Like There’s No Tomorrow is no morality play. The show is an ‘honest fiction’, evolving from the real life stories of teenagers in Auckland and Wanaka to raise questions around issues that affect young people in every New Zealand community: risk taking, identity, sexuality, dependence, machismo, peer pressure. There are no answers here. But the show raises some very important […]

Long live the synthesiser, long live LIPS! When I think of LIPS, I think of black and red. LIPS is the pseudonym/public persona of Kiwi-bred, New York-based electro pop artist Stephanie Brown, and the black is for her Noir-esque sonic landscapes, dark takes on the early days of synth, like ‘Night Call’ a, yes, driving cover of Kavinsky’s track from […]

“Keep cool ‘til after school.” Any New Zealander who watched television as a child or teenager in the 1980s will forever associate that phrase with Olly Ohlson’s tri-lingual (Maori, English and sign language) sign-off on the afternoon programme After School. Olly was a pioneer in the use of Te Reo on television; After School was the first show to use […]

  Mel Parsons’ new album includes contributions from Canadian legend Ron Sexsmith, ex-Waterboy  Trevor Hutchinson and New Zealand’s Andrew Keoghan. The album drops in April–it’s bound to be beautiful, it’s bound to be good and we can’t wait to catch Parsons at this year’s Festival of Colour. Mel Parsons cold-called one of her musical inspirations, iconic Canadian songwriter Ron Sexsmith, asking him […]

The diminishing presence of people, the opposite of north, Macrocarpas, sandflies, stories, ice, sculpture, home. What does “south” mean to you? This Friday sees the Outspoken Festival of Words & Story telling kick off for 2015 with the Legends of the South show. A varied cast of writers and performers, including Brian Turner and Owen Marshall, will take the stage at the stunning Corbridge Barn in […]

  There will be talent to spare on stage this New Year’s Eve at Rural TV presents The Branding, and best of all, some of it was home-grown right here in Wanaka. We’ll be especially looking forward to the sets from Wanaka-bred performers Jody Direen and Maggie Ruddenklau, two girls we remember performing locally as teens, now setting the national, and global, country/rock scene […]

  At Rhythm and Alps last year, the ON girls (and boy) developed what can only be classed as a mega-crush on The Funk Hunters. This infatuation saw us inventing new dance moves to their infectious selection of mindfully mashed up beats the first time we heard them, then following their tour like DeadHead groupies. We caught them at Summerlands, […]

  Bistro Gentil’s ‘An Artist at the Table’ series continues next week (yay!) with another evening of gastro-art, this time featuring New Zealand’s top portraiture artist, Stephen Martyn (‘Marty’) Welch. You might associate portraiture with fusty paintings of the Queen or the staged, picture-perfect renderings of Maori dignitaries by Charles Frederick Goldie. This is not that. Welch is probably best-known for his TVNZ series ‘The Sitting’, […]

  What’s better than summer, food and wine? Summer, food, wine and Heart! Yes, here at ON we were a little beside ourselves to hear that this year’s Gibbston Valley Winery Summer Concert would be featuring Anne and Nancy Wilson, touring again as Heart, the ultimate chick rock band that brought us songs like Barracuda (“You’d have me down down […]

Employment, probably for most people, is a mixture of frustration and boredom. Some days you mutter obscenities under your breath and struggle to stop yourself smashing in the screen of your computer, others drift by in a haze of ennui and faux busyness. However if you’re Sam Trevethick – keyboard player, guitarist, percussionist and producer for iconic Kiwi band Shapeshifter – […]