The Aesthetics - Trashed Non-Adventures

The Aesthetics - Imbroglio live in Melby/ better dead than red in Cremorne

2011-01-25T01:28:00.000-08:00

tarrif

2010-11-11T01:32:00.000-08:00

miserable venue hell (back in dunedin)

2010-11-11T01:02:00.000-08:00

Some venues are fronts. Rackets . Soulless cash-cow-cum police-states that don't give a shit about the health of the poor fools who get to 'perform' there. Think of a factory farm, heaving dispensing machines programmed to keep every student punter quietly drunk (forever), the PA mafias payed off, the local noise police appeased, beverage firms paid their due.... rigid time limits strangulating each act, 'sets' reduced to mere sound-bytes, roving media lapping up your sweat, no gig ever happens in real-time - they've become cynical and half-dead things, tomorrows necrotic facebook pics, ultimately more real than the show itself...The boot is crushing cultures' skull further into the gravel. Incremental changes in legislation. Its not about communities of music enthusiasts anymore - no chance for anything like the hippies or the punks to EVER organize again..it's about closing everyone off from everybody else, the only fun you can have is the fun inside your head, ipods pumping, each individual music consumer an island, a room full of loners , sealed off, virtualized, not actually there.

New world.

Artist run spaces seem to be the only places left for new scenes to truly experiment, the only place for bands to relax and be themselves, the only places where you can fuckin smoke a cigarette anywhere.

melbourne blog part ONE.

2010-11-03T19:27:00.004-07:00

GO HERE

PART TWO IS HERE!!

melbourne blog part ONE.

2010-11-03T19:27:00.003-07:00

GO HERE GOD-DAMN IT

melbourne blog part ONE.

2010-11-03T19:27:00.001-07:00

GO HERE GOD-DAMN IT

clip

2010-11-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

...lil' clip from the pony show before blog

Melb

2010-10-03T20:25:00.001-07:00

In a couple of weeks the band goes to Melbourne to get trashed and play dumb music. Intrepid non-reporter Matty Middleton shall keep our reader informed VIA THIS BLOG.

new aesthetics 7"

2010-08-25T22:23:00.001-07:00

GET IT FROM 'EPIC SWEEP' RECORDS HOME ON MYSPACE ::::

DUSK HUSK/DO,DO,DO/O LIVE TO AIR MAY 2010

http://www.myspace.com/epicsweeprecords

UP'N'COMIN'

2010-08-12T02:58:00.001-07:00

AUSTRALIA AWAITS

2010-07-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

We gots 2 confirmed shows in Melbourne now for 23rd/24th October 2010, ,,,,,,,with our good mates Panel of Judges .....the first is at THE TOTE,, and the seconds is later that night..well the next day but you know... (2am) at The Pony Club......

Details of further shows to come....

Crude will also be playing Sunshine and Grease 29th of October and also a couple of shows in Sydney around that time.....

Also , our new track 'Dusk Husk' is up online for streaming only... HERE

fuzz/nothingness/distortion

2010-05-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7172711

gets interesting at 37 mins onward...

...POSTSCRIPT - oops, looks like the videos has been made private..........

an old observation

2010-05-01T21:54:00.001-07:00

from 'the crude decade' May 2009

" A LIVE SHOW IS NOT A RECORDING, IT WILL BE MESSY, NO MATTER HOW PRACTICED and MUSICALLY PROFICIENT WE (THINK WE) ARE, THERE WILL BE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, SOMETIMES IN ABUNDANCE. This is what a live gig should be. It is truly the atmosphere created by the band that denotes a 'live show's' beauty, the energy created, the reference and re-interpretation of those recordings you know and love, the alcoholic gnosis, the social co-factors, the mob-mentality, the party afterwards, the haze, the fog'n'dimness, the yellng into your friends ear, the improvised sections....every band in history has fucked up live. Unless they're corporate robots. So there. Perfection, as inhuman as it is, is something to be worked towards (in vain of course) in the studio. So, bare this in mind when you go see The Aesthetics or Crude next. A live gig is a live gig. "

children of the suntan lotion, qtpi, bad sav, the aesthetics ,none 24/4/10

2010-04-25T02:52:00.000-07:00

Well well well well well well well well well well well well a night at None in the gallery room is always always gonna be a rip-snorter of a night....regardless. A meandering rollercoaster of drinks and drinks and smokes and smokes and smokes and knuckles and cracks and paint and dribble and flesh and amanita muscaria and laptops-on-heat and nasty nasty biting chords.....

and first up was the new ensemble 'Children of the Suntan-lotion' ,,,ultra-art ultra delta gamma, Motoko Kikawwa, Rachel Blackburn, Oliver of the sky, Claire Mahoney : an experimental collaboration of visual artists exploring sound and it's constituent parts (sound, whether installed or performed is an increasingly credible and bankable contemporary art practise). A breathing, heaving piece of living organic drone was the result, punctuated with Kikawwa's signature tom-tom kettle drum percussion, curious vocal hollerin' all glossolalia-like, evoking the great Central Asian plains, Blackburn and Radio Ranui pixilatting the all-round effect with pleasing glitches and treated samples, tech tech tech tech ...oliver (of the sky) arranging a lil' collection of novelties and knick-knacks and curios all sparkly and odd-ball, inelucatbly linking this show to the recent 'Flea Market' group show...charged particles and naieve magic delighting surprise audience member Chris Heazlewood no-end. A display of performance art and a knowing nod to that exciting phenomenon that is Appropriation..artefacts....voodoo trinkets....offerings to Eluggua.

