Hennessy Love Machine

All for a good cause

2010-03-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

On the weekend we played a few songs at Relay For Life which is where participants run around a big 'ol track in relay teams for TWENTY FOUR HOURS - they start at 12pm on Saturday and run, jog, walk, stagger themselves silly until 12pm the following day. Now we know we probably couldn't last that long, even as a relay team so we opted for the safer option of belting out a few tracks all in the name of charitable entertainment.

Hugh at Huge Sound put together a sweet mix on his 'back of the truck' set up and even played back the live mix when we were done, so thanks Huge, you pwned it. Our favourite moment of the day was providing the backing music for the hoola hoop competition which began with a demonstration courtesy of Katie, who we didn't really meet but seemed nice. You can't see it in the video but a small girl won the comp so our hats are off to you little lady! Have a look at the video for quite possibly THE highlight of our musical careers.

Women need support, so do bands

2009-11-22T18:56:00.001-08:00

We can help with one of those. This coming Thursday, the 26th November Hennessy Love Machine will be supporting Christchurch band Sleeping Dogs at Al's Bar. We've posted it as an event on our facebook page so if you haven't already, go check it out and get involved. Infact, even if you aren't going to come, click on attend anyway - it'll make us feel better about ourselves.

Quite looking forward to playing at Al's, we've seen numerous gigs there and now's our chance to rock the place. A big thanks to SDs for supplying us with a sound guy, it should be a fun night! Check out this video of SD's track 'Climbers' directed by none other than their drummer Rick Harvie, clever mo fo.

Nothing Deep... Just the Skills of Humanity

2009-11-01T02:32:00.000-08:00

I was going to post something mythical and magical from the tempo of the soul - but I was drawn to the skills of this kid shredding a bit of Vivaldi on an accordion.

We humans are amazing creatures...

Beggin'

2009-10-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

This remix is tight... and still unreleased in NZ. BOLLOCKS! But not to worry, we have the interweb to keep up with all the good music unreleased here.

That is all.

A common thread

2009-09-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a good old chin wag. Jon's a great facilitator so he lead the discussion - we were wanting to find out what everybody actually wants from Hennessy Love Machine, who we're targeting and what is our sound. These seem like questions you would think a band would have sorted out from the start but it's not always that cut and dry. The thing is, we've been writing all these different songs, some of them we love some of them we've grown tired of quickly, our writing began with a lazy kind of jazzy shuffle then into shuffle country, then into a weird mix of high energy rock/dance vibe.

We all come from such varying musical backgrounds which is why I think we have such an eclectic bunch of tunes. But last night we came up with one band who we would most love to play in - ie. which band in the world would I most love to sing in, or Kurt would play guitar in etc. Through this little 'sensitive male bonding workshop' we came out with an interesting result; one very obvious common thread in all of the bands we chose was that they all had a definite rock element and to be more specific it was an alt rock feel. I personally didn't see that one coming, rock yes, but alt? The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If we can take hold of this genre, this alt rock beast and focus our attention on what alt rock means to us while bringing in our own individual styles, we will come up with something really great. Nailing down a genre which suits HLM doesn't pigeonhole us, I believe it gives us a stronger direction but at the same time our own personal creativity which is so important to develop is recognised.

Another outcome from our circle jerk was we have agreed to play a few less gigs in the near future and focus more on song writing. Especially now we've decided upon where our music fits a little more into the whole scheme of things, the new stuff is practically bursting to get jammed. Moses will be a bigger part of the song writing process which until now has only been happening on a few songs, he'll push Kurt and vice versa and for me, hearing Mo's lead embellishments can inspire vocal melodies I probably wouldn't have even considered.

There was talk of a band name change too, but that's a whole other story. First things first I guess, it's good to have a new direction, and one thing I personally struggle with is change. As Mo said so wisely "If you always do things the way you've always done them, you'll always get what you've always got". Or something like that. Moses - going through puberty since 1998. Good on ya mate.

My EXIT from Chillaxation and Back to Chaos

2009-09-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hola amigos. I am back from the Balkan/Czech excursion, chillaxed and motivated to resume the music, love and chaos that is HLM. My recommendation is Budva (Montenegro) and the Mljet (Croatia) for those that are after some mellow Balkan chaos and Dubrovnik (Croatia) / Prague (Czech Republic) for the tourists who want to see sites and hang out with annoying Australians and Americans.

As I posted a while ago, EXIT festival was an amazing experience and highly recommended for all as it is cheap to 'live' there, amazingly organized with a lot of attention to the 'vibe' and the people attending the festival and living at the campsite were all on the 'love' buzz.

Here are some videos I found on the tube from the event. I remember Korn/Manic Street Preachers night was on the celebration of another successful revolution of the sun for me, it rained a little (it was 20-25 degrees still) and you can see me at 0:07 of KoRn (the guy jumping up and down). Lily Allen was the first artist I saw. She was very entertaining and had a lot of amazing interludes/segues/remixes of her own songs which encompassed house, drum and bass and dubstep. Enjoy!

Break's almost over

2009-08-21T19:54:00.001-07:00

Yep, not long until Kurt is back from his jaunt through Europe and we'll hopefully see a post from him soon AY KURT! Jon's back, I've done my little stint in the UK and we're fast approaching our first gig back at Tru Bar on the 12th September. Can't wait!

I was at Sacha Vee's gig last night at The Dux and was again blown away. Super smooth soulful sounds, sexy, funked up head bopping tracks that you can't help but move to. I was actually there solo and still couldn't help but have a wee boogie - that's usually unheard of for me especially when I'm by my lonesome! But man being there made me want to start gigging something wicked. Jo Barus was singing harmonies in this amazing falsetto register, higher than what Sacha was singing, it was freakin sweet. So what you reckon Dave? A few lessons and you'll be screaming!

So yeah, apologies for the lack of posts, it was my plan to flick at least one or two a week while we're on our hiatus but I ran out of things to blog about. I've been doing fairly mundane band stuff - submitting ALL our back dated live performance returns to APRA which took a while, blanket bombing summer festivals with applications and even penning a few lyrics to tunes Kurt left me. We've scored a couple gigs at the ChCh Cup and Show week in November so that's great! Will have to get ironing our ties... Would love to land a wine festival or two, as well as somewhere cool like Canaan downs then we could incorporate it into a tour up that way. Really would love to get our asses up to Auckland and play at Sale Street then make our way back down the North Island. BUT we need something to promote at these gigs as it's kind of pointless, well not pointless but we need to give the people something more that will last once the amps have been switched off, soooo... recording an album would be nice.

What else, what else, oh yeah Logan at Gorilla Pictures is all keen to film a music video for Follow My Nose which will be awesome! We also should play a gig at Fat Eddies' weekly event; Hennessy Art of Mixology - and really ride that name association. Could make a cocktail on stage as part of the show - Jon and Kurt's favourite - 'Parfait Amour Dream'.

The Sunny Side of the Earth

2009-07-20T04:14:00.000-07:00

EXIT festival was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was basically the philosophy of Epicurus implemented with (mostly) happy humans surviving together, friendships cultured and time to crash without worries. We spent 10 days camping with some of the greatest humans I have met. Nothing but sharing and caring, love and fun 24/7.... oh yeah... the music was pretty good too! 75% of the fun was had at the campsite though.

Which story is first??? Well, after the most painful 35 degree 2.5 hour train ride from Belgrade to Novi Sad (which takes 1 hour by car), I somehow manage to 'knife' myself in the taxi to the campsite. After locating a spot at the campsite, I head to the hospital. Luckily I met a couple of reporters who run this newspaper. After 3 hours to get 3 stitches and almost a fight with a pompous shithead who used his high level connections to jump the 'stitches' queue (including 2 old men), I managed to get free treatment and a story in the paper about corruption at the hospital! But the reporters were unbelievable - waiting 3 hours (getting a story though) and driving me back to the tentsite. Much love for those guys.

So the tent site had to be moved because the Danube flooded the intended site, thus we were placed on the army base... which housed military equipment etc. This would never happen in good old PC New Zealand... but the following story is probably why! After my 3 hour stint at the hospital, I arrive and still see the security team still fencing off bunkers and buildings etc. not really thinking too much of it.... only when I wake up later to a commotion about tear-gas. Some retard Scousers found their way into a bunker and decided to let off something they found... thankfully tear-gas. Luckily (or unluckily) for me, I didn't get to experience it... my tent is superior to tear-gas and there were only about 200 tents up, thus, no stampede. But in the morning we hear the full story of the chaos and hear about some of the stuff the army removed from that particular bunker - machine guns, grenades, explosives, more teargas etc. The Serbian guys we met (with the greatest tent at the camp site - (above)) were the first to run as they had experienced tear gas before, and thus helped a lot of peeps out e.g. telling the ones running towards the teargas to run the other way. EPICNESS!

All this on the first night, 3 days before the festival started!!! There were more epic tales from the camp site as well such as guys near us getting arrested (Serbian style), another guy near our site who had to have plastic surgery because half his ear got bitten off in a fight (British vs British), the first swine flu case in Serbia (a few tents over as well), the toilets (the 30 minute walk to town to take a shit was worth it).... too many to tell!!! As I said, 75% of the fun was at the tent site.

The music was good too. My first WTF on Night 1 was Buraka Som Sistema. Massive energy and interesting music. Portuguese/Angolan music in the Kuduro style. This night I also gained a new found respect for the Dubstep genre. Casper and Rusko followed Arctic Monkeys (who were also pretty good). I was blown away by these guys and their steez. Roots Manuva and Lily Allen also had good sets this night as well.

Night 2 was the night rolling into my birthday, thus it was a pretty epic night. The artists I wanted to see were on their 'A' game this night as well. The stand outs were Manic Street Preachers, Ettiene de Crecy and Korn. Although I only devoured Korn in my 14-16th revolution around the sun, they still have an index to awesomeness in my head 12 years on... and their live set is even better than anything heard on their recordings.

Night 3 was the birthday, and even though the previous night was epic, this night was even bigger and better with Kraftwerk, Moby and Grandmaster Flash being the stand out artists. I went to Moby with an expectant attitude (as I heard and he and his band impressed beyond what I was expecting. My recommendation to all humans is to see Moby play live before you die!!! It's not just about the music... it's about the experience.

Night 4... slightly jaded... but soldiering on... This was the biggest night of the lot with Prodigy being the main goal. I thought Moby could not be outdone... but Prodigy with their big beat badass massiveness owned all that played. I saw these guys at the Big Day Out in January, and they were bigger and better this time round. Not too much else I remember from this night other than falling asleep on a hill at the dance arena... yes... at a massively loud dance arena filled with 25000 people... listening to Japanese Pop Stars (and missing the song I really wanted to hear). Chase and Status were also quite epic this night but my body had had enough thus returning up the walk of death (and missing the sunrise with Carl Cox).

I recommend anyone who enjoys a bit of social camping and chaos to save their coins and get to Serbia for an EXIT festival. I am almost motivated to save my cash and go again....

Anyway, ciao from Montenegro.

the void

2009-07-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

We're still here! Massive props (do people still say that??) to Muz and the gang at deliciousmusic.co.nz They're nailing it at the moment and that's only after being up and running not even 6 months! If you don't yet know what they're all about go and check the website yo.

So Kurt's still away and has just been to the exit festival (blog hopefully coming soon about that one Factory?) Jon's in the UK, I'll be over that way in a couple of weeks too, Dave and Mo are holding fort in Churchtown and things are chugging along. Still got a whole bunch of new songs to write lyrics for, footage of Kurt playing them to video recorder are sitting my Mac constantly nagging at me to finish them... I filed ALL our live performance returns for the last year and a half worth of gigs which took bloody ages but feels oh so good to have done.

