The Enright House

Major website overhaul and other projects

Mark — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:30:48 +0000

I’m sorry I’ve been a bit slow on writing up new blog posts. Essentially, I’ve been really busy with the following:

Recording the new album.
Promoting the Cat and Bird 7″ lathe cut.
Creating a new multi-media single for Darkwave, including various recordings, remixes, videos and a short film.
Putting together a whole new live show as a solo performer, using synths, vocoders, drum machines, field recordings and looping guitars.
Helping book a North Island tour for late August. Solo Enright House, solo i.Ryoko.
Personal stuff. Dad just arrived in the country. Getting my life on track for next year. Planning my move to the US in January.
Pre-planning a US tour with Misfit Mod for March/April ‘09.

Lastly, I’ve been meaning to give the blog more prominence in this website, so I’ve decided to move my Wordpress installation from theenrighthouse.com/blog to the root directory. I also want to take the opportunity to change the layout a little bit and modify some of the site’s pages, as well as getting the paypal store up and running. Meaning? This week you will see a lot of broken links, a lot of weird design changes happening in real time, errors, missing images, and non-loading mp3s. In other words, anything that can go wrong undoubtedly will. After this week is over, however, things should be quite swell.

Will try to stay in touch more as soon as I get this website sussed out!

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Kiwi FM album of the week

Mark — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:03:59 +0000

During these past months I’ve been trapped in this horrid cycle of falling asleep around five in morning and sleeping well into the afternoon. Every night (or morning) I would set my cell phone alarm for a reasonable hour and tell myself that tomorrow would be the day that I would manage to wrestle myself out of bed at a decent hour. However, the bloody alarm was so abrasive, I always ended up turning it off and going back to sleep just to recover from the shock of it all. A futile attempt at resetting my internal clock.

Anyhow, fast forward (through months of misery) to the day before yesterday. I had been thinking about it for weeks: I needed a proper alarm clock. In fact, maybe I needed 3 or 4 of them. I had this odd idea of setting up alarm clocks in my living room, facing my neighbor’s bedroom. Why facing my neighbors bedroom, you might ask? Well because I am rotten at taking care of myself, but I am still a pretty decent guy, and so I figured, where rational self-interest was clearly failing me, maybe a sprinkle of contrived altruism might do the trick.

Well, I finally bought an alarm clock the other day - just one. The result, thus far? The last two days I’ve risen at 8.30 in the morning. My neighbor? Still sound asleep.

The moral of this story? Turns out I had my alarm clock set to Kiwi FM, which, so I learned this morning, is featuring my album, A Maze and Amazement, as this week’s “album of the week”. They’re giving away copies of the album, too, so be sure to listen in to Kiwi to get a copy (I am told between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon on weekdays is the best time to hear our songs).

Hours of daylight ahead!

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Chart give away copies of our Cat And Bird Split 7″

Mark — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:35:06 +0000

Jeff over at Chart just let me know that the give-away for our Cat and Bird Split 7″ is now live on their site. To win one of two limited edition lathe cuts, just head over to Chart’s website and email them the answer to a simple question.

(Hint: the answer to the question - posted on their page - can be found somewhere on www.theenrighthouse.com. Happy hunting!)

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Cat and Bird Split 7″

Mark — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:26:49 +0000

The Cat and Bird 7″ is a very limited edition split between us and the late Break Mission Kills. This collaboration, however, is more of a marriage than a split, with each of our band’s derelict post-pop aesthetic supporting the other’s. The entire run is limited to 100 copies, though the record (and bonus tracks) can be downloaded for free at www.catandbird.info.

We were thrilled to work with Peter King, who has been cutting his distinctive transparent records for over 20 years in his rural Ashburton workshop. King has worked with hundreds of bands, from local unknowns to international acts such as The Beastie Boys, Pavement, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. Building each lathe-cutting device out of rough-and-tumble electronics and washing machine parts, King’s polycarbonate discs are almost artisanal, individualized works of lo-fi art.

The Cat and Bird 7″ is the most recent part of a frantic and frenzied year for us, following the release of 2007’s A Maze and Amazement LP and three music videos, the completion of a national album release tour, an acoustic South Island tour, and festival appearances at Camp A Low Hum and Southern Amp.

