The Maggie Pills - Return With Haunting Single 'Velobell'
'Velobell' unfolds with a discordant chord progression and lead singer Delfi Sorondo 's breathy timbre, creating a soundscape that is raw and arresting. Grungy guitars, galloping basslines and driving drums underscore the resounding chorus as the track builds with explosive energy tinged with unease. Complete with an emphatic guitar solo, 'Velobell' is a blistering fusion of grunge distortion and punk urgency.
The Maggie Pills talk about the inspiration behind 'Velobell':
"At its heart, the song is a message of resilience. It's about the moments when we lose sight of ourselves, when life feels heavy and out of sync - yet something within us refuses to let go. Whether you're wrestling grief, burnout, addiction, or just the quiet emptiness of everyday life, 'Velobell' is a howl from the void that says: 'You're still in there, and you're not alone'."
Accompanying the release is a gripping music video, directed by Mario Perez, filmed by Ryan Cara and edited by Sam Mapplebeck (Amyl and the Sniffers, Tropical Fuck Storm). Set in a makeshift forest shrouded in darkness, the clip complements the gritty audio production, evoking a dreamlike descent into chaos. Unflinching close-ups and jarring overexposure dissolve the distance between the band and the audience."The video doesn't just accompany the music - it embodies it," explains Delfi. "Every frame is drenched in a sense of suffocation, desperation, and emotional intensity, inviting the viewer into a world where escape feels impossible."
To support 'Velobell' the band will play a launch show at John Curtin Hotel in Narrm/Melbourne on Friday, June 13. In the live arena, the group has shared the stage with Black Lips (USA), Shihad, Cable Ties, The Meanies, Battlesnake, The Mark Of Cain and Private Function and have sold out multiple headline shows, including their ' GOLD ' single launch.
Led by Argentinian frontwoman Delfi Sorondo and Venezuelan drummer Mario Perez, the group formed in 2019 shortly after both members immigrated to Australia. Their music has been supported by triple j, triple j Unearthed, Double J and Australian Community Radio stations such as 3RRR, PBS, 2SER, 4ZZZ and many more. In the blogsphere, they have seen support from Rolling Stone (AUS), Pilerats, Backseat Mafia (UK / AUS), Blunt Magazine, The Music, Wall of Sound, Tone Deaf and HEAVY Magazine to name a few.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Otago Daily Times
Aloud and in full colour
It might sound like Carol Hirschfeld but it's Shayne Carter's story, film-maker Margaret Gordon tells Tom McKinlay. In the opening frames of a new documentary, Shayne Carter walks along the Aramoana mole as if it were a runway. He's coming in to land, returning to Ōtepoti, back from the world. There he immediately meets the rough acclaim of the mole's resident seagulls - and curses right back. But it's an uneven contest, even for as practised a crowd wrangler as the Dunedin musician. No problem though, because the film jumps straight to Carter unleashed, wringing rawk high in feedback's most seaside registers from his leftie six string. Take that, you gulls. It's emblematic. As Life in One Chord chronicles, Carter seems to have had an answer always, to circumstance, to distance, to tragedy, to success. Life in One Chord is the work of journalist and documentary-maker Margaret Gordon - formerly of Christchurch, now of Melbourne - its title taken from the first vinyl release of Carter's very nearly all-conquering band Straitjacket Fits, a squalling '80s four-track EP that carried the propulsive She Speeds. This past week Gordon was applying the final touches to her film - crucially, making sure the sound mix does the material justice - ahead of its New Zealand International Film Festival release. The film's a musical biography, tracing Carter's trajectory from the hard-knock playgrounds of 1970s Brockville to the world stage and back again. It charts a course of approximate parallel to Carter's Ockham-winning memoir Dead People I Have Known, but welcomes in the perspectives of others involved in the various milieu that set him on his way or who travelled with him. And indeed, the book was part of her motivation for the film, Gordon says. "It really spoke to me, and I was like, it really needs to be painted in with all the bright colours, so when he talks about the bands or the people or the places that you can hear it and you can see it." So, alongside weaving in essential servings of Carter's rich songwriting catalogue - including some rare live footage - the film makes room for voices from his early life, home and school, and an extended cast of Dunedin Sound musicians. "The key people there would be John Collie, the drummer from Straitjacket Fits ... and also Natasha, Shayne's sister, which is important, because, you know, Shayne talks a lot about family," Gordon says. The film-maker's rule was that the people included had to be directly related to the story. The film follows