Really looking forward to watching Gorilla TV tonight. It's on Juice TV (on Sky) at 10pm and it's made in our very own city of Christchurch at Gorilla Studios. Sweeeet. Some freakin talented people around these part I tells ya.

The Dark Side of the Earth

2009-06-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

Sitting in 30 degrees celsius, plotting a travel solution, gazing over a Mancunian landscape and loitering in a timezone 12 hours different to what I am accustomed to, I have decided to document some musical chaos and mayhem that will begin a week from now.

EXIT Festival is having its 10 year anniversary and my girlfriend and I will be 2 of the ~200,000 people attending it. This festival has been rated the best in Europe in the past and just stuck out as a festival that we had to go to on our journey. Another thing that stuck out is that the tickets cost €90 (about $200 NZ) to attend and camp for the duration of the music and a few days in lieu of its start and end. Its amazingly cheap if you compare it to the big british festivals: Leeds, Glastonbury, Isle of Wight - you are looking at £70 per day for Leeds, which equates to shitloads if you decide to attend the whole festival and £150-200 for Isle of Wight and Glastonbury. Even PHAT 09 in Inangahua was $200 NZ and the line-up for EXIT is way more epic, and the backdrop is unbelievable.

The location of the festival is at the Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad, Serbia which is on the shores of the mighty Danube river. The place wreaks of history and culture, and beats getting drunk with some pommy yobbos at a muddy expensive UK festival.

The lineup for this festival is very interesting also. We have in no particular order: The Prodigy, Roots Manuva, Korn, Moby, Andy C, Manic Street Preachers, Lily Allen, The Arctic Monkeys, Madness, Bryan G, Kraftwerk, Patti Smith, DJ Marky, Chase and Status, Grandmaster Flash, John Digweed, Max Romeo + many many european bands/DJs of all genres that we would never ever hear unless researched. I am particularly interested in hearing the performers Buraka Som Sistema (Portugal/Angola), Roots Manuva (UK) and The Japanese Popstars (Northern Ireland).

Buraka Som Sistema play some sort of progressive electronic Angolan dancehall which will be interesting to experience. Roots Manuva is one of those arists that I absorbed whilst not paying attention to the music, and in latter years the rediscovery of the music displayed that Roots Manuva drives down the highway of awesome - let the spirit move you . The Japanese Popstars are a house act which sound like they will be a pretty epic act as they won 'Best Live Act' and 'Best Album' st the Irish music awards. Of course I will attempt to 'hit' as many of the popular/legacy artistes as possible - but there is only so much I can go and see..... sacrifices will have to be made....

instant axe recordings

2009-06-30T02:32:00.000-07:00

I think I've read about them somewhere - guitars with inbuilt mp3 capabilities, but does that mean they record a tune? Google will no doubt help me solve this.

But while we're at it, I can't wait until someone invents a shrinkable guitar, with inbuilt mp3 capabilities of course. Or perhaps a foldable guitar, something you can put in your already stuffed backpack and whip it out wily nilly as you travel the land from sand to sand. Kurt! They must sell these somewhere in Europe? Those crazy Deutsch with their 'vorsrpung durch technik' mentality must have something by now? Make sure you check out East Berlin, it's a mind fuck.

There is indeed a disturbance in the force. I (Captain Morgan) am having jam withdraws, I'm singing in the car some times but it just isn't the same as making my ears bleed at band practice with a foldback speaker. I also get the sense something undesirable is afoot in my personal life which can only mean lyrics shall no doubt soon be purged. Like the gut wrenching cramp experienced moments before vomiting up last night's rancid takeaways, I am anxiously waiting for the emotional equivalent. Will keep you posted on that one! Ah life ay, good times. Thank god for music as an outlet. At this point I googled "life" quotes, read the first 20 then promptly did throw up.

down time

2009-06-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

Well it's been almost a week since our single release party, so time for a new post. Follow My Nose went off sick at Tru Bar - heaps of peeps, crazy moves on the floor and LOTS of noise. I was blown away to be honest. As the front man I'm constantly encouraging the audience to get involved, to go crazy after each song and if the song suits - to shake their ass. But this time it was different, it was easy. The crowd squished right up to the stage before we had even started playing, they started dancing on the first song and as the final chord rang out for each tune they cheered con mucho gusto! I didn't know what to do! I liked the feeling and crave it again. So, thank you again to everyone who came out, hope you got yourself a free CD or DVD they went pretty fast.

So now Kurt's away (rhythm guitarist) for just over 2 months, Jon's gone for July and I'm in the UK for 2 weeks in August so we've got ourselves some down time. Will use it to write more songs - I've got an impressive backlog of tunes Kurt's composed so by the time we all jam again we'll have about one album's worth of new material! Will endeavour to keep blogging too, won't be able to delve in the philosophical world of musical utopia like Factory does but I'll do my best, stuff will still be happening with the Love Machine, don't you worry.

Logan from Gorilla Pictures took some more pics, these are just a few from a mate's point and shoot, you can check them out here.

Behind the scenes of Follow My Nose recording

2009-06-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, Hennessy Love Machine spent a weekend recording a new single called Follow My Nose. Once it was finished we submitted it for NZ on Air 'new recording artist' funding and the names of the lucky bands (5 from a total of 327) were released mid June. We unfortunately, were not one of them. But it doesn't matter, onwards we say! More music to be made, more submissions to be sent, as long as we're having fun doing it. Can't let a thing like that bog you down either, it's a mystery how the bands are selected and maybe one day we'll get lucky, maybe we won't.

The main thing on our minds right now is our single release party this coming Friday at Tru Bar in Christchurch! We're going to release Follow My Nose anyway, it needs mastering first but at least now we can do it under our own steam. Friday's gig will sadly be the last one for a while as Kurt's off overseas for a few months but this will allow us time for writing, resting and eating. Check out the video of us recording the track at The Sitting Room

The Good Samaritan Warrior

2009-06-14T04:49:00.000-07:00

All religions and belief systems have their quirks, but all seem to have an ideal that is part of their framework which is basically 'be a good human for yourself and humanity as a whole'. No one wants to be known as a shit human, or be associated with shit humans, but last weekend, I had the joy of meeting a really shit human.

Rather than beating the dirt that is in the vicinity of the bush and to chop a long tale succinct, to summarize, I was performing good Samaritan duties for a traveling human that I had got to know and trust and offered a couch for that (ridiculously cold) night, as they had lost the address to their residence. Nice, simple and straightforward. Upon returning to my house, for no apparent reason, the guy walks over to where I am sitting and (essentially) threatens to kill me. There were many other words in the mostly one-way conversation and I was attempting pacifism until I felt my life threatened... it is good to know what instinct will do in that situation.

None of what followed was fun or good, but I had to do what I had to do:

Do unto others BEFORE they do it to you. Lure with bait, strike with chaos.

From my point of view, I had to act or be annihilated and to feign submission before taking a person to ground in a sleeper hold is a great way to act. It was straight forward motherfucker house removal until half way out the door, where he 'came to' and had another go at me. I had to hit him round the head a couple of times (I think I also took a couple in the back of the head), and grapple some more until I had him on the ground in the garden, repeatedly hitting his head into the fence whilst punching it at the same time (I told you this was not fun or good). At this point I was well pissed off that this negativity had been brought into my flat full of love and thus it reflected in my removal of him onto the street. He received multiple hits to the head and kicks in the ribs whilst on the ground. The goal of this relatively over-the-top beating was to 'actually' get rid of this person. But NO! After getting a beating, this guy comes back for more and tries to attack me over my fence - but scarily apologizes in between the madness consuming him - 'I'm really sorry man... I am going to fucken kill you'. So basically, it was a guy trying to attack me over a fence with a gate that I could not lock, and me continually hitting him in the head as I had superior reach. Thankfully the police (whom my lovely saviour of a flatmate called) arrived and took him away..... and that was that. A lot of shock, a couple of bumps to the head/cuts on the hands but I was safe and all in one piece.

There has been a lot of discussion amongst my peers and I have filtered a lot of opinions on the subject at hand and swilled the thoughts around my brain to reflect on them. There has been the obvious opinion of 'did you really need to fight, couldn't you have talked it through - there are other options to fighting you know!' My response to all pacifist attitudes on that situation is to put yourself in the situation where you are backed into a corner by another human, no one around, nowhere to run, one on one, threatened to be killed and get back to me on what you would do. My instinct reacted with chaos to a life threatening situation. I don't look for a physical confrontation ever, but what I learned about myself is that if the shit hits the fan I will rise up and catch a fire, before I get burned.

My mum told me to never kick a man while he's down (obviously in the metaphorical sense, but relative to a literal scenario as well). It is an act of cowardice and over-exersion of power. I don't think that saying took into account a person that you have subdued to the ground that has threatened to kill you and you really really really really want them to give up their fruitless venture of aggression. (re: above) There are other means, but where do you draw the line?

It was not fun or good or exciting but I take it as a positive experience as I am here to write about it.

Ed Fatties

2009-06-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

We've got a short and sweet gig tonight at Fat Eddies in town which should be money. It's nice playing there, one because we don't have to cart all the big gear as they have their own sound system and two because they have a sound guy which takes a load off. The ambience is pretty cool too. It's a little weird some times playing at the 8pm - 10pm because you've got the tail end of the diners and the cross over between them and the party people. The latter usually haven't been drinking long, which means they're not quite ready to dance. Don't get me wrong, we try, yes we do but it takes a bit longer to get them going than playing at say 12am.

I was wondering who would win in a song-off today: Billy Ocean or Huey Lewis and the News. Billy's touring right now, and world wide too - a jab to Lewis' mid section, whereas Huey is sticking to North America and his dates are few and far between. As far as the music goes - Billy delivers a solid right to Hewy, I was surprised just how many singles British Ocean had released and how many made it on to the charts both UK and US. But native New Yorker Huey parries and counters with an equally impressive tally if not more singles released, obviously more on the US charts but still making an impression in the UK. Both artists fein with the left and jab with the right on Number ones as they end the first round on equal points. Ding! Round two and Lewis completely pile drives (unlike any boxing you've ever seen before!!) with acting in major Hollywood feature films as well as a full frontal nude scene, sure Duets was like eating your own vomit but hey it's a paycheck. Is that a twitch from Ocean? Doesn't really matter because Lewis bitch slaps him through the floor with Back in Time and The Power of Love featuring in 1985's box office smash hit Back to the Future.

I like them both, and pretty keen on seeing Billy Ocean as I'm sure it'll probably be the last time unless I go traveling. Which I'm not doing any time soon. Might drop Huey an email though, see if he wants to come to our single release party. Jake Edwards will be there.

High School shredding

2009-06-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

On the weekend I was lucky enough to witness a couple of Smokefree Rockquest finals down south; one in Invercargill, the other in Dunedin. I was MCing the gig which I have to admit was a little daunting as I've never had to deal with hundreds of screaming teenagers before. Turned out it was sweet as, I got away with talking a whole bunch of shit and learned throwing free stuff at them whipped them into a frenzy - I relied heavily on the free stuff.

My last experience with high school bands was when I actually went to college, I wasn't even in a band then, I just remember some kids playing around with guitars and drums making all sorts of loud noises. Then I probably got downtroweled. With a high school band competition, even the finals, you take the good with the bad. The predominant genre of course was good old rock. There was a remarkable number of double kick pedals - maybe because they couldn't quite get the single foot flams or they were just really hardcore, either way kick drum was a big focus for the drummer boys and girls. You could definitely feel the angst coming through with a lot of the songs, I even got to judge the lyric writing comp one night and some of it blew my mind! But I won't go in to detail, that could be a whole new post.

