Idiot Prayer, God Bows To Math, Kittenbank

Idiot Prayer, God Bows To Math, Kittenbank

Saturday 2nd April            Doors 9 pm $10 

Dunedin sonic rock three piece Idiot Prayer depart their beloved South Island haunt for the first time this coming April to showcase their debut five track EP. Thwarted by the elements playing outside of Dunedin in 2010, Idiot Prayer have been keen to display their wares further afield ever since.

The tour will be in support of Idiot Prayer’s debut five track EP, Falconer, available on CD and download from Muzai Records and on vinyl from Monkey Killer Records, available at the shows. The song 100 Ducks is the second single to be released from the EP.

“Imagine if HDU, Mountaineater, Headless Chickens and Dimmer all got together for a jam and you’re there.” – Vicki Anderson, The Press

“As abrasively toned as the bone cutting chill of mid-winter Dunedin, South Island trio Idiot Prayer fashion an elastically pictorial mixture of conventionally structured post rock and free form improv noise arrangements.” Martyn Pepperell, Rip It Up

Idiot Prayer on Facebook

Sunday Jazz with The Troubles

Every Sunday at Happy from 8.30 Free Entry


The Troubles are Lucien Johnson, Sax, John Rae, Drums, Daniel Yeabsley, Sax, Patrick Bleakley, Bass, plus guests.


They play John and Lucien's own compositions, Jazz standards, and Ipmrovisations.


Every fortnight the band is joined by a string section. This could be your lucky night.

Fear Is The Enemy featuring Karen Hunter

From Chile, UK and NZ; Fear is the Enemy bring ‘folk-core’ to Aotearoa.

Fear is the Enemy are four intrepid musical explorers who will be touring New Zealand this summer. From Chile, Germany and NZ, FITE have blended together sounds from the three continents, creating an original style they refer to as ‘folk-core’.

Philosopher Marcelo Lopez and his brother, nylon string guitarist Luis, formed progressive rock band Postuma in Santiago, Chile in 2007. After the release of their debut album Desapego, the brothers left Chile to explore the world on an O.E that began in New Zealand in April 2010. The Lopez brothers chose New Zealand, believing they would find a deep inner renovation of their cultural environment and a new source of creativity here. They also wanted to meet musicians to explore new collaborative sounds.

Starting their Kiwi experience as horticultural workers (picking kiwifruit) the brothers began writing songs in English. These songs channelled a wild energy, strengthened and expanded by all of the people it touched. The brothers’ prophecy began to acquire shape, when they meet musician Karen Hunter, at an open mic night jam on Ponsonby Rd in Auckland and then with the addition of a talented german violinist Nikita Sieber, the band was completed and is now touring the country playing a strikingly fresh blend of world music.

As active participants in what they believe is a groundswell of deep change occurring throughout western societies like New Zealand, the band understand the power of music and its potential to instigate change.

With beginnings in open mic nights and arts centres, subsequent invitations have them now bringing people, parties and gigs to life. Lyrics, music and passionate voices combine to energise their performances with a vibrant life force that is both contagious and a little bit frightening. To quote the band, ”We bring peace with a sword, bro”.

Using guitars, percussion and voices, Fear is the Enemy captures the essence of the Lopez brothers’ journey from South American heavy rock to acoustic folk-core. 

Sonorous Circle Double Night Extravaganza

Thursday March 10th i.ryoko, Siamese, Bleachboys, The Convoy

Friday March 11 Alphabethead, Glass Vaults, Seth Frightening, Golden Dawn

Doors from 8 pm $5 per night or $8 for both. 

Sonorous Circle is a growing collective of passionate individuals here to support what we know to be good; to aid and encourage the creation and dissemination of exciting and sincere music and art in whatever form it may come.

For more info on the bands, check www.sonorouscircle.com

Jeff Henderson The Dead Ringers

Founder and past manager of Happy Bar Jeff Henderson is back playing at Happy every Tuesday night in March.


This week it's The Dead Ringers - Jeff Henderson, Gerard Crewdson, Anthony Donladson and special Guest Stev Roche.
The Dead Ringers


Jeff is an integral part of the New Zealand improvised music scene. He is one of the true master saxophonists (and a dab hand at other instruments). Jeff has been responsible for fostering Wellington underground music and bringing many amazing musicians into the country. Jeff has played with Marilyn Crispell, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, William Parker and other giants over the years.


Listen to Jeff play

Ocean Floor US Monday 7th March

Happy is proud to host American folk band The Ocean Floor who are visiting our fair shores this summer all the way from Portland, Oregon.

Featuring violin, clarinet, string bass, harmonica and four part vocal harmonies, The Ocean Floor is undoubtedly going to be one of those whimsical, emotively engaging live artists, or in other words, not to be missed.... read a review

They will be joined by Wet Wings, and City Oh Sigh in support.

