana.org, www.centreforconsciousawareness.org, www.srinivasarka.com/store.

Bond Street Bridge is the creation of Auckland-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Sam Prebble.  Sam has been playing music for as long as he can remember, and ‘probably before that as well,’ as he puts it. Bond Street Bridge is currently a solo project, but Sam has always played in bands, orchestras and choirs.  For the past few years he has been playing in the Broken Heartbreakers and Reb Fountain’s Bandits, and has recently guested on releases by White Swan Black Swan, Dylan Storey and Andy Gibson, playing fiddle and writing string arrangements.  Sam’s experience in bands and orchestras has developed the strong sense for arrangement and orchestration he brings to his debut album, ‘The Mapmaker’s Art.’  Listening to the lush soundscapes and cunningly interleaved parts on this record, it is hard to believe that it was recorded on a laptop with one microphone, in a falling-down villa next to a motorway.

Working by himself, Sam had the luxuries of time and creative free rein, which he used to craft a unique and original record. The result is an often surprising collection of songs dealing with what Sam describes as ‘the details of daily life – extinct giant birds, storms at sea, pointless wanderings in the desert, demonic temptation and the like.’ This is imaginative and refined songwriting which achieves both honesty and enigma; slightly detached but never cynical, concise but never terse.

The record uses a sonic palette consisting of guitars, violin, mandolin, piano, organs, percussion and vocals, all played by Sam, with double bass on two tracks provided by Wellington-based artist Kate Whelen.  These organic and acoustic elements are complemented and supported by glitchy beats, warm reverbs and washed-out tape echoes, producing an overall sound which is at once nostalgic and innovative.  Jangly mandolins ride comfortably on top of rolling basslines, and fiddle lines trace paths through a forest of computerised beats.

This album, while fresh and original, pays homage to the artists whose work has influenced Sam over the years.  The influence of New Zealand artists such as Demarnia Lloyd and Cloudboy, Bachelorette and SJD, as well as international artists such as Bjork, Beck, New Buffalo, Neko Case, Thom Yorke, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen is audible on this record.  In creating this work, Sam also drew inspiration from writers, painters and filmmakers, among them Ursula Le Guin, Hone Tuwhare, Bill Hammond, Kurt Vonnegut, Christine Jeffs and Carol Ann Duffy.

The title of the record, ‘The Mapmaker’s Art,’ is a reflection of the fact that most of the songs are about movement, getting from on place to another.  Sam says ‘we draw a map to describe a place we’ve been, a place that existed before us and continues to exist without us.  The art of the mapmaker is to describe a place to someone else so they can get there and back with a minimum of fuss.  Needless to say, most of the places I describe on this album are not really real, but I invite you to come and visit them just the same.’

The Mapmaker’s Art was recently included in the list of Top Albums of 2008 on Elsewhere.

Reviews

“The debut album from Aucklander Sam Prebble is one of the finest collections of new homegrown music to cross this desk in a while.The Mapmaker’s Art is an album of wistful, pensive stories spread coyly over a bed of introspective indie folk, string arrangements, subtle electronic flourishes and dreamy mandolins.  Fans of SJD and the story-telling style of Don McGLashan will find favourite elements of those two esteemed artists entwined on the Mapmaker’s Art as Prebble weaves his engaging and curious narrative.  The salient track is the bnet single ‘black market soul transplant,’ a sparse yetyet delicately textured track driven by brooding steel guitar – a great song that laments the “stitches down my side where my soul used to be.” The swampy and melodic bluegrass of ‘the nature of the blues’ is another highlight from Prebble, who might be known to music fans through his work with White Swan Black Swan and Reb Fountain’s band the Bandits.  The Mapmaker’s Art is an album that commands attention and will reward the listener with a joyously cinematic listening experience.”
**** (four stars).  Phil Reed, Real Groove

Elsewhere
Otago Daily Times
Cheese on Toast
Bullet Magazine

Articles

Lumiere

Renee-Louise Carafice is a dark-folk-pop songstress born in New Zealand based in Chicago. With a bitingly honest and brutally fragile voice, she sings of her “messy rollercoaster ride” of a life, over rich and complex melodic structures.

Carafice sings with an alarming openness about desperation, love, loss, homelessness and longing, all the while maintaining a sense of glorious hope at the end of the road.

Some of the songs on “Renee Louise Carafice Tells You to Fight” hark back to Carafice’s experience with mental illness, and ultimately, institutionalization on her twenty-second birthday. But, states Groove Guide, “far from causing the album to be pigeon-holed by ‘context’, the music’s initial catalyst gives it a layer of heavy-lidded clarity – love, wisdom and longing by way of the addled brain.”
“Renee-Louise Carafice Tells You to Fight” was recorded in November of 2005 at Steve Albini’s elite Electrical Audio in Chicago. Engineer Nick Abbott (Finn Brothers, Goldenhorse, Datsuns) and Renee-Louise Carafice chose this famous analog studio because of a mutual admiration for the work of Steve Albini and the music to come out of there. The album was recorded to tape, a method which eliminates the temptation to chop up, edit and punch in… instead what you hear are the unchanged, full takes of each musician. No effects or eq were used.