On the whole, I was super impressed by these bands. Being my first ever SFRQ I have nothing to compare them to from previous years or even from other cities, but the skill level was quite incredible in some kids. You could definitely see a promising future for a few stars, some front girls/guys who just oozed confidence, lead guitarists that absolutely shredded and drummers (sans double kick pedal) who were super tight. Being side stage for the whole thing I got to see these teens' determination and effort up close, some were nervous as hell, others seemed destined for it. I'd love to see where some of them end up in 5 years or so, I may have witnessed the next Opshop or Midnight Youth! All of this really made me wish I had started getting involved in music much earlier, for a creative outlet you just can't beat it and the reward of being on stage and performing a piece of music with your mates to a bunch of people who dig it is probably one of the best sensations around. I would highly recommend it!

Then have a hand shandy.

Undeniably smooth appeal

2009-06-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Like Jon's home brew we sampled last night, Hennessy Love Machine is bluesy driven smooth rock with undeniable appeal. Don't quite know if that works to describe a beverage but damn Jon, fine effort with the DIY beer! This will no doubt raise the bar for Kurt's next brew, although I've seen that big barrel sitting outside his front door for a while now, so hmmm might need a good wash. Or perhaps a batch could be brewed using pure Christchurch rain water? Tangy.

So we had a jam last night with the intention of running our tight smaller set but instead worked on tweaking a new track called We Know She Knows, which is sounding pretty damn phat if I do say so. Also we ran a totally new song entitled Did I Ever and that came together nicely too, not quite ready to perform but won't take much to get it there. The lyrics are actually about an ex-girlfriend who was quite full on to say the least - I was just waiting for the right time to finally pen the words. It's taken a few years but, after completing the song, I realised I don't actually want to write a song about her anymore! To be honest it felt good. So today's mission is the re-write, bring it!

NZ on Air - that hot girl in the bar

2009-05-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

Myself, Moses and Kurt 'Factory' Preston headed down to Christchurch's music industry event of the year CHARTFEST yesterday afternoon to have a snoop around. For a few hours during the afternoon there are stalls set up around the ChCh Town Hall and you can meet people hawking their wares/services (it's really just general meet and greet) - audio peeps, visual, instruments, media folk etc, then bands kick in on the 4 stages - electro, acoustic, grass roots and main which feature some of NZ's bigger name acts.

To be honest I felt slightly um, I don't know OLD? It was a little like walking into a youth group convention, maybe they could've separated the industry m&g and the actual gig part of it to enable a more efficient platform to network. Anyway it's a great concept and I know Jeff Fulton and all his CHARTers (and all other contributors) work damn hard to make it happen.

So there we are - me and Mo, loitering around the NZ on Air kiosk. Brendan Smyth - the man who basically makes all the calls with funding was packing down posters and tidying up leftover fliers. It was the perfect opportunity to sidle on up and say hello. Like that good looking girl at the bar you just can't quite approach - "what am I going to say to her? She won't be interested in me!" Mo and I fidgeted for quite some time and made a couple of walk by type approaches before we grew some balls and went up to introduce ourselves. Brendan was very approachable as it turns out, we just had to make the first move and offer to buy him a drink. Well, give him our card at least. They knew our name from our application which we submitted a few weeks ago, so that's got to be a good thing right? I'm going to view that in a positive light.

It turns out this last round of funding around 320 bands submitted an application, this is the largest number of applicants ever! Neat. Oh well, regardless of 350 or 250 applying they're still slim odds. Mo is of the mind to think about the application and really hope for it, thinking positively whereas I'm more inclined to hand it over and try to forget it, not getting my hopes up so I won't get disappointed. Both ways of thinking have their pros and cons I guess. I'm going to stick with my way after I've said.. I really REALLY hope we get it!!! Ok, ahem, that's better. Moral of this story is; don't be afraid of meeting anyone, no matter who they are. If they're a hot chick/guy in a bar or a music industry executive, we're all human, we all shit, piss and have morning breath. If it takes a few dry runs so be it just make sure one of them you stick your hand out and say hello, then you're away laughing. But don't laugh straight away, that'll come across crazy like.

Taleggio bella

2009-05-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

When you watch a band perform live on stage you probably don't think too hard about each member and their personal lives - where they're from, their schooling, experiences growing up, dealing with the awkwardness of puberty and, if they're cheese lovers. Think rock bands and you're likely to envisage beer guzzling, scoops of soggy chips (if it's a band who hasn't quite made their millions yet) and maybe some sort of rocket fuel. Don't get me wrong we like that too, but smear some ripe munster on a cracked pepper wafer with some orange and cognac marmalade and we're as happy as a pig in gourmet shit. And slightly gay by the sound of it.

To be honest I personally would settle for a knife and a block of colby, Taleggio is like eating coagulated sweat wringed from a recently used rugby sock. It's never a very good look holding your nose when you eat cheese either, you should enjoy every aspect of it. Same goes for many other things in life. This actually reminds me of a time when Slap Happy were around (basically HLM minus Kurt - we hadn't met him yet) and we played some songs at Rocky Cola in Christchurch (a bogan bar since closed down). As part of the song we prepared cheese and crackers on stage, then handed them round to the punters in the room. As I recall not many people partook in the Hors d'oeuvres that night, probably because they had my dirty fingers all over them and I had just ripped a g-string with my ass. Now if we had a beautiful girl in a bikini on stage with us at Vespa on Saturday preparing cheesy snacks, I bet people would eat them then! Hmmm...

Righto, jam tonight good times, new songs to be jammed.

Single release

2009-05-25T17:22:00.001-07:00

We've finalised a date for the single release party for Follow My Nose - 19th June at Tru Bar in Christchurch. Should be a good night! Regardless of what happens with NZ on Air funding (oh yes that's right, I'd made a point to forget all about that) we'll charge forth with this track, and make a music vid under our own steam, we have the means between the lot of us and can call a few favours too, so should be sweet.

Deadwood (Kris Wilson and Moses Robbins) will be supporting us on the night which will be awesome, and I'm not so secretly hoping Tru Bar owner Richard Page will play us his rendition of No Woman No Cry that he's renown for.

The gig on the 19th will also be out last for about 3 months, as Kurt is off to Europe for a while, Jon's gone for July and I'm away for half of August so it works out quite nicely. This down time will allow me to write more (finish the massive back log of songs that's been piling up thanks to the Kurt Factory), work on marketing shizz as well as pushing us to summer time festivals. That sort of stuff takes up a lot of time so it'll be good to be able to concentrate solely on that task.

For more details about the release party go to our facebook event page and RSVP us, I don't think it matters if you're invited or not, you can just click Attending. Either way, everyone is welcome and we'd love to see you there :)

Experiencing a threesome

2009-05-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

On the weekend the 2 Orsums gained one or Hennessy Love Machine lost two for a gig down at Vespa. Just me, Mo and Kurt - two axes and vocals. Twas a bitterly cold night and wet underfoot but there were surprisingly quite a few people in town, this could've had something to do with the Crusaders vs Bulls game on at 1am, but let's just say they all came out to listen to live music. It was great to see a group of people who we had given a HLM biz card to a week before come and watch the entire gig, we really appreciated it, and your involvement.

A guy came into the bar at the end of a song (can't remember which) and I encouraged him to take his hands out of his pockets and join the applause. He chose not to which of course, is fine and I proceeded to make an example of him which is standard practice. The guy seemed to get a little pissed off I think, then during the next song he came up and put a few dollars in the remains of my beer. While this gesture could be seen as slightly offensive, it also has a positive spin - we got money from him, he interacted with us in some way and I wasn't going to drink that last bit of swill from the glass anyway. It was a win win situation! Plus after that, a young lady in the crowd was inspired and dropped another couple of bucks in. Hell, we busk in the square, encouraging people to do just this, so why not in a club gig? We could be like the Robin Hood band who take from the slightly well off and give to the bar staff tip jar! Anyway, bless you oh giver of coins.

So it was a pretty chill gig really, another good chance to jam out some songs and have a bit of a laugh. We even got to adlib a song about a couple of drunk guys dancing with each other which went down quite well, wonder if we should make that more common practice? Another cool way of connecting with the crowd. Mo and Kurt played great and sung mean bvs, in the jams I couldn't help but notice my improv melodies all started to sound the same until Mo suggested I start singing in a lower register and BAM! problem solved. Thanks Mo!

Mission for the week: not get the flu.

Music Is Lush and Fertile

2009-05-19T03:21:00.001-07:00

Music is an amazing thing that is part of our existence, but what is its function for humanity? It doesn't provide in a hunter gatherer sense, a means of providing food, shelter or evading predators, but every single human understands and embraces music. We all have a tendency to tap our feet, nod our head, move our hips and crank it to volume 11, but where does it fit in the concept of our survival as a species?

The answer (that I just claim as correct) based on Darwinian concepts is that music is a manipulative signaling mechanism used to advertise reproductive fitness .... blah blah blah .... SEX. I bet your eyes were drawn to that word before you even started reading this stream of consciousness. But SEX is the answer nonetheless and probably the answer to many of the unanswered questions and complexities in life.

Music has this amazing ability to empower, enamour, ensnare (or enslave) our emotions. The beats, rhythms and melodies move minds in an automatonicognitive way (good and bad) and the performers/composers have god-like properties as they infuse order and chaos; comprehension and ambiguity; contradictions and tautologies; to form an abstract entity that smoothly wisps its way to penetrate the soul. It is a form of ritualization where (effective) affective repetition invokes the conscious attention of the listeners and in turn opens the doors of emotion, allowing the feelings to run wild and free. Some of us smile, some of us cry, some of us dance - but all of us react.

Observations from my very own stage provide an insight into the emotional reactions that occur; the over-zealous affection of a fan; the look of love on a Dionysian landscape; anonymous singing and dancing in a mad frenzy, void of a songs knowledge. These positive blossoms growing from the rhythmic vines grip, climb and interpolate the souls vessels in a compilation of conscious copulations, releasing the bound spirit to dance with the love and sexual energy that envelops the context. Freedom.

Essentially, the music we like to create and mold as a band, will always be endowed with love. If you can feel the love in our music .... make sure you savor the harmonic flavors, let the melodic intimacy marinade your feelings, lose yourself in the moment and find yourself in the experience.

Learning

2009-05-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

Wow there's more than you think to this whole 'managing a band' thing. I'm constantly learning usually through making mistakes, such as today. When I was living in Auckland and trying to get my chops in acting there was a saying - "the audition's the work, the work is the perk" which was oh so true. Countless auditions, often resulting in nada, but when you landed a role in something (hopefully a well paying TVC) ooo damn it felt good.

While some of the tasks associated with the behind the scenes of band life are not too bad, on the most part they're fairly tedious and time consuming. The duties are like those auditions and the gigs are like 'the work' - the fun stuff. I can't wait until I'm doing more of the latter and less of the former. It's hard not to let your emotions get involved with band business too, but you really need to maintain a level of professionalism. We may not be operating in the stuffiest corporate environment but a certain degree of integrity is important I feel. In a way email/other online messaging is good for letting you take time to think before you answer or reply which can allow you to gather your thoughts and some times your head. However, it can some times work the other way and give you time to stew about things, and work yourself up. Like today.

A walk really helped.

