Reviewminator
Fill your reviewhole with reviews! So this site has laid pretty dormant for a while. Life has been happening. As a result there hasn’t been much published here barring the odd theatre review done by our wonderful theatre critic! Recently I had a conversation with a friend and it sparked my interest again. It’s Comedy Festival time and I’m reviewing a bunch of shows. So with this in mind, I’ve decided to focus the Ruminator on reviews. We’ll review theatre, music, film, theatre, restaurants, food, stand-up comedy…anything. We will review anything. I want it to be a fun place where you can get arts and culture reviews, tech reviews, etc.…
Read More
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox
Scott Bradlee’s Post-modern Jukebox: The Opera House, 18 October I’ve been a big fan of Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox for years. Their soulful jazz/swing covers of pop hits is just the right way to help me know what’s popular with the kids these days, but without having to actually listen to them in their modern renditions. I missed their show last year and I was gutted, but then this year I saw they were coming back! And there was no way I was missing them again. I even flew down from Auckland where I’d been working just so I could make the show. My date and I arrived a few…
Read More
Slow Listener
ANIMA – Thom Yorke Like just about everyone I went kind of mad on Radiohead in the mid-1990s. There was something angry, anxious and acutely pained in their music. They were also articulate, smart and still somehow proper fuck off rock n’ roll. This hard to find acoustic version of Creep from the Itch EP sums up their unhyped humanity screaming umbrage into the void as a way of getting by. It remains visceral and sits alongside a long lost acoustic version of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here in my personal canon of strong, honest, and deeply affecting songs. My Radiohead sweet spot spanned 2 exciting years of music…
Read More![“my pleasure in other people’s leisure” -Spud [Trainspotting]](http://ruminator.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screen-Shot-2019-08-19-at-9.37.01-PM.png)
“my pleasure in other people’s leisure” -Spud [Trainspotting]
It’s the middle of winter. We’ve got a broken stormwater pipe somewhere under the berm which means that slowly, indefatigably our driveway is being eaten by errant water. The weed lawn is long over sodden earth where stands our hillside house, and I somehow have a cold, clear afternoon to sort all this out. The thing about getting a little older is that these become times of liberation and meditation where the job becomes automatic and your mind off its leash slow dances the cosmos as the dirt lifts and the grass dies. Enter Leisure. Their latest is hypnotic, ritualistic and it relies on groove-led repetition to keep it’s steam…
Read More
I’m not religious but thank god for Madonna
I listened with intent maybe 4-5 times and except for Dark Ballet (more of which below) really couldn’t find context so in an attempt to get an angle I began with 1983’s Lucky Star and made it all the way to Erotica’s Secret Garden before I had to leave the club. I learned then that I really enjoy Madonna’s vulnerable moments of Papa don’t Preach & Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, but really don’t have any connection with her dominance of the dance floor. It was around then that Madame X really whispered to me for the first time. 1. 2. Cha cha cha. This liquid fantasy opens the bottle…
Read More
The Dunstan Creek Haunting
The Dunstan Creek Haunting is bloody good fun, a piece of immersive theatre, and the perfect antidote to a stressful week, provide your blood pressure is up to it.
Read More
Breathe Long
Beastwars IV Album Launch, San Fran, Wellington 5 July 2019 We arrived late and just caught the end of End Boss. The diverse, good natured crowd was loving it and then awesome ockers Witchskull sent them over with a sound and presence that belied the size of the venue, and as Witchskull triumphantly left the stage the abstract LED backdrop lit up to reveal the headliner’s harbinger: IV. Beastwars’ biggest hit Damn the Sky was a dynamic and driven way to smash open a show and would’ve also been an obvious encore. For such hard sounding music, Storms on Mars is desperately vulnerable, honest and raw. I’m a dad to…
Read More
Nothing Without Intention
When I Get Home by Solange As a middle-aged pakeha male from the bottom of the world I can really safely state that i’m not the audience for this, but also I’ve had such a time with it that I want to tell you all about it.
Read More
Comedy Festival: Tim Batt & Disasteradio in Space Couch: A Live Comedy Chat Show
Tim Batt has been around the New Zealand stand-up comedy scene for well over a decade now. In that time he has perhaps never quite reached the potential that is quite clearly there. Space Couch is perhaps the best format for Tim’s brand of comedy and is a really really good show.
Read More
Comedy Festival: Hamish & Lynette Parkinson in Me ‘n’ Ma
This show was either going to be hilarious or an utter train wreck. The premise was so fucking bold. Hamish brings his mother, Lynette, on stage and then the two of them sit on a couch and talk shit and drink wine for an hour.
Read More
Comedy Festival: Eli Matthewson in Myth and Legend
In 2015 I got an email from Eli Matthewson asking if I’d like to come and review his show “Faith”. I get a lot of these requests and I don’t go to every single show, but I try to get to those who pro-actively ask.
Read More
Comedy Festival: David Correos in Better than I was last time
David Correos is not going to be for everyone. You should know that about his comedy. He is 100% for me, but I love the insanity.
Read More
Comedy Festival: James Acaster in Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999
When I last reviewed James Acaster in 2016, I said the next time he came to New Zealand he’d be doing a show at the Opera House or somesuch because he was that good that smaller venues couldn’t contain him.
Read More
Comedy Festival: Ivan Aristeguieta in The Fourth Floor
Ivan Aristeguieta is a Venezuelan currently living in Australia. It’s his first time in Wellington he tells us, but he’s got a strong supporter base of Wellington’s Venezuelan’s community to cheer loudly and laugh along at the bits of the show which don’t quite land – which fortunately are not many at all.
Read More
Review: Why are we still here?
Review: Why are we still here? Written and presented by Tempest Theatre Company
Read More
Review: Emily Writes, Rants in the Dark
Review: Emily Writes, Rants in the Dark Rants in the Dark is a play based on the book, based on the blog by Emily Writes, whose rant in the dark “went viral” overnight, and led to her creating a space on the internet where Mums who occasionally (or regularly) say fuck can find their life experiences reflected and validated.
Read More
Review: Mrs Krishnan’s Party
Mrs Krishnan’s Party Director: Justin Lewis Company: Indian Ink Mrs Krishnan’s Party, by Jacob Rajan
Read More
Review: Medusa at Circa Two
“Some of it I really liked and some of it I thought ‘What the Fuck’!!!”
Read More