Music | Pitchfork
10 March 2014
New Zealand-born Fiona Campbell, a long-time participant in the Brooklyn DIY music scene, discusses her admiration for late-00s noise-pop New York band Vivian Girls, for whom Campbell drummed in 2010.
Formerly of Auckland, Campbell left…
Music | Los Angeles Times | Rolling Stone | YouTube
3 March 2014
According to Rolling Stone, Bruce Springsteen made the most surprising cover choice of his career when he played an acoustic rendition of teenage Grammy award-winner Lorde’s song Royals during his Auckland show at Mt…
Music | Noisey | Vice
3 March 2014
This coming May, New Zealand singer-songwriter Liam Finn, 30, will release his third full-length album, The Nihilist, on which Finn plays 67 instruments. Vice magazine’s music channel Noisey premieres the new video…
Music | South Florida Classical Review
3 March 2014
The “clear beat and enthusiasm” of New Jersey Symphony’s assistant conductor New Zealand-born Gemma New, “charged up the Miami Symphony’s crackling brass and percussion sections”, at the orchestra’s “Valentine Fiesta” in February.
“With a colourful…
Music | Female First
28 February 2014
With a voice described as “Bowie meets Bono”, New Zealand-born Thom Cross will release his debut radio single Heavy Sea, mixed by Grammy Award-winning producer Guy Massey of Manic Street Preachers fame.
London-based Cross talked…
Music | Vogue
27 February 2014
Ella Yellich-O’Connor stares at the reader from the pages of Vogue magazine looking wraithlike, almost like another famous alien fallen to earth. This Lorde looks quite unlike the girl from Devonport who improbably conquered…
Music | The Mirror
20 February 2014
Lorde has overcome the odds and won the best International Female Solo Artist prize at the Brit Awards 2014.
Despite going into the show as a huge underdog, the 17 year old newcomer took the…
Music | V Magazine
19 February 2014
Lorde takes one of four covers for fashion magazine V’s music special as part of a feature on the “next wave of alternative pop voices,” starring alongside HAIM, Say Lou Lou, and BANKS.
The 17-year-old…
Music | Guardian (The) | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
13 February 2014
“Neil Finn makes pop music, and good pop music at that. He can’t help it,” espouses the Sydney Morning Herald’s senior music writer Bernard Zuel, and he “makes the oddest and, to these ears,…
Music | Billboard
11 February 2014
While Lorde is New Zealand’s biggest success story at the moment, she’s far from all we have to offer in terms of pop riches. Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger looks at New Zealanders impressing stateside in…
Music | West Australian (The)
10 February 2014
Christchurch-born neo-soul queen Ladi6, real name Karoline Tamati, 31, has been described as “New Zealand’s answer to Erykah Badu” in her home country and listening to latest album Automatic, it’s easy to hear why,…
Music | London Evening Standard
8 February 2014
Eccentric Connan Mockasin may be, but it’s his wayward musicianship that has won over famous fans like Radiohead, Beck and rapper Tyler, according to the London Evening Standard, which reviews Mockasin’s London show at…
Music | Music Feeds
30 January 2014
Liam Finn has announced the release of his first full-length studio album in three years, titled The Nihilist. The Melbourne-based singer-songwriter has also unveiled the album’s first single, Snug As F-ck.
The track…
Music | Daily Mail | Daily Mail (the)
28 January 2014
Lorde looked stunned upon hearing her name being called as she won her first Grammy of the night for Best Pop Solo Performance at last night’s Grammy Awards, the first of two awards for…
Music | Rolling Stone
17 January 2014
“The thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone,” sang Dr Hook in 1972, a blatant but ultimately successful act of musical sycophancy that earned the band…
Music | Evening Times
13 January 2014
New Zealand musician Connan Mockasin is kicking off his UK tour in Glasgow on 22 January at King Tut’s promoting Caramel, ahead of the February release of his second single from the album, Do…
Music | Fader (The) | Guardian (The)
10 January 2014
Auckland brother-sister duo Broods, aka Georgia, 19, and Caleb Nott, 21, “make, ahem, brooding synth-pop that makes sadness sound quite lovely,” according to the Guardian’s Michael Cragg writing for the publication’s “New Music” blog.
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Music | Billboard | Hollywood Reporter
8 January 2014
Lorde is set to perform at the Grammys 2014 award show later this month, amongst a set list that includes Katy Perry, Metallica, and Chicago.