Next up was power-duo 'QTPI'....Aaron Clarke on Bass/vox and Di Smith on Drums/Vox (and vice versa)...a short and smart set of arcane fuzz-bass melodies over unconventional rhythms. Punk and Art make a deal. And the house cats! Tabbies, shorthairs, black cats, white cats, black and white cats, our most beloved four legged friends (well...you got dog people and cat people...im a cat person) - QTPIs mascot, their soul-animal, their guardian angel, evil cute, cats - you just can't be that tough hardcore punk rocker you thought you were or may have been when you got cat-cam footage behind ya. The cats show us up for who we really are, underneath it all, we coo and we smile like babies and we stroke and curl up and melt like candy..

... Kill rock stars. Nascent lining. Beat beat beat. Question answer. Now look what you've gone and done. Audience responds favourably. I chug back another Peroni. You mean...for a chaange??

Next up was Bad Sav ,,a power trio, and through the murk afforded me by the Peroni(s) I stood and basked in a band clearly driven to greater things...the beyond...the other..their guitarist had a map of Texas emblazoned on her jacket. Riders on the storm. They say of themselves on their myspace page.."Bad Sav are that band that you heard drifting out from the basement at 4 in the morning at that party in the middle of nowhere when you were passing out somewhere near the campfire that had been dead for hours." Beautifully droll!! Kicking out laid-back cynical ballads (like the delightfully anti-tory 'john key has aids') and a noisy suite of darker disjointed psych-punk rifferama Bad Sav is a kind of nightmare rock, heavy/sweet, gone, death-a-delic, a menacing post-flyin' nun phenomenon.

And then we come on - to a big audience, a big bad collection of ears and brains, doctors, laywers, laymen, scholars, painters, dockers, machinists, artists, writers, sculptors...we come on, I , tripping through leads and riff-raff, fumble with the digital delay pedal, and the floors and walls fall away, eyes close, the worlds' a stage, and i enter that warm bardo that is distortion and attention, a type of yoga, a word-to-the-mother, a 'real' hallucination.

I leave to find my car with freshly applied gradually setting acrylic paint splashed over the doors and windows ,,luckily it was white-on-white. Oh the violence and madness of a dunedin rugby night, did we win? we musn't have. Spattered on like an American abstract expressionist work, like a murder, a viennesse actionist ejaculation, the soft gunky paint reminded me: keep quiet. don't rock the boat. this is a sporting nation, you bohemian faggot.

The Aesthetics, Heka, TFF, the hyenas.

2010-04-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i've penned a review. Perhaps I'm losing my touch. Too many cells burnt away. Too much sun. Too much science. Too many turds. And so it was refuel, the ONLY paying venue in town , well, the only venue where you get a guarantee, and that's ONLY one night. Wednesday pint nights attract students aplenty. So there was a good lubricated politically impressionable crowd welling up in the bar next door. First up in the band bar was Timmy Doyle, fleshing out the cavernous void of the stale early evening with stylish and heart-felt singer/songwriter gems. Butter up butter up. roll up. And grande grande lack doth pray. Toodle, toodle , whip. Thoth, lord of script, cast me your energy . None hath ye? Bugger my orchard. A sot! A vagrant sot spat yellow viscous pap. Then was a personal highlight ,,Thee hyenas, and i must eat my pseudo-cynical thirty-something turd-words for there was no boyish show-off heroics there this time - 'twas sleek and sinister fuzz, irascible and gnarley just under the hood - the heaving chords of mens mens mens men - the cultish musicianship of a dextrous cadre, glib , wry, tawdry and curt. Like it rocked. And i bemoaned 'how do we follow that??' , which was lucky coz we didnt have to and then Heka did. And the hoary bardic joungleur/janglers

deliver a selection of fine songs of true Dunedin yoke - that salty sea , fish street memories, overdrive - not distortion - nods to velvets, nods to the 3ds, nods to xpressway. Solid slam of bass/drum by ex-Suka rockers Tenzin Mullen and Heath te Au the surlyu foundation for Steven Kilroy's story-telling.

We were on next,,,,the aesthetics, and without a set list (yeah it was folded up in my pocket the whole evening as we haggled over titles) we pulled out old heavies like 'imbroglio' and other uni-riff hypno-regressive stonkin' stompin' honkin' floor licking numbers.