Trifle

2009-05-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Poor 'ol Dave had his wisdom teeth out this weekend so we were minus phat bass at Red Jacks on Saturday night. You don't realise how important something is until it's gone! While we enjoyed the gig (playing dub jams in between songs to fill our a set up) it certainly didn't sound like what we're used to as Dave also does the sound - big ass JBLs run through a desk. A few people got up to dance, we had tequila poured down our throats by one of the lovely bar girls and Moses showed me and Kurt his penis in an elevator afterwards so all up it was a good night.

The Red Jacks was admittedly quite a challenge but it was also a great opportunity for us to jam out some tunes and ad-lib quite a bit. I got to freestyle some lyrics - singing and MC styles which was cool as I've never really had the confidence to do so. Thanks heaps to the staff down there for making us feel welcome and keep an eye out on the place as it's shutting down for a week only to resurface as a Macs brew bar which should be interesting.

One thing I shouldn't have done was gone across to Vespa and checked the band out there. It made me furious. The band, who shall remain unnamed, play covers and are a hard working band, I'll give them that. I should cover my ass by saying this is no reflection on them personally or their musicianship which I'm sure is of a very high standard. It just bugs me some times - us playing sets of 100% original music for the same amount of time other cover bands play other people's songs, while they get people up easily dancing and singing along because obviously punters want songs they know. OLD SONGS. Songs that have been played a million times over. There is nothing creative about that! Sure we get people up dancing and some even are starting to know the words but it always takes a little bit of time and effort and especially energy, infact some times it's down right hard. I guess I wish folks were more curious, open to new music. Our tunes are so accessible, we're not some indie band with musicians being 'ironic' and playing shit that makes no sense aurally or theoretically we welcome new listeners and want to connect with them and show them a good time. Knowing there's a band across the way creaming it with cheesy classic hits from the 70's, 80's 90's and today makes me want to puke, because WE'VE sunk our hearts and souls into the music we're playing, which WE created and play so well. If only people didn't settle for the 'easy' option and opened their ears to a new sound, they'd probably be pleasantly surprised and hopefully maybe even made slightly more aware of some of the awesome talent Christchurch has to offer.

Ahhhh that's better.

The Weekend

2009-05-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

It was a fairly large weekend for the Love Machine, we played two mega sets - one on Friday at good 'ol Vespa then we popped the Tru Bar cherry on Saturday. If you haven't ventured to Tru, I suggest you do, they're fully 100% Kiwi - beers, food and most of music. Richard and his team push NZ music every day of every week, so don't just make a token effort to see some Kiwi talent during May, Tru Bar serves it up all year round!

We've even got out name on the NZ music wall of fame! That's it, we've officially made it. Big thanks to everyone who came out, the weather was far from good and we realise how easy it is to stay all snug at home. Same goes to the peeps at Vespa on Friday too! Naomi and co and that big group of girls who were celebrating someone's 21st (Zoe I think?).

Our application for this round of NZ on Air funding is all ready to go, deadline is this Friday so it'll be in the post tomorrow for sure, fast post. I'm never quite sure how much time to put into an application like this, I mean they receive hundreds of submissions and no one really knows exactly what will make the cut. There are surprises every year, just from talking to industry contacts, people who fit perfectly within what you would think is the 'guaranteed seller/hit mould' don't see a cent while others from way out left field are granted the full amount. So while I'm keeping my hopes in check, my fingers are crossed by my side. I've put together something short, sweet and now I'll try forget it.

This is the Christchurch City Council gig a week ago on Oxford Terrace. As soon as we were ready to go the sun hid behind the grey clouds then almost as soon as we finished it came out again. Go figure. Was good times though, check out the footage, kindly shot by none other than Marg Edwards! Bloody legend. And of course a big thanks to Laura for hooking us up, as well as the sound team (aka Ryan) there on the day.

Excerpts from Emails

2009-05-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

Incase you were ever wondering what goes on behind the scenes at HLM headquarters, I've pasted in below text from 5 emails - one from each member of the band leading up to our gig at Vespa last night. Sure we're a slick rocking machine on stage but during the day we're just like any other family; we disagree, fight, make up, carry on, check out each other's girlfriends...

1st email from Moses

Hello best buddies. I have some FUN ideas: Stuff we already know in our heads;

Lets each have a setlist
Dave could start some songs on Bass while Kurt tunes, I could play a song appropriate riff while Morgy connects
Let's continue to perform between songs.
Let's try and move about a lot tonight - if you feel like your performance is "over the top" then its nearly working.
I want to see Dave going mental, like a mad man! The more you dance the better I play.
Let's interact with each other - build each other up - Smile!
Give Jon some loving - every gig he's just ripping it back there - dance over to him and show a brother some appreciation.

Love you guys! Let me know what yous think...

Morgan's reply

yes Mo good thoughts

wear a shirt tonight, even if it's stinky

between songs, play something for sure, but turn it down or I'll be trying to talk over you and that sucks for me. Don't question me about the next song while we're performing that pisses me right off. But having a set list sorted beforehand is good and will alleviate this.

Whoever wants to start a song go for it, but don't you guys usually want to practice that before hand?

if you're going to move heaps in that small space, just be careful you don't hit mic stands/me with your guitar, cause I don't have one to hit you back with. I think the movement currently is cool, Dave grooves away nicely, Jon does his thing, Kurt rocks out, Mo does too, move more sure, but don't look spastic. That's my job haha. (we're playing on the other side tonight - to the right as you walk in - on that new little stage they're put in)

Smile Smile Smile definitely. Laugh even. No, don't laugh, we're not there to have fun.

I'm going to give Jon so much attention tonight he's going to hate me by the end of the gig.

Jon's reply

Good thoughts

I’m not gonna wear a shirt but I will wear some carefully thought out clothes

Agree about not questioning about the next song

Can Kurt practice the chords for the next song with the volume down so starts of songs are clean?

Uga

Kurt's reply

We don't need to fully fill the space with music all the time, but Morg is priority to fill it if there is nothing going on. Remember if we were like some massive huge band - we would be changing guitars during that period anyway - so I think Morg should talk - and if we fill the space, its with something we play normally re:'Dave could start some songs on Bass' - draw out the intro a little, Drum Solo intro to a set maybe....?! (I'd pay to see that... 'The Coursey Explosion').

"Can Kurt practice the chords for the next song with the volume down so starts of songs are clean?"... There are a select few that I will target there... I know the exact ones cause I friggin forget the intros every time we play - the dynamic nature of song selection leads to me having to think 'how does this song go again?' scenario. We just need to be more precise in decision making. e.g. Morgan don't ask us if we want to play 'a' or 'b' - tell us we are playing 'a' then 'b' (or pre-write a list for all si vous plait.... and a carefully structured setlist to maximize the listener experience). We can't aspire to mediocrity as mediocrity is easy to achieve, and we are already there.

A little bit of structure and organization will maximize the fun and nullify the uncomfortable unknown

Ow! that was one take writing. Fucken Orsum!

Dave's reply

Haha

Side Stage brilliant, Love you guys.

Seriously though we either remove it or put half the band on it and the other half off. We are not a 2 piece. In fact, if you line up kurt mo and I holding our guitars we wouldn’t even get close to fitting on that bullshit, let alone have me dance like a bass player should.

Everyone that we have discussed leading up to tonight gig should be made into a Blog post so everyone outside our conversation can see what we think about and what we end up doing which they are invited to experience.

Dave

Writing lyrics

2009-05-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

Wow. Here it is my blog about song writing, seems like a mammoth task and I'm sure there will be more I'll think of by the end but that just mean's I'll have to post a part 2. I'm not even going to scratch the surface of song structure.

Someone left a comment about lyrics I posted to a song called She Knows We Know. It started out as quite a light hearted song about a girl who thinks she's orsum but just isn't (could be anyone - a girl or guy at this point) but then instead by the time I had finished it the story had turned very dark. As the person who pens those words I have to stand behind them, of course. Most of the songs I write aren't about a real person, I usually take the angle of an author of fiction. I like to tell stories, some end up being true but the majority are not.

So why would I make up such a mean story? Why do I keep watching horror films that scare the shit out of me and give me nightmares? I do it for two main reasons: 1. I am venting my thoughts, like most tortured artists who seek to tell the world of their woes, writing lyrics can act as an outlet for me. I say can - it's not always the case, some times I just need a good wank and a cry. Reason 2. I want to get a reaction. We play a song about chubby chicks which is usually announced before we start to a certain degree of uproar but hey, so what? It's about how women are beautiful regardless of their shape and size, so you've got extra padding but you're still hot - get over it. Is cuddly or chubby a bad word to use? Well I'm scrawny but that's ok. If what I just said pissed you off ever so slightly or even made sense, my job is done. Hate it or love it, just don't ignore it.

When it comes to writing songs I think lyricists can definitely over analyse things. To me, writing lyrics is like anything else you set out to accomplish - JUST DO IT. Don't talk to me about it, start writing. Show me when you're done. When you start, just let it all out, open the flood gates, nothing is wrong, it can be edited later. I remember going to a song writing workshop which was hosted by some big names in the NZ music biz and I have to say I got absolutely nothing out of it. They were mainly talking about lyrical content and when it comes to that topic you're smack in the vast land of subjectivity. They were contradicting themselves all over the place - "write about what's special to you or what's in your heart" then "write about anything, it doesn't really matter" Who can tell you your lyrics are wrong? When I think of Soulja Boy's lyrics to 'Kiss Me Through the Phone' I am in no way inspired but someone out there might be and hey he's got Grammys and BET awards coming out his ass! I think the lyrics "... girl you know I miss you, I just wanna kiss you" suck a pile of shit but 16 MILLION people on youtube disagree with me.

It's a lot like naming a song, this is fuel for a huge debate one which I'll gladly take on but for now - it's helpful to have the name of the song actually used in the chorus, but you don't have to. You can get hung up and what people will think about the name of your song as if that really matters! You could have an amazing song, catchy, lyrical melody is orsum etc etc and call it Spud and it'll still go off. Infact some times I think lyrics don't matter in some songs at all. DON'T take this to mean every song! They have to be phrased well and have a good vocal melody but the actual content could be anything. 'Ironic' by Alanis Morisette had absolutely no examples of irony in that song at all but we all know it and sing along. Infact that song in itself is one big irony! 'I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt', that really annoying 'Crazy Frog Song' (lyrics consist of Ring Ding Ding Di Di Ding Bing Bong Ba Ba Bom Bom) there are so many number one hits with what I think of as ridiculous lyrics. Then I go away and sweat over a song for days??

People will sing almost anything, guys will sing along with "I Feel Like a Woman" while ladies will follow "I'm N Luv (Wit A Stipper)" it's catchy, it's sticks, it sounds nice, it doesn't mean anything to you. Memories will probably play the biggest part of your association with a song, how the tune makes you feel or what you were doing at a certain time when you heard it - loving, hating, winning, losing, falling in love with a stripper...

Start writing, if you like it - it's good. But you better sing it like you mean it or you won't convince anybody. Ah yes, I definitely feel like a part 2.

Busking

2009-05-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

On Saturday around lunch time we mosied down to the Cathedral Square smack in the middle of Christchurch and busked for about one and a half hours.

About 8 years ago myself, Moses, Dave and Jon had a band called Slap Happy, we covered a lot of Incubus songs as well as playing a few of our own. There's actually some footage of us busking in Wellington one weekend when we were up their for the Incubus concert which I will endeavour to track down and post. That weekend is definitely one of the best memories of my life, it was a great road trip and we earned enough money from playing on the street in Welly to stay in flash hotel right across the road from the gig! In Christchurch we used to busk some weekends in the Art Centre. It's a little more tricky getting in there now as they've tightened regulations, more bureaucracy blah blah... but there were good times and we earned a good bit of coin so we thought we'd try it again with Hennessy Love Machine.