This may not be the only chance the young Kiwi…
Music | Billboard | New York Times (The)
31 December 2013
Auckland’s Lorde is one of the New York Times’ cultural Disruptors of 2013 – people who broke the rules in a year of artistic upheavals. She features alongside pop provocateur Miley Cyrus and rising…
Music | Guardian (The)
19 December 2013
The songwriting savant behind Unknown Mortal Orchestra, New Zealander Ruban Nielson, 33, spends many of his nocturnal hours locked away in the basement of his Portland, Oregon home, creating beguiling, hypnagogic psych-pop, the Guardian’s…
Music
11 December 2013
Lorde, who has been nominated for two Grammys for her hit “Royals”, up for both record of the year (for the recording) and best song (for songwriting), “stuns” on the cover of the
Music | Wall Street Journal (The)
10 December 2013
“Dean Wareham ranks high among the most faithful disciples of Lou Reed,” the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Battaglia writes in a review of Wareham’s recent New York show at Brooklyn’s Bell House.
“He doesn’t have…
Music | MTV
10 December 2013
In between shows on her Red tour in New Zealand, American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift posted Instagrams of herself busy at “aesthetically pleasing activities … like driving a boat, gazing off into the…
Music | Bachtrack
6 December 2013
New Zealander Gemma New, associate conductor of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and director of the Lunar Ensemble, talks with Bachtrack’s Meg Wilhoite about the question of gender equality in the world of new…
Writers | Guardian (The)
5 December 2013
Once upon a time New Zealand cultural values were based on the unholy trinity of rugby, racing and beer. Then the marketing concepts – clean and green; 100% Pure – were added to the…
Music | New York Times (The)
3 December 2013
Lorde has suddenly become quite famous, but in reality the 17-year-old kiwi just wants to stay out of the world of smoke and mirrors like other young popstar of today.
“It’s still pretty weird,” she…
Music | Skinny (The)
27 November 2013
“A defining sense of optimism and curiosity took Mockasin and his then band, The Mockasins, to London in 2006, where, despite running out of money very quickly, their initial style of…
Music | Billboard
19 November 2013
Starting his music career as a member of pop-punk band Goodnight Nurse in the early 2000s, kiwi Joel Little is now becoming one of the most in-demand producers on the planet after producing Lorde’s…
Music | Billboard
18 November 2013
Hot on the heels of Lorde’s success, Auckland pop-synth duo Broods are making a positive international impressions of their own. The brother-sister duo, made up of Caleb and Georgina Nott, have worked closely with…
Music | WA Today
8 November 2013
Neil Finn, who is playing at Australia’s Falls Festival in December, has had a colourful career so far. Wild in Split Enz, he’s been a straightforward balladeer, the front man of a…
Music | New Zealand Herald
7 November 2013
New Zealand businessman Sir Douglas Myers has secured the rights to John Lennon’s music and some early Beatles records, he says in an exclusive interview with the Herald on Sunday.
Meyers owns Downtown Music, a…
Music | NY Daily News
6 November 2013
New Zealand got unparalleled international exposure from the recent tour by Beyonce, arguably the biggest music star on the planet at the moment. Whether posing for an Instagram with a Kiwi fan, promotion of…
Music | 3 News
30 October 2013
As Lorde goes from strength to strength, covers of her number one song ‘Royals’ are sprouting like mushrooms on YouTube, and now a second Kiwi is finding fame with his take on the world…
Music | Denver Westword
28 October 2013
If artists get a chance to leave New Zealand, says Thom Powers, co-founder of The Naked and Famous (TNF), then they must seize the opportunity. Los Angeles-based Powers is in the US with TNF…
Music | Celebrity Cafe (The)
27 October 2013
New Zealand-born singer and songwriter, Los Angeles-based Ted Brown has released his second album, An Unwide Ride; “an elegantly spare and tenderly introspective record”, recorded at Roundhead Studios in Auckland.
In 1993, Brown…
Music | New Yorker | New Yorker (The)
23 October 2013
Lorde makes it into the New Yorker this week, the subject of a profile by contributor and music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who conducted several conversations with the 16-year-old about, amongst other things, how important…
Music | Guardian (The)
16 October 2013
Lorde, 16, who says she chose her stage name because she wanted an aesthetically feminine aristocratic title, tells the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis that the record company “got straight away that I was a bit…
Music | Daily Mail
11 October 2013
In order to mark her recent trip to New Zealand, Rihanna decided to get a permanent reminder by having a traditional Maori tattoo added to her already vast collection of inkings.