The next year promises even more projects, including the release of a new album at the end of 2008, a few boutique shows in Japan, and a relocation to the United States around the turn of the year, followed by extensive tours up and down America.

To purchase the lathe cut in New Zealand, just visit my Trade Me listings page, where I always have a copy up for grabs at a mere 10,- NZD. If you want to order the record from oversees, just hang tight a wee bit longer, as we’re currently setting up a little paypal shop, which will make it a lot easier and safer for us to trade together.

Last but not least, for more information on the Cat and Bird Split, including free downloads of all tracks, just visit www.catandbird.info.

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Tour Diary: Day 3 - Invercargill

Mark — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:50:12 +0000

Despite having stayed up all night playing guitar hero, we got up nice and early. Firstly, we needed to make our way down to Invercargill by late afternoon. Invercargill lies at the southern tip of New Zealand, so we easily had a good four hour drive ahead of us. Secondly, Luci and DJ were really keen to take us to Dunedin’s local farmer’s market in order to introduce us to “bacon buddies”, a specialty of one of the market’s local vendors.

The market was set in a small corner to the side of the beautiful and historic railway station. The morning was sunny, and, frankly, I was still feeling all warm and fuzzy from a good show the night prior. The atmosphere at the market was joyous: kids were playing amongst the small gathering of locals, and grown men and woman seemed to be smiling just a smitten more than on other days. After I had the absolutely best veggie burger of my life and most of the guys had filled up on their beacon buddies (which, incidentally looked revolting!), we said our goodbyes and made our way towards Invercargill.

Now, everyone under that sun had warned us not to play Invercargill. The place had a fierce reputation for being only into metal. A comment I had read on some New Zealand forum had been gnawing on me: “don’t worry about people not showing up, worry about the people who do show up.” Whilst, planning the tour, however, I figured most of the criticisms must have been a tad hyperbolic, and it couldn’t really be all that bad. After stopping for a quick and greasy lunch somewhere along the way, we arrived safely in Invercargill and promptly made our way to the venue.

The venue was large and the PA seemed of high quality, but to our dismay there were demons, monsters and cartoonish young girls with gigantic breasts spray-painted all over the black walls. Wow.

Well, there wasn’t much we could really do aside from put on our poker faces and set up our gear. After we got everything looking as good as we could hope for under the circumstances, we checked into the backpackers around the corner. Shaun and Simon were both quite exhausted and wanted to take a short nap, so Evan and I went to find some dinner.

Whilst watching Roadrunner episodes at Hell’s pizza and enjoying our meal, Shaun sends me a message that sends waves of panic down my spine: he’s sick, really sick, feels like throwing up, doesn’t think he can play tonight.

After rushing up to our room, Shaun tells me he thinks he has food poisoning. Shaun certainly looks the part, and a disgusting pie he ate for lunch immediately comes to mind as the likely culprit. All doctors and pharmacies are closed at this time, so I take the van down to the store and buy all sorts of over-the-counter medicine, herbal supplements, and even Aloe Vera juice, but there was just no way he was going to pull through in time for the show, which, at this point, was only 45 minutes from starting. At this point I was just hoping he would feel better in the morning - my worst fear was that Shaun would not be well enough to continue the tour.

With absolutely no options left, we headed back to the venue by ourselves, only to find it completely empty with only 30 minutes to go before the show was supposed to start. I told the venue owners about Shaun’s ill fate, and they reacted as expected: compassionate, but also unable to mask the fact that they were totally fucked off at us. They agreed to let us start a bit later, but that hardly improved matters. By show-start there were roughly seven people in the bar, and none of them seemed to have come because of us. Aside from the staff and sound tech, only two girls got into our set a bit more - the other five kids were shooting pool and eventually left half way through our set. For days we would joke about how Shaun, who was vomiting out his bowel fluids that night, actually had the best night of us all.