For starters we had a bag piper to contend with; his shrill notes stark in the square, and a street performer was just wrapping up their show to a handful of people. So the guys bunched together to maximize sound force and I tried to belt out the songs as loud as I could, which isn't that easy to do in a massive open space with no amplification. The response was great though, people stopped to listen and take photos and we had quite a few Chinese tourists getting involved for photos and even getting their groove on! Why isn't there more of this in the Square? Music should be a bigger part of every day, and this being NZ Music Month I'd love to see more locals bands out there playing, not just an occasional lunch time gig on Oxford Terrace (although they're a great idea - go Laura at the CCC!). We even made some cash which was an added bonus. Thanks again to our number one fan Gabby for coming down and handing out fliers and to Ruebs for the support also. And to that beautiful Portuguese girl who stayed for the whole thing.

Next time we'll try a different spot, somewhere where the music doesn't get swept away by the slightest of breezes and where there's possibly some more foot traffic. Oh, and not have a gig that night - busting a gut on the street only to have to play to a somewhat reserved room in town can really rinse you out. But we love it. Here have our card...

To pose or not to pose

2009-04-29T01:41:00.000-07:00

Last night we got some band photos taken. Dan Watson (aka Golden Lion, aka Little Golden Lion Man) snapped us down at Vespa Bar in a couple of those little rooms/booths that run along one side of the space. Thanks heaps Dan, bang up job! All the best for your mission work in Southeast Asia too bro that's wicked.

We talked about what we should do for these photos at length - the possibilities are virtually endless and you could waste hours debating where the best location is, what you should wear, if you should smile or pull stupid faces... At the end of the day hell, if they turn out shit you can always do some more! I think our greatest fear was appearing to 'cool'. If you have seen us play live (if you haven't, what the hell?? Come down, we'll shout you a spritzer) you'll know we're hardly rockstars on stage, we believe in having fun, playing well and cracking a grin or three as mentioned in a previous post. This whole serious brooding band thing is a sack of shit basically, so we were presented with the conundrum - looking good without being to posey and looking fun without appearing like amateur goofballs.

When I have to submit applications to festivals or provide various organisations with a decent band image I love giving them the picture with Jon wearing his helmet and us all pulling cheesy thumbs up. But I'm torn because while we're all about having fun I want us to be taken seriously too. The Chillis never seemed to take standard pics when they were relatively new but that was back then and they were doing something different, now they can do whatever the hell they want due to their super stardom. They say everything that can be done has been done, and I guess to a certain degree that's true, but I still see huge scope for creativeness. The thing is there will probably be elements of something previously created - new music always sounds like something else, a graphic designer's work always looks similar to someone else's etc etc. You can also arrive at a brilliant idea through independent thought only to find out it's been done on the other side of the world - 10 years ago. I came up with a circus trick I thought was original then found out some dude in America had been using the same routine all his life! Clearly he was a genius.

What do you think of these pics? Obviously the one above is by far the best... I'll keep it just incase we decide to move into more of a 'boy band, acapella' genre. I think continually taking pics as we progress and evolve will be a good move, keep it fresh like the music. Amateur goofballs/posing twats or not, at least we've got some more images now, with all 5 of us in them. If you have any ideas for locations etc let us know and even more importantly, if you're a photographer wanting 5 subjects drop us a line!

Lydia's Recording Diary

2009-04-25T04:34:00.000-07:00

I was going to write some magical philosophical emotional brain exapansion about my experience with Susan Boyles amazing performance on the tube, but since we had an epic recording session last weekend, I have decided to invoke my flatmate's experience of the event. She arrived when we were wrapping up the major tracking takes and experienced all the fun and chaos that ensued, and here she is:

Hi, I'm Lydia and I live with Kurt and Moses and was lucky enough to be invited to hang with the band while they recorded Follow my Nose.

I turned up with a box of beer and no expectations. My first memorable experience was Kurt's amazing ability to sing. I didn't realize his balls were so high! Lol! But in all seriousness the song didn't really need his fantastic singing talent, it was already amazing! The vibe of the studio was comfy and I felt part of the team, especially when they included me in the percussion. It was joyful. Hahaha. The most interesting part of the night, where I saw the guys work the hardest, was when they decided to remix a Timbaland/One Republic song with the chorus of their song. It was highly amusing, as I stood round filming them holding hands in a circle singing ...It's too late to apologize. Good times!

After this tomfoolery, the actual seriousness took place where they focused on minor technical difficulties and it got quite heated, but I just sat back, drank a beer and observed. I never realized how much work goes into a song, and now I have the appreciation of why a lot of band members get pissed at each other and at extremes, break up. It was enlightening and entertaining. By this time I think the guys had been in the studio for 12 hours so it was a unanimous decision that everyone should go home, chill out and return the following day (sober) with fresh ears!

In the end it was great fun and a great experience. I hope they invite me along next time they record! ;-)

Breakdown of recording this weekend

2009-04-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

Jon was up first. I'm not even going to attempt to get technical with this so here's a picture of the drum mic set up, with Ben about to attack that mic above him.

We came to a compromise on the speed of the song, settling for 130bpm and Jon had the trusty 'ol click track going through his cans. While tracking drums we were all in the room playing along toned down, as playing a song on drums with nothing else doesn't do much for your vibe. Jon experimented with a fill that brings in the last chorus after the break down which turned out mean, it gets cut a little short in the finished track with a reversed cymbal but you hear enough to appreciate the awesomeness. Jon's tracking took a good couple of hours, and I say good because we (Jon especially) were stoked with the outcome and left the rest of us warmed up and amped to get cracking with the rest of the tune.

Often the bass comes next but we opted for Kurt to lay down the rhythm guitar instead. Kurt's famous for his big Maori strums meaning he is quite a percussive, rhythmic strummer. This helped everyone later being able to hear the drums and his guitar together which furthered the tight cohesive vibe we were striving for. Ben had all instruments running to amps in the main room and the players in the control room. We've all played music infront of each so many times now, this set up didn't effect nerves, infact Dave loves showing us his playing while imagining us all as Jo Barus which apparently helps him perform at a higher level. Anyway, Kurt nailed his takes as well as laying some extra bits to flesh the song out. Piece of cake. Legend.

Next up was Dave on bass, it basically took him 1 and 1/2 takes. He's a bit of machine is our Dave, it was sounding warm and sweet and just another step in the process where you can really hear the track coming together as every instrument gets layered on. Hearing it played back gets you more excited as this seemingly crazy bunch of sounds and bars on a computer screen is becoming a proper song. Just look how happy he looks.

So then there was Moses, adding the icing on the musical cake - lead solo, picky bits in the chorus and general embellishments that really make the song sound sweet. A sudden gust of wind blew his top clean off, but that didn't stop Mo busting out some catchy shit. We were getting into late afternoon by this stage so well on schedule. There was a lot of changes of amps with Mo's tracking because we needed to get different sounds for pretty much every separate track, this gives the song notable variation and keeps an integral part of the track sounding fresh.

Next up was me, Morgan with vocals. The thing about leaving vocals to last is that I began to feel just a smidge anxious after everyone has done their part, the song is sounding mint and it hasn't even been mixed or mastered yet! I felt like a lot rested on my shoulders, and I guess it did to be honest. Next time I might attempt to do things differently but at the end of the day I gave it my best shot and Ben had something workable so that's good. Mo laid some beautiful harmonies and Jon did some "Oooo's" in the final chorus which sounds fantastic too.

By the end of Saturday we were all pretty much ready to get out of the studio, 12 hours straight in there is just about enough. Any longer and you begin to notice the cabin fever kicking in. We had put in the work and now all that was left was for Ben to mix and master it which would be happening on Sunday.

We left feeling tired and smelly but knowing we had just recorded a very cool single, one which not only sounds great but carries with it our tentative hopes of receiving funding. We're being realistic here, our chances are slim at best but you never know until you try and hell, we've got a sweet track on our hands regardless of the outcome!

The aftermath

2009-04-20T02:12:00.000-07:00

I'd have to say this weekend just gone was a total success. The recording went smoothly, and we've come out with a track that sounds pretty mean - something we're all very proud of. Ben Edwards who runs The Sitting Room was our engineer and did an absolutely brilliant job recording/mixing/'mastering' in the amount of time we had.

Friday evening we began packing in a little later than expected but it didn't really make much difference, as Ben had the place all ready waiting for us and Jon had his kit set up in no time. The Sitting Room definitely has a warm cosy feel, they've really done bang up job on the renovation of the place, it just feels good being in there. The smell can get quite ripe after a weekend of eating Munster and Taleggio cheeses but if you're there from the start you don't even notice! The trick is to go outside as little as possible, thus never smelling fresh air until you leave for the day.

After we sound checked all the amps etc, we called it a night and headed to Goodbye Blue Monday for one drink before home. All was positive, and we were amped to get stuck in to tracking the next morning... which I'll blog about tomorrow when I can see the computer screen properly, I'm lucky to have made it this far.

Into the studio we go

2009-04-16T20:58:00.001-07:00

The day has arrived! In about an hour we'll be loading the gear in BOL (band van) and setting up at The Sitting Room - getting the drums sorted first. This can take quite a bit of time so will be the main focus of the evening, if there's time we might even go for a take for drum tracking purposes but there's no major hurry, that's what tomorrow's for.

Just to mix things up a little, we've posted four of our new tracks on our myspace page - they're live practice recordings so are pretty raw but they'll give you enough of an idea how the songs sound. So check them out! Tell your friends, leave comments! Get involved is what we're saying here.

To Shred or Not To Shred

2009-04-12T20:39:00.000-07:00

Shredding is a term that is used to describe the ability of a guitarist to play blistering solos or a guitar style that most players like to refer to as literally taking the guitar up and playing as fast as you can. It is a relatively subjective term, thus my definition of it is:

A guitarists ability to play a pointless/meaningless sequence of notes as fast as possible whilst throwing in as many arpeggios and soloing techniques disregarding structure and feeling.

Could it be that I am wrong and a cynic in having this attitude towards guitar solos? Well, discussions with other guitarists on the subject arrive at the same conclusion, shredding is not good when applied to a song dedicated to evoking emotion, but why is this the case?

By taking a trip through time, there is a point (1980s) where shredding was the condiment to enhancing a song, mainly due to trends and technology of the time, and we (the listeners) were none the wiser as shredding was not something we had the ability to view/hear often, so there was something magical about the mad skillz of a sublime soloist being added to a song. But the major point here is that trends and technology determined this and funnily enough it has also determined its downfall.

The information age has given us the ability to source many things we previously didn't have. An important media source that I frequent more than I should is YouTube, which contains a plethora of videos that explore the depths and skills of humanity and human experience. Some decent examples are:

Guys that can fart real well with their hands: Popcorn
Sublime acting skills: XBox Lady
Random dudes that can shred with a guitar: Shredding

Now the ability to source all these amazing human skills leads to the outcomes of abundance and excess. All that is beautiful is absorbed within the anonymous sea of collective conciousness and mass media conglomoration that is the world wide web. This phenomenon is not totally unwholesome as it provides a clearer definition of where the bar resides skillwise. It also creates an environment capable of enlightenment to musical beauty due to the consistent nature of the extreme skills but in turn the interpretations of beauty within music can be distorted by the abundance. So as this technology has eased the acquisition of impressive guitaring, the actual impression of the skills declines.

Technology has forced us a full circle where music is back to being reliant on songwriting skills, not musicianship. Although the ability to play blistering solos is a handy skill to have, it is not required emotively and less accepted in the whole context of performance and recording. At the end of the day, who wants to watch a bunch of musicians play with themselves on stage. I sure as hell don't!