Carafice teamed up with Angel Ledezma on drums (Defender, Alla) and Matt Lux on bass (Iron & Wine, Smog), without the two Chicago session musicians ever having met her or practiced the songs. The magic chemistry of the three artists, who on some tracks would record live in the room together, was undeniable, and Ledezma and Lux now act as her permanent backing band.

Ben King from Goldenhorse acted as producer and also personal chef while he, Abbott and Carafice stayed for 14 days in the building at Electrical Audio. During this two weeks in Chicago, Renee-Louise fell in love with the city and permanently relocated there soon afterwards, where she now performs and records. Since her move, she has opened for extremely popular US acts Xiu Xiu and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.

In New Zealand she has performed alongside Goldenhorse, Anika Moa, Pluto and Goodshirt, as well as US acts David Pajo, Micah P Hinson, Band of Horses and Crooked Fingers.

2008 Alternatui ALBUM OF THE YEAR.

“Musically stunning”
- New Zealand Listener.

Reviews
NZ Listener
Elsewhere
Rachel King

Articles
NZ Musician

Interviews
The Wire
NZ Own Interview
National Radio

Live to Air
National Radio

Music Videos
Bodhisattva
House on Fire

The sensational Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band have just released their first ep, Danse Macabre. Please buy it so that they can send money some back to their poor families in the old country.

Hailing from the slums and ghettos of Auckland (the Prague of the South), The Benka Boradovsky Bordello band is a highly theatrical musical group specialising in music of Eastern European, Gypsy and Jewish flavour, along with some Western European influences. With music ranging from old to new, originals to standards, vocal to instrumental; they are remarkable in their ability to get everyone up and dancing, regardless of age, musical taste, or level of drunkenness. Benka’s globetrotting voice sings in a wide variety of languages, with lyrics in Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romani, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, English and more. If references are necessary, they sound like Tom Waits, Shane McGowan and Franz Kafka drunk too much vodka and thought they were in 1950’s Yugoslavia.

HISTORY:
After first emerging from an alleyway behind Auckland’s Wine Cellar sometime in the May of 2006, under the guise of Kapitan Shakirov’s Krazy Klezmerim; there has been a vague aroma in the air… a sprinkle of klezmer and a lingering hint of the Eastern Europeanesque with an exhalation of the Romani, well disguised behind the scent of whiskey and sweat. But when the Kapitan himself, Mr Daniel Dumnov, embarked on a trip back to his native Russia, the band had to reform, and Benka furtively grabbed the reins. Through other tribulations, such as The Blackbird winging off to the Bourne of Mel, Benka Boradovsky brought several new players under his bearded wings and the band is now ready to continue spreading its lingering and addictive scent across the country. Since then, the Butterfly has flown off to the Ton of Welling. Benka Boradovsky has since stopped hiring virtuosos named after winged creatures. With the capture and assimilation of Anna Rehkitz, the deer, on the flute, the band is now ready to put into motion its plans for domination…

“Got to be the best gypsy band I’ve ever heard. And I just got back from two years travelling around Europe!”
- random punter

BAND MEMBERS:
Benka Boradovsky – Clarinet, Vocals and licentious flirtations.
Anna Rehkitz (The Deer)- Flute and coy glances.
Philka Cherbyakov (The Worm) – Lead Guitar and devilish grins.
Senka Senyaglaze (Blue Eyes) – Bass Guitar and hats at jaunty angles.
Yelyena Yareiach (The Moon) – Percussion and feminine wiles.
Sometimes: Mauritz Pappillon (The Butterfly) – Violin and unnecessary puns. (Wellington based)

Reviews

The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band is the most un-kiwi sounding kiwi band imaginable. While the title Danse Macabre comes from the French translation of The Dance Of Death, the EP sounds more like it hails from around the campfire of an Eastern European gypsy camp. Although four of the five tracks are traditional compositions it is still no mean feat that they have all the essence of another time and place. The band justifies this cultural discrepancy by calling their hometown Auckland “the Prague of the South”. Emanating seemingly unlimited passion and desire, the group’s charm is also rooted in their playfulness. This spills right down into the fact that after the instruments are credited, their band roles are allocated from licentious flirtations to coy glances and devilish grins. Best served with a generous helping of alcohol, preferably vodka, to get in the generously lubricated spirit of the recording.

