Live: SHIP SHAPE #1

Special Needs Agency presents
SHIP SHAPE
With Bevan Keys
Support from Sweetpants and Nyntee
Doors 7pm, Sat 31 Jan
The Cloud, Queens Wharf, Auckland
www.iticket.co.nz

Live: Sweetpants and Nyntee

This Friday night at the Golden Dawn...
SWEETPANTS AND NYNTEE
"Playing Other People's Songs"
Check here for more details.

And This... #3: Titeknots + Tru Thoughts 15th Anniversary

And This...
#3
TITEKNOTS
+
TRU THOUGHTS 15th ANNIVERSARY

I'm a big fan of Tru Thoughts. Have been since the early days (don't they all say that?) and am proud to have repped them and their artists hard, both personally and professionally. One of my enduring memories of the label was the warmth, friendliness, free records and delicious food I was supplied with when I was lucky enough to get to Brighton - and even co-host a Breakfast Radio show with Sweetpants, and TM Juke, Natural Self with label-boss Rob Luis, from a flat in some leafy street in the seaside city.

They're celebrating their 15th Anniverary in 2014, and I'm bloody stoked for them. Consistently strong releases and a willingness to press wax at every possible opportunity continues to win me over. Getting Alice Russell back on board was always going to be a winner, too. Talk about enduring memories.

Anyway, I could've picked any one of a number of tunes to highlight the milestone for the label, but I've gone with one from the compilation 2CD you can pick up now. It's a track with a whiff of early-Quantic to it, but it comes courtesy of one of the label's more recent signings, Titeknots. This young UK producer has released a string of bangin' singles, all twisting house music into some bloody interesting - and increasingly danceable - shapes. I like. I reckon you might, too. Listen to the single 'Hummingbirds' here, or in the player below.

Titeknots website.
Tru Thoughts website.

Live: Music Sounds Better With You

Longroom and Peroni present
MUSIC SOUNDS BETTER WITH YOU
A new night of gorgeous grooves, with DJs
Bevan Keys, Jason Eli, Nyntee and Sweetpants
From 7pm til 3am + Free Entry + Drinks Specials All Night
LONGROOM
114 Ponsonby Rd

Radio Ponsonby Playlist Thu 28 July "The Long Black"

Step up to the plate: I had a call from Sweetpants yesterday asking if I'd like to cover his breakfast show this morning, as he'd managed to score an interview with Morgan Spurlock, he of Super Size Me fame. I said yes, as you do. So, check out the playlist and click here to listen to the audio - and the interview, where Morgan speaks about his latest "Doc-Buster" film, POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, which is part of this year's International Film Festival lineup.

D'Angelo | Everybody Loves The Sunshine
Rick James | Gettin' It On (In The Sunshine)
Chet Faker | No Diggity
Gecko Turner | Monosabio Blues
Skull Snaps | It's A New Day Redux
Gene Harris | The Look Of Slim
Sola Rosa with Four-D | Del Ray
Rae & Christian with Veba | Spellbound (Old English remix)
Holy Ghost! | Do It Again
Rayko | Ipanema Boogie
Disco Tech | Get Lifted
Chapter Three | Smurf Trek (The Revenge edit)
* Morgan Spurlock interview *
40 Thieves | Backward Love
Cherie Mathieson | Tomorrow's Day
Ben Sidran | About Love (Seegweed edit)
Five Special | Why Leave Us Alone (Larry Levan remix)
BLT | Tighten It Up
Charanga '79 | Good Times

Live: Trusted Friends at Tyler St Garage

TRUSTED FRIENDS
With your hosts Sweetpants & 90
Every Friday night from 9pm
A new weekly night of classic rare grooves & proper good times music
At TYLER ST GARAGE
120 Quay St, Britomart
www.tylerstreetgarage.co.nz

Live: Dewey Decimal Sound System at Library Bar

DEWEY DECIMAL SOUND SYSTEM
With your hosts SWEETPANTS and 90
Spinning a selection of music suited to lounging, foot-tapping & soft-shoe shuffling
From 8pm til close
Saturdays in July: 2nd - 16th - 30th
At THE LIBRARY BAR
Cnr Market Place & Pakenham Street East
www.thelibrarybar.co.nz

George FM Playlist Friday 27 May "In The Selectah's Pocket"

I had great fun covering for Karn Hall on the George FM Selectah show today, and even managed to squeeze in a bunch of tunes from my own selection! Alas, there was no playlist taken, as such, but my share of the tunes came from this selection below:

Spandau v Peaches | Shake Yr Ballet
Al Green | Piece Of Mine (Jayl Funk edit)
East Coast | The Rock
Gazeebo | You Ain't So Tuff
Holy Ghost! | Hold On (Blackjoy remix)
Homework | Hold Me Tight
Andy Ash | Freak
Starsgarage | The Massage
Superbreak | Body Bait (Superbreak Disco mix)
Rayko | Gettin' Down

...and if you enjoyed those I strongly suggest you get on down to The Third & Social THIS Saturday night for Bump n' Hustle, alongside my good mates Murry Sweetpants and Jay Jeffrey.