$10 Doors open 8 pm 

First Happy week in March

Friday night's comedy show has sold out, but there's plenty of other ace gigs to check out at Happy this week. Plus a special Momnday night show from Ocean's Floor

Saturday 5th March

Brains, Seth Frightening, Mammal Airlines, Lontalius  $10, Doors 9.30             

Every Sunday:

SUNDAY JAZZ with 'The Troubles' featuring: John Rae, Daniel Yeabsley, Lucien Johnson, & guests. Sunday from 8:30pm. FREE ENTRY. This is the best live jazz you can see in Wellington. Until Sonny Rollins gets here that is.

Monday 07/03

the Ocean Floor, Wet Wings, City Oh Sigh  $10 Doors 8pm

Coming up:

Saturday 12/03  Folk Core from Fear is The Enemy  ”We bring peace with a sword, bro”.

Thursday 17/03                Emily Pee will be releasing her new album.

Friday 18/03                      Full Moon Fiasco

Friday 25/03                      No Aloha

High Places (US) with Glass Vaults

Happy are totally thrilled to be presenting: High Places (USA) with Glass Vaults on Saturday February 5th.

Tickets from utr.co.nz and on the door.

High Places is Mary Pearson and Rob Barber, NY natives bringing an exquisite corpse approach to dream-pop. Utilising folk percussion instruments, guitar duets turned into treated samples, and percussive lines created from the manipulation of household objects. Their sound is evocative of walking through a rainforest, although imagine the trees equipped with organic subwoofers and Mary Pearson's vocals floating through the foliage. Their latest: 'High Places vs. Mankind' (Thrill Jockey) sees them "tackling the complex, gigantic subject of being human and what it’s like to interact with other human beings." Guitars feature more prominently, and the subject matter moves from the ethereal to the more elemental; relationships, overcoming addiction, aging and death. However, these more sombre tones are still couched in the trademark layers of beats, samples, and found instrumentation that make High Places so engaging.

The Thing - this Thursday (Jan 20th)

General mind blowing ear boggling musician mats Gustafsson is touring NZ with his incredible trio The Thing! FROm SCANDINAVIA the great Extreme energy free jazz punk cosmic mind altering power trio

THE THING!

Featuring saxophonist of the century

mats Gustafsson from Sweden, with norways finest: ingebrigt haken flaten on double bass and the extraordinary paal nilssen-love on drums.

  

thurs 20 jan

THE thing plus local support

happy - 118 tory st - te aro

doors 8pm $10

plus - workshop with the thing! Come and meet, talk and play with The Thing! wellington - freds - fri 21 jan - 12pm

 

Mats Gustafsson is Sweden’s and one of Europe’s biggest names on the free music scene. Through groups like Gush, AALY trio and Peter Brötzmann`s Chicago Tentet, he has established himself as a very powerful saxophonist, and has reinvented the way of playing the saxophone. Gustafsson has collaborated with many of the most adventurous musicians in the universe including Sonic Youth, Yamatsuka Eye (the Boredoms), Otomo Yoshihide, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Paul Lovens and Hamid Drake.

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love have become known as Norway`s heaviest rhythm-section. Their long time collaboration bagan in 1992 and they perform together in many groups including School Days with Ken Vandermark, Scorch trio with Raoul Björkenheim, and the Swedish/Norwegian jazz-group Atomic.

The Thing also performs with Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Otomo Yoshihide, Jim O`Rourke, Thurston Moore and Cato Salsa Experience.

Only once in a great while does a group of musicians come along with an inherent discipline that dares to question the realm between the known and the unknown. Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love of the Scandinavian Power Trio, "The Thing," provide a language so determined in its musical complexity, boundaries literally and figuratively disappear.

Each one of these extraordinary musicians has redefined their own given instrument with an exceptional ability to transform life into art with burning clarity.

If you miss this rare opportunity to hear some of the hottest musicians in the world you are a dick!

Presented by Vitamin S and the Frederick St Sound and Light Exploration Society

Happy new year from Happy!

Fabulous Diamonds (Melbourne) Saturday December 11th

 Another show we are totes thrilled to be presenting with HSP.

HSP is pleased to present the NZ tour of processional dub and crypt punk diviners,
FABULOUS DIAMONDS from Melbourne, Australia. Following their US excursion alongside Pigeons and Wet Hair, and their sophomore LP on Siltbreeze (Times New Viking, Sic Alps, US Girls), the duo’s heavenly garage anthems, liminal haunt funk, and transfixing, psychedelic mantras are poised to captivate audiences around the country in mid-December.

Likened to a lysergic union of Lee Perry, Terry Riley, Suicide, Silver Apples and Young Marble Giants, what Pitchfork calls Fabulous Diamonds’ ‘part pagan sleepover incantation’ and ‘lush and trippy’ minimalism is a UFO potion of radiant synth arpeggia, lock-groove futurist-Baroque riffage, celestial chant and post-disco percussive clatter that has a disquieting, modal beauty and entrancing, cosmic unease. This is the duo’s first NZ visit.


