Charlotte Forrester, aka Womb, has united her mother’s progeny to form a live band! Here is a video from their second ever show late last year featuring Georgette Brown on drums and Haz Forrester on guitar, both of whom also created the stage setting, with projections by Erica Sklenars/Lady Lazer Light:
Womb font by Georgette Brown
TWIN TALK
The Forrester twins (ex-Athuzela Brown) were recently featured in a radio series on Musical Siblings. Listen here to their interview with RNZ‘s Shaun D Wilson in which they discuss “growing and making music, together and apart”:
A HUM OF VOICES
Haz makes ethereal folk & electronic music under the name A Hum of Voices. You can listen to and freely download his beautiful debut EP here:
I don’t know what the lambs get up to but this lovely pair of humans had a productive 2015!
Sean Kelly (Seth Frightening) and Claire Duncan (I.E.Crazy) with Midnight and Lamb #2.
Thanks Veronica CP and Joseph Griffen for the photo!
It began with Seth Frightening‘s release of But We Love Our Brothers And Sisters – his sixth in as many years & the latest in a back catalogue of unrelenting brilliance. Direct and personal while still poetic, haunting, beautiful and always in that unmistakeable Seth Frightening style.
BWLOBAS FEATURE/ REVIEW
‘…his music is full of ugly emotions. Themes include, but are not limited to; death, sex, abortion, loneliness and existential frustration, told through layers of self-deprecation and home recorded charm. It’s heavy stuff, but far from being intimidated by such subject matters, Kelly finds writing about them therapeutic’.
“I write sad songs, but I don’t write them for you to feel sorry for me. I write them because it empowers me.” – Sean Kelly
In November, Sean and his equally talented and radical accomplice Claire Duncan (I.E.Crazy / Dear Time’s Waste) toured the country to empathise with folks and promote his vinyl that had not yet arrived. Alas, it soon after came – fashionably late in beautiful bone tone – and has since been dispatched via a network of couriers. Email sethfrightening@gmail.com if you want one!
I.E CRAZY EMERGES FROM SHELL WITH #1 HIT
“To celebrate having lapped the sun 28 times without yet flying directly into it, I’m loosing this limping beast of a song into the world.” So wrote Claire on her birthday as she released her first track under the name I.E.Crazy:
Lastly (but not leastly) check out this incredible Seth & I.E cover of the Shocking Pinks song, Nostalgia, released as part of a collection by A Low Hum in November:
What will 2016 bring from these talented two? Keep your ears & eyes pinned & pealed!
“A lot of symbols come up again and again for us: like bleeding shells, insects and other flora and fauna, fire, and sisterhood. We didn’t exactly know where it was going, but we knew it would start with a bloody womb and end in flames and we just let it unfold organically from there, like sowing a dream seed. Kind of inspired too by David Lynch once saying how he’ll just see a random image in his mind and then follow that without questioning it.” – Charlotte Forrester/ Womb
Critical writing in New Zealand is being further expelled from the mainstream media as it continues on its woeful trajectory into tabloid tactics in attempts to stay financially viable. This is worrying as it may suggest the public at large would rather pay for celebrity gossip and light entertainment instead of real, important news. Still, there are encouraging signs that critical and constructive thought in this country is far from dwindling, it may just be a little harder for most people to find…
THE HOROEKA READING GRANT
Horoeka / Lancewood
The Horoeka Reading Grant was established in 2015 by New Zealand’s reluctant intellectual ambassador and Booker-Prize winning author, Eleanor Catton, in order to encourage young and emerging writers to read extensively on a topic of their choice before writing an essay to share what they have learnt. Great idea!
Congratulations to recent recipient, Wellington-based pseudonym, Richard Meros, of Lawrence & Gibson publishing who read “recent texts on post-scarcity economics and a selection of philosophical works on abundance and gifts.”
The result is an essay on lack, abundance and NZ excess entitled ‘New Bourgeoizealand’:
“…any project that makes specific demands against government needs to be augmented by a concurrent increase in optimistic alternatives. A similar compact exists in Gramsci’s saying “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will”. Where Gramsci locates optimism in his own being – his will – the heart of this essay will focus on a similar optimism but one located in the material abundance of the world.”
Siting budget restraints, the New Zealand Herald has ‘discontinued’ the opinion column of one of their last remaining voices of dissent, Dita De Boni, who signed off this week with her final scathing piece: “Government contempt too overwhelming to ignore”.
“People have asked me over the years why my columns have become more strident in tone; more “biased against” the Government. The answer’s that the examples of contempt for the public, hypocrisy, and flat-out bulls***tery have become too overwhelming to ignore.”
It’s a wondrous time of year for intensive knowledge gathering and world-illuminating mind expansion – the New Zealand International Film Festival is in town!
Once again there are too many great looking films for most of us to catch them all, but to help narrow down the list here are the initial recommendations of one keen documentary enthusiast: (& they’re selling out so it may pay to >>book quick!<<)
THE LOOK OF SILENCE
This is the companion film to ‘The Act of Killing’ and rounds out a pair of truly world-changing documentaries of the highest artistic calibre and political potency. They relate to the anti-communist ‘purge’ in Indonesia in the 60s which killed upwards of 500,000 people and whose perpetrators remain in power today.
This is a must see, including Q&A with the director, Joshua Oppenheimer, who can also be heard discussing the films in this recent RNZ interview:
BELIEF: THE POSSESSION OF JANET MOSES
“This impressive doco disperses the fog of shame and sensationalism to shed light on the tragedy that made international headlines in 2007 when a young Wainuiomata woman died during a mākutu lifting.” >MORE INFO<
THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER
“A Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life by revealing it, amid growing clouds of revolution and war.” > MORE INFO <
THE PRICE OF PEACE
“There’s an enlightening and moving portrait of Tūhoe activist, artist and kaumātua Tame Iti at the heart of Kim Webby’s film about the trial of the ‘Urewera Four’ and its aftermath. She outlines the perils of surveillance in her account of the trial, in which Iti and three others were accused of plotting terrorist activities” > MORE INFO <
“A gripping, nuanced look at two different responses to the ongoing violence and death strewn by the vicious drug cartels plaguing both sides of the Mexican/American border” – Tim Grierson, Paste > MORE INFO <
A recent interview with the director, Matthew Heineman:
“While the songs themselves are the heroes of the story, behind-the-scenes footage permits a glimpse into the processes and world-views of a group of fiercely creative individuals whose work falls outside the ever-constrictive paradigms of popular music in New Zealand.” – Claire Duncan, writer & director.
Zac Arnold of RNZ’s Music 101 spoke with Claire to discuss the difficulties of capturing the essence of live performance and what it means to be a musician on the margins:
Also, keep your eye out for more in Lumiere’s web-series covering pockets of New Zealand’s underground print and cinema scenes > http://video.lumiere.net.nz
Thanks to Under the Radar for this great wee interview with Charlotte Forrester of Womb:
“It’s like the womb is the most sacred, safe place. It is warm, it is floating. Then the womb is also totally sexual, and red, and passionate. And finally, in some ways it is raw and frightening, this eerie zone of amniotic fluid, and then you’re pushed out, bloody, into the world.”
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