Summer in Auckland means "Breakcore Island".. that time when international artists get poached from their Australian tours or from Camp a Low Hum and play a show at some K' Road dive. This is all we get in this faraway corner of the world.. it's lucky that the local talent is so good here..
The first show The Great Wall of Noise Island was on the Thursday night of 28th of January, a noise show in Alleluyah Cafe in St Kevin's Arcade; more specifically in the atrium outside the cafe, which was walled off from the rest of the arcade with sheets strung from a line. Nomex didn't show up after some sort of private drama, so Toecutter and last-minute addition Daedelus both agreed to play improvised sets at the last minute as replacements.
Joining them on the bill were long-time and establishished (establishment?) noise scenesters Duncan Bruce, and Richard Francis with Clinton Watkins. They played the sort of noise you would expect: Bruce more experimental, Francis & Watkins more harsh; all based on sounds and textures and stuff.
Also on the bill for their first time out together in several years was Tumour & Beard, two young men who previously played together as pioneering NZ breakcore outfit Anti-Kati. These guys are long term friends of mine, and to be honest I expected big things. Their set was instead more in line with what I had already heard that evening.. entirely adequate, particularly given the setting lovely atrium setting and the other artists on the bill, but once upon a time I feel like I could have relied on these guys to shred speakers. ..
The speakers did get shredded somewhere along the line, and Daedelus' set was rather quiet and possibly compromised because of that. The dude did a pretty good job of doing some glitchy beeps and blips and stuff; I'm fairly sure he doesn't usually roll like that.
Toecutter's set involved a short amount of harsh noises, a whole lot of incense, and ended with a piece involving Toecutter and several audience members, including myself, dragging tables across and around the atrium floor in a synchronised fashion under Toecutter's direction. Very interesting, although tables were broken and the cafe owner was a little annoyed; mainly at how profusely Toecutter apologised about it.
Directly following this show was the last-minute Daedelus Surfaces on Breakcore Island show at Whammy, which for those who don't know is also in St Kevin's Arcade. This had secured heavy radio promotion, and Whammy rapidly filled up with kids. Happy kids, who danced the night away to future music. P.P. Flo was followed up by Manaia Toa with DJ sets; Manaia Toa with his usual old-skool jungle kinda thing, P.P. Flo his regular pop/breakcore mash-up.
Toecutter was playing as DJ Anal Erection, which apparantly means he plays more dancefloor friendly stuff. The kids were loving it. About 1 in the morning or thereabouts, when the oh-so-punctual kids had been thus warmed up for a few hours, Daedelus did his thing. Someone had predicted somewhere on the spectrum between Ninja Tune and Tigerbeat6, and I guess that was some way to being accurate. Definitely it was somewhere on the spectrum between electro and dubstep which is where the kids are at these days if this crowd was anything to go by. k5k took me and Roxy Riot out the back behind the bar to this little broom-closet that the staff sometimes use. It was weird.
The crowd basically left after Daedelus' set; I didn't realise until much later that it was mainly to do with it being a Thursday night. Manaia Toa played a bit more and then k5k took the 3am to 4am floor-clearing set. k5k's fakecore is brutal and tight, and the test for whether NZ audiences truly get breakcore is whether or not they ever start staying to see a local master like k5k do his set.
The next night on Friday the 29th of January was The Curse of Breakcore Island at Area 26, again in St Kevin's Arcade. This was house party, at the same venue that Belgian breakcore poster-boy Sickboy rocked at this time last year.
I arrived in time to see Glottis, which I am led to believe are a two-piece who are one half of teenage rave crew Ponny Fight (who were who were billed to be playing) and one of their other mates. Glottis do throat-singing. There's video on youtube. Anyway, the lounge was filled with their parents and younger siblings (!) so I stayed at the door and talked with Toecutter and Softsmell and Creassault and Audioslut and the other long-term scenesters, and the family all field out, but I stayed there for Gee Gee who is some teenage MC who I assume is friends with Ponny Fight, and even manned the door for a while by myself which I always find kinda nerve-racking because it involves asserting your will over people and capitalism-like situations.
Eventually I filtered through the party, which at some point had become filled up with teenagers from the Shore who were all tripping on Saliva or Salvia or something (allegedly). Whatever, there were some messy people there. Incredible Hexadecibels with Creassault ripped shit up, playing their European-tour-honed tracks off their forthcoming release. This was the first time I'd seen some of their new videos, and I was laughing on the dancefloor as they are filled with people that I know... I became overwhelmed with that feeling of elite and power you get when you have knowledge that other people on the dancefloor don't have... like when you know the chorus to It's Gotta Be the Shoes or when you suddenly remember the time like nine years ago when you went to a family dinner at P.P. Flo's house and his mother served this bolognese sauce with lots of tomatoes in it and Amy just won't eat tomatoes and didn't touch her meal and it was hella awkward. That really cracked me up. On the dancefloor. Good times.
Toecutter, who was also here last summer, ripped it up again. This is why he has a global reputation as the go-to good-time-party-breakcore DJ. Highlights for me would have to include Don't Cry; hell the whole thing was great really. It's a breakcore party. It was loud. At some point I was slam-dancing with myself in the hallway.
k5k did his usual crowd-clearing best. Dance-floor pretty much to myself. I went outside for a bit, took out my ear-plugs and realised just how shredding it was. Very cool. After his set we sat around on the balcony discussing the ramifications of the youth starting to come through and infiltrate our underground and elite scene/community.. the virtues of having an actual scene vs. having a best-kept secret... the sort of conversations you have late at night with drunk people... uncertain future... can change happen? can it be dealt with?
There was another show on the next night, at some shitty downtown bar that has a pentagram painted on the floor. N.U.T.E. played. Some goth bands played. I didn't go.
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5 years ago
