god bows to math

Some sweet footage of our recent Melbourne show courtesy of Matt Richards!

Both NZ and Australia were mega fun, best tour we’ve done so far methinks. Will post up some photos and such soon.

Wellington!!!!

Thanks for Friday, it was awesome. Dobermen brought the ruckus and Force Fields slayed. Was really great to catch up with some of our favourite people.

Even the drive down wasn’t too bad, we stopped in beautiful Tokoroa for bakery goods and made good time down to the capital. Got to share a meal with some of our favourite people in Petone and then share some beers with some more people at Mighty Mighty.

Sorry this doesn’t sound particularly exciting. Basically we just drove for 9 hours, tried to catch up with as many people as possible then left. I’ll post some photos and words about Whanganui soon.

Thanks to Nic for coming down (and taking the photos), The Havells and Eamon for putting us up, Chrisana for the beautiful dinner and great conversation, Dylan and Sally for booking us and the band bros for playing!

Here’s a tour blog for last weekend. Basically it’s me gushing for too long about how good all the bands were, using too many exclamation marks and not enough full stops (my sentence construction leaves a lot to be desired).

We flew down to Christchurch and met up with the FADOHT guys and went for a drive around. We ended up having a wander around the city which was a very intense experience. The last time we were there was when the September quake hit (we had played a house party and one of the last shows at the dearly departed El Santo in the days before) so it was pretty shocking to see how much the place has changed. The hotel Nic and I were staying in when it hit is still there (the Ibis next to Cathedral square) but a lot of the other buildings on that street are gone.

What is really inspiring is despite the city centre being in a state of perpetual limbo there’s some amazing musicians and venues making awesome things continue to happen.Darkroom is one of those venues, a small cosy place with awesome vibes and a superb beer selection, it was a pleasure to play there. T’Nealle, Jasper and everyone that works there are super awesome folk and the stage and sound were rad.

Salad Boys played first and they ruled, Joe Sampson is a beautiful guitar player and the sparse 2-piece set-up really allows for his playing to shine through. FADOHT played next and injected an older song into their set as well as the new one they played in Tauranga the other week. These guys just get better and better. Coate played third and are quite possibly my favourite live band at the moment. Everything about their set was perfect and it was a great feeling to finally play a show together after nearly five years of trying!

After far too many beers and nowhere near approaching enough sleep (big ups to Joe for letting us crash at his place) we hit the road with Tim and Dave for Port Chalmers. Chicks Hotel was just as awesome as it was last time we were down but now with a bunch of new owners (all of them good sorts). I really love Port Chalmers, it has an air of mystery and a slight weirdness about it that makes it a great place to spend a couple of days.

The show went well, we had more people come than we’ve ever had at Chicks and all of the bands were sublime. Got to meet Blackball in the flesh and finally see Space Bats, Attack (incredible!). FADOHT played the best set I’ve seen from them yet and Opposite Sex were frenetic and unrelenting. I got to meet Simon McLaren which was pretty rad and finally read some of the Principia Discordia. We stayed for a few too many Emersons beers and slept far too late the next day (even with daylight savings giving us an extra hour Cuss was still sound asleep until 1pm).

The next day called for bacon. Here’s an illiustration:

We got to catch up with the best rhythm section NZ has ever seen (Dave and Sam from Idiot Prayer) and spent heaps of time hanging out with Timmy (the man) which included a sweet trip to the bowling alley (which ended with me gloriously defeating everyone else).

In summation, Christchurch and Dunedin rule hard out.

Here’s a list of people we’re extremely grateful to:

Tim and Dave for joining us (and doing all the driving while we slept on the way to Chch), Timmy for graciously driving us around and dropping us at the airport (which has happened before cos Timmy is the man and way to generous), Lee, Lucy, Tim for playing and providing gear, Hope for lending me a copy of the Principia Discordia, Dave for coming along, Blackball for the poster, Tom Bell for the sound, Thomas, Will and the Coate dudes for Chch backline, Joe for the place to crash, JamesH DanR and JamieL for the great conversation, everyone at Chicks, Darkroom and probably heaps of people I forgot.

