Nelson

These Are pictures from my week away in Nelson















The opening to the Malborough sounds














Cruising on the Interislander!















Tahuna Beech Yesterday. Doesn't it just look like a tropical getaway?














Picture taken today at the Japanese Garden














Cool Freight Plane that is in the founders museum @ Nelson















A bit of Nelson History for you

Anberlin - Never Take Freindship Personal

Finding a good christian is at times like sifting for Gold. It takes hard work and sometimes your efforts are fruitless, but when you find that CD, you cry "Eureka I've found it."

Anberlin's Sophemore release 'Never Take Friendship Personal' follows up Blueprintsfortheblack market in great fashion. It is an intriguing album that I can not stop listening to (Which I do with a number of great cds). This CD is a complete CD, The production is awesome an is a sweat-flowing album that keeps you on your feet dancing and your head thrashing from start to finish. Anberlin reminds me of rock groups such as Jimmy Eat World with thier awesome melodys and awesome quitars. These guys though step it up a notch with hard hitting drums and cruching guitar. They then top it up with the vocals. The vocals I will have to say are not as good some groups. The album has been impressing critics in america and recieving astounding reviews for a relatively uknown band. For Example Rip It Up (4 1/2 Stars), Real Groove (4 1/2 Stars), and the allmusic.com website (4 Stars).

This album is a highlight from start to finish. The songs are all great numbers.
Never take freindship personal is the first song on the album. It is a song about hurt and pain. It is a wonderfully powerful rock song. Starting off with strong heavy guitars and continuing in that flow of mind. It carrys the emotion of hurt and the loss of trust from start to finish. It is a great opening track.
The Album then flows into Paperthin Hymn again typical anberlin on this album hardhitting guitar chords accomplishing good rock. I don't exactly know what the songs about so I will say it is just another great song.
Stationary Stationary is about a relationship that going no where. This is a bloody good pop rock song. It is one of the stand out songs for me on this album and if the record company had the same taste in music as I do it would be a single. This song gets me bouncing up and down from start to finish.
(The symphony of) Blase, Is a Beautiful slow track (Slow for Anberlin.) It is very emotional and brings a tear to my eye. It is a great track
A Day Late is the first single off the album. This song is how I discovered the band that has changed my listening habits. Again typical Anberlin.
The Runaways is another great typical anberlin track. It is very heavy but is a song that you can still bounce along to. It shows the vocal variety of the lead singer for the band.
Time and Confusion is a song about following after you dreams. It is a great song I love it. It is just a really fun and great song. It is hopefulled and dream-making music
The Feel Good Drag is about lust, sex and temptation and society. It is dark at times in its music and lyrics.
Dance Dance Christa Paffgen is the final track on the album. It is a beautiful track about love and chemistery. This is a wierd love song but it is my favourite track on the album. Too long to be a single but it captivates you for the whole seven minutes of the song.
You need to listen to this album. These guys impress me a whole lot and i'm excited to see them coming down to Parachute 06. They will not disappoint you. I promise

If NZ Idol was decided by MMP

This is for all you who enjoy the form of popular democracy called Reality TV Shows.
This came from Maxim Institutes online weekly magazine 'Real Issues'.
1.Those you voted off last week would be back on the list.
2.Contestants would start every sentence with "When I'm NZ Idol, I'll...".
The bottom five candidates would be kicked off in the first week for failing to reach the threshold.
3.Jackie and Frank would announce they had worked out a three-way deal to support one of the contestants on confidence and supply, but this did not mean they were in any way supporting one of the contestants, but planned to work constructively with all of them, for the sake of the competition.
4.It will emerge later in Investigate magazine that Nik and Sir Howard Morrison were in a secret conspiracy to thwart Rosita with an infamous "Rosita is fat" smear campaign.
5.Petra will demand that Jean be given a space in the bottom three, and if this does not happen, she will threaten to quit the competition.
he losing contestant in the final two will say it's fine, because the country has called him to other things.
6.Contestants would attack their competitors throughout the competition, using phrases such as "No talent hack" and "unstable lunatic", but "come together" in the last week to declare that they are the best of friends, and looking forward to working together.

Emery - "The Question?

This is Emery's sophomore release on Tooth and Nail Records. Emery is a Hard Core rock band who are classed in the Screamo category. This means they have girl sounding guy vocals mixed with screams in their songs. The Album is produced by Aaron Sprinkle, know for his work on albums such as Anberlins Never Take Freindship Personal. This album is full of what I call Chaotic Rock. From Start to finish this album does not flow or carry. The Album is introduced well with a hard hitting screamo track "So Cold I Could Hold my Breath", which talks about lust and sex and the struggles that people hide. The album then meanders through the next couple of tracks where Emery can't decide what rhythm to stick to or what style to stick to. The Fourth Track, the single, Studying Politics, is a classic emery track full of great harmony with hardhitting rock and scremo. This track is one of the highlights of the album, talking about relationship breakups and the hurt behind it. The album then picks up again from here but tracks still seem to meander because of Emerys lack of ability to keep a style or a rhythm in their tracks. "Listening to Freddy Mercury" is a great track and brings another set of hard hitting lyrics about sin and life, and the fact that we all sin This song starts strong and concludes. "The Terrible Secret" is then another classic emery track. Starting of with a strong introduction then flowing into a chorus and actually not flowing into chaos. This track shows what emery can do when they don't try to become complicated and arty, and just stick to the basics of style and rhythm. The Last two songs, a "Win Win Stituation", and a "Lose Lose Situation", show what earlier songs lacks, that is a constant rhythm and style. A Win Win Situation is a classic emo track, containing nice chords and piano pieces, again showing that the band has the ability to write good tracks and make good albums It is a beautiful song that finishes a chaotic album off with class and makes you forget about the earlier shockers of the Album. The weightlessness of the Album for me are "So Cold I Could See My Breath", "Studying Politics", Listening to Freddy" Mercury" and "The Terrible Secret." The Lowlights for me is this albums lack of flow and that the potential of this band wasn't lived up to on their second album