Gordon's well received 2014 documentary Into the Void as another entry in the musical history of Te Waipounamu - the earlier documentary focused on the Christchurch band of the title. Music, bands, people interest her. "I think being in a band, it's a really ephemeral thing, isn't it?" she muses. "Like, it's very hard to exactly pinpoint what it is that makes it so special, but there is a certain kind of magic there that happens within that group of people and it's really the transmission of that through to the audience ... just that spark, in that moment, when that happens, where this group of people is doing something and this other group of people is there and they witness it and they feel it and they get engaged." So, not a straightforward phenomenon to distill, to capture, away from a gig's pulsing cacophony, but in her film, Gordon has a great ally. "Shayne's such a good talker," she says. "That was one of the things that I was really drawn to about him in terms of a documentary subject, you know, he has really great reflections on everything, really, and he has a lot of really great things to say, so that's really important. "He's a performer, too, and so that's really good. Like, it's not necessary, but it helps when you're making a documentary to be working with someone who's not afraid of a camera, someone who's OK to gather themselves together and put on a little bit of a show, which is most certainly what he did." Carter's on foot, in his own footsteps, through much of the film, from the mole to Brockville Rd, from his old high school to tracking down Straitjacket Fits' original broom cupboard George St practice room. It's a story of making your own fun. And Carter's created a lot of it. Still is in new and reinventing ways - he's now composing for the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Gordon wasn't familiar with all of it when she started into the doco. She'd joined the Carter fandom from about the Straitjacket Fits, following it on to Dimmer, but was learning about his earlier output with Bored Games and Double Happys. The formative story of the former plays out at what was Kaikorai Valley High School, Carter trooping back despite some misgivings. But as Gordon tells it, his reception there also pushes out the margins of the story to include a community's pride in the boy who did good. "You know, he said before we went back, he was like, 'oh, I didn't really like high school that much. I don't know how this is going to go'. "We came in and then before we'd even got into the office, you know, the deputy principal, John Downes, came out ... and then a couple of other people came out and everybody came out welcoming Shayne - really loved to see him back there." That sort of slightly revisionist remembering - back in the day the school's then principal stormed out of Bored Games' abrasive punk-inspired school hall performances - is joined in conspiracy by a Dunedin caught at its blue sky best. There's no sense here of the cold, suffocating grey that those Dunedin bands of the 1980s were trying to mitigate. Gordon admits to being a little bit disappointed Dunedin didn't deliver on its meteorological reputation. "I was like, 'oh, OK, this is making it look really good. Is this true? Are we really telling a true story here with all the sunshine?'." There is, though, plenty of shade in the story. Grim reality foreshadowed in the title of Carter's memoir. Gordon had some difficult material to cover, requiring sensitive handling. A striking element in the film is the tight knit nature of the community involved in Carter's shared story. Among the most prominent players is his Double Happys partner in crime, Wayne Elsey - another preternaturally talented friend from school, who was there for the pre-teen hijinks that became teenage kicks and rock and roll. The Carter-Elsey chemistry meant the Double Happys seemed destined for the sort of success Straitjacket Fits later achieved, but Elsey died in a touring accident. Gordon says they thought long and hard about how to handle that tragedy, integrate it into the story arc. "Because his passing was so tragic, it's still felt very strongly, it's still very raw within that Dunedin community. So, whatever we did, we had to be really careful about it and respectful." She knew Carter was not going to talk about it in an interview so that responsibility was picked up by Collie - drummer in both Double Happys and Straitjacket Fits - who grew up a stone's throw from Elsey's childhood home. And if anything more was needed from Carter, he'd addressed that responsibility already in his song Randolph's Going Home, a rawly heartfelt remembering that is afforded generous space in the film. For all Carter's showman inclinations, Gordon says she knew he was not going to be offering unlimited access to his inner workings. "He has a lot of self-protection, and I think that, you know, I always knew that he wasn't going to do a big interview where he would reveal all. "That's really not what he's like, and I