Can’t wait for Wellington and Whanganui this weekend! Will try and take some photos this time.

So the other week we played Krazy Jacks in Tauranga and fun times were had by all.

It was a real honour to play THREAT.MEET.PROTOCOL’s last ever show as a two-piece. Apparently the first show we played with them was their first two-piece show (also FADOHT’s first ever show!) so it kind of seemed like a fitting line-up.

FADOHT were on superb form, new songs sounded incredible. Deathbeam totally ruled and THREAT.MEET.PROTOCOL were in their own league entirely. With all the self-effacing rhetoric that gets passed around it’s sometimes easy to neglect to mention how good things can truly be in Tauranga. It was really good to see some friends again, the boys from Super Narco were on good form.

Tour continues this week in the South Island!

So we’re pretty stoked that we’ll be visiting again. The last Christchurch show we played was the day before the September 2010 earthquake. Since then a lot has changed in the Garden City, we’re stoked that we’ll be getting to play in what I’ve heard is the best new venue to pop up - darkroom. The show will be on the 5th of April which is a Friday and the Saturday will see us hit up Dunedin at Chicks Hotel (one of the best venues this country has produced).

We’re also bringing some friends down with us - Flogging A Dead One Horse Town. We met Dave and Tim when we played Tauranga back in 2011 and have done a few shows together since. Nicer guys you will not meet, you can download their EP for free from Hell is Now Love

We’ll be adding some more info over the next few weeks but for now here’s a link to the facebook event page for Christchurch and Dunedin.

One of our tracks was used in this sweet skate vid from Nike Australia! Big thanks to Chris Middlebrook for being an awesome dude!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and a few exciting things are about to happen so i thought it would be an appropriate time to send out a mailer.

First up a big thanks to everyone who downloaded the free EP (we’re now up to 400 downloads whoohoo!) and also to everyone who has bought the album!!

Here’s big news number one: We’re heading over to Australia next month (finally!) and our album is out now over there through Tenzenmen (who has released an amazing amount of stuff from some of our favourite bands - bang bang aids, DEAD, Dead Farmers, Hira Hira etc). The facebook event for the shows can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/events/338833572826101/

and these are the dates we’ll be playing:

April 13th - Adelaide - Crown & Anchor w/ No Action, El Alamein and SparkShifter
April 14th - Melbourne - Gasometer w/ On Sierra, El Alamein and Jess Locke
April 15th - Melbourne - Irene’s Warehouse (All Ages) w/ Medicators, Franco Cozzo, El Alamein, Stockades and M. Academy
April 17th - Newcastle - Pharmacy w/ Lennin Lennon
April 18th - Wollongong - Yours & Owls w/ Zita Grimm
April 19th - Canberra - Phoenix w/ support TBA
April 20th - Sydney - The Roxbury w/ Hira Hira and Zita Grimm
April 21st - Brisbane - Fat Louie’s w/ Nuclear Summer, Wil Wagner and El Alamein
April 22nd - Brisbane - The Waiting Room w/ Make More and Tiny Spiders


The album is also being released in the UK by the wonderful folks at Bomb Shop on cassette tape!!

In other international news, we are very proud to be a part of a new record club called Flexi of the Month. For those of you that haven’t heard of Flexi-discs (or Polish Postcards), they are a small plastic card that can be played on record players. It’s a really neat idea; a bunch of underground artists from around the world are featured and when you subscribe you get one very nicely packaged flexi disc per month. If we get enough orders we’ll be the third release with a track called Paper Trails (which has good as dude Michael Havell on vocals and guitar). Check out the website cos we think it’s an awesome idea!

