New Zealand Music Features — indie

"...It felt so extreme that something one person could perceive as light weekend entertainment, could drag me to such devastation..." Part one of a three-part series in which Vera Ellen talks to local musicians about the difficulties navigating live performance and turbulent emotion.

"When I produce music, it’s so important that the music is felt, and reaching those frequencies that are hitting a point in me. I don’t care about the technicality. All of my previous music is mixed properly, but it’s all off ear and whether I feel my body getting into that space. That’s it. I’m not trying to do anything other than create the feeling."   Violet Hirst spent the evening with Vanessa Worm to talk about the making and release of her latest album Mosaics, and to explore her freewheeling expression of self through her music and movement.

In 1999, Pet Rocks had an album ready to release called PR Nightmare. The title is even more appropriate now, given that it’s now being released twenty years later on that supposedly-dying media, the Compact Disc. But is the era of the humble CD really over?

"We used to make steel, but now we make music." Across the span of one year, within two seperate meetings, Violet Hirst sat down with Tāmaki Makaurau (and now Ōtautahi)-based band Ringlets, who yesterday released their debut self-titled album on US label Mutual Skies.