did know that going in." That contributed to her decision to use passages from Dead People I Have Known in the film. "It's all there. All of that stuff is very, very real and very raw in Shayne's own words." However, in a genius twist, those words are read into the documentary by Carol Hirschfeld, the broadcaster's honeyed tones mixing equal measures of her straight-faced professionalism with the double-take comedy of delivering the punk rocker protagonist's own words in the first person. There's more pathos to come, beyond Elsey's passing, as of the original four members of Straitjacket Fits there's only two still standing, Carter and Collie. Bassist David Wood died in 2010, followed 10 years later by the band's other songwriter, Andrew Brough. Brough left the band abruptly in the early '90s just as they were about to go stratospheric and, while he found further critical success with his band Bike, had largely retreated from the world by the time he died. As a result, Gordon's interview with him is particularly affecting, as the bitterness previously reported about his departure from the band appeared to have receded. "It was interesting, because he was a lot warmer about his time in the band and a lot more circumspect about the band's demise than I thought he would be," Gordon says. "I feel like he'd come to a point where he still had a bit of grievance, but overall he was pretty much, you know, had accepted that it was what it was. "I wouldn't want to say that he'd moved on, but he wasn't fretting about it any more, that's for sure." As the documentary does at various other points, Brough's story acknowledges the well-observed tensions at the heart of the music industry and the price to be paid. "The music industry is always a strange one because it's got this unhappy marriage between creativity and money," Gordon says. "And those two things just don't really work well together." A lot of Dunedin bands would have been through the same grinder, she says, having been identified by the industry as bankable propositions. "And then, you know, all of that kind of influence starts creeping in and things become very difficult. And I actually think that's an underlying theme of the film." Adversity, character and resilience are foregrounded again in a chapter on Carter's role in supporting Dunedin Sound progenitor Chris Knox, following his debilitating stroke, in which the Enemy and Toy Love frontman delivers his own lesson in gritty defiance. Knox's determination seems to hold up another mirror to Carter's doggedness. Gordon confirms that was the story she found, but it was also the story she chose to tell. "You could have made a documentary and not talked about that, but for me one of the big things about Shayne that's really important and that is potentially unusual is that he really is resilient and that he just keeps getting back up and getting back to work again. And even though he's had to deal with some of the most difficult things that you could possibly imagine, including, being in a band and touring the world and then coming back to Dunedin - I mean, that's going to be tough. "It'd be tough for anyone. Especially because, you know, I don't think New Zealand is very good at having much empathy for people in that situation." The standard antipodean advice to such vicissitudes, absent of much empathy, would be to "get over it". Yep, true, Gordon says. "But, you know, that's exactly actually what he does. And so, yes, that theme of resilience, it really was something that we wanted to tell because I think it's very central to Shayne's story. "He's a resilient guy and amongst all of this difficulty and tragedy, he just continues on. He's an artist. He stays on the path." While Gordon's film will initially screen at the New Zealand International Film Festival, and perhaps beyond that in a conventional cinema format, she has other plans for it. "We're going to regroup and create, like, a different version of the film that has more music in it and that will have live incidental music and that will tour more like a band." Music documentaries aren't always huge box office draws at the cinema, she says, and, in a lot of ways, Life in One Chord is quite niche. It is, to a significant extent, one for New Zealand about New Zealanders. "So, we always wanted to have another plan so the film could have a second life where it could travel to, like, music festivals and arts festivals and things like that." It would be a longer show, incorporating live music. It would be doing things differently, appropriately enough. "One of the things about Shayne, he was, is and remains a punk and likes to do things his own way," Gordon says in summary. "And that was the way we did the film - 'this is how it is and we're going to do it the way that we want to do it, we are going to do it ourselves, we're going to do it our own way'. And that's how it ended up." Life in One Chord screens as part of the NZ International Film Festival at the Regent Theatre, Dunedin on August 16 and 19.