TFF were thee last band on and, in typical tff style their flat-out energy was inimitable that night - yes ill say it again...angular spasms of violent chunk-rock amidst sax blat'n'gack, clever micro-synth lilt'n'suckle, teets on/teets off, poff , hoff, toff, bosh, posh, tosh, piff paff suckin' probiscus-discus all very viscous like a turd sandwhich with henry rollins. ruling. Ruling . Fierce. Jazz-i-mi-tazz. A veritable bukkake session of sound sperm. Vital. fertile ground.

refuel pint night is an important forum for dunedin artists to infiltrate fresh new minds, make friends, import files, tag photos,

sit in a seedy corner and tounge kiss, cross-pollenate your audience, irritate islam, proflagate and vagabond, niggardly. Bring yr tongs.

Bethunes Gully 6.3.10..

2010-03-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

it was GOOD . ALL THE BANDS WERE GREAT.!!!
GOOD ON YA TO PROXY MUZAK!

HERES SOME PHOTOS BY MARKUS GRADWOHL::

to sum up /recent gigs

2009-12-29T00:32:00.000-08:00

above photo by roger grauwmeijer

Hello hello hello. ........ . . . The Aesthetics performed 2 blistering (yes. i know. an adjective perhaps over-used in rock journalism) sets the other week, there was a gig at Chicks and then the Cellars bar, shows with Crude, and the Anals.....we even had a chap who flew down to Dunedin specifically to see the show - a new and very encouraging phenomenon,,,he gleefully bought up merch and liberally plied me/us with booze,,,the year has ended on an up note,,,,the new line up is on fire...2010 is upon us....cant think of anything to write about...just that we/I/it/they hope to perform somewhere else next year...the furrowed brows of summer......the white sands of micronesia......the Ugly Ambition LP was voted 'number 47th' best NZ album for the last decade in Real Groove magazine.....things are looking up....other people....Iran 2010......Iran 2011........control....control...dirty old town......beer....beeer......beeeeer.......pull yourself together.....its only a bit of poo......dunedin....the other.....

None 9/10/09 - LIVE

2009-10-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

aesthetics live 1980

None basement is one of the only remaining inner city venues in Dunedin right now that noisier bands can perform at. Actually I don't think None Basement is officialy a venue at all - its more a residential space that is used for gigs occasionaly. This show was a pleasing combination of modern art-musics and was an absolute blaassst - a heady and volumous crowd, rickety chairs, concrete and that unmistakeable oily odour of a basement. 'Twas the kinda show people let loose at...when it was appropriate. The evenings' introductory entertainment was a film screening - and for the life of me i cant recall what it was. Waltzing in half-way through it was a fairly useless venture to try and pick it up so I sought solace in the None lounge. For the brief moment i spied the feature it gave the impression that it was lo-budget and minimalist. The Forgotten Guests are Katrina Thompson on Harp(no not the mouth-organ) and Leyton Leyton (epsilon blue/rotor+) on electronics...theirs was a stunning set - so very soft, subtle and poised...a real tension created. In fact when i walked down the creaking stairs to see it just after they started my creaking seemed to merge into it. 'Twas that tense. Electro-acoustic sound par-excellence. I mean hey - shes's pluckin' a HARP. It's going to be delicate stuff. Leyton's electronics of choice were a very tasteful array of clicks, washes, pads, murky synths and lite patterns. I hope they perform at Lines 2010. Alex MacKinnons set was super-quick, Rory, the brilliant drummer from TFF as backing him up with this lightning-fast snare-roll madness. Noise guitar topping. Great fun. And then, we, Aesthetics 7.0. And it worked. And they danced a bit and clapped, and the general concensus was that this new line up works. Well. Like. And. It. Worked. And. Then. The man from America played - a curious concoction of sounds - very much collages, musique concrete, layer upon layer, found-sound, pre-set sounds, a stylish tourist and his machines. Guitar string/bell-like effects reminiscent of that classic Lee Renaldo effecto/erecto/detecto. Guitar sections. Ducktails, certainly no Lucky Dragons hippy-type, definately East coast in his attack, and attitude - but still - its that poppy pretty electronic effect loop tradition thats oh-so-much fun. And then people seemed to want to party it up in the None lounge. Hurrah. Byee!

Aesthetics : version 7 or 8 or something

2009-08-31T16:42:00.000-07:00

Like Martin Phillips and the Chills. Or George Henderson and the Puddle. The Aesthetics has been a band that changes form over the years creating an exclusive club of ex-members. J-mz Robinson (notv/tmai). Russell Coveney (lo-liners/renderers). Graheme Fyfe (mindfuckers/oblivion, fuck off cunt face). Alex MacKinnon (dirtroom/house/alex mackinnon). Morgan Oliver (fuck chairs/ho'dogs). Shaun Jury(drugs vs children/bloody souls). Stefan Neville. (pumice/armpit. Chris Livingston(mountaineater). And now Jason Barrett(bastardwisher/fraudulents/tiger shark) - aesthetics bassist since 2003 joins the club. His playing is immortalized in the grooves of the Ugly Ambition LP. Why you ask? Well...like that great option you get on Facebook when they ask you for your relationship status - it's complicated. You may not like it. You may not care. You might wanna join. You might wanna know all about it. You might want to bail me up against a wall and punch me in the face to break that pretty little pointy-uppy nose. Or you might gleefully wait for who's gonna resume the role. Anyways, all shall be revealed at our next gig, which is i don't-know-when. So see you there!

lyttleton

2009-08-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

a little review of the Aesthetics/Bastardwisher/Stevie McCabe gig is over at the Axemen blog HERE. A couple of mini-vids too!

phenomenonenon

2009-07-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

the aesthetics - elsie is picking the winners again

2009-05-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

..........New Zealand's largest city is about to get larger.
And so, to see it off, the Aesthetics make it up to AK, our AK, the K-road, Mt Albert Grey Lynn/Kingsland/Graftony part for a couple of doom-cast/grim outlook-type shows!