The Beast of Easter

2009-04-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

Christmas has the Grinch, surely Easter should have an antagonist? A sworn adversary of the bunny? He/she would need a name... actually I think the Beast of Easter is quite catchy as is, there might be a song in that.

Well it's getting closer to NZ Music month which is pretty damn exciting, Christchurch will see a noticeable swelling in its live music loins and it means quite a few gigs for Hennessy Love Machine. Make sure you keep an eye on our upcoming gigs to see when and where we're playing next. I personally can't wait to get out and see some more bands, it'll be a great chance to catch new acts, see some fresh talent coming through. And then there's CHARTFEST at the end of May to top it all off which should be money.

Had a good practice on Tuesday evening tightening up Follow My Nose some more, just nailing solos, the ending and tweaking some 'decorative' parts. The structure is all sorted now and I have to say it's sounding mean! We had enough time to jam out a brand new track which is called We Know She Knows. The lyrics started out with a line that Kurt and Moses came up with when they were creating the tune "we know she know she's hot" so I took that and ran. After finishing penning the lines it had turned into quite a sad song about a girl who strives for attention but just isn't paid any. It originally began as a bit of laugh about a girl who basically thinks she's ALL THAT but just isn't, then it took a slightly blue turn. The song itself proved to be a little challenging to get a collective groove for but it definitely showed legs and I can't wait to see how it turns out when we get back to it with fresh ears. Here go the lyrics.

Fading with the evening from a sullen day I missed
Undistinguished average grace she falls away
Always a grand entrance from the little side door
One or two they notice but neglect to explore

Chorus.
And we know she thinks she’s hot (a glow although)
She knows we know she’s not (at best so-so)
She’ll go til she gets caught (it’s all a show)
Beneath the skin she’s in it all begins over again

Dressed to unimpress a voice compliments her deep inside
With emptiness she hikes her dress and heads into the night

Bridge.
You know that she’d come back if we’d
Given her a subtle second glance
Always sees with periphery
She’s ravenous for half a chance

From our Number 1 Fan

2009-04-07T19:21:00.001-07:00

Can't find the words to express how we feel about this...

The journey of creating a journey

2009-04-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

Once we've finished recording Follow My Nose, I'll be able to do this properly but for now, here's the first part of how Hennessy Love Machine makes music.

Kurt - that's him in this video - creates a tune which he dreams up the chords for on his guitar. The good thing about Kurt is he uses intelligent chord structures and a rhythmic strumming style which makes for a solid sounding song, it's like a skeleton with really strong bones. His tunes are high in calcium. At this time, the structure of the song is also worked out, although some times it can change later when the whole band jams it out and we find it needs tweaking. How long the verses will be, if there's a pre-chorus, a bridge or even a pre-pre-chorus. In this video, Kurt plays a new song which I think will be called Jake Snake (this also may change). I can't wait to get stuck into this tune.

You can tell it's going to be rocking track just from hearing the axe by itself, at this point I usually begin to feel slightly anxious my lyrics and melody won't do it justice. But after messing around with it, which can some times take days or WEEKS it all comes together. The big buzz is hearing it with all the other instruments - we're actually bloody lucky we're in a band that isn't precious - once we bring a new track to the band room everyone trusts the process thus far and adds to it, rather than trying to change it. I'm sure in other bands it's not usually that easy, that's why I'm a believer in having roles within a band, I know it sounds pretty structured but it's not a militant enforcement, it just helps get things done, which in turn helps you progress!

Get creative :)

Farewell Andy Rowe

2009-04-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

It's always good to keep challenging yourself as a band, you can get complacent and comfortable playing at one or two places (if you gig a lot around town) and forget about what it's like to have to really work a crowd and get them moving. His Lordships at the entrance to SOL Square is one of those places we find challenging. It's very location, while being quite prominent, can also work as a drawback as it's positioned at the beginning of the alleyway to the square. People get sucked down right past Lordships as if swept into a wind tunnel and carried towards the glittering lights beyond. I think it's a great bar and if you haven't been in, you should definitely check it out, it has that quaint English pub feel while not being too stuffy.

Before we began playing we all agreed to push the smile test (mentioned in a previous post) -even if we didn't feel particularly 'up' because there weren't as many people dancing or watching as we're used to, we'd put on a smile. Sounds cheesy, but I have to say it really worked! Not only did it help us connect with the crowd, it somehow picked us up. I imagine it's kind of like positive affirmation, if you kept telling yourself you can do something, chances are, you'll be able to - keep smiling and you'll end up feeling happy. Or maybe it was the beer... Regardless, if you can change your band's cognition, anything is possible. As a group it's even easier as you can feed off the energy of your band members and who doesn't like being part of a team, a team who's kicking ass on stage??

Just want to say a big SEE YA LATER to Andy Rowe who has been working on the door at Vespa as long as we've been playing there. Andy's a big man with a big heart and always has something good to say, if I was ever going to get thrown out of a bar, I'd like to be thrown out by him for sure. I imagine it would be rough, but somehow... graceful. So thanks heaps dude for all your support and for doing a brilliant job down at Vespa, can't wait to hear you play a drum solo and make sure you let us know when your first strong man comp is, we'll be your support crew for a change!

HLM jam video

2009-03-31T18:32:00.000-07:00

I think Jake Edward's talents are wasted in music, the man should be a full time camera operator. He hung out with us last night when we had a jam up at RSR and filmed most tracks we played - here's one take we did of Follow My Nose, we're just sorting out the final structure for when we record it in a couple of weeks.

There was much filming, with Jake shooting through sunnies and even an empty Hennessy bottle (of course) but I'll post some of that stuff later. The song structure is pretty tight now, and we're getting very close to being 100% happy with it which great, as we'll go into the studio feeling comfortable and will be able to concentrate fully on giving great deliveries.

When applying for NZ on Air funding (this is a can of worms right here so I won't even get close to cracking the top off) you have to think of the duration of the song - the mark most tracks go for is around 3:30 for radio play. So we want to be as appealing as possible, this is business after all and we need to appear as a very sellable product - ticking as many boxes as we can when applying - to increase our chances. It's also good for our musical brains; culling sections of a song where we've had no restrictions when creating, meanwhile maintaining our integrity AND keeping the peace in HLM camp. I'd say it's been a whopping success!

Hey um, what's that in your pocket?

Encore ethos

2009-03-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

We played an encore last night at the Vespa gig. While you may think 'so what? bands do that all the time' take a second to consider: we're playing 100% original music in a bar in town where no one has paid to see us, let alone knows who were are in the first place - and they wanted to hear more!! This definitely creates a brand new sub group for my personal definition of success. Thank you to all those who came along and had a boogie or just hung out and listened. Was really great meeting you folk who came and saw us for the first time too, after countless facebook messages you received while overseas haha, welcome home.

The track we played for the encore was a brand spanking new one called I'm On It which we hadn't attended to play at all. A big high five each to the boys for making it sound pretty damn fine after we all weren't totally ready for it (lyrics are still a little hazy for me); having only jammed the track out a couple times! But it's definitely got legs, so I'm looking forward to hearing it once it's evolved and tweaked, should be mean.

Last night I had the absolute joy of experiencing the affections of a middle aged drunk woman. She stumbled up to me on her way out of the bar, mid song and began grinding on my leg, which was so weird as we were playing the very gentle jazz track Hennessy. When approaching me though, she tripped on my fold back and smacked the mic into my teeth. That is the last time I invite my Mother to a gig.

Jason Long who is the uber talented audio engineer at Christchurch's RDU 98.5FM mixed an awesome, albeit bizarre mash up of our track Lemon & Honey with very dirty drum & bass last week. Don't know if that's a road we'll travel but it was pretty damn funny, I'll try get the audio and post that bitch.

Hennessy Love Machine hopes you had a great weekend, remembered to turn your lights off for Earth Hour and keep your ears tuned for more Hennessy tracks coming real soon.

Follow My Nose

2009-03-25T00:24:00.000-07:00

Last nights practice was an amazingly productive event. We had 2 major agendas to attend to which were the continuation of creativity on a new track called I'm On It and restructuring a current song called Follow My Nose. The reason that Follow My Nose requires modification is the fact that we are recording a high quality demo for the specific purpose to acquire some dinero to help in our quest of world domination.

Restructuring a song as a band can be a stressful task as the collective creative juice is flowing in all directions. Points of view work overtime where the 5 points of the pentagram bash heads trying to find which parts stay and which are culled. It is also especially hard when we are trying to shorten a 4:45 track to 3:30! Luckily the songs initial structure had strong foundations in the way we have all been trained to listen to and interpret music (via the radio):

Verse : Chorus : Verse : Chorus : Bridge : Chorus

Nice and simple and aesthetically pleasing to the radio trained ear. The hard part of restructuring was removing content from all sections, especially parts that add flavour to the 4:45 version such as guitar licks and sections of the bridge. This has to be done as the people that will be listening to the song will be critically evaluating it therefore all the hooks, space, melodies, dynamic and consistency need to be optimized and succinct for their judgmental ears.

Some might read this and think why? WHY? WTF? Well it is a fact of any thing involving business, especially if you are trying to win some contract for your skills and services, you must have some sort of bling or XFactor backing you up. This bling could be a great salesman, reputation, buzz or in our case a high quality prototype of what we intend to produce further.

Money or not, business and art are not really the best of friends, but to capture minds with an artistic message of love, executive decisions must be made at some point to how best this message is propagated.

Hot hot Rocket

2009-03-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

Wow I just found this old video of Hot Rocket we performed at Yellow Cross way back when. It's a little painful watching old footage but really encouraging to see how much we've progressed, evolved and now have a new band member Moses! My favorite part is Dave yelling "what's that in your pocket?" bless. Make sure you watch it right through to the end to hear the audience response - character building stuff! haha I love playing with Garage Band.

The Band in the Bar

2009-03-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an article this week about The Violinist in the Subway. It was a social experiment on the perception of beauty where Joshua Bell, one of the worlds greatest classical musicians, busked with 4 of Bach's most complex movements, on an instrument worth $3.5 million. He received the admiration of less than 1% of the 1097 people that walked past, and accumulated a reward of $32 for his time spent. The main focal point was summed up in that:

If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

After reading this I realized many parallels in what he did to what we are currently doing when we perform 'unadvertised' gigs in pubs in the relation that a lot of people walk on by unflinching to the music. Now I am not trying to speak in comparisons of music or musicians as Bach to our music is like tomato sauce to ice cream and Josh Bell is a classical cover artist whereas we are original alternative pop artists. But the responses to the music can be similar.

Every gig we play is not the same and a lot of the time people do appreciate the music (even though they don't know what it is) but every so often there are moments where its as if we are pillars of red dirt on a martian landscape, and people are the tumbleweeds blowing in the wind. My conclusion of why these moments occur is that there is the norm where we (humans) have a preconceived concept and context of a situation as to be comfortable and secure in their surroundings, for example, expecting a covers band at a pub or just another busker in the subway. As soon as we are pushed to think outside the socially acceptable box when treated to something different or special, instead of embracing it, we pull out the inhibition card and await others approval to react, rather than act, to follow rather than lead. My simple solution that I have found is a step in the direction of beating down the social barrier is simply a harmless smile and connection of eyes, because at the end of the day, we as a band get off on you having a good time, and removing all the 1st date awkwardness and connecting in the spiritual realm of FUN makes the experience more worthwhile.