Sick Disco Presents Into The Night

Into The Night
With Bevan Keys, DJ Philippa, Logan Baker and Made Of Horror
And Sweetpants & 90 hosting the Kitchen Party
10pm Saturday 14 May
Cassette #9
$10 on the Door

Goin' Places

Goin' Places
With Sweetpants & 90
Alternating Fridays
From 9.30pm 'til close
New Bond Street Bar
429 New North Rd, Kingsland
Get amongst!

Review: Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra 'World Of Funk' and 'Hooked Up Classics'

SHAWN LEE'S PING PONG ORCHESTRA
World Of Funk AND Hooked Up Classics
[Ubiquity]

There are many words reviewers use which are superfluous. That's probably a chief culprit right there.

However, the one I'm picking on introduce this brace of Shawn Lee albums is "prolific".

The LA-based DJ, beat-maker, producer and weed-head Madlib aka Yesterday's New Quintet aka Otis Jackson Jr is prolific, recording quite literally stacks of material for the Stones Throw label, under multiple aliases. Legendary American indie rock-popper Robert Pollard is prolific, churning out something like eight albums a year via his bands Guided By Voices, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils and too many more to mention here. Brighton-born, Cali, Columbia-resident, producer, DJ and crate-digger Will Holland is prolific, recording as Quantic, Quantic Soul Orchestra, Quantic and His Combo Barbaro and many others besides.

Add American-born, UK-resident Shawn Lee to this list.

This multi-instrumentalist, producer & musicologist is genuinely prolific, having released literally dozens of albums on his own, as the Ping Pong Orchestra and in collaboration with the likes of Money Mark, Tommy Guerrero, Clutchy Hopkins - not to mention in his past life as a session musician for hire, when he worked with everyone from The Dust Brothers & Jeff Buckley to the Spice Girls, while the man has made a mint from providing the musical backing for hugely popular TV shows like Lost, CSI, House, Ugly Betty etc. You could argue he began his career as a "library" music composer and performer when he released the phenomenal Ape Breaks series back in the day.

Under his Shawn Lee and The Ping Pong Orchestra guise, he now presents two more albums of heavily conceptualised library music, each as eminently listenable as his past work.

Following in the footsteps of recent albums Soul In The Hole and Sing A Song, where Lee was joined by a roll-call of guests in albums dedicated to various readings of one musical style, World Of Funk is packed with churning, riveting afro-funk in all its many flavours.

Guests include legendary Egyptian singer Natacha Atlas, multi-instrumentalist Brazilian artist Curumin, Dengue Fever's LA-based Vietnamese singer Chhom Nimol, Truth and Soul recording artist Michael Leonhart, NOMO band-leader Elliot Bergman and others.

While some may rail against Lee ripping off or bastardising these musical styles, the fact remains that this is a labour of love for him. He really does pour himself into these albums, playing many of the instruments himself & wholeheartedly committing himself to an authentic, genuine approach to song-writing, performing and recording the music.

The second of this pair of Ping Pong Orchestra albums is inspired by the Hooked On Classics series of the early '80s (factoid: put together by ELO's Louis Clark) and follows more in the vein of previous Lee albums Hit The Hits and his Christmas album.

Hooked Up Classics sees universally known songs like 1812 Overture, Swan Lake, Dance Of The Sugar P{lum Fairy, Also Spracg Zarathustra and eight others given a right odl dressing down, with Lee taking the essential elements from each piece and reinventing them within entirely new frameworks: 1812 Overture becomes a sweet, sunny, BBQ reggae track; Flight Of The Bumblebee welcomes a freestyle "chorus" over a boom-bap beat; and Hall Of The Mountain King gets twisted into a frenzied surf-guitar stomp.

This is an entirely enjoyable, hilarious and musically unpredictable journey through some of the best known songs ever written. Upon first listen I snorted, more than once, thinking "Sure, this is fun, but how many times am I actually going to listen to this gimmicky record?"

The answer? Prolifically.


World Of Funk: SIX AND A HALF sitars out of TEN
Hooked Up Classics: SEVEN AND A HALF outraged classical music buffs out of TEN

Listen to the Radio Ponsonby Record Review with 90, every Weneri morning around 8.30am, on Murry Sweetpants' Breakfast Show. Thanks To Longroom.

Trusted Friends at Longroom

Just as it says on the tin: your Trusted Friends from the wireless spinning a sweet selection of midweek music at the hottest spot on the Ponsonby Strip. Cold drinks, hot food & tasty tunes, with plenty of room to stretch out on the couches, in front of the fires, in the courtyard...

Every Wednesday night from 7pm til 1am, at Longroom, 114 Ponsonby Rd.
www.longroom.co.nz