DAY 1 - sees the band leave Dunedin in a metal bird...It roared like a million lions. Arriving in Wellington upon this thing of light and fire the band parties in newtown, belting out jesus christ superstar word-for-word around a bonfire, as if to give the tour context...

DAY 2 - Saturday the 16th of May, I (crude) perform an 'improvised' piece on juno 60 keyboard, vocal and me silver-tinted battered saxophone at Spacething in the tempestuous Wellington afternoony. Stefan Neville (Pumice - also on a microtour of the nth island) joins me on the cans for a blazing free jazz blowhole/blowout - a format i wish to replicate in Dunedin soon (with lee noyes maybe?)...Bright Colours, one of those 'only-in-wellington' bands demonstrating a curious melodic angularity and complex rhythmic afrocentrism also perform, their frontman a true oddball presence with nervous talent in abundance. A spacething instore is part performance, part network-space, part swap-meet, part op-shop and part art-gallery and this one was all that and more. Thanks again to Beth for squeezing crude in in relatively short notice....
The main event, i.e the evenings'entertainment was hosted at a classic pub type venue, The Adelaide Bar. Two piece Newtown perform first, their set pointedly more ROCK than what we had witnessed back in '07. Warm, vicious (warm - and vicious?),straight(well-sorta)-ahead anthemic punk-rock songs from these riotous Netownians. Nice lil'turnout..perhaps not a behemoth of a turnout - but hell - we were in direct and pernicious competition with folkist PUMICE and locals mr sterile assembly - an anomalous and painfully polarizing phenomenon - Pumice has many powerful and loyal friends in the capital, and blood is thicker than water. But hey. Thats the biz. Cut-throat. Take no indie-kid prisoners. Zombie Fuck, a garish assortment of ex-dunedite blood'n'bone surrealize the night just that little bit more as they step up. Expertly programmed drum-buddy-machining. Nightmare question-answer-male-female-type vocals. A demonic-fuzz rifferama reminiscent of Amphetamine Reptile/Touch and Go/Trance Syndicate era sonic malefactors the Pain Teens.
A fine set from the Fucks, perhaps a lil' more dance floor grovel would've added to the general debaucho-degradation..Wellington a notorious wall-flower town (yes?no?is that AKL? christchurch?)...and then we play.
LONG AND LOUD AND DISGUSTING. All the hits. 'Drive On' sung with real despair and with that true small-town-south-island-i'm-shocked-and-shattered-by-all-this-big-city-sophistication ...but Wellington likes it. And I thank them fo' it!

DAY 3 - didn't take much for us to be royally ejected from the capital after our blashpemous din , indeed, the wind itself throws us out. And onto the cornucopian corporate zone that is AKL ! There is to be no show until day 6 - and so we plant ourselves in mission-sympathetic flats, line up a weeks worth of art filmography and shut ourselves away.

DAY 6 - Thursday the 21st of May sees the Aesthetics 1ST AKL performance at the super-busy whammy Bar, joined by The Spunks and the fabulous Cigarettes. The Spunks are Stefan Neville and Bob Brannigan - perhaps the two hardest working musicians in New Zealand, their line up that night sadly missing the intoxicating drone and smokey, dopey rock-muso party that is Roddy Pain. Brilliant songs and musicianship only thousands of hours of touring and frugal living could make manifest. Of course, for the sheer entertainment, the sheer god-damn madness of it all, the night belongs to Celia Mancini and her new out-fit, The Cigarettes. Celia fronts the band on organ, Liz Matthews drums and Sean-o'reilly, the silently reliable and prefered Mancini-musick cohort is on guitar. And regardless of near glacial shifts in time,,,since, oh i don't know, the last days of King Loser, it is clearly a kind of timelessness that defines her - the sound a heavy psychedelic swamp monstrosity relevant then, relevant now and relevant fukkin tomorrow. Clever, sinister, and yes, its fukkin funny too.
Really fukkin funny and really fukkin rare. ..and then we play.
LONG AND LOUD AND DISGUSTING. Al the hits. 'Bionica' played especially for the chap who listed it as is favorite NZ song on this big corporate poster campaign about town. But Auckland likes it. And I thank them fo' it!
There was a kind of party afterwards, a sort of crumbling, tragic, jaded, deranged, physically dangerous, madenning, stupid but triumphant gathering in an impeccably furnished (beige leather/neo bauhaus design?/walnut stereo system) apartment,,,,and lo-and-behold DAY 7 dawns and its all 'dawn, you've been gone, its been such a long time'