5 vs 8 or 9 or more

2009-03-19T19:29:00.000-07:00

I was just listening to what I consider to be a very cool New Zealand band. In this band there are about 9 members and on stage they rock, with a big sound and an amazing vocalist they really bring something special to the live music scene. Anyway, it got me thinking about what makes a great live show, does this band have more potential to give a bigger, better performance because they have greater numbers than other bands? What makes for a good performance?
I remember watching Muse in concert, I had scored a ticket from my bro in law Jonny Schwass and didn't really know too much of their music beforehand. I was blown away, their musicianship was out of this world, their sound was incredible and there were only 3 of them! Granted they probably had some amazing equipment on their side but as far as stage presence goes they really filled the space. The Lucksmiths are an awesome Aussie band who I saw waaaay back when I start Uni and they blew me away too, just bass, guitar and the vocalist played snare with brushes too - they had no fancy equipment.

So when we try and emulate a 'big band sound' does that mean we're going for as loud a sound as possible? Do we all try and move around as much as possible during a set to take up heaps of space? No, well, yes, some times, but we'll never achieve that big band sound so far as brass etc goes. We don't play trumpets or trombones but we play our hearts out, with songs that have a 'big' sound! I tried tapping away on a jembe the other day whilst singing and realised that's going to take a WHOLE lot of practice, so for now it's just singing for me. But at least we're upping the bvs, cause the lads on the axes have talent coming out their ears.

Have a great weekend!

The Context of Music and Money

2009-03-16T01:55:00.000-07:00

I recently had a brief but interesting conversation with Jake Edwards recently about Music and Money and his hardcore socialist view towards it (also detailed in his blog):

Money should be the last thing on your mind when you pick up a guitar. F**k the money. If you get any, give it away.

I agree with this attitude approximately 60.52%. The remaining percentage sits with the why and the when relative to the point of time you wield your axe.

Money and Music are mutually exclusive entities in the whole scheme of our little universe. As a guitarist/composer, I view music as a release valve, a free and easy formless drug that allows you to abstract yourself away from the world with the greatest reward being the music you create. Money on the other hand is a feature of society used as a means and end of exchange to facilitate trade, allowing order from chaos for humanity, but containing the undesirable properties of enslavement, a facade of power and control and extreme materialism. Where they cross paths is when the music is applied as an entertainment service (Captain Obvious Award) where its applications are direct usage (concerts) or indirect usage (super markets) with the end goal of some capital gain for someone. The capital gain is the contentious issue here.

I'll relate the issue to my motivation as a musician to why capital gain is contentious relative to live music performance.

When I pick up a guitar and start jamming, I am searching for the next catchy vibe that tickles my ears which I will devote my time to nurture. I visualize the beats, the bass and most importantly, weigh up its mojo in its ability to impress girls. The drive behind the songs creation is its live performance experience; to put smiles on faces, to get humanities foot tapping and to get a bunch of happy humans moving to the music and the beats. There is nothing more emotively powerful than when you have left everything on the stage and feel the love of people getting off on your creativity. As soon as the song is fully grown ready to unleash, the ego kicks in, believing unconditionally that the song is special and it must be devoured by as many ears as possible with the end goal of some sort of reward or appreciation. These rewards can come in many forms; abstract things like clapping, constructive criticism or a smile on a distant face to physical things like beer, girls and ..... money; and I accept all with zest, satisfying the small materialistic vibe that my ego wants the music to be recognized for.

Now this rewards for services idea doesn't really seem that far out as in essence we are merely contractors performing a specific task. But contention arises where creativity is lost when money is involved and music becomes a mundane regurgitation of bollocks. That may be true if you were earning hundreds or thousands of dollars a week off your music, but if your extended motivation is to eat well for the month, then I don't think creativity comes into question as you are playing for your survival. Therefore, receiving money for performing music is wholesome in the great scheme of things. At the end of the day, someone will be using your art performance for their personal gain so it is only just that you also benefit from it as well.

I have only covered music performance here as it is the most honest form of music there is. Other forms of musical income fall into the realms of free music philosophy and are another beast of a domain to analyze.

We're super heroes

2009-03-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin posted a great blog today about letting people know what your 'super power' is when you first meet them. You'll need to read his blog to get the main gist, but I'd love to have the balls to say "Hi, we're Hennessy Love Machine, we get girls dancing and make guys jealous around the world." I guess that's a super power isn't it? I mean, how many people can lay claim to that? We just need to work on the 'around the world bit'... and maybe the 'making guys jealous' bit too. This might actually earn me a punch in the face, but we'll see.

We had a great wee jam in the weekend, worked on that new track called I'm On It. The good thing about jamming acoustic styles in a lounge is you can hear everyone's harmonies well. I mean, you can when we're practicing with the gear but then you've got the electrics amped and loud etc, this way it's nice and subtle and good on the ears. So we got the harmonies sounding pretty damn good I have to say, really looking forward to hearing it all played live at our next gig on the 28th at Vespa.

The Anticipation

2009-03-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

Sadly we don't have any gigs this weekend, so we'll be working on some new songs instead. I never realised how much preparation was involved leading up to recording, I thought once a song had been jammed out and played live a couple of times we'd be pretty much sweet to head into the studio. But no way!

We've narrowed down our top songs to record to 5 tracks, but it's obvious there are still some tunes we're going to hate to miss out. There just isn't really enough time unfortunately, some band members are off overseas for a while in the near future and we need to get these tracks in the bag before then if we're going to make the NZ on Air deadline. Somes time I wonder if there's really a point applying for that funding, but hey you never know if you don't try.

There's only one thing better than sleeping in on the weekend and that's the anticipation of sleeping in the night before. I think if you're aiming for a truly relaxed state, you need to have the next day off, put on some Hennessy Love Machine tunes and just melt into your bed...

Seth Godin's territory

2009-03-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

I want to know what happened to this guy, he pulled the sickest moves AND he's right smack in the middle of out target demographic.

On the 24th of this month there's a Music Marketing Basics workshop happening at the University of Canterbury. It's hosted by none other than Canterbury's own New Zealand music crusader Jeff Fulton and will "explore ways of successfully marketing your musical efforts to achieve maximum profile and business opportunities, including tips on MySpace and effective online promotion."

The reason I'm blatantly pushing this event is because Jeff is like fountain of knowledge, like a sponge of wisdom you just can't seem to wring dry and believe me I've tried, basically he's a great guy to ask questions. Even stupid ones. I've rung and I've rung, and I've wrung and I've wrung. It's always good to keep in the loop even if you think you already know the basics, hence why I'm going along, and you should too! To find out more go to the CHART website.

Another marketing guru is Seth Godin. A few of us in the band believe Seth has some very sound advice, a lot of it is common sense but he brings issues into a light you may not have considered before. Check out his blog link down this page a bit on the right hand column under Knowledge and Wisdom.

Throwing Stones

2009-03-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

This is another little vid I threw together of Hennessy Love Machine's road trip over to Punakaiki on the West Coast to play at a wedding (watch it in HD, it's way cooler). It's set to Down Town and features us throwing stones a lot for some reason, hey who doesn't like throwing stones? Girls. That's who.

My predictions were correct! The new track 'I'm On It' sounded great last night, and Dave recorded it too which makes it easier when writing guitar parts to listen back to as a reference and of course for Jon on drums. As soon as that's bounced we'll put it up for ya'll to hear, bear in mind it's a live recording so isn't perfect, but we'd like to share not just the polished stuff with you. We also ran over Follow My Nose a few times and recorded that too, so I'm looking forward to hearing that when it's ready.

Ear busting goodness

2009-03-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

In this week's edition of Canta we were reviewed for our set at the emerging artists gig a couple of weeks ago at U.C. Orientation. It's the first one we've had and all things considered it's pretty damn good! It's comforting to know we do indeed sound like who we say we do, cause hey, everyone needs some kind of comparison right? With quotes such as "good 'ol fashioned rock 'n' roll band", "Energetically engaging" and "...the odd but welcome alt country tune" I think we're pretty happy. As for the noise level, weeeell that was kind of out of our control, but isn't that what 1st year students want?? Anyway it came right so all good!

That new song I mentioned yesterday, is indeed finished and will be jammed out tonight, it's sounding really good and I can't wait to see it evolve into something great, it's called I'm On It. Another new track called 1000 Points of Light will also be brought to the guys this evening, it's about looking for love in outer space. Of course!

Monday, the day off

2009-03-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

Some good news - Lemon & Honey AND Can't Go Home Again are both currently on rotate at Christchurch's RDU 98.5FM, so make sure you tune in! If you're really keen you can text in when you hear them - 021 RDU 985 - and let the station know you love it :)

I was just thinking, if we were making a living off our music, chances are Monday would be the first day of our weekend. I'd be keen to know which Kiwi bands based in New Zealand are making a decent living off their music. I mean decent living as in, not just scraping by, some might be supporting families or starting up another business... There are many definitions of success, one of mine used to be 'making a living from doing what you love'. But now it's kind of evolved to 'doing what you love' - whether you're making a living from it or not. We write songs that we're proud of, we love playing them to a crowd and seeing them enjoy our sounds too, that to me sounds like a damn good success! Money is just an added bonus at this stage.

Thank you anonymous comment leaver for your comment, yes - go Toby for also organising the SOL Square carnival!! Although I don't know who Toby is but hey, if he had a decent hand in it then great stuff, congrats! Infact a big thumbs up to everyone who helped make it happen.

SOL Carnival fun

2009-03-07T16:57:00.000-08:00

Went to the SOL Square carnival yesterday - it was great! Unfortunately Hennessy Love Machine couldn't play due to unforeseen circumstances so they got Sal Dub instead, but they were awesome.

SOL Square had such a great vibe going on, granted the weather helped a lot - being a gorgeous day, but everyone was grooving and happy and I didn't see any agro at all. Christchurch needs more events like this! When I was living up in Auckland, over summer there was almost an outdoor party/gig on every weekend and it would be good to see that happen in ChCh. Go Callam for organising this event though, you nailed it buddy! Not only did the bars in the immediate vicinity benefit from a packed SOL Square but I'm sure the neighbouring stores felt a positive effect too as it brought a lot of people into town.

Kurt dropboxed a new track last night, don't know what it's going to be called yet, but holy crap it's going to be a killer song. Can't wait to get stuck into it, I'm wondering whether I just get balls deep in it or finish all the other songs first... it's definitely got that distinctive Hennessy Love Machine sound, quite a poppy number and damn catchy, can't wait to see what the others bring to it.

La Revolución de la Música

2009-03-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

Hola comrades. I read quite an interesting blog post recently by Jens Roland called How to Kill the Music Industry. It describes the compounding reasons why a paradigm shift has occurred in the acquisition of music since (approx) 2000, relating specifically to the Pirate Bay Trials. The information described in the blog is not new knowledge to anyone as we have been there since the beginning, experiencing the shift in ideals, but with this information at hand, it poses the question: Where to next for the music industry and the business oriented musicians?

The battle that the music industry has chosen is to try and fight the pirates head on and enforce rules and restrictions to subvert piracy for the greater good of the parties involved who are losing $$$. Although it is within their rights to do this, having a fascist attitude to a situation that is already beyond any control is not conducive to either side of the coin, as history suggests, pirates are going to be around as long as the ocean has water. So as long as humanity maintains the sea of collective consciousness that is the internet, there will always be the pirates seeking out the abstract booty. The better attitude that the industry should have, to put it in an existentially positive way, is to innovate or die.

