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.’

As soon as she was barely able, Renee-Louise Carafice released these songs to the public, through live performances with her band “Operation” and through student radio. 95bFM featured her first single, “Lorazopam” on its top ten chart for 4 straight weeks, only 8 months after her hospital release. Renee-Louise attempted to convey her experience of mental illness in a gentle, sometimes teasing, often touching musical format, which quickly saw the public reacting with fascination and support.

She toured New Zealand with US acts Crooked Fingers and Micah P Hinson, as well as opening for David Pajo.

In 2005, 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’. The album was recorded at Steve Albini’s legendary analog recording studio “Electrical Audio” in Chicago, USA. It was engineered by Nick Abbott (engineer of Crowded House, Goldenhorse, Pluto), produced by Ben King (Goldenhorse) and mastered at Skye Mastering in Scotland (Talk Talk, Madness).
In 2006 she moved to Chicago to pursue her music career amongst her musical heros.
Since her move, she has opened for extremely popular US acts such as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Xiu Xiu.

In 2008 she returned to NZ to release her album on Monkey Records and undertake a 15 date national tour to promote it.

The Hot Grits have had their first music video release banned by TVNZ. The video was produced by the award winning local production house The Downlow Concept, and features a cast of four year old kids simulating an adult night out on the town. The kids are shown to be drinking milk, and dancing at both a house party and a nightclub where the intention was to demonstrate the child-like greed with which adults conduct themselves whilst on the road to excess. The TVNZ censor is reported to have said that it was inappropriate to show children drinking from a funnel and from shots, and that the general behavior of the children was unacceptable.

This is the first New Zealand made music video to be banned by TVNZ since the Skeptics 1988 clip ‘A.F.F.C.O’ which filmed the journey of sheep through an abattoir in graphic detail. It is interesting to note that TVNZ finds images of children drinking milk as offensive as watching sheep get their throats slit.

Headlights is the second single to be released from The Hot Grits debut album ‘It’s too Drunk to be this Early‘.

‘Bodhisattva’ is the first single from Renee-Louise Carafice’s debut album, ‘Tells You to Fight’ to be released on the 28th April. The video was shot and directed by Chicago-based Israel Alpizar.

Renee-Louise on Bodhisattva
“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..
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, like “leader of the pack” but different.”

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 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.

The 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’.

The video was directed by James Solomon (Solly Films) who has also recently made videos for Holllie Smith, Káren Hunter, Tim Guy and Batucada Sound Machine.

From the album Binary Pop Songs by Onelung.

Cater for Lovers is the second single off Tim Guy’s new album ‘Hummabyes’ and features the heavenly backing vocals of Anika Moa and Anna Coddington.

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 is directed by James Solomon stars Leisha Ward-Knox and Tim Guy, and was shot by Richard Harling with production design by Shayne
Radford and Leah Morgan and post-production by Nigel Mortimer.

Tim Guy comes forth with what surely must be the lightest gentle ode to the sound of the old Pacific. ‘Summer Breeze’ is the latest offering from Tim’s second album, the self-produced ‘Hummabyes’, and is a surefire antidote to the winter blues. The track, rolled along by ukelele, also features harmonica, slide guitar and delightful harmony vocals from Anika Moa and Anna Coddington.

This video was shot by award winning documentary maker Briar March at Bethels Beach and directed by Monkey Records label manager Nigel Braddock making his directorial debut.

Following a frantic and explosive year of touring, festivals and crazy parties, The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band finally unleash their first music video . After sellout crowds across the country, including an extensive month long tour of the South Island in the summer, and spots in festivals such as Prana (where the band played brought in the New Year), Jambalaya, Parihaka and Splore, those unlucky to have missed out on the band’s outrageous live show now get a chance to experience there debaucherous shenanagins close up. Ryan Heron directs the video for The Dance Of Death, the single off the bands current ep Danse Macabre, which has already enjoyed successful radio airplay, including spending 5 weeks the Kiwi fm top ten. With this release, the band are starting polish up material for their next album, to be recorded in August, and have plans to travel to Europe in 2008. All of the key traits of the Bordello Band experience are on show in this rampant clip: crazed dancing, audiences driven wild, bare chests, virtuosic playing, and dancing, dancing, dancing…

Director Ryan Heron spent 18 months circumnavigating the globe on a boat in 2006-7 shooting footage for the Earthrace series and since then he has been busy shooting and editing for a range of companies including C4, MTV, Screentime, Television Spaceman, Cream Media, Two heads, Film Construction and Curious films.

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’.

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

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

The Hot Grits Interview on George FM