For those of you in Auckland we have two more shows for the year before taking a break to write and record album number two (the first record took us four years to get out so we don’t want to end up being like Tool). We play Borderline at Whammy/Wine Cellar on the 7th of April and then when we get back from Australia we are doing a free show at Lucha Lounge with our good friends Used to be Apes and Flogging a Dead One Horse Town (plus one more special act yet to be announced).

Lastly if you’re looking for some sweet new tunes to listen to, check out a band called Next Year’s Love. Remember when Pairs came all the way to New Zealand from Shanghai and played some awesome shows? Well Next Year’s Love is F’s other band, somewhere between Band of Susans and Young Marble Giants, an awesome mix of no wave/new wave and their EP is free from http://nextyearslove.bandcamp.com/!


Thanks for reading!!


Chur to the chur


Martin, Tom and Sam

http//godbowstomath.co.nz
http://facebook.com/godbowstomath


PS If you are receiving this email it’s because you signed up through bandcamp when downloading our music. If you don’t like getting emails from us there might be a link at the bottom of this page or else email us at godbowstomathband@gmail.com and we’ll remove you from the list.

Having toured up and down New Zealand too many times to mention, Auckland noise-rock trio god bows to math finally make their way over the ditch, playing eight shows across Australia this April.

After acclaimed reviews of their debut album, god bows to math, and earning a slew of accolades for their live shows, the three piece tour up and down the East coast ahead of the Australian release of their album through Tenzenman.

The band themselves had a triumphant 2011; drawing their biggest crowds to date during their album tour, with blistering performances in Auckland and Wellington and playing their biggest show to date – radio station 95bFM’s Nirvana tribute night. The event, held at the hallowed Kings Arms in Auckland, saw a near-capacity crowd for the headline act.

The three members of the band - Martin Phillips, Thomas Morrison and Sam Cussen - make up a triumvirate with ideals as hard-nosed as their walls of noise, firing from the hip in a display of intensive methodology: just ask the ten releases already put out under their name.

Recording their latest release with Warner Emery (Double Ya D, ex-Phoenix Foundation) proved a priceless experience; emboldening them to strip back their sound a little more and allowing it to be mastered by the hallowed Chicago Mastering Service (run by Bob Weston and Jason Ward) was a long-standing goal of the band added indelible touches from Jason Ward that truly gave the band the polished (or rather, suitably rough) quality they have long aspired to attain.

god bows to math play:

April 13th - Adelaide - Crown & Anchor - with No Action and SparkShifter
April 14th - Melbourne - Gasometer - with Shit Weather
April 15th - Melbourne - Irene’s Warehouse (All Ages) - with Palisades
April 17th - Newcastle - Pharmacy - with Lennin Lennon
April 18th - Wollongong - Yours & Owls – support TBA
April 19th - Canberra - Phoenix – support TBA
April 20th - Sydney - The Roxbury - with Hira Hira and Mere Women
April 21st - Brisbane - Fat Louie’s - with Make More 

For more information, visit:
http://www.godbowstomath.co.nz
http://www.facebook.com/godbowstomath
http://www.tenzenmen.com
http://muzairecords.com

For media enquiries contact
Benjii Jackson at MUZAI Records
+64 21 129 8690 / e: benjii@muzairecords.com

So this hasn’t been updated for a while, and I (Martin) thought I’d try and update our masses of fans (all three of you) on what’s been happening in god bows to math world…

We finally released our album in November, so far it’s been selling quite well and people have said nice things about it (always great for our precious egos). We played some shows around the North Island to promote it in Nov/Dec and that was pretty fun. Michael Havell from The Postures has been playing a bit of guitar with us every now and then as well. We managed to play in Tauranga for the first time ever which was surprisingly awesome and have met some really great people on the road.

I’ve started a new record label called Hell is Now Love which will be a MUZAI-related endeavour focussing on smaller bands that get overlooked far too often, so far the bands on HINL include Lost Rockets, Mason Clinic, Hollywoodfun Downstairs, Proton Beast and The DHDFDs there’ll be a bunch more releases coming soon though.