Innovation is the only way forward as the revolution has already begun with the technological evolution of hardware, media and information access. It is noticeable that bands are beginning to harness the technology rather than fight it, providing services relative to the trends of social networking/streamed media sites to connect more intimately with their fans. Janes Addiction for example, had a flash website up until last year that was based on the trends of '03-'05 flash design, focusing on the art experience and less on usability (Janes Addictions' old site). Their current website on the other hand (although not that good looking yet) is blog focused with band members individually posting, creating that individual connection with the readers and fans. This social interaction doesn't combat piracy directly but it is a step in the direction where the fundamental change is the direct connection to the people who support you and your vision. By creating an interactive communicative environment where the relationship between both parties is love and respect, then the outcome will be of greater worth to the musician that is trying to sell their product. Seth Godin (who's ideas I have heavily used here) aptly puts it:

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it. Interact first, sell second.

The days are numbered where we can just create music and expect people to buy it, we need to employ other strategies....

Canterbury talent

2009-03-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

I was just looking at a gig guide for this weekend in Christchurch and dayamn there are SO many gigs on. Most of my mates are these uber-multitalented freaks which is great but I come across so many people during my days that blow me away with their 'on the side' projects. A graphic designer who just happens to be an amazing painter, has their honours in biology and can rock climb up to an Alaskan grade 6, or a young lass making coffee at my local caf who can fluently speak 4 other languages, is going for a TVNZ presenter role and plays bass in her band. I mean, you should never underestimate anyone, ever!

In Canterbury we produce some incredibly creative and talented people, which has got me thinking ChCh has a good chance at being the next Welly - some local bands are going to make it big very soon I'm sure. If only Auckland On Air would share the love... but that's a whole other post. What we can do in the mean time is get out there and support them. Not only is Hennessy Love Machine a great band, we're an awesome audience too!!

Can't Go Home Again

2009-03-05T00:38:00.000-08:00

We need more photos with Moses!! Anyone out there keen to take some pics? We'll write a song about you!

That country track myself and Kurt recorded at the Sitting Room a week ago called Can't Go Home Again is now on rotation at RDU 98.5FM. Kurt wrote a really interesting blog about the production of the song a few days back if you care to have a look at what went on behind the scenes. RDU98.5FM is the professional independent leader and source of music, opinion and culture for Christchurch, and if you're not in the area you can 'listen live' online. They have a kick ass breakfast show too. If you haven't already, feast your ears on this:

We've had some great feedback already, even after one day of air time, so thank you for that people and keep it coming! I wonder what they think about it in the APRA offices...

Fooze and Beauty

2009-03-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

Man I came SO close to beating Kurt in foose at lunch time! Weeeell, maybe not that close but it sure wasn't the usual down trowel. Whenever I enter the guys' work place (Jon, Dave and Mo work together and Kurt is always popping in) with a white envelope I am welcomed warmly. This is because in that envelope is payment from the previous weekend's gig(s). If I'm not carrying a white envelope I am eyed suspiciously, greeted with sneers and looks of pure distain. Some times objects are thrown at me whilst "aiming for the bin". I have learnt a valuable lesson; always carry a white envelope. Ha!

I'm looking forward to seeing what Kurt comes up with in regards to a new look for the Hennessy Love Machine website. In my humble opinion a website should be easy to use, robust and functional. Every day I come across band/music sites, and while some have got very creative with the home page they're just too busy. Waiting for a title page to load only so you can skip it is a pain in the ass, I usually just want to find out information and don't really care too much for over the top aesthetics. Having said that, there is a fine line between 'too much' and plain boring. You want to stand out from the millions of other sites equally as determined to gain visitors and keep them but make their experience on your site as interesting and simple as possible. This is all my take of course and as I type this I feel dangerously out of my depth, so good luck to you Kurt my friend! I'm off to learn how to make fonts go bold. Woo hoo!

I need to pull finger and get us booked in to the Sitting Room to record the next 4 or 5 songs so we can release it as part of NZ Music Month '09 so there's a chance they can add us to their media package. But more on that next time.

A true fan of Hennessy Love Machine, a bloody good fella and the lawyer who will represent us in a court of law - Andrew. Cheers buddy!

Here's My Card...

2009-03-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

Moses here, I managed to infiltrate HLM ages ago now, but it has taken me until today to finally weisel my way onto the logo. This is good for me and you.

Don't forget to check out the awesome video Morgan made here

You can check out my personal blog when I get permission from HLM managment to direct friends that way.

Much love Mo:)

London... Street is calling

2009-03-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

Top chef Jonny Schwass is re-opening London Street in Lyttelton this coming Friday the 13th of March, and we're going to hole up in a corner with some geetars and play for the people. Should be quite a nice wee intimate gig, it's a really nice space with red brick walls and hard wood floors. Jonny's going for a 'small plate, big taste' menu which I think means tapas style food, accompanied by an amazing wine list. I think we'll be playing for our supper...

I've compiled a bunch of footage we have randomly shot over the last month - jamming, recording and gigging so will have that up online as soon as vimeo.com verifies it. Seems to be stuck on 1 minute remaining, but will post it as soon as I can. Filming the band I believe, while being potentially annoying at times, is very important for future reference. I have a terrible memory so it's always a nice surprise checking out videos of past gigs and when we're propelled into stardom this will be the killer stuff from 'the days before we were famous', doco styles. Need to hand the camera over to the others more though cause I'm hardly in anything, but on THAT note..

I just wanted to say a big thank you to that awesome guy we met at Orientation gig who shot most of our performance on my little Canon camera. You were with Franklin (hey Franklin what's up!) and I'm really sorry for forgetting your name. Anyway, the footage was mint bro, so thank you again.

HLM 2.0 from Morgan Williams on Vimeo.

Vespa Sound System

2009-03-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

David the owner of Vespa bar sent the band some feedback. He had great reports from Saturday night which is great to hear.

Interestingly enough, we were experimenting with some subtle changes to our set that night... the most noticeable being that we turned the volume down a notch or two.

Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits used to ask the venue manager to turn the volume down so patrons could converse while the band played.

It certainly made a difference from where I was sitting behind the drums, I think I heard just about every ghost note on the snare, so it was massively obvious if I miss played even the slightest note (not that I make a habit of that). The up side was that the music was much clearer for everyone involved and I'm pretty sure we will continue with the setup.

Thanks to David for the feedback. We need as much of that as we can get (even when its not all good).

If you were there, it would be great to hear from you. Leave a comment.

Merchison

2009-02-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

Where were the CDs?? Some say they're already obsolete, and I'd have to semi agree, we're probably not far off ditching them, but I think people enjoy having something tangible to take away with them. I'm only talking music here, a downloaded kebab for example would suck.

So THE PLAN now is, after a few requests for our CD last night at the Vespa Room, to always have a few discs with us at every gig. There's definitely a correct approach when giving away free stuff, to give it any true value rather than just a thing they're going to discard in half an hour, which we will endeavour to implement in the coming months. The brilliant minds of HLM have been firing and I think we've developed a very accurate way of tracking interest in the band, increased numbers of fans and online interaction. Will keep you posted on that one... we need Merch!!

The gig last night was fun, first set was a little tough just due to the void infront of us at times where energy was sucked into like a live performance black hole. Well, that's what it felt like to me, but I talk to the crowd and enjoy having at least some form of response. Maybe I'm too chatty? Perhaps some people just want to be left alone? On the whole, punters seem to really like a bit of banter which leaves me to hassle the ones who don't and thus entertain the others so hey, sounds like a win win to me! Probably shouldn't have told that girl to put on some weight though, but what can I say, curvy girls are hot! Second set was sweet and a great way to end the night for us, people dancing, music was tight and we just loved playing our songs to the ChCh massif. Thanks Vespa!

Cowboy Productions

2009-02-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

Producing even the simplest of songs is quite an art. Ears need to be tuned to objectivity and the sound interpreter in the brain needs to intercept the creative vibes that pass through it, and make instantaneous decisions that can either enhance the song, or fully blow it out. Preparation is always a must as it provides a plan and a goal of the recording session and a great audio/sound engineer goes a long way in achieving the goal.

Although Morgan and I are good songwriters, we are definitely not producers. If there was a ski jumping competition of music producers, we would be Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, soaring like the infamous brick that he was. I'm not saying that we know nothing about music production, we know just enough to get by and how to 'hack' together relatively decent recordings with some cowboy production techniques. Let me run you through 'Can't Go Home Again' which we recorded a few days ago as an example of our production expertise and skill (I feel like a magician giving away his secrets right now!).

The Plan
The beginning of our cowboy production starts with giving ourselves approximately 5 hours to record/mix/master a whole song. Luckily we had recorded at our venue of choice many times before, so we knew what gear was available there and the knowledge that we could actually get some country sounds out of that gear. But it was our first stint with 'The Young Apprentice', Jesse, so it was new and uncharted territory in our experience with 'sound guys'.

Recording
The tracking was relatively straight forward as Jesse is the consummate professional with the setup, recording, communication and playback. Guitar tracks were performed through a good ol' Fender valve amp mic'd up hard with an Eko 100/M guitar for the main rhythm tracks and an Ibanez with Strat pickups for the lead tracks. The vocal tracks were recorded with minimal comping, if you could call what we did comping, as we were working to the recorded within 3 tracks rule. The only other tracking we did was percussion which consisted of karate chopping a horrible tambourine and 'custom' wind noises generated from a looped inhale/exhale sequence of awesomeness.

Mixing and Mastering
At this point of our immaculate conception, we figured out that by adding lots of reverb to all the tracks, we can not only create a country sounding track, it masks almost all the bollocks that came through with the goodness of the recording and basically enables 50% less work for Jesse. Thank goodness Jesse had a cool head on him and denying us our cowboy ways and actually performing a proper minimal mix/master on the tracks.

The Final Product
It is up to the subjective capacities of the listener whether this is a decent recording and we are not too fussed either way, as it is designed for the APRA country music awards which is all about composition and lyrics (...and we are totally aware that this song is an outlier in the country genre). So enjoy the audible feast entailing, and remember, music is the winner at the end of the day!

Can't Go Home Again

Country fun

2009-02-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

I think the O gig went well, not a huge turn out, maybe a better place for us to play would have been outside, to the PACKED Foundry bar (nextdoor to the gig venue) on the stage that was already set up there. Don't make the people come to you, go to the people! The small but perfectly formed crowd that did venture into the Ballroom rocked out which was mint, they were truly the hardcore so thank you guys for all your energy!

On Wednesday evening, myself and Kurt recorded a country track at The Sitting Room on Lichfield in Christchurch, called Can't Go Home Again. We have submitted this song to the APRA Country Music Awards which are held in Gore in May, so here's hoping. Thanks to Jesse for doing such a great job mixing and Tim for the final touch ups. On the track that is. So now we wait... it's a slow, moody number that touches on the painful issue of infidelity, what could be more country?? There's no mention of a dog, mind you. Now I'm dreaming of all the corn shucking, bourbon swilling glory that could come from winning the title of Best Country Song at the NZ Gold Guitar Awards.

Orsum Williams

Kurt Preston

1st message from the Galacticus

2009-02-22T18:14:00.001-08:00

Really looking forward to the Orientation gig tonight, we're playing with Franklin who I just checked out on myspace and really dug their song 'It sucks to be eaten by a shark', admittedly mostly because of the title but the song's good too! Then up after us is The Thomas Oliver band which should be sweet.

We haven't played with other bands for a while, usually holding the stage solo playing mammoth 3 hour sets, so it should be good mingling with other musos and talking about how a diminished 5th plays well with an augmented 9th in the key of H. I have no idea, musical theory and me just never got on, I hope no one notices...

Right, must go and shave my head, can't have that fuzzy look for a gig, and call up some assemblers for my gruds, try and get the best price possible per unit. Why does business have to revolve so much around money?? Oh yeah, that's what business is.