There was one positive thing I drew from that night, however: at no point ever during the show did we not try to give our best. In fact, we might well have played one of the most intense shows of the tour on that strange night. One way or another, I was really proud of the three of us. We hadn’t taken out our disappointment on the few that had come. Whether they ultimately cared or not, we were going to make sure we gave those present every opportunity in the world to find something of value in our music and our performance thereof.

After we packed up, the bar manager gave us 50,- for petrol money and - truth be told - we felt rather grateful for it, too - the price of petrol was sky high, and feeding the van day in day out would prove to be the biggest expense of the tour. After a long day and an emotionally draining night, we headed back to the backpackers, where the three of us filmed a short video diary for our little tour documentary. Finally we went to bed and slept - exhausted, but also a bit tougher, perhaps.

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Tour Diary: Day 2 - Dunedin

Mark — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:50:41 +0000

[Photo by Roger Grauwmeijer. View entire set.]

All of us actually woke up quite early in Oamaru. We didn’t have far to drive to Dunedin, but this was the first morning where we had actually risen from our sleep being “on tour”. I felt energized and wide-eyed. The day before I arose in the same old bed that I’ve slept in for most of the last few years: a small room, dark, barren, rather unpleasant really. But this morning I was already living an adventure, and I was grateful not be at home. I felt like taking deep breaths slowly; I was glad that it was a bit brisk; I felt freer than usual.

I rounded up the boys and, after Simon stunned us with some pretty rocking renditions of Slayer and Metallica on the resident upright piano, we left a thank-you note for our hosts and made our way into town for breakfast. It was Anzac day (a local NZ holiday honoring past heroic war efforts) and so the whole town crowded into the only cafe that was open for business. To my delight we ran into our hosts, John and his partner, whom I had little opportunity to speak to the night before. Both of them were absolutely darling, and I left Oamaru, glad that I had met them.

The drive to Dunedin was quite beautiful. The landscape of central Otago lacks the flashy beauty of supermarket calendars, but the plains, hills and far-off mountains radiate a wholesomeness I found comforting.

Our first stop in Dunedin was at a guitar luthier’s workshop. My guitar was giving me serious trouble (the pickup wasn’t amplifying the strings uniformly in volume), and I was very fortunate to find a friendly and competent guitar builder in Dunedin who was willing to take a look at my instrument on such short notice, particularly since it was a public holiday.

There’s actually a marvelously funny story that came of our visit to Steve’s workshop, involving me crashing through a little bridge he had built to get into his workspace. During the course of our tour I captured roughly 13 hours of footage. 3-4 minutes of it catch my crash and the aftermath of my fall on tape from a first person perspective (I was holding the camera during the whole ordeal). I’ll just defer the full story to the roughly 30-40 minute documentary we are editing, which ought to be available mid year for free online.

Anyhow, after leaving Steve’s workshop with a more tonally balanced guitar, a massive bruise and a wide grin, we drove into town to find that the Arc was closed until 6 on Anzac day. I called Kieran, the new owner, and we agreed that 6 o’clock would still leave us with plenty of time to set up and have a bite to eat, so the four of us had a stroll around town and eventually decided to split into two groups and promote our show a bit more. Evan and Simon grabbed a little over 100 fliers and made their way towards Otago University’s campus, whilst Shaun and I awkwardly and a tad haphazardly started handing out fliers to “indie-looking” people in town.

At first, I was a bit shy, but eventually I resolved myself to the reality that if I didn’t believe in my music enough to tell people about it, then certainly no-one else would. In the States hand-to-hand flyering is how everyone promotes their shows. If you’re an indie-rock band playing a show in town next week and Sonic Youth is playing tonight, you go stand outside the Sonic Youth show with 1000 fliers and 100 CDRs next to the other 20 bands handing out their fliers and their CDs. Total normality in a city like Chicago to leave a show with 7-8 fliers, a promo booklet and two CDs of random bands you’ve never heard of.

Anyhow, whilst living in the US, I never really played in any one band long enough to get into the whole promo routine, so for me it was still a really odd experience walking up to a stranger with a flier and telling them about my music - and that’s despite the fact that I actually worked for a year at Chicago’s cult venue, the Metro, handing out fliers at shows three to four times a week. It’s actually way harder to push your own music, rather than someone else’s band that you really couldn’t care less about.