DAY 7

Um Day 7, thats the Ambassador gig. And you can read a succinct gig report on this one at the absolutely encyclopedic AXEMEN blog..
Ambassador is a totally wild bar, and was a joy to play a totally loose rediculously silly set (well my singing seems so on watching this:::

Axemen ruled, strangling, killing, eating and reconstituting Bryan Ferry songs like you'll never believe,, as did the Hairdos ((no they didnt strangle bryan ferry songs - oh you know wat i mean)..a brilliant AKL 3 piece, punchy keys'n'chunky gat,,girl 'n'guy question/answer vox,,,and that tee shirt - --u seen it????) ,, (oh and HOW COULD I FORGET - KIMMY SWANSON SINGS THIS AMAZING SONG WITH THEM HAIL STUD!!)and Piece war (classic punk - surprisingly melodic---), and yeah, the Axemen 'gig report' sums it all up so much better - its got pics and vids and yeah...

And so to sum it all up: THE MICRO TOUR WAS A GREAT SUCCESS !!! ...it was the Dunedin music consumers at the launch party who made it possible, those 20 or so Ugly Ambition sales literally propelling The Aesthetics up to Welly and Auckland and it is with a real sense of pride that i can say that. There is nothing more rewarding than funding ones own project out of ones own sales. I wanna thank everyone in Wellinton and Auckland who helped out, Liz Matthews, Zoe Drayton for the PA, Duncan Bruce for recording the Ambassador show, Naomi Hickin for general hospitality and helpin' with the Ambassador show,,,but especially Beth Dawson in Welly and super-especially Stefan Neville in Auckland - driving our broken-asses 'round town, helping set up gigs, setting up a live-to-air, putting us up, talkin' to folks on our b-half, lotsa little bits and pieces all helping to slicken up general rock-logistics...at this indie level - it's simple - you gotta maintain your networks with love. No bridge burning is allowed anymore, well, it wasn't back in the mid 90s when i was a particularly pyromaniacal brat either... Nurture them. Guard them. Back 'em up in a fight....Special thanks to the Axemen - was a rare joy to play saxophone for them - what was that Bryan Ferry song? I've earnt the super-exclusive right to pen blogs for their great Y2K blog now having performed with them (once)so.....yehaww! So, we hope to get up nth again soon. Sooner rather than later.

gig posters

2009-05-07T17:01:00.001-07:00

Europa Kid, Brains, Bastardwisher & The Aesthetics @ Chicks

2009-04-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

sefton playin sax for the aesthetics.
photo by christine knight.

NB - for some reason the bottom half of this blog is in very small type so please adjust yr text size settings..it seemingly wont change when i try to edit the draft..sry for the inconvenience..

Madness, when mixed with alcohols, amplified by loud primitive sounds and contained within a small social space is a ravenous contagion. Certain insane spirits were invoked at the gig at chicks on the weekend and by the end of the evening many of us were drained of essence. Oh well, that's the dunedin demon. A sick wind that howls through one person to the next, our minds made all the more penetrable with the booze and pot; aye - 'tis the dunedin music madness. Ugly ambitions, moody teenagers, catharsis-on-demand, atrophied loves, media crystals, and that sorta gnarly scotts-irish bar-room lurch'n'scowl of those wizened locals. And the smell of money. Cash money.
The line up for the evening was not the typical hermetically-sealed club-ov-gentlemen often associated with the Aesthetics, it was an experiment in cross-pollination and a good ole' skull-and-bones style hazing. And i believe it worked, to a masonic degree. Of course, too many cooks etc etc. But then - many hands make light work etc. But then too many chiefs - not enough indians etc. No, wait - there was clearly too many indians and no chiefs at all that night. Oh the flat-lined anarchy of it all. But then, who actually cares. Facebook events just filter away into shonky/gunky/matted neuronal nothingness just like everything else in nature.
Europa Kid are local academic and anarcho-syndicalist(correct phil?) Phillip Mason and city librarian and Albar cynic Joshua Scott, an semi-acoustic guitar duo, who opened the psychotic evening with a selection of beautifully dark and meditative songs. EK is a singer-songwriter combo with a gothic almost e.b.m streak and their set was a welcome deviation from a typical rock fest.The audience did swell as these boys performed , steeping the venue in some dearly needed banter'n'bustle'n'tinkle'n'gluggidy-glug. From my vantage point it was the next act Brains who took the cake. A power-trio,and my gawd was power their friend that night, Brains performed this fierce bruising set; bass with both rich 60s subs AND scorching overdrive: the bassist acheiving a speed perhaps only topped by Lightening Bolt, the drummer backing it all up like a gun, and band leader Matt McAuley layering over it all an intelligent mezza meal of noise-rock indie badness..

okay, so these guys are new, but you can just tell they have greatness in their sights - not a whiff of arrogance or cliche or any other redundant adjectives i use to describe ambition about them... And so I applauded them then and i do so now. But in true Dunedin tight-pocketed scotts miserliness - Ah didn't even buy their $5 buck ep for want of a gaseous db draught (drink yrself sober with malty 4% beer! Bleargh!!!). I'll get one on Thursday boys! Coz Thursday is my high day. It's my you and i day.

