by Sam Valentine | 7:34 am 26/05/2011
May 14, Re:Fuel Bar. With Thundercub, Black Yoghurt, Surgical Department, Max Waots, Nicole Van Vuuren (DJ).
“The little zine that could?”
With the current flood of self-produced gig guides (INK), comic collections, (DUD), culture mags (Crop) and zines, Dunedin’s independent publishing “industry” seems in relatively good health. Among these excellent, no-strings-attached publications is Marrow. Co-edited by two Critic contributors (wassup’ nepotism!), Marrow promotes itself, as “a self published and promoted zine intent on providing freedom of artistic and intellectual expression”. Sounds pretty good, right?
With frequent articles, both pertaining to and provided by the Dunedin music community, last Saturday Marrowundertook the cleverly obvious move of hosting a musically-endowed release (with bonus Twister and limbo) for their May issue.
Beginning my night in the classic “idiot reviewer” fashion, I arrived sadly too late to witness the opening band and my musical entertainment instead began with solo act Black Yogurt.
As the side project of busy Dunedin musician Sefton Holmes, Black Yogurt sees a move away from the nosier elements often heard on other Holmes’ projects. With distorted synth lines, and a drum machine his weapons of choice, Holmes creates a deadly hypnotic groove which slinks underneath his casual (and often subversively funny) half-spoken vocals. With a rhythm that could described as “sexual”, Holmes manages to create an almost club-style repetition in a highly unexpected context. And with the amount of girls I saw dancing during his set, who’s to argue?
Catching my attention with their already uncommon combination of violin and drums, it was safe to say I was quite interested as I watched Motoko Kikkawa of the Surgical Department don a blindfold before beginning their set. While a slight gimmick, it was soon forgotten as the department began what seemed from afar to be a largely free-form and unplanned set. With their drummer on top of the beat in hip-hop style reminiscent of the Roots’ Questlove, and the violin coming fast, liquid and freeform, the both visually and aurally arresting music captured the attention of all present.
Concluding the night were electronic three-piece Thundercub, a band already praised in far too much detail throughout this year. So please, just remember this one thing: one of Dunedin’s best bands and often breathtaking live, Thundercub are a must for any local music fan.
With great performances and an even greater communal atmosphere, be sure to check out Marrowboth online or at their next zine release.
As a child I dreamed of becoming an archeologist. I imagined scouring ancient ruins and fragmentary images of life and death inside dark caves where humans lived thousands of years before me. Encountering Levi Hawken's recent wall work located in a secret tunnel in the Leith, armed only with a torch, instilled me with the same sense of awe I might have experienced had I decided to follow this dream. Having only a small shard of light to guide one across the impressive scale of this untitled mural allows the viewer to have an experience which is truly intimate. Consisting of geometric forms in a muted colour palette, with each line intersecting another, each line presents the viewer with a contradiction as there is no fixed point. Geometric forms are an integral part of Hawken's visual vocabulary, evidenced by his recent Willful damage exhibition at None gallery. Using a monochromatic palette it feels as though it has always been apart of the environment, with some water damage and the subsequent growth of plants impinging on the concrete wall.
In creating the work in this kind of environment, Hawke is subverting traditional modes of display. To get to the mural one must go on an adventure, which includes climbing through bush and down an intimidating pile of rocks. There is a remarkable contrast between depth and surface, as it seems to be engrained with a sense of movement, similar to that of a rollarcoaster. It playfully suggests three dimensionality, yet it retains a two dimensional Modernist formalism. This highlights Hawken's active engagement with Modernist conventions and abstraction. As it reflects aspects of German expressionist Franz Mark and a kinetic embodiment of the theories of Kandinsky. The work is innately autonomous and can also be likened to a tomb, with the sharp lines of a hawk acting as a momento mori for both his late Grandfather and close friend who died earlier this year. In this way the lines appear to me to resemble hieroglyphic symbols moving your eye across the wall like an archeologist studying an ancient inscription.
-Hana Aoake
