Incredible Hexadecibels vs Creassault, Gei, Sorry see Saw, Anti-Kati, Nigel Wright @ Wine Cellar, Fri, Nov 23

I cruised into the city on the bus, keen to see the Incredible Hexadecibels. The Wine Cellar is a cute little venue, with couches and stuff to sit on while you listen.

Gei was one-man-drone, using a guitar. A lot of people do this style of music, even just in this city. I cannot say it was any better or worse than any other I have seen.

DJ Nigel Wright played some music in between sets, including some DHR stuff if I recall correctly.

Sorry See Saw - in the lead up to this they were known as "unnamed super group (feat. 7 members from more than 30 bands)" - consisted of some random people, none of whom I really recognised, except for Erika, who is k5k's girlfriend. She did vocals and played a conch shell. They played some rock-based music.

Incredible Hexadecibels vs Creassault was great. Combining video and audio together is mesmerising, just like television. It helps that both the audio and video are top quality. I had to run out just before the end to catch the last bus, but it sure left me wanting to see it again...

DJ Olive, Anti-Kati, D-Form, Manaia Toa, Wilberforce, Bombadrop @ Galatos, Auckland; Friday 16 Feb

I managed to get to this right on time; Anti-Kati had told me they were starting at 10pm sharp. I mean, they didn't, but that was good. We chatted a bit and then they played. They'd managed to get one of those fancy Serato systems for the night. They played a pretty standard kind of set, with tracks off their latest 12", and stuff that hadn't been released at that point and so on..

After their set, Wilberforce and Bombadrop seemed to be racking up the tracks; they were playing kinda dubby and bassy stuff. I spent this time mainly hanging out downstairs/outside, having conversations.

Manaia Toa arrived, to my surprise that's Manaia Toa aka Splash aka Aotearoa Battle Soundz aka End Of Man. Well anyway, he's well into his dubstep, he played a lot of that, alternating with some jungle, and then he drops some jazz, Coltrane I think it was, and I turn to Anti-Kati and I say to them "If you ever wanted someone to play jazz at your event, why don't you just let me play?"

Quite a crowd had built up by this point, and DJ Olive started playing. None of us really had any idea what he was going to be like. I mean, googling him seemed to suggest he was "cool" and a "turntablist". In fact k5k told me he'd seen a little of him the night before at a little show down at the Wine Cellar. Anyway, tonight this guy was playing some kind of like tribal kinda house music. I swear he sounded exactly like DJ Food circa Jazz Brakes vol. 4 or something, which is good for house music, but it is 2007. God knows what New York must be like if this is the example.

It was really a pretty strange line-up, but the bar had filled up with people and some random square-as looking people in their 40s were down the front raving it up. Me and MC slypussy and his girl Rewa were sitting on these couches laughing hard. And then me and my MC made her dance up the front with them. I was still laughing hard, but it was hard to read how Rewa felt about it. Dancing real stupid and looking stupid, to my mind, beats (for example) the people I saw standing against a wall nursing a drink and kinda scowling.

DJ Olive must have played for at least an hour. And then D-Form arrived, and played some commercial hip-hop for a while. I just really used this time to catch up with my acquaintances, as I don't get out much these days.

All in all it was a pretty good night, and certainly one of the stranger Anti-Kati shows I have been to. But really, give DJ Olive a miss if he comes to your town.