In the end Shaun and I handed out about 50 fliers each, and I don’t think a single person we talked to on the streets actually came to our show. Still, it was a cool experience I must say, because it really forces you to talk to strangers about what you do. You have to be able to explain who you are, what style of music you play, and why that person should come to see your show - all in like 30 seconds. My hang-ups about pushing my music flew right out the window after about the first 15 minutes…

“My name is Mark and I play in a band called The Enright House. We’re playing an acoustic show here in your town tonight and would be really grateful if you would consider coming out to our show. We play a mixture of tuneful but thoughtful indie-rock that sounds a bit like Sigur Ros, Death Cab For Cutie and the Shins…. oh yeah? Yeah Death Cab is a great band… yeah that’s my favorite album, too. Anyhow man, maybe catch you later? It’s only a 5,- cover and the show starts at 8! See you!”

Not great, but it’s early days and at least a start, you know?

[Photo by Roger Grauwmeijer. View entire set.]

So… the show ended up being really beautiful and, contrary to all the rumors that have been circulating around New Zealand, the Arc Cafe is still a great venue in my books. It’s run by really sweet and genuine people, who took primo care of us and gave us free reign to set up the venue as we liked. We ended up playing downstairs and arranged all the chairs we could find into a lush, bohemian lounge. There were about 20-30 old and worn chairs, and, after lighting some candles and firing up our vintage lamps, the Arc started to look like a charming, derelict old theater.

The turn-out was quite small for a Friday night, with many students having left for home over the long holiday weekend, and one of Dunedin’s venues, the Backstage, celebrating their anniversary with a festival-like lineup of local bands. Despite the smaller-than-anticipated gathering, it easily ended up being my favorite show of the tour. The atmosphere was just perfect.

I had been taking care of the door and suddenly felt this urge to shake everyone’s hand, introduce myself by name, and thank everyone for coming out to our show. When it came time to play, I felt safe. I had touched every person’s skin and looked into everyone’s eyes, and I felt like I wasn’t alone. We were all trying to make this night a meaningful experience. By the end of the show I felt like I had done more than just play a few songs - I felt somehow that I had connected to people, and I am still just so grateful to everyone who trusted us enough to come to our show that night… you gave me something precious to remember.

After packing up, the four of us headed back to Lucy and DJ’s house. Lucy and DJ are two of the seriously nicest people I’ve ever met and were our hosts for the night. We listened to music, chilled out in their kitchen, played guitar hero (especially Shaun!) and eventually fell asleep around 3 AM, happy and content.

[View the complete picture set from our show at the Arc Cafe.]

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Simon’s South Island Tour Diary

Mark — Sun, 25 May 2008 12:15:31 +0000

[I'm totally stoked: Simon just emailed me his tour diary. This is the first time a post will be up on The Enright House that wasn't written by myself. Sweet. So without further delays, here's Simon's diary from our South Island tour:]

[Photo by Roger Grauwmeijer. View entire set.]

Day One: Oamaru

We left about two in the afternoon, which was a pretty cruisy start. We drove to Oamaru, a fairly short drive. The town was beautiful. The old buildings looked really cool. We had kebabs for dinner, and the owner of the restaurant spoke with Mark in German; he was Dutch himself. Mark almost ran into one German-speaker in every town we went to. Pretty impressive.

The Penguin Club was a stylish venue with a friendly, enthusiastic crowd. We assumed we were playing to a crowd of non-initiates, but it turned out they had checked out our MySpace before deciding to come and watch us. The show went well, with Shaun performing a lovely solo set, and us playing well afterwards. It was a good precedent for the tour. We stayed at another singer’s house, a guy Shaun met on his last South Island tour. He and his girlfriend had a nice flat and were very hospitable towards us. He has been recording his music there, and his girlfriend runs a photography business, capturing the images of New Zealand musicians, among other things. Everyone else slept on couches, I slept on the floor. It was to be the first of two times doing that. I had a sound sleep, believe it or not. The next morning, of all the places we could have breakfast, it was at a café where our hosts were also dining. I had a large lasagna for breakfast. People were placing bets on whether or not I’d finish it, luckily not too high stakes, as it was easily done.