***** Sharyn Croft, Groove Guide

Listen: Benka Boradovsky Uncharted Interview

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 DVD (free with CD)

1. Tim Guy – Cater for Lovers
2. Renee-Louise Carafice – Bodhisattva
3. Onelung – Banana Jelly Tower
4. Luke Hurley – The Sound
5. The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band – The Dance of Death
6. Onelung – White
7. Káren Hunter – Perfect Jump
8. Onelung – Far As I
9. Tim Guy – Summer Breeze
10. Peachy Keen – Not Your Kind Of Girl
11. Onelung – The Royal Loop
12. Hummel – Littoral
13. Onelung – Nu Scientist
14. Sleepytime – Triangles in the Snow

Reviews
I doubt Auckland’s Monkey Records has a motto, but I’m prepared to suggest one: “When you are smaller you have to be smarter.” And although this label may be small it certainly is smart—as this excellent CD/DVD compilation package proves.
The label boasts many fine artists who have been posted at Elsewhere in the recent past (Karen Hunter, Tim Guy, An Emerald City, Ishta, Mamaku Project) and others that will be firm favourites when you hear them.
Among them will doubtless be Steve Abel whose new album Flax Happy is going to be posted here next week. Abel is a singer-songwriter who can count in his band for Flax Happy members of Pluto and Goldenhorse among others, a measure of the high regard in which he is held. A track from that album appears on this collection, as does material by all those Elsewhere postings plus Luke Hurley, Hot Grits, Onelung (who gets airtime regularly on my Kiwi FM show), Sleepytime and others.
And then there is the DVD with a swag of Onelung alongside Hummel, Peachy Keen, Renee-Louise Carafice and others who appear on the CD. This is quite some package which comes with beautiful artwork by Leah Morgan (let’s name and acclaim) and a gatefold sleeve.
Monkey has a wonderful catalogue to celebrate—and they are putting many of these artists on tour to support the album and their individual albums. Grab a copy of this album and check out the dates below.
Monkey Records: small but very smart indeed.
Graham Reid, Elsewhere

Monkey Records has been taking musical risks since 2000, and now has a small intriguing roster of artists that range widely in genre from funk-rock to pop to Eastern European Klezmer. ‘Monkey Magic Volume II’ is clearly enough the label’s second compilation album, successfully blending the disparate acts while also including four tracks from acts not strictly signed or licensed to the label. The accompanying DVD is not track matching, more a showreel of music videos made for the label. The two discs are delightfully packaged in a tourism-friendly native bird decorated pictorial foldout card case. The music on the album is universally sublime. My personal favourites include Tim Guy’s stunning Rescuer, Renee-Louise Carafice’s Jenny Lewis-esque Bodhisattva, An Emerald City’s eastern psychedelic whirlpool A Thousand Stars at Night and the rocking Headlights by The Hot Grits, but choosing favourites is unfair. ‘Monkey Magic’ is that rare beast of a compilation where every song provides pleasurable listening. Monkey Records definitely have one of the more interesting and distinct local rosters, and this compilation is a superb way to investigate these low profile acts, many of which I look forward to hearing more from.
Amanda Mills, NZ Musician

The gorgeous native birds and flowers on the cover of the new Monkey Magic sampler give a clue as to the offerings within – an interesting look at local music with a hippy twist. After a shaky start the CD kicks into gear with a nice but naughty tune from Renee-Louise Carafice, followed shortly by a swirling Emerald City track. The Hot Grits and Ragamuffin Children also contribute sweet pop to the sampler and the stirring sounds of the Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band have to be heard to be believed. The dvd of cute videos includes standout clips by Tim Guy and Peachy Keen… and watch out for the genius hip-hop vid by Onelung. If you’re into New Zealand music, ambient music or pop with an edge, this sampler is a great introduction to 16 new bands you might love, and to the Monkey Records catalogue.   ****
Katie Price, Groove Guide

What do you get if you mix a pound of Fela Kuti’s Afrika 70, two cupfuls of The Meters, 250g of thinly sliced early James Brown and a level dessert spoon of psychedelic rock? -you get the heaving, convulsing powerhouse of soul music that is The Hot Grits.

For over five years, The Hot Grits have been electrifying club dancefloors and festival stages around New Zealand with an eclectic, take no prisoners approach to soul and afrobeat music. When THG hit their stride, no-one in the room is immune from the power and sheer soulfulness of their groove, and band and audience become one in a giant, convulsing testament to the power of good music. The overall Hot Grits sound is funky and deep, but always powerful and never too smooth.

The Hot Grits have steadily evolved into a powerhouse live outfit, capable of packing out venues and creating havoc on any dancefloor. Highlights have included playing to several thousand people at 95bfm’s Summer Series concerts in Albert Park, bringing the house down at the Wintergarden theatre during AK03 and AK05, and rocking festivals from Grey Lynn and Waiheke to the Coromandel and Nelson. Along the way, THG have shared bills with a diverse array of acts, including Pluto, Goldenhorse, City Newton Bombers, North Shore Pony Club, One Million Dollars, King Kapisi, Greg Johnson, The Sneaks and The Phoenix Foundation.