In January we toured the country with Pairs (from Shanghai), their drummer Rhys was partly responsible for breaking up me and Tom’s old band back in 2008. Two nicer people you could not meet, touring with them was an absolute blast and there will be a documentary film in the works as soon as we all sufficiently recover enough to sift through the hours of footage. We played a show in Hunterville at a little record shop called Lucky that was amazing! So welcoming and thoughtful, they even had a platter of cold Double Browns waiting for us when we arrived!

Next couple of months are gonna be pretty busy; we have some shows coming up this week (with Ouch My Face for free at Whammy on Thursday and with DEAD at the Basement (AA) on Saturday) then the following week we are playing a Dead Kennedys tribute night at Lucha Lounge (don’t expect too much ‘cos we haven’t practised nearly enough).

March will see Sam’s other band Sherpa release their debut album and tour around the country in support, if you get the chance go and check them out.

Then in April we head over to Australia to play a bunch of shows with our good friends Make More, tour dates are on the shows page and a facebook event will be up in the next week or so. Once we get back we will be playing one more show for the year before retreating to a cave and writing new material ready for a follow-up album (expect something to come out in late 2013).

Our last show of 2012 will be at Lucha Lounge on Saturday the 5th of May, it’ll be free entry and we will have some awesome new bands supporting.

Until next time…

A really nice review of our album on Under The Radar. There's also one in this weeks Groove Guide!

Our Debut Album is Out Today!!!!!

Our debut album comes out in three days!!!! This is what I feel like at the moment.

mspandaandmrfox:

(c) Nicola Edwards

After a steady number of EPs and splits,across a wide variety of formats,Auckland’s best noise merchants and long-time MUZAI act god bows to math are finally ready to release their first full length album.

The eponymous release,out November 14th is three years of hard work from the group finally come to fruition. In true god bows to math fashion though,it wasn’t an easy process…

Originally recorded with regular MUZAI engineer Daniel Speight,the album was intended to be release in early 2011. One hard drive failure and Speight’s return to the U.K. found the band once again at a loose end.

Picking themselves back up saw the group turn to,of all places Whanganui to re-record the album with Warner Emery (Double Ya D,ex-Phoenix Foundation). It proved a priceless experience,with the region’s rich history of noisy guitar bands emboldening them to strip back their sound a little more.

Where Whanganui may not have been an obvious choice initially,getting the album mastered by the hallowed Chicago Mastering Service (run by Bob Weston and Jason Ward) was a long-standing goal of the band. It was the indelible touches from Jason Ward that truly gave the band the polished (or rather,suitably rough) quality they have long aspired to attain.

It shows;god bows to math meshes the group’s latest works such as the moody “Slow Decline” and “Paper Trails” (featuring vocals and guitar from Postures front-man Michael Havell) with their older work from previous releases. An amalgamation of the tried and tested with the new and exciting,which has allowed the band to proverbially stretch their legs – allowing for tracks you may not have expected the emerge from the group.

god bows to math is available on CD and digitally from November 14th through MUZAI Records (distributed by Rhythmethod NZ).

TRACK LISTING:
1) Slow Decline
2) Blues for Blind Lemon
3) Yr Kids Aren’t Special But I Am
4) The Ship That Sank A Thousand Faces
5) Paper Trails
6) How to Beat Your Dad at Chess
7) Sixty Degrees of Separation
8) Details on How to get “DONCAB” on your License Plate
9) Small Victories
10) New Designs for Hip Kids
11) Teenagers is Lazy Journalism
12) Smile &Nod

Big thanks to everyone who came out to the Nirvana tribute night last Friday. It was a blast! We covered Very Ape, Negative Creep (with our good friend Chris Rakete helping on vocals) and Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. You can read Benjii’s review in Volume magazine here (disclaimer: since Benjii is our label boss he has to say nice things). The photos above that beautifully illustrate the insanity were taken by the awesome Jeff Smith.