Kiwimo

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

SAD by SAD WEST posters // nailed it Lesstalk // will be a special weekend

[thehotelier]

So while I have done one of these the past two years, I almost didn’t this year. Not really sure why. I certainly turned more inward this year which I feel like I needed. I was trying to listen more and speak less. This one might be shorter. Let’s see. Listen more, speak less. Right. 2015 was the first time we actually paid ourselves anything from doing this. My reported income from 2014 was maybe like $600, which was only reported because it’s a third of our total profit for the year. Idk it’s just like how business stuff works. But now I pay my rent (in a cheap as heck collective house in Worcester) and could probably afford more, which is tight. The reality of that sort of eased me into realizing that as much as we are just *mocking voice* a coupla dudes making music, we are incapable of separating our art, our politics, and like even the way we conduct ourselves on social media from the aspect of that we are always a business selling ourselves to you, as listeners. This is something 2011 me would have been like disgusted with. I’m fine by it now. I think there is a sort of silliness with guitar rock bands. They sort of straddle this line of performance and “real” that leaves the viewer kind of confused as to what it actually is. To me, it’s a trick and sort of a good one. The result is, in my opinion, a watering down of both fronts. The performance aspect is sort of stagnant. It’s a good model for singing along with peeps, feeling lost in the sound and I don’t bash it. But the realness aspect is an interesting one for me. When this band was young, or even before, I didn’t really think of it but pop/rock bands are in a way an effort to appear the most real. Who is wearing their heart the most on their sleeve? Who is saying the thing we think but don’t say? And like within that, at least with men, there was no talk about like how that is performed through the music and is accomplishing its goal. It’s just like a “idk it’s just a feeling”. Cute but imo not true. I am wholly under the impression that each of us is always performing in our lives. Within that, it is hard for me to believe that their art is somehow transcending that. This whole realness thing leaks over into what I’ve been thinking a lot about this year, which is public figuredom. With most of the bands we toured with in 2014, we did not have these conversations. Both because ‘dudes’, but obv strongly in that we were sort of all recently jettisoned into situations where this all of a sudden mattered and we didn’t know how to talk about it. Our first tour of 2015 was the first time I saw it talked about openly while we were touring with bands that had been doing it for a while and like are huge tbh. It was funny hearing artists described as “cool guy bands” in appreciation. As in like, mysteriously distant and deeply profound. On that tour was also a band with a deep care for their art yet a disconnect from how their fans interact with it. Also an interesting thing to see on such a large scale. Cool tour learned a lot. Through this all I am experimenting with public figuredom as an intentional piece of being an artist. How, when I “clock in”, do I present myself that reflects the work we do to make it more cohesive and understood? How do I cultivate the attitudes around our art and ways of interacting with our art that I desire to see? How do I interact with people in a way that right off the bat assumes that they are complex and intelligent people? How can what I am doing challenge or disrupt the ways in which people are used to interacting with artists that can establish relationships that disempower the listener? Things I think about. We’ve been lucky enough, or like maybe “good” enough, to have been able to build trust with the peeps that listen to our stuff. We have really intelligent peeps that care about our music enough to have honest and difficult dialogues about cool, interesting, challenging stuff regarding our art, presence. I feel pretty grateful for that. But when you combine that trust with music media and politics though and you have a huge mess. If you thought art and public figuredom is complicated, adding politics is a legit damn mess. I for a long while stopped doing interviews last year because I hated the political aspects of the conversation that would always come up. It always felt like “so, you political?” “Yeah” “rad I agree with you.” Someone reached out about a piece they were writing on depression culture…? Or something…? Basically saying that kids on the internet talking candidly and comically about suicide/depression was insulting to people with “real mental illness”. I answered almost all of his questions with “I disagree with the entire concept you are talking about” but the piece still got published I still got blurbed for talking about eating right or something. This as well as the articles that want to paint us as “band of men vanguarding with feminist politics”. I am learning to reframe questions and reestablish narrative so that these things don’t happen. It’s not ever really a question about whether other public figures care about that stuff or not as much as, “are they good at talking to 1000+ people?” But it’s a weird line in general. At what point does having a large social media presence tied in with your business and social currency both require you to and to not touch on certain issues? At what point is your voice needed to speak? At what point are you aestheticizing your business in another’s struggle? At what point are we System of A Down? At what point are we Macklemore? I spent 2015 listening while thinking about SOAD and Macklemore. I’ve been lucky in this year to get to hear from and be surrounded by some wildly brilliant people with whom I’ve been trapped in a van with, traveled around Europe with, come home to share a room with, started projects with, gone on walks with, sat on a porch until late hours of the night with. I seem to have sort of been magnetically attracted to these people because a common theme amongst them is that they are all folks clinging deeply to realness. To honesty and transparency and kindness as a radical act. These people are mostly artists in some regard, each with their own way of expressing their chaos to the world. Which I am grateful for as it is often the only way to get real with what they are about, or more likely get real with that I have no clue what they are really about. Music is honestly great in that way. We are allowed to reconstruct the intangible worlds in our brain through sound and language. I’m not going to get too hippie on y'all but it’s honestly sick. So much love to those people. AK, JD, CM, CH, OWB, CZ, AB, MZ, ST. And I think this is what bums me out about the wishy-washiness of rock music and performance. Realness is a treasure in life. I don’t want to see uncritical postured realness. I want transparency. I want to know that I’m not trying to be fooled. I want to see each person on stage conducting a performance. I want to see that performance able to be something talked in concretes and abstracts in admiration and disgust. And I’d like to see the same practice in the realm of public figuredom as well. Within that there is realness and performing. I think there needs to be the transparency as to when each of those separate pieces are present. Otherwise, I feel we are confusing the message, making realness a commodity, and thus more difficult to understand and know for not only the audience but individuals in their lives. For y'all right now, I’m not entirely divorced from performance but am attempting to have my yearly update brought to you by “realness”. I do this because I feel more capable of being playful most of the time but also need space to affirm that I am a real person. I am an otherwise closed off person who makes a clear distinction between my personal life and my public figuredom. It is a division that allows me to clock in and out and not lose my sense of self. I hate taking promos and hate that we have a band Instagram. There are pieces of my life that I will share bluntly whenever, and pieces that I will only share on my own time. I will do my best to be honest with y'all and never treat you like you are unable to understand. I will do my best to tell you when I am trying to sell you something. Transitioning to trying to sell you something. I’m very excited to show y'all this record the four of us worked on all last year. It’s called Goodness. It’s a love record. I feel like we are allowed to do that now. We are announcing it tomorrow with a video my friend Xirin made. This is going to be tight.