Orchestra of Spheres are keepers of the psychedelic flame, entrancing crowds with a diverse array of instrumentation (including drums, biscuit tin guitar, gamelan, keyboards, and bass organ!), hypnotic grooves and cosmic atmospheres. Their live show has been known to make the most rhythmically retarded shake their money maker, get on the good foot and leapfrog into space. NZ Musician magazine (Aug. 2010) called their album Nonagonic Now "free improv that you can get down and party to." Fellow Wellingtonians Diana Rozz have supported the likes of Deerhoof and Die! Die! Die!, partied with Dan Deacon, and bring a refreshingly entertaining approach to the live stage along with some seriously great tunes. Check out their live album recorded at Happy here: http://dianarozz.bandcamp.com/


Wellington Saturday 11 December, Happy with Diana Rozz and Orchestra of Spheres. 
$14 presales from UTR

MONOPOLY CHILD & DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE

Another show we are very proud to be a part of.

HSP is pleased to present the Oceanic voyage and tour diary of US and Belgium travelers, MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS and DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE.

Wellington Thursday December 16th, Happy with I.Ryoko and Sign of the Hag.

 Monopoly Child is The Skaters’ and Pacific City Vision’s Spencer Clark. His ornate, hallucinatory environments are enacted through a Xerox mirage of celestial horse gallop, mizmar-like horn melisma and avian vocal Interpretation. His live performances have been likened to a mix of t...emple inauguration and 50's Ethnic Folkways bootleg, and his myriad of recorded artifacts surf from devotional pyramid drone and celestial bamboo ritual to the tropical romance audio novel of his most recent vision, ‘Make Mine, Macaw’.

Courtesy of the Ancient Skywatchers of California and Shamans for Levitated Coconuts, amongst other distant bureaus, Clark’s cosmic accretion of tapes, CDrs and LPs have appeared on labels like Old English Spelling Bee, Heavy Tapes, Eclipse and New Age, and he has collaborated and performed with artists such as Tomutonttu, Sonic Youth, Deerhoof, Nurse With Wound, Charalambides, Melvins and Wooden Wand.

Dolphins into the Future is the Antwerp-based, Cetacean Nation Communications and Taped Sounds ambassador, Lieven Martens. Forming his music through a process of ‘automatic writing instigated by dialogues with the cetacean world’, Martens’ warbly and effervescent sonic ecosystems abound with the attuned aquatic energies and tranquility of liquindi percussion, echolocative synth gurgle, Polynesian cantata and tape-collage swirl.

Martens has released music on Kraak, Not Not Fun, Release the Bats, and his own evolving imprints, which have also played host to an array of artists such as, Oneohtrix Point Never, Orphan Fairytale, Kraus, J.D. Emmanuel, Emeralds’ Steve Hauschildt and James Ferraro. Dolphins’ radiant musical glare and calming ascension emerges from an innerspace of reflective elation and Higher Intelligence.
 
Thanks to Kraak, High Reflections, Obedient Atom, Adam Art Gallery and Altmusic NZ for their support.

Dear Time's Waste 'Spells' album release show with Siamese (Grayson Gilmour) and Timothy Blackman

This Friday (November 5th) we have one of the country's most promising songwriters (in our ever humble opinion!) releasing her first full length album with a show at Happy. With support from Siamese (the side project of one Grayson Gilmour) and Timothy Blackman, who also released an LP here a lil while back. VERY excited about this show. We'll be kicking off after the fireworks. Below is a download of one of the songs from Spells.

Weezer Tribute this Saturday

Featuring Solo Ono, Milkshake Cowboyz, god bows to math & Kiko (named for the teenage Japanese fan Rivers Cumo was rumored to have written several songs on Pinkerton for). And Weezer karaoke.  Kick off 10pm sharp.

SOLO ONO: Buddy holly, Island in the sun, Pink triangle

MILKSHAKE COWBOYZ: undone (sweater song), only in dreams, across the sea, in the garage

GOD BOWS TO MATH: If you really want me to, Beverly Hills, Keep Fishin, Hash Pipe 

KIKO: Tired of Sex, el scorcho, the good life, say it ain't so

THE STORY OF K RECORDS - FREE FILM SCREENING

We though seeing as Mirah (one of K record's brightest stars) will be playing the following night we’d take this opportunity to screen the K Records documentary.

Kicks off at 8pm sharp. Free Entry. Drink Specials. We’ll be doing dinner runs to the surrounding restaurants for ya's as well. If it goes well, we’ll do some more screenings in the future.

The Shield Around the K: The Story of K Records screens at Happy October 27th.
...
ABOUT THE SHIELD AROUND THE K: THE STORY OF K RECORDS:

The Shield Around the K: The Story of K Records, profiles the birth and growth of the punk rock DIY record label, K Records, based in Olympia, Washington. Co-Founders, Calvin Johnson and Candice Pedersen are interviewed along with over 20 K artists and peers including Mecca Normal, Lois, Rose Melberg, Ian MacKaye, Slim Moon, Dean Wareham and more. Directed by Heather Rose Dominic, The Shield Around the K features performances by Calvin Johnson's legendary Beat Happening. International Pop Underground Festival footage features Fugazi, Beat Happening, Mecca Normal and others. The Shield Around the K portrays an independent record label whose lo-fi credibility has never been compromised.

With many thanks to director Heather Rose Dominic.