Monday 19th May 09 Musicians Night featuring Disaster Radio New Zealand (2/2) by Michelle Dee

(1/2), (2/2).

Photograph Gallery - Gallery 1, Gallery 2.

The vocals are buzzes and drones robotic and disembodied, appearing to emanate from someplace outside the synthesized sound. Swallowing half the mike, he creates a deeper drone something like a 64K feedback lode but interspersed with melodic tones. One track that opens with the sound of a manic phone bursting in beeping, bubbly and alive took a mere twelve hours to program Luke reaches aural heights with rich blocks of synthesized sound that chase one another, reflecting and refracting in the minds eye to dub-tastic finale. Spying Bill from TopGun at the back hopping an' bopping to the beats, I join him and there's dancing down the front, dancing in the middle and dancing at the back of Adelphi tonight.

Much later I sit down and sup cider with Luke, Christina and Bill and try to discern what makes Disaster Radio tick. Bill opens with the musical influence question. Luke responds Sparks definitely Sparks and Rix the Dog, Flash Harry and Add N to X, Bob Moog... The passion for the latter has resulted in a collection of forty keyboards, 8 Commodore 64s and 11 drum machines residing back home thousands of miles away in Wellington, New Zealand. We continue to swap bands and favourite films, Luke recommends Electric Dreams and I follow with I'm a Cyborg but that's okay directed by Park Chan-wook who also directed Oldboy which comes highly recommended by Quinny who offers Darjeeling Limited joining the film foray.

The inevitable Conchord questions come up now and again and we learn that Luke works or has worked with Jermaine and that Bret appeared in Lord of the Rings and is known on message boards as FIGWIT which stands for "Frodo is great… who is THAT?!?" Brett appears as a hot looking elf for approximately three seconds. Before Flight of the Conchords, Bret was in the lofi band Video Kid and we also learn that peculiarly the cult comedy show is not actually shown in New Zealand but watched via the aussie channels. However, Corrie or Corro as the Kiwi's call it is huge in New Zealand. Bill intones darkly, 'Flight of the Conchords destroyed my band' referring to the sad, possibly defunct, status of wrestling-loving bedroom electro popsters TopGun.

Moving to a happier place, Christina declares that Dark Star is the best sci-fi movie of all time; one I will have to investigate. Finally, before we descended into devouring baked cheese toasties at dawn, I asked Luke to leave us with his version of the super-group game.

This is what he came up with: The band would be produced by Trevor Horn he was very certain on that. Thomas Dolby would feature on vocals and keys along with Ron Mayall the straight-man from Sparks also on vox and keyboards but with added song writing duties. John Foxx on backing vocals keyboards and song writing (there's a pattern emerging I think) Klaus Nomi with his trademark pop/opera singing voice with Mike Watt on bass. On lead would be Bob Mould from Hüsker Dü backed up by a bank of Linndrum drum machines.

After spying a taxi dropping off or picking up outside Adelphi he proposes to call the Super Group Computer Cars and that the first single to be called 505050 . "I'll be your tour dawg" www.myspace.com/disasteradio www.disasteradio.org www.youtube.com/user/Disasteradio www.myspace.com/samhappytobehere

Photograph Gallery - Gallery 1, Gallery 2.

Photographs Copyright © 2009  Michelle Dee

thisisUll.com Featured Writer Michelle Dee
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