Scoop
a day ago
- Scoop
NZ Band Tadpole Announce New Single
Auckland, New Zealand – 1 August 2025: Multi-platinum rock trail-blazers Tadpole end a 19-year studio silence with 'George', a blistering reinvention of Headless Chickens' 1994 chart-topper. Reuniting with legendary producer Malcolm Welsford —who helmed both Tadpole's seminal albums The Buddhafinger and The Medusa, as well as the original 'George' sessions— the band fuse hook-heavy riffs with cutting-edge production—proving they remain a vital force in Aotearoa rock. Taking the track's sonic punch to the next level, mastering duties were entrusted to Ted Jensen of Sterling Sound. The Grammy-winning engineer—whose credits include Green Day's American Idiot, Evanescence's Fallen, Deftones' Around the Fur and Pantera's Far Beyond Driven —brings his trademark clarity and stadium-ready impact to Tadpole's modern spin on a Kiwi classic. The single follows Tadpole's triumphant 2024 reunion, which reignited fans across the country and introduced powerhouse vocalist Lauren Marshall to the line-up—signalling a bold new chapter for the near-triple-platinum outfit. Lauren Marshall (vocals): 'Recording George has been an exciting experience for me, as it's the first song I've been a part of with the band. Collaborating on such an iconic Kiwi track as my introduction to this new era of Tadpole has been special. I'm grateful to be working with such an awesome team and putting my mark on our version. It's been cool to learn and grow through the process—George has been a massive part of Tadpole's musical history, and I'm looking forward to this next part of the journey!' Chris Yong (guitar): 'We've loved playing George since our early days. Recording it now feels like both a tribute and a statement that Tadpole is fully switched on in 2025.' Malcolm Welsford (producer/mixer): 'Getting back in the studio with Tadpole to record George was electric. There's a real power in returning to rock production with a band that helped define the scene—and hearing that energy come alive again was something special. This track is raw, urgent, and unmistakably Tadpole.' WHY 'GEORGE'? Originally released as a double A-side with 'Cruise Control,' Headless Chickens' 'George' spent four weeks at No. 1 on the New Zealand singles chart and remains a cornerstone of the nation's alternative canon. Tadpole's 2025 version sharpens the song's menacing groove with razor-edged guitars, Marshall's soaring vocal, and Jensen's high-definition master—bridging 1990s alt-rock attitude with modern studio muscle. LOOKING AHEAD 'George' is the first taste of new material leading into the 25th-anniversary celebrations of The Buddhafinger later this year—promising more singles, festival dates, and surprises from one of NZ rock's most storied names.
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
Kerikeri's world-class events facility, the Turner Centre, turns 20
'I remember driving into Kerikeri, what I thought was a reasonably small town, and seeing this massive events centre. And I was like, 'Wow, these guys are lucky'. Little did I know a few years later I'd be up here running the place. Careful what you wish for, eh?' While that initial surprise may have worn off after three years in the job – following a stint running Wellington's popular CubaDupa festival – Paul said he still found it remarkable. 'For a town under 10,000 people, to have a 400-seat theatre and an event centre that can accommodate 1000 people is just amazing. It's probably one of the very few towns around the world that [has] a facility of this size for the population.' With the Turner Centre widely regarded as the best performing arts venue north of Auckland, many touring groups bypassed Whangārei and headed straight for little Kerikeri instead. 'It's meant that we've had access to performances that you would never otherwise get in a small town. The capability of the stage and the capacity of the fly tower and the rigging system means we can bring up the likes of the Royal New Zealand Ballet or the [New Zealand] Symphony Orchestra.' The Kerikeri-based Northern Dance Academy perform The Nutcracker in 2015. Photo / Peter de Graaf The other thing that made the Turner Centre unusual was that it was planned and paid for by locals, not by the council or Government. 