-Christian

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

STYE

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

Have been helping Lesstalk Records buds set up this emo festival ~~ Lineup released later this month ++ Sydney and Melbourne in April xx

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

A KIWIMO’S MALAYSIA + SINGAPORE DIY TOUR GUIDE (2015)

Carb went to Malaysia at the start of this year and it was sick. They have a super strong and earnest DIY (mostly punk) culture at the moment, which was an inspiring perspective and real cool to experience. And though its mildly intimidating to tour from the outside, its actually really easy to get around, and really cheap once you’re there. Flights even get pretty cheap from Aus (AirAsia mostly - I saw some for as cheap as $137 one way + baggage etc), but not NZ :( (more like $500 each way). This is me recommending it.

- Disclaimer - this is just from my experience and advice from some people I met, feel free to contribute if you think I’ve missed something or I’m not quite right - My experience is with peninsular Malaysia, but you can definitely tour Borneo too. Makes a lot of sense to start or end in Singapore (also once you’re in the region, its pretty cheap to fly around - Indonesia, Bangkok and a couple of cities in Vietnam are options too). May as well bring up cost up front, basically, compared to NZ and Australia, you get paid very little. There’s no chance of making back your flights as a DIY band. BUT covering most of the in-country costs is possible, but to be honest you’d want to have a few hundred dollars spare to enjoy yourself more. RM is Malaysian Ringgit, was around 1/3 of NZD when we went. Expect 0-150 RM per show = 0-50 NZD + merch (which people get real into - probably make as much as from the show or more from merch) It’s not much, I know, but in context: Decent meal - 6-12RM = 2-4 NZD

Bus tickets between cities - 15-40RM = 5-14 NZD

Dorm bed - 15-25RM = $5-9

Decent hotel room for 2-4 people - 80-130RM = 26-43 NZD

Public transport - 1-5RM = 0.30-2 NZD

It’s worth mentioning its overall a pretty PUNK scene, and the aesthetic can come across pretty strong, but even the dudes in the \m/ grindcore \m/ bands we played with were welcoming. Speaking of dudes, in terms of bands its very MEN. There were women at the shows though and they outwardly appreciated when other women were on stage.