Day Two: Dunedin

Longer drive today. I started to sleep sitting up, with my head down on my chest. I did not drive this whole tour; Mark and Evan did most of the driving. While not sleeping, I was reading. We stopped lots of times on our drives to take photos; the scenery in the South Island is breath-taking. Although not literally. Before the gig we handed out flyers at the university. I don’t think one of those people came; yet this was not the case later on in Nelson. The show went really well, the crowd were one of the best we’d had It was so cool they came especially to see us, especially as most of the Dunedin punters were at Backstage at its huge birthday event with many of the town’s popular bands playing. We stayed with another musician and his girlfriend. We had a great jam on the organ and then the others played on guitar hero while I slept. We had breakfast at the Farmers’ Markets then left town with some nice fruit and a huge bottle of juice.

Day Three: Invercargill

Shaun got food poisoning from a pie from a crappy café south of Dunedin. I forgot its name, because we were going to badmouth the place. The kiwi way: Don’t complain; just run a place down to all your friends after going there. We arrived at a really cool bogan bar called The Glue Pot, with cleverly airbrushed demonic figures on the walls. Somehow we didn’t expect much. Even though people warned us not to play in Invers, we did. About four people showed up. To the manager’s credit though, she did give us petrol money to help us out. The people of Invers, the same town that had bottled the Rolling Stones years back, preferred to drive up and down the road (like some people in Christchurch and most other NZ towns) or sing AC/DC songs to karaoke beneath our backpackers. Good for them. Let’s not go back there. I think the town should adopt a sign and a slogan: “Gateway to Stewart Island”, possibly with the subtext: “just drive on through.”

Day Four: Stewart Island

What an awesome ferry ride, flat despite its nasty reputation. And then the island was phenomenal too. Our hosts – the arts trust there – gave us three cooked meals: fish for lunch, fish for dinner, and for a change, fish for breakfast. It was cod, and it was delicious. We got to explore the island a bit before dinner, Little River and Halfmoon Bay. Very nice. Pity we didn’t have time to discover the rest of the 160 km (ish) island, and the great bush that covers a lot of it – or so I am led to believe. The audience at the Wharfside Café were a mixture of young and old, even some kids there. I talked to the café manager afterwards. His son had liked the show – he even came up to me to say so – and he said his children were both musical too. It’s nice to think we inspired some budding musicians. Also, as a teacher, it was cool to see kids getting into our music, and to talk to them about it.

Day Five: Okarito

One of our longest drives. Most of the tour we were sleeping from about 11:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. More sleep than I get at home. We had been woken at 6:30 a.m. for breakfast, and I had had a great talk to an older man at the ferry terminal about The Simpsons and all the show’s legendary social commentary. His son - or grandson, not sure who the kid was – surprisingly was not so into the programme. The man told me about the ill-fate of the Rolling Stones in Invers, which made me feel better about our poor turn out. I napped and read most of the trip to Okarito. Then we arrived at a kayak shed in a town with no streetlights, and a population of a whopping thirty-five people. Most or all of the town were present at the monthly pot-luck dinner. The locals were very friendly. The gig went well and the people seemed to really appreciate us going out of our way to play there. We stayed at a backpackers there.

Day Six: Karamea

We met up with Shaun’s banjo player Renee in Westport on our way. Fairly nice bar and people in Karamea, apart from this munter who heckled us, telling us to use electric guitars and to play some Megadeth songs. You know that stereotype that everyone always jokes about when you’re playing/at a gig? “Play some Slayer/Sabbath/Metallica…” etc. Well, it turns out he’s real. To his credit, Mark did play a tiny lick from Symphony of Destruction to appease/humour the dude. Good old Daz. He smashed a glass right next to his own baby. Not sure what the mother was doing in the pub with the baby anyway… The backpackers – Rongo – was really cool, with lots of tourists there. There were a few Americans, some of whom were at our show. One guy in particular had been really into it. He said the music sent shivers down his spine. Nice compliment, it made up for the other guy. Mark played a song on the backpackers’ radio station, as did Shaun and Renee.

