I’ve been having thoughts about a kickass Halloween gig lately. I know it’s a long way off but it’s going to involve a bit of planning. I have a venue in mind but haven’t been in touch with them yet. Anyway, this gig, shall be a screening of the 1920’s silent movie Nosferatu… with a soundtrack written and performed live by Transit of Venus. It’s gonna be so much fun if we pull this off. I envision the show being watched by people dressed up as creatures of the night for Halloween, relaxing in beanbags, drinking bloody marys or red wine. Heads up, keep Saturday October 31st free. If this happens it will be a once off thing and a very spooky epic exciting event.

I am gonna keep up with the video blogging, I’m just to shy to sit here and record one in the cafe I’m in.

Have had a few t-shirt entries come in, and looking forward to seeing more. Keep checking the t-shirt comp page on the website to see what’s been sent so far. I’ve made it possible to leave a comment on that page so feel free to give your opinions there

I’m excited about the gig with IFK tonight, will be so much fun. I’ve managed to incorperate my IFK t-shirt into my evenings attire yay!

Well that’s about it from me, catch ya soon!

<3 K xxx

Click through to http://www.transitofvensuproject.com/latest-news if you cant see the video

If you can’t see the video click through to http://transitofvenusproject.com/latest-news/ to watch

p.s. If your reading on a rss feed or facebook auto import thingy etc and you can’t see the above video you might have to click through to the website to watch it  http://transitofvenusproject.com/latest-news/

Our next gig coming up is July the 3rd with Infinite Flying Kick at The Dogs Bollix.  I will post more details when they become available.

A few photos from recent times…

Here’s Tory (Drums) enjoying a post gig cigar after we played at the Jester Underground party, and wearing a fantastic hat which amazingly stayed on his head when he played!

Caught up with Michelle Klaessens that night also, she just got back from doing sound for Charlie Ash on their tour of Europe.  Missed you Michelle!  Glad you’re home!

Thanks to Pene (Anti-venom) for the next couple of photos.  There’s Tory in the background and my skirt and legs in the foreground.  My friend Kat made this skirt for me on Saturday before the show, she’s a very very clever girl!

And there’s the whole band, as much as you can see us wearing black in the dark heh heh

Thanks to Ant Corban for this photo off his phone, this is the acoustic set I played at the Motion Arts festival a week or so ago.

Well that’s about it from me today.

Will be working on a few web bits and pieces this week so if you have any suggestions/requests for the website give me an email info@kristieaddison.com

Anyway, we have a huge gig coming up this weekend.  It’s the Jester Underground 2nd Birthday, there are 11 amazing artists hitting the stage at The Kings Arms on Saturday.  We’re playing quite early because Jester of Jester Underground is actually our very talented drummer Tory.  As well as being his event management companies 2nd birthday it’s also Tory’s 23rd birthday so we need to play early in the evening while he’s still sober enough to hit dem drums.  As well as birthday celebrations it’s the leaving party for our sexy tight pants wearing guitarist Mike who is off to the UK shortly to seek his fortune.  He will be missed.  Especially by the groupies.

Other bands playing include Bang Bang Eche who have just returned from some kind of exciting tour of other countries.  I’m hanging out to see these guys as I’ve heard so many very good thigs about them.  Also my long time favorites Battle Circus.  I’m sure I mention these guys from time to time, they’re very awesome and I’m looking forward to seeing them play again.  Turning Tricks are a pretty damn sweet two piece who’s drummer is my current bass player.  Also on the bill we have Inverse Order, Jimmy Maher, Johnny Love, Chris Reed, Janine Foster, Gemma Russel, and These Four Walls.

Presale Tickets are available through Under the Radar

In other news, my mum just phoned and we’re gonna go have a coffee. In OTHER other news, Transit of Venus EP is now available for purchase on iTunes, Amplifier, and maybe some other online sources that I don’t know about yet. We have a ton of physical copies to sell too. Haven’t set up an online store for this yet but if you email info@transitofvenusproject.com we can sort out getting a cd to you. Or if you’re in Auckland you can pick up a copy from the NZ Alternative section in Real Groovy.

We’re all actually quite quickly starving to death, so please buy our music if you like it.  Or even if you don’t like it, buy it as a gift for a relative you don’t like.

We’ve been in the studio lately (Miscreant Recordings), and have got most of the way through a couple of new songs.  This is the first steps we’re taking towards a full length album.  But that won’t be out for a long while yet.  Good things take time, like cheese.