..Just like Will Ferrel's character Dewey Cox in Walk Hard I thought to myself 'How do we top that?' Oh well, Bastard Wisher oughta smash-up the place and erase any trace of brains's sonic pogrom. Right? Right? Right? And on comes the affectionately coined 'bastards', the whine and wease of Jason Barrets alto saxophone tearing at the ears, like albert ayler playing sax on his deathbed - insanely high overblown squeals, like some sort of crippled soul/animal - a truly unique free-jazz sax attack, Sefton all over the show - drums and crayons and pedals and vocals, John at the helm of the lap-top, adding the odd reconstituted scream into the mix. The performance this time more like a masochist demonstration than pure assault, the venue's psychogeography morphing into their jam-pad up the valley . These boys are almost religious in their devotion to noise - I often run into Sefton up the valley where he is all glowing and transcendental after 'a two hour jam with John'..surely constant peak performance has gotta be an inhuman demand of these guys. In fact its gotta be an inhuman demand full stop. The nature of this performative ritual music is that it can literally go on forever. Until they boys are either transformed into Gods or their skin melts off. Under pressure from locals and skinheads, I had to do the unthinkable and cut-off their performance mid-stream with some 'hard words'. Matty plays big daddy. Matty, trying very hard to be all things to all people as well as being responsible for every sctalogic detail of the evening's entertainment. They did stop, and sorta packed up in this brooding way, which made me sorta squirm, but hey.
And it was our turn with the toys, and in a cunning move Sefton don's Barretts saxophone and assimilates into the Aesthetics and so his all night jam continueth! Good on him, really. It was fun. Flipper have this tradition of letting anyone play horn with them on a particular song whenever they play live, not sure which song it is, so i just thought, oh well , flipper do it why dont we. Considering we sound like a flipper covers band. And so we play a very loose set, yet again just firing songs off instead of using a set list, of course this can be a degenerative practise, but hey. Loose loose loose and by the end i have a tizzy fit and tell everyone to fuck off. Way to keep fans! Nah, we played all the dirty hits, Doomtown fuzz from my right to riches,, Succubi, Twenty for Timmy (thanks so much for the help with the sound my young friend), reptilian agenda , ah yeah, Do Do Do ......all the hits.
Matthew Middleton , April 2009

PS - If this is the sort of lucid commentary I can dredge up from a night in which i was supposedly 'utterly and embarrasingly off my face', I don't want to know what i would be able to transcribe from a sober one. even if i appear like the clownish retard savant from invercargill when we chat, watch your BACK. He he heeeee.

the moronic triumphant : aesthetics live at chicks april 2009
photo by christine knight

aesthetico bebo

2009-04-05T19:21:00.001-07:00

yep - a couple of songs from UGLY AMBITION are on our dirty little teen-titilatin' bebo page:

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=8255888252

AND ALSO ON OUR MYSPACE PAGE, SNEEK A LISTEN TO DRIVE ON, FRIDAY AND REPTILIAN AGENDA ....

http://www.myspace.com/theaestheticsss

photos of the launch gig by Markus Gradwohl

2009-03-31T17:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.drachenwerk.at/markus/

notes on the bonus cd

2009-03-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

We've included a bonus cdr of mainly live material with the album....many tracks here feature the band as a four-piece. Here's the track listing

1. lead the pak (live at the big day out) - with morgan oliver on bass, this was the last track of our set and it's raw, driving and as nasty as you can get at 10.30 in the mo(u)rning...
2. reptilian agenda - this track was originally meant for the album but was taken out at last minute - perhaps one of the more 'musical' tracks here, complete with drone guitar suggesting bowie's 'heroes', sleazy multi-layered vocals and a glamorous polyphonous outro; lyrics tipping the hat to english conspiracy kig-pin David Icke..
3. Junky Rock Jam - a long medium-moderate-paced rock'n'roll jam ala teenage fanclubs 'the king' ....recorded in 2005 just before our implosion, part of the rare collection 'aesthetics last tapes' . .
4. Twenty (live at the big day out). A cynical rendition of this youth culture critique..(there were at least 20 people there at the time)
5/ all electric (rehearsal) one of our exhausting and half-cocked band rehearsals up in Alex Macs studio at none - you can even hear me 'teaching' alex the 'riff'...this was perhaps the exact moment Alex decided to 'quit' the 'band'
6/ marijuana girls (big day out) - as ugly and pathetic a rock riff as you could ever get. but c'mon - 10.30 am dosen't lend itself to brilliance..
7/ devon part 2 (extended mix) - a 'dark' 'ambient' track which was the last on the LP, here is the track in its entirety, solemn, brooding, feedbacky, sad, self-loathing, lazy doom riffery. Ohhh, with alex doin gat.
8. the idiot team (live at the big day out) "i don't care if my credit rating's bad" -- ooooh ! wat a rebel!!!!!!
9. raro sunset ...ah the good old days of deperately tearing open those raro packets and vigourously shaking frothing, chemical smelling bottles of seed. This track is part of the 'last tapes' session back in 05. Bad old days.
10. do do do - live at the big day out...a nervous rendition of this track - the song evoking the swingers, eno and hawkwind,,
11. live in christchurch ep - 2 tracks taken from the set ....if you listen hard you can identify the geniusness i suppose....its good, honest.

