Friday March 11th: Chicks Hotel, Port Chalmers

The new single and title-track of Tim Guy’s third album Big World plays as a meaningful introduction to one of independent pop’s most entranced and entrancing journeymen. Amid a nightscape of glockenspiel tinkles and gentle synth swirlpools, Guy coos cautiously like someone just waking up in the evening, equally affected by lingering dreams and the flickering to life of streetlights. A dream-drunk connection between the imaginary and the real set partly in north New Zealand, ‘Big World’ expresses the simmering excitement and disorientation felt when new impressions blur with the losses they are meant to relieve: “it’s a movie washing over me.”

Now returning to New Zealand for a 20 date tour promoting ‘Big World’, Guy replaces the movies he dreams and sings about with the real thing. Filming his adventures and encounters with small communities and the various local musicians who remarkably form his revolving scratch band, Guy’s documentary is not about the artist on the road, but about capturing and salvaging little legends and oral histories that would otherwise remain unrecorded. As in ‘Big World’, where Guy endearingly charts his relative but essentially human smallness, such story-sharing is a valuable and understated way of surviving the threatening weight of the world, whereby individuals leave their unique and intriguing traces.

Since relocating to New Zealand several years ago from Australia, Tim has released three critically acclaimed albums and has toured here many times, both solo and in such illustrious company as Anika Moa, Bic Runga, Anna Coddington and Paul McLaney to name but a few. He has carved out a reputation as one of New Zealand’s most hard-working and endearing singer/songwriters and in 2011 he will be taking his latest album “Big World” to a global audience with tours planned in Australia, US and Europe.

Tim Guy, North to Alaska tour:

Feb 11, Butter Factory, Whangerei
Feb 13, Funky Fish, Bayly’s Beach
Feb 16, Vinnies, Raglan
Feb 17, Grand Beer, Palmerston North
Feb 18, Meow, Wellington
Feb 23, Freehouse, Nelson
Feb 24, Roots Bar, Takaka
Feb 25, Franks, Greymouth
Feb 26, Okarito Community Hall, Okarito
Feb 28, Cooks Saddle Café, Fox Glacier
Mar 3, Dux de Lux, Queenstown
Mar 4, River House, Wanaka
Mar 5, Blue Duck, Milford Sound
Mar 9, Uncle’s Disco Bar, Invercargill
Mar 10, The Penguin Club, Oamaru
Mar 11, Chicks Hotel, Dunedin
Mar 12, El Santo, Lyttelton
Mar 13, Le Café, Picton
Mar 17, Plateau, Taupo
Mar 18, Café One2One, Auckland

All venues doorsales only.

8:30pm, Thursday 13th January
Harbour Light, Lyttelton
$15 presales from the venue: ph 03 328 8615
limited doorsales from 7:30pm

Behold, an unstoppable Gypsy juggernaut is headed your way!

Wellington Gypsy giants Niko Ne Zna are bringing their hot Balkan Gypsy sound to a town near you this summer! Niko Ne Zna are New Zealand’s very own Balkan brass sensation who are able to set any stage ablaze with their sizzling Gypsy sounds and since 2005 the band has been stunning audiences with their thrillingly exuberant, dynamic performances. This seven piece ensemble have melodies which will steal your heart, captivate your imagination and make your feet move in a frenzy. Funky grooves, rumbling percussion, blasting brass, astonishing accordion and enough jazz chops to satisfy any Balkan barbecue! This is nothing but the ultimate true and authentic party music!

The band have been busy this winter performing and composing new songs and are looking forward to taking their amazing sound on a second New Zealand tour that will be making dancefloors throughout the county heave with delight.

Last year Niko Ne Zna released their debut self titled ep which consists of delicious arrangements of five traditional and original Gypsy tunes. Following this summer’s tour the band will hit the studio again to record their first full album, combining the Gypsy sounds of the Balkans with their very own Kiwi flavor.

Unlike most bands Niko Ne Zna aren’t confined to the stage and are just as comfortable joining the audience on the dancefloor or parading into the street. Audiences are then enchanted into dancing, singing, clapping and stomping all night long. This band consisting of some of Wellington’s finest instrumentalists coming from a wide array of musical backgrounds uniting together to produce a musical cocktail that take your ears to far away hot exotic places that you may have only dreamt of!

Joining them on tour will be DJ Balkanetic, the champion of all things Balkan and veteran of three other Gypsy Fever tours who will be bringing back a bag of fresh Balkan/gypsy tunes and cutting edge globaltronica from his travels in the old countries.

REVIEWS
“Niko Ne Zna serve up authentic and twisted gypsy goodness on (their) eponymous EP. Complete with sax, sousaphone, trumpet, trombone, accordion, percussion and drums, this is a band that came to party. Balkan time signatures, funky brass bass lines, exotic melodies, it’s all good.” - NZ Musician

“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

“ … this is straight to the dancefloor” – Elsewhere

TOUR DATES
New Years Eve: Prana Festival, Opoutere

January
Sun 2 afternoon: Coromandel Celtic Fair
Sun 2 evening: Star and Garter, Coromandel
Wed 5: The Yot Club, Raglan
Thu 6: Festival of Lights, New Plymouth
Sat 8: Cabana, Napier
Wed 12: Mussel Inn, Takaka
Thu 13: Harbour Light, Lyttelton
Fri 14: Chicks Hotel, Port Chalmers
Sat 15: Penguin Club, Oamaru
Sun 16: Le Café, Picton
Sat 29: Mighty Mighty, Wellington

February
Fri 18: The Kings Arms, Auckland

The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band
Intersoup w/ Mr Paul (live electro)
Schliemannstr. 31
10437 Berlin

Hailing from the slums and ghettos of Auckland (the Prague of the South), The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band bring their unique brand of highly theatrically East-European Apocalyptic Debauchery to those in need, wherever they may be. Expect spontaneous combustion in the audience, clothes thrown off in frivolous rampage, macabre stories, legs turning into snakes, much musical and physical inebriation, and dancing, dancing, dancing… When Balkan, Punk, Cabaret and Swing combine, nuclear meltdowns of worlds begin.