TnT last night

These are just some random pictures I took from last nights Tnt. The top was taken at occ. The Next 2 were taken at Paikakariki beach at 10.30 at night.

Parachute 06 - The Case of the Missing Bands

If you are like me you will be dissapointed to see that there are only three big bands coming to parachute this year. Sources have told me that the reason why this has occured is that the Sonfest music festival has gone under. This means that fewer big christian bands are willing to come and play parachute becuase of the long and expensive trip from thier home countries. There is also the increased global threat of terrorism that can make bands make long trips to the southern hemisphere.

So was last year the peak of Parachute Festival, with many major bands and recording companies there for the concert. We will see. Parachute will drop in numbers this year and probrably platua for a few years but if australia gets another big festival it will all be on again. Parachute will still be a huge place for youth groups and the whole of hamiltons youth to hang out(becuase there is nothing else to do in hamilton ;-]) It is an awesome time away with freinds and always a good time.

Blogs taking on the Man

Democracy has improved from the rise of the internet and blogs from the amature demcracy. This can be seen in the salient vs victoria university case. Victoria university has tried to stop the student magazine from publishing information regarding fee rises next year. Salient went to court yesterday, stopping the magazine from being released on onday morning. The article has gone through the great network of ASPA and has reached the reading public of all the other major student magazines in the country.

The article is obviously important for victoria university students and it should be released to the victoria university students. Bloggers and internet websites have released the information and the magazine critic have released it online. Unfortunately critic has had to take its site down becuase it seems they have been embargoed aswell. The University's attempts to try and stop the information from being released has meant that the information has spread like wildfire across the blogosphere and many people will know the real details behind the plan.

This is the strenght of the blogosphere. The state and corperate information cannot censor information that is deemed sensitive becuase of its effects. Clinton was impeached as a result of one article on a early blog. Information these days is free flowing. Borders and big buisiness and the state can no longer stop information after its released to the public. If the try to embargo the information it spreads like wildfire.

THe fact of the matter is, the university is going to hurt its reputation through this. As Keith Ng the writer of the article has said, they have shot themselves in the foot and overreacted. They are going to be made out by the media, who will have there own vested interests in this case, to be heavy handed and against the freedom of speech. It is also going to cost them a whole lot more money, while the article has already been released to the public and those who want to know whats in it already know.

Bishop Brain Tamaki - A Maori Prophet?

I was talking to an insightful freind a couple of weeks ago about Pai Marire and Maori Prophetic Movements. These movements took parts of christianity and married it with Maori tradition as an expression of Maori Autonomy. On the east coast the North Island, members of the Pai Marire fought against the settler government as the settler government attempted to destroy Maori movement of autonomy so that they could move towards racial amalgamation of the Maori people.

The Pai Marire movement was seen as a perversion of christianity, becuase it picked and chose the traditions of christianity it would accept, while keeping traditions that christians either saw as sinful or accessive. Thier religion was seen as excessive and at times immoral. Pai Marire was misunderstood by the missionary William Williams who saw it as a Denunciation of traditional anglican tradition and as anti-christian.

I don't believe this is so. Many of these leaders were sincere christians. Te Whiti took on christian teachings of pacifism in his movement, while fighting for looking after for both the material and spiritual needs of the people of Pariaka. Before the settlement at Parihaka was destroyed it was the largest and most prosperous Maori township in the Country. But becuase it resembled a threat to Pakeha Culture and the Settler Government, it was destroyed.

So is our friend Pope Brian Tamaki a Maori Prophet. That is an question to be answered. He fulfills some of the criteria. He is a political and spiritual leader, who is aiming to service both the spiritual and economic and social needs of the Maori people for his movement. The Destiny Church and Party are supportive of the Treaty of Waitangi. The excessiveness of the leader of the church has been seen as immoral and his personal involvment in politics has been criticised. I also beleive he is a sincere christian with sincere convictions, who wants to see the best for this.Are we again seeing a Maori Prophet who is missunderstood by the Pakeha people conservative and liberal christians. 'Pious' christianity has tried to seperate christianity from the state, is this really right? Should we stop seeing religion through our cultural paradigm, and see what people are trying to acheive for the good of New Zealand and the good of their people.