The Aesthetics, Wolfskull, Bastardwisher and Crude at Sammys

2009-03-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

There is something special about Sammys, it lends to a musical event a sort of old-world magnificence and a cavernous cathedral-like sound. That proscenium arch, gorgeous art-noveau, i couldn't help think it some sort of old-time Dunedin Scotts- masonic reference to Nuit:

Yes, the small pub-rock boys get a big stage once more, only the second time, and we get all toy-store excited. This was the 'big night' , the official launch party for the 'ugly ambition' LP, and the weeks of preparation and facebooking and interviews boiled down to this moment. And , quite objectively, I think we pulled it off. As you all know, i tend to 'self-review' alot, a fairly dodgy practice. But really, if I don't do it no-one will so here i go again. As punters dribbled in, their entrance barred first by friendly bouncers, then id checks, then a table of beautiful screenprinted LPs (care of the great 'Little Paisley') , then a friendly door person ,that inimitably Sammy's style atmosphere began to brew. Lots of oxygen, lots of nooks , lots of crannies and cliques. First up was Crude (here goes - that 3rd person
charm that only the artist themselves can muster) - crankin up the ole' juno 60 with a new cheap distoriton pedal and layin' a few pseudo-occult 'alien' ritual fanfare motifs on the audience...oh! those acoustics - such ghostly resonance! Lots of harmonics and quasi-islamic tone bending - then the old square-shawm instrument attempts (doing a rather nice job of it actually) to emulate the synth sounds. The set ends with a suicide inspired glitch/pulse number emblazoned with the cutesy vocal mantra ' I'm the glitch bogan'. Yes, matt, you (I) certainly am (is).
Bastardwisher hit the apartment-set-studio-type-theater-stage next, with sly and sullen coolness, with that streak of psycho,,Jason Barrett brandishing his elusive Alto sax, John on drums and the Sefton on laptop,a raging rodeo of a set - a misanthropic rock'n'roll teddy boy high on jazz-pizazz at thee helm, dark and angular and skinny, cropped sefton all sweat and jap-noise anger, john from alabama slappin the cans like a improv octopus. Very impressive, Lynch-like set.
The LPs were getting snapped up !! Opinion leaders and followers alike had their very own copies proudly under-arm evoking that WINZ icon, (you know the one, the blue thing with the orange thing under it's arm - a sort of image representing 'skills' or maybe a 'cv' or an orange to keep you going while your on 2 week stand-down..)
Next on, and perhaps the best thing about the night, was my perosnal favourite band in town, that very masculine band 'wolfskull'. The acoustics, like a pitch black chasm , were perfect for the skulls, and they played up to it like true champions. Amazing set. Duane Zarakov was truly on fire, his playing a psychedelic engine room , groovy tom tom chatter ubiquitous and constant and spinning any dancer into a dervish -delirium (hey, don't play with my delerium...hey..)Iso, the frontman, was totally in his element, and I can only hope they play the venue again.

The Aesthetics hit next, and i can only say that the bass and drums were so beautifully solid, that my sluggish musical bumbling didn't actually matter. its always hit and miss, 'feeling out' a new venue, a new situation, a new set of equipment. Nevermind. We churned out 'Drive on' , a few oldies,,,,,,,,,,bringing heady smiles to the right people and glazed indifference from others....it all turns to memory and disappears.

the page

2009-02-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

the official aesthetics page has been fixed up, the link is HERE

my right to riches

2009-02-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

Here's the album page for the 1997 LP 'My Right to Riches' by The Aesthetics on the Ecstatic Peace catalogue...quite strange that Thurston mentions he asked me for anything and that he was expecting Crude...I never heard that...paranoia suggests some manipulation on band members part...nevermind...it's a classic piece of wax anyway...

_-_-_-_-_

2009-02-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

phenomenonenon

2009-01-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

The Sammys gig is LOCKED DOWN and it will function as the OFFICAL release date for UGLY AMBITION...the line up: BASTARDWISHER (those noise guys), WOLFSKULL ,CRUDE and THE AESTHETICS
febuary 27th

COMMENT/ GIGS

2009-01-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Hello . My name is matt middleton. Things are warming up here. The test pressings have arrived, and Ugly Ambition sounds amazing. Objectively so. Honestly. In all, pure, scientific, unbiased objectiveiveivity. It's very exciting, and its so rewarding to watch an idea hatch into a thing of matter.
Next is to hand make the covers. They shall be screenprinted, and hand folded.
Our first celebratory event, publicly, anyway, will be a gig at dunedin international sized (oooh a big stage! ooh!) venue sammys. The exact date hasn't been confirmed but it'll either be feb 27 of early march. Stayed tuned to find out.

my purpose now is to remain lucid...