The current Hot Grits lineup consists of no fewer than eleven very talented musicians from such varied backgrounds as jazz, hardcore, metal, reggae, hip hop and big band. Alistair Deverick (The Shades) holds the whole operation together with his supple breakbeat drumming, abetted by the fat, soulful bass of Marlon Lobo. Nick Wood (Payola) and Trygve Wakenshaw round out the rhythm section on percussion, giving a thick rhythmic drive to the band’s powerhouse engine room. Martin Sutcliffe (The Defendants) keeps everything tight on guitar, and Nisha Madham’s keys bed everything down in a warm hammond glow. Shaun O’Kane adds fluid saxophone lines to the power trombone of James A’Hara and the deep baritone sax of Ben McNichol. Atop this veritable mountain of sound rides the Hot Grits’ two vocalists, Barnie Duncan and Elitia Clark. Barnie is an incendiary performer who can push a crowd (and himself) to the absolute limits of funkiness and Elitia provides both sensual soul and sheer power.

Lineup:
Barnie Duncan: Lead Vocals
Elitia Clark: Lead Vocals
Jim A’Hara: Trombone
Shaun O’Kane: Tenor Saxophone
Ben McNicoll: Baritone Saxophone
Nisha Madham: Keyboards
Martin Sutcliffe: Guitar
Marlon Lobo: Bass
Alistair Deverick : Drums
Nick Wood: Percussion
Trygve Wakenshaw: Percussion

Music Videos
Headlights
The Ballad of Joe Stalin

Interviews
The Hot Grits Interview on George FM 

 Live to Air
The Hot Grits live in the Red Bull Studio

Reviews

“New Zealand’s previous excursions into the funk-soul collective sound tend to result in something half-pie (One Million Dollars) or, pardon the pun, half-baked (Fat Freddy’s Drop). Where One Million Dollars was too poppy and soppy, Fat Freddy’s is too sedated — so let’s have something in the middle. Something that pushes the afro-beat variety of funk-soul; something that has grunt, but also has soul — and that something is The Hot Grits. It’s Too Drunk to Be this Early is a fantastic (and longawaited, for those following the band) slice of Fela Kuti-derived funk. The sharp horn blasts sit inside a bed of percussion (two conga players and a drummer) and Marlon Lobo’s fat, heavy bass guides the choppy guitars and keyboards on this good ship funk. With 11 members, The Hot Grits trade vocal styles, shifting between Barnie Duncan’s good-time party vibe and the after-hours soul of Elitia Clarke. And though Kuti and James Brown would seem the obvious references, you can also hear the subverted sound of early Talking Heads and the Brian Eno collaborations. “
★★★★★    Simon Sweetman, The Dominion Post

“You could be forgiven for looking a little vague when I mention The Hot Grits to you. Well it’s up to you to remedy this as soon as you can – get the album, catch them live, just do something dammit. This eleven piece (that’s right…. eleven) from Auckland have an ‘Afro Soul’ sound that is equal parts funk, soul and power. You’d expect the power when you have such a large band to call on and this is definitely to the fore on the first two singles, ‘The Ballad of Joe Stalin’ and ‘Headlights’. These tracks are notable for their driving rhythms, horns and fantastic vocals from Barnie Duncan, all layered over a psychedelic base. But just when you think they might be a one trick pony, the album is rounded off with Elitia Clark stealing the show on ‘Deep Threat’, this track is pure soul from start to finish. And not content to finish things off there, the band strip it back even further with ‘Syntax’, a smooth groove which provides the necessary chill-out before you hit play all over again. The Hot Grits have just dropped an absolutely stonking album, let’s just hope the world finds out about it.”
Bullet Mag

“With a line-up as long as your grandma’s Louise cake recipe, The Hot Grits amusingly-titled new album certainly is layered. Boasting no less than 11 accomplished musicians (one wonders how they all cram onto some of the stages they play on) the Grits’ James Brown-influenced fiunk and soul is infectious. Vocalists Barnie Duncan and Elitia Clark do an admirable job atop this pyramid of musicians, with the reliable drumming of Alistair Deverick providing the backbone for the guitar, bass, keys, trombone and sax ensemble. The Ballad of Joe Stalin, which has received a lot of play on bNet stations around the country, is a standout track as is Headlights with its punchy horns and suitably gritty vocals. Haven’t been out and boogied for a while? Then head out and catch the Hot Grits next time they’re in town, and pick up a copy of this excellent album while you’re at it.”
Shane Cowlishaw, NZ Musician

“The Hot Grits are a band you’d expect to see fronting a big summer festival. Their music is loud, it’s ‘funky’ and it demands that you forget your uber cool and get up and groove.”
Lucy von Sturmer, Salient