Well, gotta dash and take a shower then run out the door.  Hope you’re all keeping well, looking forward to seeing those of you who can make it at THE GIG on Saturday.

Mike and I dressed by a fun shop called Smoove, their website is http://smoove.co.nz/

The video has been slowly crawling it’s way onto teh interwebz. Thought it was about time I blogged about it.

The song is called Meatmarket.  It was written a few years back when I was playing round with creating electronic music, and then more recently recreated as a rock song, you know, in a band with guitars and stuff.  The song was both a piss take of sleazy club scenes, and yet a grudging acknowledgment that it’s also somewhere where (much to my surprise) genuine love and serious relationships can ignite.

The video starts out with me walking into a room.  For some reason this was the hardest thing for me to do.  I’m not an actor, I don’t know how to walk into a room.  17 billion takes later we have me sitting at a piano singing the song and then the rest of the band come and set up.  This was filmed with me playing piano in front of a green screen, then the band were filmed setting their gear up in one long take, which obviously was sped up when it was put into the background. At about the 35 second mark you can see our make-up girl Sam come in and powder Mikes face.

Around 50 seconds in Ralph comes in and pushes me off the piano stool.  First take we did of that scene unfortunately resulted in me flashing the rest of the band.  Awkward!  So embarrassed but somehow managed to get over it to do another five takes or something.  Ralph did not push me gently and I had bruises by the end of the night.

If you’ve been to our gigs you may have noticed an inconsistency in bass player identities.  First gig was Harry, then in the video we have Dave, then EP release show there’s Tim.  Well thats just our little bass player dilemma.  But Dave  plays bass in the video, and he also, amazingly plays bass on this track and mixed and mastered our EP.

One of the comments I’ve been getting on this video is “You do know that’s not a microphone?”.  Yeah.  I do know.  It’s a lamp.  It’s a magical lamp that lights up more the louder you sing into it.

The fact that it says “Stay Safe” on the wall behind Tory as he drums is just pure coincidence.  The room we filmed in is full of random interesting graffiti and this wasn’t a reference to that time he had his drink spiked.  But it should have been!

The extras, first two in the room are Angela and Anna-Claire (if I remember rightly).  They came in armed with fairy bread and cheezles to feed the party.  Next we have the fabulous Pirate Jessica with a very scary Denis in a gas mask, lab coat and feather boa.  Then enter Kristina as a mermaid and her boyfriend Aaron the lucky snorkeler.  Kristina is also the model who’s lips feature on our album artwork.  Next on the video you see Siri come and dance next to me.  Plum Green is the hot young woman with reddish hair and a fake mustache. A great disguise but she is given away by her boyfriend George wearing a “I <3 Plum Green” shirt.  Christina from Infinite Flying Kick is wearing the gold hoodie and carrying a squirrel, and Robin from Infinite Flying Kick comes in next with his guitar.  Somewhere there we have Chris from Pilgrims Pyre dressed as a wizard and bringing fairy lights.  Then Reuben from The Rickshaws looking smooth, and Lana with her pretty curls, and Adam and co. crowding through the door last. Some of the last few people aren’t really seen in the final cut of the video which is a pity because the costumes were great.  Jimmi’s especially (huge mohawk, great punk rocker look).

We had been held up filming the parts without the extras due to a few technical difficulties (if we’re gonna get technical, Tory’s kick drum was vibrating the camera and a whole section of filming was unusable) so by the time it came to film with everyone, they’d all been drinking downstairs for a few hours.  It was a very fun party kind of atmosphere.  We had balloons and streamers and party poppers and other silly things.  Art department had done amazing things with a tiny budget.

The scene with the guitar solos, Robin actually plays on this track, Mike played on some other tracks but not this one.  (Yes, he is wearing a wig.  No, not because he’s going bald.  Nice try to the person who attempted to start that rumor!)  I think I was off taking a break while that bit was filmed but it looks like fun.

My favorite bit of the video is the bit where everyone drops out at 2:55 then magically appear out of no-where again at 3:00.  Everyone was crouched down on the floor then at the cue they all jumped up and threw balloons and streamers and started dancing again.  It was funny at the time, but seeing how it turned out I’m quite amazed at how much better it looks on camera compared to how it was being there and being able to see all these people crouched on the floor around me.

I’m really pleased with how the video came out.  It’s the first music video I’d ever been involved with and it was a lot of fun as well as quite hard work and a rather long night.  The people who worked the hardest are the ones listed in the credits at the end.  Simon, Sophie, James, Lizzie, Sam, Kendal, Anthony,  thanks you guys.

K.