The tattoo was done…
Music | BBC | Billboard
3 October 2013
Sixteen-year-old singer, Lorde has become the first New Zealander to top the US Billboard charts, following the release of her first album, Pure Heroine, in the US at start of this month. Her single…
Music | The Bay Bridged
2 October 2013
“The Portland-based (though one-third New Zealand-born) trio finds a delicate balance between lo-fi minimalism and swirly, disoriented pop songs heavy on themes of isolation, which they translate gracefully into a live…
Music | Buzzfeed
30 September 2013
Though alternative rock bands of the last few decades have oozed cool by rejecting the music industry and pretending not to care, The Naked and Famous didn’t move 19 time zones and nearly 7,000…
Music | Guardian (The)
25 September 2013
New Zealand psych-funk oddball Connan Mockasin hasn’t listened to anyone else’s music for 10 years; he shuns record labels and recorded his bewitching new album in a Tokyo hotel room, Ben Arnold…
Music | Billboard | Los Angeles Times
24 September 2013
New Zealand-born country singer Keith Urban, 45, has been branching out musically – playing with the Rolling Stones and others, and fresh collaborations on his latest album, Fuse, which debuted on Billboard’s 200 Albums…
Music | West Australian (The)
18 September 2013
Naked and Famous singer-guitarist Thom Powers says Los Angeles was the perfect environment for the New Zealand synth-pop outfit to make their second album, In Rolling Waves.
“That side of living in Los Angeles is…
Music | Billboard
11 September 2013
New Zealand singer, Lorde, has graced the cover of Billboard magazine, while saying in the accompanying interview that in a perfect world she would never do interviews.
The comment, according to the magazine, stems from…
Music | Billboard
10 September 2013
Auckland singer Lorde, 16, has made it into the United States Billboard Top 10, with her “debut alternative/pop hit” Royals, which pop star Selena Gomez covered at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam on…
Music | Scoop
9 September 2013
New Zealand band, Streets of Laredo, have taken a top spot in the US indie music competition, Unsigned Only. The New York-based band, made up of brothers Dan and Dave Gibson, and Dave’s wife,…
Music | Billboard | Daily Beast (The)
5 September 2013
Sixteen-year-old New Zealand singer, Lorde, has had continued success the US, with her single ‘Royals’ currently sitting at 8th place on the Billboard Hot 100 List.
The single has also been sitting atop of the…
Music | Daily Mail
27 August 2013
Flight of the Conchords star, Academy and Grammy Award-winner Bret McKenzie, 37, wants to bring back to life the eighties classic storytelling technique of real people and puppets singing and dancing side by side…
Music | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
26 August 2013
Wellington septet Fat Freddy’s Drop “are spreading their infectious grooves all over the world,” according to The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paris Pompor. In a shrinking, fibre-connected world, the band find themselves in ever more…
Music | Vulture
21 August 2013
Lorde continues to make waves internationally ahead of the launch of her debut album, with US online magazine Vulture writing giving their readers a crash course in who the 16-year-old singer is and why…
Music | Billboard | Huffington Post (The)
15 August 2013
New Zealand singer/songwriter, Lorde, has landed the top spot on the Billboard Alternative Songs Chart with her hit single ‘Royals’. Not only is she the first solo woman to top the charts in her…
Music | Billboard
13 August 2013
The “unflappable” Lorde, 16, “hypnotises” at her first concert in the United States introducing “her collection of immaculately drawn pop compositions with a confidence and demeanour well beyond her years”, Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz writes…
Music | BayouBuzz.com
9 August 2013
Formerly of Gore, singer-songwriter Jackie Bristow, who has been based in the United States for the past eight years, recently performed two shows at the Neutral Ground Coffeehouse and House of Blues in New…
Music | Huffington Post
2 August 2013
In an interview, Auckland singer-songwriter Lorde, 16, said that unlike many female teenage artists, boys aren’t all she is interested in when it comes to writing songs. “I feel like that isn’t maybe the…
Music | Billboard | Wall Street Journal (The)
1 August 2013
Identified only as her stage name, Lorde, 16, the artist kept her true identity a mystery for months, Wall Street Journal correspondent Megan Buerger writes. The only available representation of her was a drawing…