Winston Watusi Music Plus

This week: gigs and new music. The gigs are easy to describe, the music? Hmm...

Okay. Two gigs. One word: folky.

This Sunday, August 28, The Harmonic Resonators are fundraising at Baycourt's Addison Theatre, raising money for the Boobops dragon boat team to help them get to the World Championships in Karapiro next year. The Boobops is a breast cancer survivor dragon boat club, paddling out of Sulphur Point and is nothing short of amazing. But, back to music...

The Resonators self-describe as 'an acoustic country/folk/waiata Māori family band” and that pretty much nails it. They're fun live, sing a mean harmony, and are currently recording their second album at the Mount's Studio 11b, where all sorts of good work is occurring. There's a clip of the band online singing a Te Reo arrangement of ‘Imagine' featuring beautiful work from Pere Wihongi. Tickets, at $40, are selling fast.

Then next weekend (Friday, September 2, folk royalty visit Katikati in the form of Gumboot Trio, comprising Mike Harding, Janet Muggeridge and Wayne Morris – all celebrated performers who themselves celebrate New Zealand songs and songwriters. They've performed everywhere from the Beehive (their first gig) to WOMAD so, yes, they are very good. They'll be at the Arts Junction: find more on the Katikati Folk Club website.

Rattle

And the new music is this week courtesy of Auckland label Rattle. In their case as well as online releases they specialise in Print-on-Demand pressings of the most beautifully-produced and packaged CDs. It gladdens my old-school heart to see a New Zealand label not only creating a home for serious and seriously eclectic music but also doing it in such style. I reviewed their release from David Long a while back and the new tranche are equally strange and appealing in their own unique ways.

The one that's been getting the most media attention is ‘Black Clouds In Stereo' by Brett Adams, a hugely respected music industry figure, originally guitarist for The Mockers and known for his work with Dianne Swann and The Bads. It's a collection of big, layered arrangements – all Brett-played – with a certain European flavour. If anything, it reminds me of instrumental music that emerged in the wake of Brian Eno's 1980s shift into ambience, music which straddled the ambient and the prog. And for all the cover photos of cows these strike me as very urban soundscapes.

‘Flower Of The Sea' by Gunter Herbig is easier to define. It is a collection of pieces by composers as diverse as John Cage, Albinez and Douglas Lilburn arranged for solo guitar, in this case a sinewy electric. Currently based in Wellington, Gunter has lived in New Zealand since 1989 and taught classical guitar at Auckland University, the Massey Conservatorium, and the New Zealand School of Music between 1991 and 2015. He's previously released three volumes of New Zealand guitar music on the Naxos label and these are pure and perfect performances, meditative, relaxing and lovely.

Gumboot Tro. Photo: Supplied

Commissions

Contemporary classic music is the name of the game on album number three, wherein Robert Ashworth (viola) and Sarah Watkins (piano) commissioned six New Zealand composers – Gareth Farr, Ross Harris and more – to write pieces for their two instruments. They're here along with the previously unrecorded ‘Moonstone' by Dame Gillian Whitehead and Alfred Hill's ‘Sonata movement in B Minor'.

This is a big contribution to the New Zealand repertoire for these instruments though will obviously have a limited audience. But lovers of contemporary classical should be delighted, and it surprised me with, amongst other things, quite how much Dame Gillian's piece sounds like Prokofiev. So there ya go...

Last and weirdest is ‘Collapsed Clouds', part of Rattles' Seventh House Music series of really out-there things. This is piano music by Ross Harris, played by Stephen Clothier then messed around with by Neal Johnstone's 'synthesised soundscapes”, the 'textural distortions” of Sam Leary's guitar, Steve Burridge's 'various samples and recordings” and Steve Garden's 'final manipulations and treatments”.

It is dark and brooding and epic and ambient and I think my favourite of the lot. Hats off to Rattle for releasing such sounds; long may they run.