Day Seven: Granity

One of the coolest gigs. We were given lunch, dinner and heaps of drinks, as well as a morning coffee and being put up in the backpackers across the road. The backpackers was beautiful, with a cool rock garden and the beach right next door. The Drifters Café crowd were really cool and supportive, and we hung out with them and played three-way chess into the early hours. The crowd here knew of our heckler, and informed us his name was Daz. These were the only hosts who stayed and partied with us after a gig. It was awesome.

Day Eight: Nelson

We didn’t expect a huge turn out, but Mark’s flyering, particularly at a local backpackers, paid off. I had a good chat after the gig to some tourists from England who said they’d really enjoyed the show. I never found out, but I had texted National Radio before the gig to ask them to announce that we were playing at Yaza Café. Maybe they did. That may be another reason we had a good turn out. The only down side here was that we had to pay to play there. We stayed at Renee’s uncle and aunty’s place. Luxury for a change.

Day Nine: Motueka

Hot Mama’s. What more can I say? My brother has also played a gig in Mot, as well as in Golden Bay, back in the days when he was playing Celtic music. The gig went okay here, but for our standards, I was getting used to silent, respectful audiences appreciating out music. This crowd contained a small few enthusiasts, but many felt like talking and smoking outside instead. My brother later informed me we went I the wrong season. When all the tourists and fruit pickers are there there’re probably a lot more people into live music in town. The locals just wanted to talk to their mates. We did get a few people come up to us after the show though, and some bought our album. The barman/manager put us up in his own home after the gig: now that’s hospitality. Until now for me, that was unheard of.

Day Ten: Christchurch

Back into our home town. Playing the Dux de Lux for our third time was awesome. We had many of our loyal fans, and, surprisingly, many new ones. It was probably the best we’d ever played the acoustic set. We had it recorded, by the legendary Rob. I decided to bring along my good (bronze) snare and hi hat for this set, after playing a small Kick Start kids’ drum kit – apart from my good Paiste ride cymbal – for the previous nine days. We still got a good sound out of the tiny bass drum. Amazingly, a guy at this gig knew Daz from Karamea too. We put Shaun and Renee up in our flat. They were both sick this night. Sad for them.

Overall, the South Island had some beautiful scenery, some amazing small towns, and some warm, receptive audiences. It was an adventure, one not to be beaten for at least a few months.

And then it was time to crash and recover for a day before returning to teach on Monday. I’m taking a school band with nineteen eight-to-ten year olds to the Smokefree Rockquest in June. That and my school camp at the Wainui YMCA are my next two adventures. Between them there’s our gig supporting HDU. I can’t wait. But I’ll have to…

-Simon

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Enright House merch now on trade-me

Mark — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:46:02 +0000

I suppose it took me long enough, really, but after reading this interesting article (albeit, a bit annoyingly written) this afternoon, I thought - hell yeah, why not! - and put up some of our new shirts, badges, EPs and 7″s, as well as a few copies of our album. If you live outside of New Zealand and fancy buying something off us, just hang tight a wee while longer. We’ll have a proper paypal store up within the next few weeks! In the meantime:

2 1/4″ Badges/Buttons (5 NZD, including shipping):

Screenprinted T-shirt S-XL (25,- NZD + shipping):

Cat and Bird Split 7″ Lathe (10,- NZD + shipping):

Acoustic EP (10,- NZD + 2,- shipping):

A Maze and Amazement (20,- NZD + 2,- shipping):

Check out my listings on trade-me…

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Frau Grau

Mark — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:12:44 +0000

I just stumbled upon Frau Grau’s awesome body of drawings and mixed media work. I’m so into what she is doing! Check out more of her portfolio at www.fraugrau.de. The following work, entitled “There’s a feeling / That lingers in the afterwards / Will you ever return”, is a great example of her drawing style:

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Darkwave = MC Squared at the Arc Cafe in Dunedin

Mark — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:27:21 +0000

Thank you Roger for shooting this video and sharing it with us!

Prefer to watch the clip on youtube?

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