Twisted Dunedin pop foursome Kilmog play at Taste Merchants this evening with Seafog and Sonny Carver.
Led by the manic spiky pop-Pixies riffs of Glen Ross (formerly of Onanon), the band is also somewhat of a super group, with Richard Ley-Hamilton on guitar (Males, Space Bats Attack), Robert Scott (the Clean, The Bats) on guitar and Ian Henderson (The Puddle, Fishrider Records) on drums.
The band also offers a taste of Dunedin's sinister undercurrent, with Ross' often unhinged vocal delivery aping a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while lyrically wonderful tales of the psychotic, the dead, and the bizarre are retold with a disarming level of familiarity and conviction.
Seafog, featuring Robin Sharma of '90's alternative outfit Jetty (reportedly Dunedin's Pavement) will play a quiet three-piece set accompanied by violin, and Sonny Carver (Lucy Hunter and David Reginald Norris, of Opposite Sex) will perform their sinister, swamp/blues murder ballads to open the night.
• Today in Port Chalmers sees the Anteroom host ''Refining Light'', as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival. The all-day free event is all about ''expanded cinema'', with film as the dominant medium supported by musicians improvising to the moving images in varied ways.
A sister event to the long-running Lines of Flight festival, it shares many of the same participants and organisers. The combination of experimental film-making, improvised musical accompaniment, and a character-filled venue and garden promises to make this a wonderful community event.
''We have been running the Lines of Flight music festival for years, which combines music and film but with music as the primary focus. Local film-makers have been interested in a related event where the film component is the dominant medium, so Refining Light is the result of those discussions,'' co-organiser Peter Porteous said.
Twenty-five local film-makers and musicians are involved, including Kim Pieters, Campbell Walker, Peter Stapleton, Chris Schmeltz, Phoebe Mackenzie, Esta de Jong, Motoko Kikkawa, Charlotte Parallel and Ted Whittaker.
• The Fringe Festival Club is also up and running this week, and tonight, pianist/composer Nick Knox and Strange Harvest perform.
Knox's pieces are cascading, gruffly Waitsian and painfully emotive, while Strange Harvest's hypnotic darkwave electronica is capped by interesting and witty lyrics about celebrity, society and PowerPoint presentations.
Knox was also the subject of a recent BBC mini-documentary called The Characteristics of C-Minor.
• Auckland power pop band Sherpa play tonight at Chick's Hotel.
Last in town for 2011's Radio One Onefest, the four-piece has just recorded an album with producer Kody Nielson from which they released the first single, the French nouvelle cinema-inspired Love Film last year.
Swirling, energetic and upbeat, the band will make great accompaniment for Clap Clap Riot, which headlines the evening.
Be there
• Kilmog, Seafog and Sonny Carver tonight at Taste Merchants, Lower Stuart St. Doors open at 8pm (early show), $7 entry.
• ''Refining Light'', today at 2pm-4.30pm and 7pm-9.30pm (different shows), old Port Chalmers Masonic Lodge, 29 Wickliffe St, Port Chalmers.
• Nick Knox and Strange Harvest, Fringe Festival Club 2014, tonight, Carousel (upstairs Lower Stuart St). Free entry from 9pm. Sherpa supporting Clap Clap Riot's ''Nobody Everybody Tour'' tonight at Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers. Doors 9pm, $10.
• Pianist/composer Nick Knox, the subject of a recent BBC mini-documentary called The Characteristics of C-Minor, will perform tonight as part of the Fringe Festival Club.