The band is currently lurking in Berlin, and will be destroying minds and lifting knees and skirts across Europe for the next six months, until late November. Upon their return, they plan to bring a whole new Bacchanalia to New Zealand in another of their famed summer tours, as well as festivals across the country.

After first emerging from an alleyway behind Auckland’s Wine Cellar sometime in May of 2006, the band has gone from enigma to sensation. In April 2008, the band released their first ep, Danse Macabre which lingered in the Independent NZ top 40 for several months and the riotous energetic video for the single, The Dance of Death, has been in the top five most watched videos on Amplifier for over a year. In this time the band has completed three highly successful nationwide tours, brought the bordello to some of the country’s biggest summer festivals (including Prana, Jambalaya, Parihaka, Cross St Carnival, Fleetwaters and Splore), performed at AK09, Auckland’s biggest bi-annual arts festival, played in “The Famous Spiegeltent”, and opened for American band Beirut. Now, with the release of their album, Polkapocalypse, the band has relocated to Europe, and is ready to delve deeper, further past the apocalypse, into unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy.

The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band and DJ Balkanetic take to the road again on another Gypsy Fever tour bringing you an intoxicating, exhilarating, uplifting blend of East European/Gypsy/Klezmer and Balkan tunes that will have you throwing your arms in the air and dancing as if your feet were on fire.

8pm, Wednesday 21st January – Marahau Park Cafe, Marahau

The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band and DJ Balkanetic take to the road again on another Gypsy Fever tour bringing you an intoxicating, exhilarating, uplifting blend of East European/Gypsy/Klezmer and Balkan tunes that will have you throwing your arms in the air and dancing as if your feet were on fire.

Wednesday 21st January – Marahau Park Cafe

“House on Fire” is the second single from Carafice’s debut album “Renee-Louise Carafice Tells You to Fight”. It was written for Texan alt-country singer Micah P Hinson who Carafice met while supporting him on his New Zealand tour in 2005.
“We were instant buddies and got on extremely well,” Carafice explains. “For me that was quite a rare thing at that point in my life. We’d both been to hell and back and maybe you can attribute it to that.
“He’s a person who just tells it like it is, both in his music and on stage… he uses profane language and smokes endlessly and is just a very vivid personality.
“I was very impressed upon that this young guy who had so much in common with me was traveling the world with his music.”

June 6th: Bar Mode, Palmerston North feat The Hot Grits, The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, DJ Balkanetic and Uncle Barnie

FREE ENTRY!

Monkey Magic II is a CD and DVD showcasing contemporary independent New Zealand music to be released on the 19th May and to celebrate we’re going to be touring the country in May/June. The tour features several of the most exciting new acts in New Zealand who have all had critically acclaimed new releases over the last few weeks:

An Emerald City
Currently garnering unanimous praise for their recently released self titled debut ep, Auckland band An Emerald City have strived for musical experimentation and liberation since their inception in late 2005. Organic instrumentation and sounds of the east meet psychedelia with guitars and violin are at the centre of this original and unique 6 piece. Already having performed at Rhythm and Vines, Soundsplash and WOMAD this summer, they will be recording their album over winter and are planning to base themselves in Berlin from April next year – catch them while you can.

The Hot Grits
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, 11 piece band 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. Their debut album ‘It’s too Drunk to be this Early’ featuring the bnet hits ‘The Ballad of Joe Stalin’ and ‘Headlights’ is out now.

The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band
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. Having undertaken a highly successful Gypsy Fever tour over summer and performances at Prana, Jambalaya, Parihaka and Splore, the BBB Band are back to devastate dance floors and promote their new ep ‘Danse Macabre’.

DJ Balkanetic
DJ Balkanetic has been entertaining audiences at festivals, parties and weddings around New Zealand for the last couple of years with a highly infectious, uplifting blend of Balkan beats, Klezmer, Romani/Gypsy music and organic global grooves. He has also supported his good friends The Mamaku Project, The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band and the Jews Brothers. Over summer he played at Prana, Jambalaya, Splore and Cross St Carnival and recently undertook a 20 date national ‘Gypsy Fever’ tour with the Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band. He has a world music radio show called Terra beats on KFM every Tuesday from 2-4pm.

THE TOUR
Friday, May 23rd: Album Release Galatos feat An Emerald City, The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band and The Hot Grits ($15 presales/$20 door)
Friday, May 30th: Refuel, Dunedin feat The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, An Emerald City, Haunted Love and DJ Balkanetic ($10/8 doorsales only)
Saturday, May 31st: Als Bar, Christchurch feat The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, An Emerald City and DJ Balkanetic ($10 doorsales only)
Sunday, June 1st: Revolver, Queenstown feat The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, An Emerald City and DJ Balkanetic ($10 doorsales only)
Friday, June 6th: Bar Mode, Palmerston North feat The Hot Grits, The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, DJ Balkanetic and Uncle Barnie (free entry)
Saturday, June 7th: San Francisco Bath House, Wellington feat The Hot Grits, Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, DJ Balkanetic & Uncle Barnie ($10 doorsales only)

THE COMPILATION
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.