Amplifier

15.02.10

Hope you had a cracking weekend and are ready for another week. To start some discussion/interaction today over on the forums tell us what you're currently listening to (kiwi or not)... come on don't be shy.

Perhasp you've already whipped past me and grabbed this week's release of the week and are enjoying a morning cuppa whilst it plays... add some sun for a very pleasant time.

Release Of The Week
The Ruby Suns - Fight Softly

Fight Softly is the new studio album by NZ's 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 & modern Angolan kuduro, the Beach Boys & Britney Spears, Brazilian tropicalia & Argentinian 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).

Fight Softly is the kind of head-spinning combo of big-picture vision and sumptuous detail that only comes from an artist with a need to express all he's seen. And you can dance to it!

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.

Gigs

Here are our pick for live music for this week as found on the Makuna gig guide. 

For a full breakdown on whats on offer around the countries pubs and clubs take a look at Makuna

Have a great day
Ed