Big Day Out has issued its second artist announcement for the January 15 show at Mt Smart Stadium.
America’s new favourite big beat soul popsters PASSION PIT are bringing their musical gifts to BIG DAY OUT 2010. Led by singer/songwriter Michael Angelakos’ funk-fuelled falsetto, PASSION PIT’s debut album Manners comes alive with kaleidoscopic soundscapes and plentiful ambition. On stage, they’re chaotic, oddball and impossible not to dance to. They’re the only pit we recommend you dive right into – PASSION PIT at this summer’s BIG DAY OUT.
The hardest-working men in dance music, James Ford and Jas Shaw never stop moving. And you won’t either, when SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO DJs work the Boiler Room into a frenzy at BIG DAY OUT. From the Brits who brought us We Are Your Friends, Hustler, It’s the Beat and 10,000 Horses Can’t Be Wrong, we can guarantee one thing: surprises. “Their samples are eclectic, their sound is electric, and their energy is, well, orgasmic.” (killahbeez.com, March 2009). A year ago, we lapped up their live show. In 2010, we’ll delve deep into their record crates – prepare to play musical lucky dip with SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO DJs at BIG DAY OUT 2010.
For 20 years, SASHA hasn’t just been playing and winning the DJ game, he’s been changing it. This summer, SASHA will bring his A-game to a new playing field, BIG DAY OUT. The last true rock star DJ, SASHA learned his craft at Manchester’s famed Hacienda in its late-80s glory days, found global club fame in the ’90s, and scored acclaim with his ’00s albums Airdrawndagger and Involver. He’s an innovator, a pioneer, and he knows how to mix it up while keeping the dancefloor moving. Enter the Boiler Room and rewrite the rules with SASHA at BIG DAY OUT 2010.
The band that rewrote the history of Oz rock and made it possible for Aussie bands to once again take on the world (and win), JET are bringing their Shaka Rock home this summer for BIG DAY OUT. The boy’s third album is “a visceral account of what rock’n’roll should be,” says ChartAttack, “…chain-smoking, whisky-drinking, gritty good times”. With new anthems K.I.A (Killed in Action) and She’s a Genius piled on top of the likes of Are You Gonna Be My Girl, Rip it Up and Rollover DJ, JET are now the proud owners of one of the strongest setlists in rock. Perfectly described by the BBC as “a lot of rough fun”, JET are rough, rockin’ and ready for another BIG DAY OUT in 2010.
MIDNIGHT YOUTH’S bio is studded with more numbers than you can read. Unless you are a binary computer, then it would be quite easy cos most of them are #1. But this popular Auckland band are pretty damn worthy carriers of the mantle of biggest band in the land today, having worked their way to the top of the charts over the past 18 months with a bunch of crackingly anthemic songs. MIDNIGHT YOUTH kicked out the jams with their album The Brave Don’t Run, already a Platinum seller in New Zealand and a winner of three big NZ Music Award Tui’s. They’re sharp dudes with great hits ready for their first BIG DAY OUT.
They tried to put them in a box the first time round, but there was no pigeonholing HEAD LIKE A HOLE’S anarchic onstage madness and searing, metallic-rooted rock’n’roll. For ten years Booger Beazley and co had left Wellington and half their clothes behind as they stormed across the stages of New Zealand, Australia and Europe. In 1996, 'On the Street' in Sydney wrote they were “easily one of the most creatively brilliant bands in the modern world” and over a decade later, the band are back to prove it. If you’re not hanging out for “A Crying Shame” and “Comfortably Shagged”, you’re not coming to our party, pal. HLAH are a national treasure and we will be feeding them whatever it takes backstage to make sure they tear it up at BDO 2010.
It’s time to turn up the sound system and welcome the king of the dancehall, BEENIE MAN, to BIG DAY OUT. From Kingston, Jamaica comes the chart-topping, Grammy-winning master of reggae evolution, who during more than 20 years in the game has pumped out dancehall smashes including The Girls Dem Sugar, Who Am I, Slam and Gimme Gimme. On stage, he’s a nattily-dressed “livewire lightning rod of a man, pumping adrenaline and feeding off the beat” (OC Weekly). And if all that weren’t enough, the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt, counts BEENIE MAN among his favourites. Stand back – BEENIE MAN will be setting off dancehall dynamite at BIG DAY OUT 2010.
BIG DAY OUT will let its freak-folk flag fly this summer with DEVENDRA BANHART. The people’s troubadour came to prominence with the cosmic folk and ethereal vibrato of his 2005 breakthrough, Cripple Crow. In 2009 came his sixth album, What Will We Be, which Rolling Stone calls “the best he’s ever made”. In concert, this charming quirk of nature drifts from hushed to frantic, from folk to surf to reggae to heavy psychedelic rock. Call it whatever you like – pysch-folk, avant-folk – DEVENDRA BANHART “stands out as a compelling and utterly unique artist” (Q Magazine). Find out for yourself this summer at the 2010 BIG DAY OUT.
“Finn Andrews, the striking frontman of THE VEILS has a streak of lovelorn bleakness as deep as the night is long” emoted the LA Times as they reviewed a recent show by the Antipodean/UK quartet. “His creepy preacher hat, and an unshaven, alabaster complexion that suggests he lives off a varied diet of scotches, only accented the band's sense of gnawing doom -- though it was leavened with melodic sweetness and a lovely ear for arrangement detail.” THE VEILS’ third Rough Trade album Sun Gangs has been universally hailed as their best and sees Finn and the band striking a rich vein of form, capturing a emotional range in their music from joyous indie pop to compulsively gloomy epics worthy of the Doors.