2009-01-02T02:53:00.000-08:00

out and about buying aesthetics and crude cds

2008-12-31T01:13:00.000-08:00

UGLY AMBITION - cover art concept 1

2008-11-16T14:42:00.000-08:00

saturday (chicks gig)

2008-10-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

It's an art-form. Logisitcs. Rock logisitics. A skill you refine carefully over time. Trial and error - a lot of error. In fact, in the main, it's error that paves our way. But without failure there could be no growth so, we don't mind.
Rock music is not a walk in the park. The gnostic postures you see us demonstrating on stage aren't a display of ego, they're a display of relief, loss of mind and compensation for the trials of the day's grinding petro-dollar lined rock logisitcs. It's a gestural narrative, a reorganisation and reinterpretation of everyday street-level psycho-social misery; a way of being in the world that does not include the supermarket, atm, chemist, 'cunt', 'dick', stop-go, receipt, angry national party supporters, pocket, coin, dog-shit, stroller, lint, gum...

It's a fairly well-trodden routine, in fact its painfully old-hat but a rocking we must go. And so we did.

Set One :
hombre - mexican stand-off /boy meets boy/ seething ugly ambition/ slightly larger city once upon a time
drive on - forward propulsion/ motivation seminar/quaaludic moaning brattish spank'n'skank
do do do - what's it like being you/thelemic anthem/ sweet aromas the current hookah cafe trend
20 - o grow up u little shit/student loan debt monster/12 bar blues gay-knob puke machine
all electric - triads ate my sister/ wall street benefit fraudster in middle class drinking hole
doomtown fuzz - sucking own member/pseudo-goth rock/ banana split'n'shit
new meme - snot'n'shot/pogo hobo with german shepard bestish film in brief-case
reptilian agenda - moderate/liberal/boiler/david icke/under-fed crack baby makes good
the idiot team - defence corportion mega-merger (in my pants)
marijuana girls - jelquing habit/stilton,harvey, nash, gash, cheddar

(then djing bad mp3 sound and bad posturing/ smokers deliberation/name game/ hit me up in toilets/it all for YOU)

Set Two :
Better Dead than Red - reds under th' bed/8-beat/beat beat/lilt,promise,cigarette,tooth, peg, toilet
the idiot team - defence corporation merger (in my syphilitic chancre)
pelvic arcana - pronounced/obvious rifferama/ghandi inhales/nick nack paddy wack
friday - song about day of the week/ friday is my high day/ thank god/ blanco blanco blanco/ griselda gristle
devon - purile doom rite/ moloch bang/ seeds from 2005/ th good old days/ nubile and teat/ crust
lead the pack -------primitiv/ hallowed be thy shame/ flying bum/post merger/free music killed dave dobbyn

---then ...the night sorta atrophied into this sorta free-for-all jam,,,but, it wasn't at all bad because it had a nice sorta good-will feel to it, no pummelling, just good ole' jamming. It cleared the audience.

for a list of what i attempted to dj go here:
http://crude2008.blogspot.com/2008/10/end-times-jukebox.html

oh yeah - hector hazzard filmed the night and concocted a great music vid concept so look out for the fruits of that soon! hopefully we'll get it on c4 and it'll be a single from the Ugly Ambition album/movement
- - - - - -

FRESH BATCH OF AESTHETICS OFF CDS!!!

2008-10-15T18:32:00.001-07:00

$30 bux each!!!!!!!!!!

also on the album

2008-10-15T18:15:00.000-07:00

..we'll also have a supplementary disc that contains live cuts from the big day out and our wellington shows. these recordinig feature our old bass players morgan oliver and alex mckinnon..

ugly ambition - nearly complete...

2008-10-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

Supernature - the righteous smell of the hardworking kiwi mother of 8. Keep reports on those who rip you off lady - those scumbag cretins we call the sickness beneficiaries. Of course, tax breaks for the wealthy, govt dept retreats and holidays and travel, thats fine.

Anyway................the Aesthetics album 'ugly ambition' is nearly FINISHED!!!!!THE TRACK LIST GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS:

Drive On
Hombre
Livin' Low
Reptilian Agenda
Do, Do, Do!
Devon
20
Marijuana Girls
New Meme - New Dream
Friday
O

So wipe my bum and call me a grown adult!!
New as it come to hand!

LIVE NON-ADVENTURE #1

2008-09-29T02:51:00.001-07:00

previous aesthetics resources and urls

2008-09-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/theaestheticsss

http://www.crude.co.nz/aesthetics%20bio.html

http://www.crude.co.nz/aesthetics%20discography.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-m-xdkmtBQ

previous news:

http://crude2008.blogspot.com/

WELCOME ALL!!!!!

2008-09-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

THE AESTHETICS - THE NEW ZEALAND BASED ROCK BAND - HAS NOW FORGED THEMESELVES A BLOG IN KEEPING WITH CURRENT INTERNET REQUIREMENTS. THE SITE CONNECTED TO THE BAND OFF THE CRUDE SITE IS UN-MODERATEABLE AT PRESENT SO IT IS HERE WE SPOUT FOR NEWS AND PSYCHO-SOCIAL INSIGHTS. WE ARE WRITERSW THREE - MATTHEW MIDDLETON, MALCOLM DEANS, AND JASON BARRET.