The creation of music can be quite a frustrating process for me sometimes. Sometimes, songs just happen. Doing OK just happened in the fortnight leading up to the EP release gig. It was a simple little pop song I’d written on acoustic guitar, and I brought it to the band and we jammed on it and in no time at all it was this whole different song that I really love. Still needs a bit of spit and polish, but it’s the only song of mine right now I can actually listen to and enjoy. Usually with my songs by the time they’re constructed I’ve spent so much time with them that I’m sick to death of them. These are the songs that don’t “just happen”. Which is most of my songs most of the time. The newish one we worked on today (when we got bored of pre-production), definitely is taking some work to bash into shape but I am really pleased with how it’s looking so far. Looking? Sounding I should say. Yes I know I have a backspace key but I didn’t feel like using it.

We have a couple of gigs coming up. An acoustic one that honestly I don’t know any details for except that I’m playing with Plum Green (yay!) and another gig with the full band on the 20th of June for Jester Underground’s 2nd Birthday. And Jester Staples 23rd Birthday. More details coming soon.

Been getting hordes (or is it hoards?) of facebook messages and emails asking when the Meatmarket Music-Vid will be on youtube. As soon as it is available for viewing I will let you know I promise! Often I twitter when I don’t have time to blog, so if you follow me on there you might get the link a wee bit sooner than it appears here. http://www.twitter.com/kristieaddison

I need to start jotting down things I need to blog about as I think of them during the day.  I feel like I’m forgetting something.

Thank you twitter…  Here is an MP3 of a live recording of Doing OK from our last gig.  It’s not pretty or polished but it is a taste of things to come. If you enjoy it feel free to past it on.  Right click here and save to download

It feels like the end of an era.  It was as far back as 2005 that I began mucking about with home recording on my  computer.  Decided I wanted to write songs that felt right to sing along to in the car.  Many of the songs on the EP have been sitting about half written for a few years, a couple are newer, some we even played in Amperzahn even though they’d always been written for Transit of Venus.  I never intended to put a live band together, it was always just a little recording project.  Anyway, after all that time, all that writing and recording, wow you should see all the demos I have.  But yes, whittled down to the five favourites that were finished off with Miscreant Recordings and released through Black Doris Music.  And we have it. A product.  A little plastic square containing a little plastic circle upon which five songs have been etched with the magic of laser beams.  The first Transit of Venus EP. The pre-EP era is over and the post-EP era begins haha

The EP release party was incredible in itself.  It was so much fun, but the piano playing bit was scary!  I have to tell this little story… When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11 or thereabouts, I used to play in these piano competitions in Tauranga every year.  One year I’d left learning my piece for the Memory class till the last minute.  I basically crammed it the day before the performance. My teacher advised me to pull out of the class but I was cocky and adamant I could pull it off.  Played through the piece at home on the morning of the performance, went fine.  Got to the performance, walked up took my bow, walked over and sat down at the piano.  Started playing.  About 8 bars in my mind goes BLANK.  I’ve stopped playing and I’m sitting at the piano in front of an audience made up of fellow young pianists, their moms and teachers, and worst of all a small panel of judges.  My mind is spinning, I’m thinking “what do I do? what can I do?” over and over in my head.  Eventually I get up, walk to the front and take a bow then leave the stage.  Everyone claps and I am UTTERLY HUMILIATED.  It’d be nice to think I had a laugh about it years later, but I’m an oversensitive child at heart, and even now I cringe when I remember it.  Ouch.  So when I decided to play piano at the EP release party, I am getting all these flash backs to that moment.  I am sorry I was so nervous, my knee was shaking under the piano and I felt like that stupid little kid again.  But thanks everyone for being so supportive, it felt good to play piano for you all even though I was a little terrified.  It was a huge relief to get up on stage with the band.  Mike was the one who talked me into getting a band together for TOV, when Tory agreed to come on board it really became a reality.  For the EP release gig we had Tim on bass who is also a wicked drummer for a band called Turning Tricks.  My highlight of the gig was Tim and Tory dueling on drums, it’s a point where I can take a back seat and enjoy their playing.  I am in awe of good drummers!

My phone won’t stop ringing. I have lost many trains of thought today!

I’m gonna write some more about stuff later, lost my writing mojo haha.  Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such an awesome night.  Special thanks to Plum Green,Turning Tricks,  Jester Events, Black Doris Music, Smoove (Clothing), The Dogs Bollix, all the wonderful contributers to the EP and the Meatmarket Music video. Just, thanks everyone.  I could never have done this on my own.