Sure, you can’t go past bandleaders Chris Stapp and Matt Heath’s impeccable poo-humour celebrity in Back of The Y and its movie spin-offs. But their long-running band DEJA VOODOO is back in town and new album The Shape Of Grunge To Come can be considered as a re-ignition of the hard rock/punk attitude and everyman accessibility that their peers from Seattle back in the day sweated out. OK, the lyrics are still “a bit shit”, but they are an honest expression of the everyday life that Deja Voodoo and their wide Kiwi audience experience. And before some prick decides “joke band”, just remember that if history had allowed only bands who WEREN’T considered a joke by the cognoscenti to be heard, we’d only have cocktail jazz.
Dope. It means more than just good hip-hop in the hands of the mysterious KIDZ IN SPACE. This trio of interstellar beat-makers is truly dope incarnate, doing the moonwalk like they have jetpacks on their backs that are rammed with stinky weed. Two singles, “Downtime” and yeah, get this, “Oceans Of Drugs”, and an EP on the sweet Move The Crowd label have seen Kidz In Space orbiting the high points of local charts and beaming their ‘spokesman’ into New Zealand media outlets to represent their fusion of chilled hip-hop and smoking dance-electro with cool indie collaborators like vocalists Coco Solid and Alisa Xayalith from The Naked & Famous.
Two musicians, one loop station, a synth and a couple of guitar amps can generate massive noise in the right hands. CAIRO KNIFE FIGHT is Nick Gaffaney, a man who has drummed his way around the place for many of our leading songwriters, and Aaron Tokona, the founder and front man of iconic rock group Weta. They are the right hands we were talking about and, just like a rumble in a souk, they wield their instruments with hectic passion and in a dangerously free manner. Honed down from the six piece crowd they began as, right now we are seeing a thrilling new CAIRO KNIFE FIGHT emerge and Nick and Aaron have been in the studio cooking up some fearsome new material for their summer shows.
MOUNTAINEATER. They’ve bitten off a chunk of rock cake with that name haven’t they? But when this Dunedin trio debuted in late 2008, they were ready to show audiences that they’d brought along the biggest fucking knife and fork they could fit in the back of the van. MOUNTAINEATER were ready to lay down a heavy slab of broody sonic landscape and visceral bludgeoning rock. Boom. For Tristan Dingemans, front man of the formidable HDU, it’s a nice case of lightning striking twice. In Chris Livingston and Anani Ngata, Tristan has found another rhythm section capable of joining him on some of the most mindblowing guitar journeys known to man. A couple of NZ tours have been building the hype – “if you thought HDU were capable of wreaking sonic destruction, this trio will leave you gasping” hacked Real Groove.
New Zealanders Dion Lunadon (The D4) and Boxcar Benny Maitland had their share of crossed paths prior to forming THE TRUE LOVERS in New York in 2008. But now they have a band, a saucy, writhing, primal band on heat, and a sound that is burning up the New York winter so much that Dion and Ben are bringing them down to cool off at the BIG DAY OUT before they combust. Like fuck they are – cooling off, that is. Dion’s 100% rock’n’roll heart always powered The D4’s shows to incredible heights and THE TRUE LOVERS, as their new single ‘Death Threat’ testifies, promise to live up to that reputation. A BIG DAY OUT debut that is sure to be memorable.
TIME PHINN is the founder of the country’s leading dance culture music and fashion bible ‘Remix’ and the promoter of superclub dance party brands including Our House, Nitelife and Deep Hard & Funky. Thousands of Aucklanders prepare for their weekend with Tim’s highly-rated Friday night radio show First Class on George FM and his ability to get the party started has seen him consistently voted New Zealand’s No.1 House DJ.
BANDICOOT are three Auckland kids who like lots of the same things, like dubstep, dancing, jazz and synths that make weird noises. None of this really shows up in their music though, except perhaps the dancing. Because they also like making noisy, spazzy, hardcore pop. In just six months, Pearl, Daniel and Reuben have made an EP called Happy Talking, which is available for free download, hit number one on bFM and played tons of shows that have excited lots and lots of people. How cool is that?
You want heavy? LORD OF TIGERS was born of the pursuit of heaviness. Combining the righteous power of Sommerset’s Ryan Thomas, Anthony Davies of the WBC and Ryan’s old mucker Milon Williams of Cobra Khan, they have a high volume urgency that’s been merrily shredding ears at shows all year. A glance at the material they have available on Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace suggests a certain regal bent to their tunes, and a listen to any of “Rage Of A Demon King”, “Shadow of Dark Queen” or “The Ruler Of Eagle’s Reaches” may confirm many of your suspicions of delusions of grandeur on their part. Or you may just find yourself concurring with the eager LORD OF TIGERS punter who told them after a recent show: "you guys were so loud I think I saw through time". Yeah.
The 2010 BIG DAY OUT will see the return of crowd pleasers, SILENT DISCO. Premiered in Australia at the BDO in 2006 they returned in 2009, and will again electrify disco dancers with their mixes of dance, hard house, punk, salsa, twenties swing, alternative, world, electro, hardstyle, gabber and Dixieland, all through the convenience of wireless headphones! In the Double Channel SILENT DISCO, which features new 2-channelled digital headphones, party people can choose from resident DJs OR the guest DJ at the time and have a good old fashion dance off!
