ghost writers in the sky

right, I’m tryin to blast this one out cos otherwise I’m gonna miss my train so apologies for any tyipungh errorrs. Uh.. where was i? Oh yeah, Mumbai (bombay as the locals still call it), bollywood’s capital, london through a weird distorting mirror(if someone dumped a million tons of trash and shit on it), the indian city that never sleeps etc. This place is the most incredibly overcrowded bustling megametrolegolopolis (sp?) of the very rich and the very poor jammed together, a place where yesterday I saw an investment banker scraping human shit off his italian leather shoes. The buildings are all this kind of weird victorian (peculiarly indian) style of architecture- overly ornate, with stained glass and gargoyles, glass domes, and other architectural stuff I don’t know the names of, with statues of Kali and shiva and Ghandi, and ‘progress’ jammed all over (one indian architect to another in the dark: ’statue bro?’). I mean, check out the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station for fx sake. I love this city. I wana live here. Igotta go, I’ll add more bout mumbai later. catchn train to udaipur. laaaater!!

casio :: May.30.2008 :: architecture, india :: 1 Comment »

 I deleted my older blog earlier tonight, and trashed everything I had written on it, except for this one piece, which I find endearing in some way, so I thought I’d re-post it here for posterity. It’s totally out of date, but whatevs, rite?Thursday, December 13, 2007…so I ended up going to see Midnight Juggernauts and Pig Out ! playing in britomart square last night. It was a promotional free (phew!) all-ages gig organised by some energy drink or something, and was New Zealand’s first chance to evaluate the juggernauts as a live band ‘cos that’s what they really want to be. Emerging out of a veritable shit-blizzard of circle-jerking internet hype they strode gamely on stage to face a largely underwhelmed crowd of spotty nu-rave/emo crossover kids jacked up on free energy drinks, and proceeded to, well, underwhelm.
Britomart square is the public face of Auckland city’s grand folly- the central public transport hub. Beneath it is the eye-wateringly expensive Britomart transport centre, where tardy and woefully antiquated trains disgorge dribs and drabs of disillusioned commuters into downtown Auckland. Built a couple of years ago, the place is, admittedly, rather magnificent- a confection of gleaming chrome escalators rising through modernist glasshouses- but the whole thing has been completely under-utilised by a public that refuses to be herded through an infuriating and draconian public-transport system that fails to adequately transport the public, and seems to lack any notion of what being a system involves. The commuters would much rather clog the motorways, thanks. Here in N.Z we like CARS.
So, in this gleaming showplace for a hopelessly antiquated ‘future’, we are given The Midnight Juggernauts, blogged far and wide as the next big thing, and offering up tired 1980’s synth-pop pastiche with faux-kraftwerk flourishes driven by a krautrocky ‘band’ aesthetic. All rather appropriate really. For three skinny hipster fags with scraggly justice-beards they certainly make a kinda big sound with stadium ambitions, but the weak indie vocals, and general cheap half assedness of their whole deal let me down considerably. I was all ready to like them on the merits of ‘Tombstone’, which I loved when it came out, and.. um… that they’re australian (?) (ok so I liked the video  for ‘into the galaxy’), but I was disappointed that Tombstone was by far the strongest track they played, and everything else sounded like a muddy bunch of arse. The Midnight Juggernauts came across not as a bunch of inspired futurists, but as a tired pastiche of everything that’s supposed to be cool right now, and as such, left a bad taste in my mouth (”other people who bought soulwax also bought the midnight juggernauts”). Oh yeah, and the singer kept shouting “Hey Auckland!, how you feeling out there?”, which made me want to throw the beer bottle I was trying to hide from the overzealous security monsters at him.

 pig out!
The gig’s saving grace was Pig Out!, our local indie/rave/techno mutant superheroes who have a huge amount of fun with a small amount of equipment. They’re a four-piece, some of whom are former members of recent DFA signings The Shocking Pinks , and they hark back to the early nineties Hacienda  scene with their endearingly garagey mash-up of flowered up and minimal chicago tech-house, which seems tailor-made to appeal to dancing Stevie. Unfortunately, as the picture shows, they were made to play while it was still light, which really didn’t help their cause much. Pig out are a proper rave band, far more suited to a grimy warehouse party at four a.m than a gig or a nightclub. They do have an album out, called club poems , which, in my opinion, isn’t as great as it could’ve been, although their newer recordings, I am assured, are set to rectify this. They have played quite a lot locally, so, of course we’re losing them overseas soon, where I’m sure the sweet-asm they generate with their epic live set will rock a few parties. They’re doing England and Europe in January, and I hope they blow up over there, because they’re nice people and hugely enjoyable to shuffle around drunkenly to.

I am not currently permitted to post the mp3’s that accompany this article on this site (boo!) but theres lots of Pig Out! stuff available on their myspace page here

casio :: Apr.08.2008 :: architecture, gig review, music, rant :: No Comments »