Hi.
I'm starting a new 3-piece pop band and I'm looking for a band name. Everyone says my band names are terrible, so I'm trying to 'workshop' the name this time.
The only idea I've come up with so far is FOODTOWN.
Please help.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
ONE FOR PAUL
Hello Lil' Chief Blog,
So me and Wonderful Prince Winston decided to take a break from finishing the album (it's getting there) to pay homage to my favourite Beatle Sir Paul McCartney.
What I'm trying to say is that Paul McCartney is so cool, I'm willing to commit a musical heresy in his honour and have therefore risked covering 'And I Love Her'.
This coupled with a few other covers I have up my sleeve, will make up BONUS material upon release of first LP this year.
In the meantime please feel free to enjoy this zany video clip.
Wonderful Prince Winston felt the urge to clean himself during the outro which is nice.
Also, here is a clip of Paul McCartney teaching people how to make mashed potatoes.
So me and Wonderful Prince Winston decided to take a break from finishing the album (it's getting there) to pay homage to my favourite Beatle Sir Paul McCartney.
What I'm trying to say is that Paul McCartney is so cool, I'm willing to commit a musical heresy in his honour and have therefore risked covering 'And I Love Her'.
This coupled with a few other covers I have up my sleeve, will make up BONUS material upon release of first LP this year.
In the meantime please feel free to enjoy this zany video clip.
Wonderful Prince Winston felt the urge to clean himself during the outro which is nice.
Also, here is a clip of Paul McCartney teaching people how to make mashed potatoes.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
New Ruby Suns Album Out Today
'Fight Softly' is the third album for Lil' Chief by pop masters The Ruby Suns. Ryan McPhun (their prime mover) has the kind of voracious musical mind that cites as equal influences '80s New Jack Swing and modern Angolan kuduro, the Beach Boys, Britney Spears, Brazillian tropicalia and Argentinean cumbia. He's the kind of diligent, meticulous soul that spends days hunched over a laptop in a tiny rented studio in Auckland just to perfect a sequenced drum track (mission accomplished). And Fight Softly is the kind of head-spinning combination of big-picture vision and sumptuous detail that only comes from an artist with an urgent need to express all the stuff he's seen. And you can dance to it!
For the New Zealand winter months last year The Ruby Suns escaped to Seattle and began work on Fight Softly. "Mingus and Pike" is about their temporary Victorian abode and its happy-go-lucky pit bull mascot Mingus; “Cranberry” captures a day trip to Cranberry Lake, a dream of a swimming-hole 90 minutes from Seattle on Fidalgo Island. The former is beat-buzzed bedroom R&B swathed in reverb while the latter is part tequila-drunk marching band, part Eastern Bloc candy rave.
The Ruby Suns also took a whirlwind tour of Europe that included 10 days at a friend's spread outside Szeged, Hungary. McPhun and friends Bevan Smith (Signer, Aspen, Skallander) and Matthew Mitchell (Skallander, Muriel Tsains) spent their time devouring veggie pizzas and jamming, improv-style, in an old farmhouse. These sessions didn't make it to Fight Softly as-is but were a springboard into new ideas McPhun brought back to his Auckland studio.
Like "Closet Astrologer," a song that started in Hungary and concluded, vaporous and Vangelis-like, in New Zealand. Or "How Kids Fail," a multi-movement epic that sounds like a post-techno hymn and nods to How Children Fail, John Holt's groundbreaking book on the general out-of-touch-ness of the public education system. "Haunted House" bounces on a pitch-shifted vocal sample and bubbly synth line, simultaneously lush and minimal. "Cinco" and "Dusty Fruit" share a similar digital-tropical soul.
This is where Fight Softly veers from the path set by its predecessor. Thematically, it's not as wide-eyed or lighthearted, picking apart the relationships faced as we pass through the world—with our surroundings, each other, ourselves. Sonically, it remains as beat-centric, though these beats are deliciously artificial—stretched and compacted and distorted beyond recognition. Melodies are scuzzy and digital, not many guitars strummed or basses plucked. McPhun's soulful upper-register croon, swallowed into the mix, replaces group chants and full-throated singalongs. Rather than an album of clearly-drawn influences, Fight Softly is a unique, inscrutable synthesis, more itself than anything else.
If you'd like to purchase titles directly from Lil Chief, both our local and international online stores are open for business.
For the New Zealand winter months last year The Ruby Suns escaped to Seattle and began work on Fight Softly. "Mingus and Pike" is about their temporary Victorian abode and its happy-go-lucky pit bull mascot Mingus; “Cranberry” captures a day trip to Cranberry Lake, a dream of a swimming-hole 90 minutes from Seattle on Fidalgo Island. The former is beat-buzzed bedroom R&B swathed in reverb while the latter is part tequila-drunk marching band, part Eastern Bloc candy rave.
The Ruby Suns also took a whirlwind tour of Europe that included 10 days at a friend's spread outside Szeged, Hungary. McPhun and friends Bevan Smith (Signer, Aspen, Skallander) and Matthew Mitchell (Skallander, Muriel Tsains) spent their time devouring veggie pizzas and jamming, improv-style, in an old farmhouse. These sessions didn't make it to Fight Softly as-is but were a springboard into new ideas McPhun brought back to his Auckland studio.
Like "Closet Astrologer," a song that started in Hungary and concluded, vaporous and Vangelis-like, in New Zealand. Or "How Kids Fail," a multi-movement epic that sounds like a post-techno hymn and nods to How Children Fail, John Holt's groundbreaking book on the general out-of-touch-ness of the public education system. "Haunted House" bounces on a pitch-shifted vocal sample and bubbly synth line, simultaneously lush and minimal. "Cinco" and "Dusty Fruit" share a similar digital-tropical soul.
This is where Fight Softly veers from the path set by its predecessor. Thematically, it's not as wide-eyed or lighthearted, picking apart the relationships faced as we pass through the world—with our surroundings, each other, ourselves. Sonically, it remains as beat-centric, though these beats are deliciously artificial—stretched and compacted and distorted beyond recognition. Melodies are scuzzy and digital, not many guitars strummed or basses plucked. McPhun's soulful upper-register croon, swallowed into the mix, replaces group chants and full-throated singalongs. Rather than an album of clearly-drawn influences, Fight Softly is a unique, inscrutable synthesis, more itself than anything else.
If you'd like to purchase titles directly from Lil Chief, both our local and international online stores are open for business.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Leilani Heather
Leilani Heather is an Auckland based photographer who takes awesome photos. My friend Matthew showed me her website last year and then she contacted us to take some Gladeyes band photos.
Check out her website www.leilaniheather.com
Check out her website www.leilaniheather.com
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