So going South-North (and all on the West Coast), the options are: Singapore

Some people don’t rate Singapore but I lived there for a while as a kid and always love going there. They don’t have the same DIY culture as Malaysia, partly because regulations, property prices and everyone living in high-rise apartments means it can be super hard and expensive to put on shows. I have heaps of respect for the people who keep fighting to put on good stuff. For example, the venue we played at, maybe slightly bigger than Great Job, probably smaller than Black Wire cost $120 per hour (!) to put on a show. But anyway, thats for the local peeps to worry about. Venues seem to change a lot, and don’t really promote shows, try: Prohibited Projects: (punker end of things) http://prohibitedprojects.blogspot.co.nz/

Other Sounds: (indie end of things) https://www.facebook.com/othersoundsmusic

Johor Bahru Used to be a pretty dodgy place, but way chiller and safer than it used to be. Just across the border from Singapore Try Embrace Hall: https://www.facebook.com/groups/242518063120/?fref=ts

Batu Pahat

The main venue there The Wall burnt down recently, but there have been heaps of fundraisers and stuff lately, think they’ll probably be up and running in a little while. Keen to help, they offered us a show out of the blue when they heard we were coming to Malaysia. The Wall: https://www.facebook.com/thewallbp?fref=ts

Malacca

We didn’t go here but played with a band Loch from here who were super friendly, they’d point you in the right direction. Loch: https://www.facebook.com/lochmusic?fref=ts

Kuala Lumpur

KL is a big city, has more indie stuff going on then elsewhere.

Indie/experimental shows at an art gallery: Findars - https://www.facebook.com/FINDARS?fref=ts Punx as (Carb wasn’t punk enough to suit playing here really): Rumah Api - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rumah-Api/157888934276502?fref=ts Other: BTNK - https://www.facebook.com/btnk.btnk?fref=ts The Wknd (a pretty big Malaysian music media site) is also based in KL and can probably give you tips and other options, they were super helpful and nice to us, and helped me with this guide.

- https://www.facebook.com/thewknd?fref=ts

Ipoh

A smallish city north of KL, these people Toothache Splinter put on sick shows there, with really nice posters and promo, and make tickets for the show which are badges and stuff. They’re great. They also put out the Carb album on tape.

Toothache Splinter - https://www.facebook.com/toothiesadventure

Penang

Nicest city we went to, food actually lives up to the huge hype, some killer vege restaurants. Try Soundmaker Studio (pretty much across the road from the water and a world heritage site, also have a hostel room you can stay at, the guy who runs it, Cole, is super nice):

Soundmaker Studio - https://www.facebook.com/Soundmakerstudio?fref=ts

_____________________________________________________________________

Cool yeah, and if you wanted to go to Borneo or other cities just ask some of these people, almost everyone’s happy to help in my experience. PS. Get merch made there otherwise your prices will just be too high. Just ask around.

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

also just heads up this is isn’t going to be an active blog, just wanted somewhere nice and public to put specific posts

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

Kiwimo for Emus

Hospital Sports

Owen-style chill emo. Recently got a new drummer and currently doing louder, rockier songs live.

Hit: Smile Lines

Whatever Happened? by Hospital Sports

Coate

2010-2014, now defunct. Doing an emo in the 2010′s well before anyone else in NZ was. First album clearly AF influenced, more energy later on the Spring EP and Keep It Together Records splits they did. On a personal level, important to Carbs’ turn to emo.

Hit: Climbing Playgrounds with Paul Brown

Spring EP by Coate

Also worth checking out sister band Winter if you like yelling. And new combo band of Coate/Winter, Buddy Up

There are some live recordings of Coate available too, here and here.

Dental Plan

Short lived Auckland emo band, released 1 ep, and 1 split, and played two or three shows. A new band is being started out of it that is super promising, here is an acoustic set played as Dental Plan.

Dental Plan EP by Dental Plan

Open

These guys have some nice emo bits, other parts are kind of techy math/post-rock. Interested to see where they end up.

Chasing Returns by Open

Tuff Wizard

Maybe they don’t really count as emo, but sure is some seeck emotional pop punk (with A+ lyrics). FFO: TWIABP and Los Campesinos. Hit: The Gap Between My Two Front Teeth

Gap/ Telling by Tuff Wizard

Also worth checking out a band a couple of the wizards were in before, Attic Sky’s.

Carb on Carb

Its me band. Didn’t use to be emo, but we’re going more and more that way now.

Carb on Carb by Carb On Carb

Trampoline Dreamers

A friend’s album I did the singing on.

Hate Patterns by Trampoline Dreamers

#staytrueyoungemo

[zkii]

Carb on Carb | Blackiwire Records + Beatdisc Records 

Last weekend was real cool got to see Carb on Carb twice at both of my favourite Record stores. 

This video was probably one the most difficult things I’ve set my self to edit but its always a bunch of fun trying out new things. 

P.s buy CARB ON CARB’S REKKID : https://carboncarb.bandcamp.com/

beatdisc + carboncarbband

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

I’ve watched Zac’s video of Sweater Season’s ‘Allergies’ an obscene amount of times. Cool to be among so many great bands on his youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/zkphotovideo)

[carboncarbband]

dreams come true #staytrueyoungemo #ramsack #emupunx http://ift.tt/1JXmUBa

[staytrueyoungkiwimo]

End of a beautiful tour. Kiwimo recommendations coming soon!