'That's a big part of the Turner Centre story. The whole building was built and fundraised by the community. So there's a real investment in the place, and that's why we see it so well attended.' The dream began in the 1970s when arts enthusiasts John Dalton and Doug Turner were putting on shows in the Memorial Hall, a possum-infested former fruit-packing shed. As the population and interest in the arts grew in the 1980s, they decided something bigger and better was needed. Doug Turner in 2011. Photo / Peter de Graaf Aided by fellow volunteers, they spent the next two decades planning, lobbying, cajoling and fundraising. What was initially known as The Centre at Kerikeri was opened on August 5, 2005, by Prime Minister at the time, Helen Clark. Its bold design, by local architect Martyn Evans, included a distinctive swooping roof to create space for stage machinery. The roof also gave the centre its early nickname, 'the ski ramp'. John Dalton died in 2012, followed by Doug Turner just late last year. The venue was renamed the Turner Centre in 2011; the main auditorium had already been named after Dalton. The centre's distinctive roof led to its nickname, "the ski ramp". Photo / Peter de Graaf, RNZ Turner's daughter, Susan Corbett, said her father would have loved to see this weekend's 20th anniversary show. 'He would have thought it was absolutely wonderful. And he'd be very pleased to see that everything that he and John dreamt about all those years ago has come to fruition, and is still happening – and in very exciting ways with Gerry keeping things moving on.' Corbett said her parents owned Kerikeri's Cathay Cinema for 35 years. They would host art exhibitions and plays at the cinema before joining Dalton organising shows in the Memorial Hall. Corbett said their legacy showed the value of dreaming big. 'Why not dream big? And it's just as well they did, because we probably wouldn't be able to afford it today. Their dream has happened, and the community has got this wonderful asset because of it.' A scene from Kerikeri Theatre Company's The Sound of Music in 2021. Photo / Peter de Graaf In total, building the two stages of the Turner Centre – The Plaza event centre was completed in 2012 – cost around $20 million. Gerry Paul said a commercial building expert had told him building the same venue today would cost more than $100m. Operating a large venue in a small town was not without its problems, however. In 2024, with rising maintenance costs and the after-effects of the Covid pandemic threatening to overwhelm the Kerikeri Civic Trust, the Far North District Council took over ownership of the building. The trust was still responsible for equipment, staff and programming. In the past year, Paul said the centre had been used by 43,000 people, had 558 bookings and given away 5000 free event tickets to youth. A shift since 2022 towards greater inclusion had included a series of 'pay what you can' events and initiatives such as community kapa haka. Bay of Islands College cultural group Te Roopu o Pewhairangi perform at the Turner Centre's 10th anniversary celebration in 2015. Photo / Peter de Graaf John Oszajca, a US-born actor and singer-songwriter who now lived in Kerikeri, said the town was 'incredible lucky' to have a venue like the Turner Centre. Now the president of Kerikeri Theatre Company, Oszajca said he had performed at the centre as a musician and actor, as well as bringing plays to life on the stage. One of his personal highlights was co-producing the musical Little Shop of Horrors in 2024. He said the venue had become a second home to him. 'I think having high-calibre performing arts, which you couldn't have without a venue like this, makes the quality of life notably better. It's one thing to live in a beautiful town. It's another thing to live in a beautiful town that has amenities, and it's another thing again to live in a town that offers inspiration to the people that live there, both as artists and as patrons.' The centre had also served as a springboard for young performers who had gone on to forge careers in the arts. One of those hoping to follow in their footsteps is 17-year-old Jack Laird, a Year 13 student at Kerikeri High. Laird had just played the part of Scuttle the Seagull in The Little Mermaid; this Saturday he would be one of more than 100 performers taking part in the centre's 20th anniversary show. On this occasion he would be playing drums for hard rock band Bandwidth Riot, winners of the recent Far North Smokefreerockquest. Having a venue like the Turner Centre meant a lot to Kerikeri youth, he said. 'It's so nice to have that venue, that outlet, to be creative and just give us a voice. I don't know what we'd do without the Turner Centre.' Also performing in Saturday night's anniversary show would be the Bay of Islands Singers, Kerikeri Theatre Company, Taylah Barker from Fly My Pretties, a duo from Americana folk band T Bone, local rocker Merv Pinny and Ngāti Rehia Community Kapa Haka, with local legend Troy Kingi the headline act. - RNZ
