Click here to RSVP to the Facebook Event for this show.
We will be playing as a four-piece for the first time on Friday the 10th of September at The Garden Club.
We have Fuyuko’s Fables opening for us.
We have been rehearsing with Louis Thompson-Munn on keys for a month now and it is sounding fantastic. We’re all really looking forward to playing you our new sound.
Come check it out!
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You may have noticed that the riverblind site is a bit of a mess right now. The sidebar is screwed up and there are weird messages like “post 5″ etc.
I’m sorry if you’re having trouble finding your way around the site, I am currently in the process of re-building the site from scratch right now. I have called in master design Jaap Badlands to do the finishing touches and the new site will be up as soon as possible. So, in the meantime, bear with us and thanks for your patience.
Daniel Simpson Beck
For several weeks we have been keeping a secret from you. Now we can confess: Yes, Riverblind has a fourth member, he plays keys and his name is Louis Thompson-Munn. He’s a top notch Aussie bloke and a wicked keyboardist. I’ve asked him to write a few words to introduce himself, so I’ll leave the rest up to him. – DSB
Growing up, music was very much part of my life, but I guess it wasn’t really at the
forefront or an obvious thing to me straight away. My dad’s record collection was what
gave me that first insight into a larger world of music from what I’ve pieced together.
There was usually music playing on the stereo at home and I don’t think it was until my
teenage years when I decided to amble over to the 100+ year old relic of a piano in our
living room to try and place some of the melodies I was hearing. I’ve got a bit of a soft
spot for that piano, even though it’s a semi-tone out of tune and it sounds like a tractor.
I was mostly self taught from when I started in my teens and then I got some lessons from
a jazz pianist out of Newcastle, Australia where I was born and raised. Before then I had
mostly only listened to rock and fusion type music of my dads and popular stuff on the
radio, then I started to get into jazz. By the end of high school I’d wanted to spend some
time in New Zealand which had become a bit of a second home for me growing up with
trips over to see relatives and holiday. I moved to Wellington in late 2006 and have been
studying jazz performance on piano at the New Zealand School of Music. I’ve come
across and had the pleasure of playing with some extremely talented people, chancing my
hand at new styles and writing original material.
On joining Riverblind I’ve found an enjoyment and interest in some challenging original
works and I hope I can bring some equally exciting material to the table. I’m sure I’ll
be nervous as hell at my first outing with the guys…But if I wasn’t I guess there’d be
something wrong.
But until August 15th you can still download it all for free!
Why you can still share it:
Because that’s what music is for!
Riverblind encourages you to share any and all of our music with whomever you please (yes, that includes torrent sites). The digital product is infinitely repeatable at no extra cost, so there is no harm in having more copies of it floating around and getting heard by new listeners. It is far better than it not getting heard!
So, enjoy downloading it without worrying about money, and enjoy sharing it without worrying about the law. And when the album price does go up to a minimum amount, don’t worry, you can still get the album for free if you can find a friend to copy it off 
A note on the copyright symbol we used:
Ok, you may have noticed that the CD and the digital tracks are coded with a traditional copyright symbol ©. And, yes, I know, we should have used creative commons licencing symbols if we wanted people to know they could share it. Sorry, that was an oversight on my part. And also there was confusion over the importance of being a part of APRA. Basically, APRA doesn’t appreciate the creative commons philosophy, but I’ll write more on that subject at a future date.
Take care and enjoy the rain! (Yeah right…)
Daniel Simpson Beck
Shoki Kamishima 1984-2010
Today, as I was practicing a new song, I realised that key sections of the bass part only existed because of a young Japanese bassist named Shoki Kamishima. Tragically, Shoki died last month at the age of 25.
I had only met him once at a gig in 2008 when he was still playing for Cripple Mr Onion. I watched the band play after opening for them with Riverblind. I was fixated on Shoki’s hands the whole set. I was particularly interested in how he was using finger tapping because it sounded amazing.
He would tap three-note chords with his right hand while playing a bass line with his left. I had previously heard recordings of other players tapping chords on bass, but I’d never seen anyone do it live and in a context where it inspired me to do it myself. When I got home that night I tried to do similar things to what Shoki had played. I found it quite hard but managed to stumble through the basics. Since then I have worked the technique into several Riverblind songs including the end section of Unsettled Scenes. That bass line and others simply wouldn’t have existed had I not seen Shoki play that night two years ago.
Rest in peace Shoki Kamishima, I met you only once, but your inspiration has helped me evolve as a player and I thank you sincerely for that.
Daniel Simpson Beck
Our distribution deal with CDBaby.com is creeping across the internet. Here is a list of some more of the online retailers that you can now purchase Hour Of The Wolf from. All sites have CDs available as well as digital except itunes.
cdpoint.com.br – (Brazilian retailer – site in Portuguese – I think!)
anapnet.com – (site in Japanese – correct me if I’m wrong, ta)
And it’s still at all the other sites listed on the shop page.
Happy shopping!
Happy Guy Fawkes!
This concept of teaching you our new songs before they are even finished comes from a brilliant move by Deerhoof.
They gave out sheet music of a song not yet released and had fans record their own versions before even hearing the song.
I’m gonna do it a bit differently though as you’ll see below. But first, an important announcement.
Gig Line Up Change:
Big Flip The Massive will not be playing at the Friday 13th Happy gig coming up. Instead Big Flip’s drummer Reece will be playing with another of his many ensembles: West Coast Bullies. (No, Big Flip did not pull out because I took the piss out of their name in my robot video…. I hope…).
How to play Riverblind’s new material.
Dave, Stefan and I have been having much fun writing new material at recent practices. If you want to hear what the new songs sound like you’ll have to wait a bit though as they’re not done yet. But this isn’t going to stop me from trying to teach you how to play them. The first one is easy:
Play a 3:4 groove for the first 3 beats of a 5/4 bar (for the last 2 beats of the bar just play the first 2 beats of the 3:4, but don’t play the last beat of the 4). While this is going on play 4 beats in the space of the 5/4 bar over top (that’s 5:4), then, just when you start to think “oh, this maths might actually be musical” break into a heavy Soundgarden-like riff that takes off out of nowhere. Done. Call the song something like: “Numbers Are Special” or you can call it something better.
Got the idea?
I’ll post instructions for the other song if requested, but first I’ll have to figure out what the hell Stefan got Dave to do on the guitar. It’s something like: loop 3/4 then loop 5 over that then play some fancy solo. It’s actually really groovy – honest!
That should keep you busy. See you on Friday the 13th!
Photo by d3 Dan
The gig at Happy last week went so well (thanks especially to MASC and you) that we are doing it again – only bigger!
Friday 13th November at Happy Bar we are putting on a prog* night of truly epic proportions. The original line up of Riverblind, Moonlight Flit and The Novelist returns and in addition to this is Big Flip The Massive. This will be one intense night of progressive music played by the best the scene has to offer.
If you do facebook invites click here.
Moonlight Flit were brilliant on Wednesday with their new 4-piece set up. They have recently released a beautiful album called Road to the Outside which I’ve been enjoying regularly. While I missed The Novelist when they started the show last week, I won’t dare miss them again on Friday 13th. I love their carefully crafted songs with exciting hits and… dammit, I can’t wait to see them again. As for Big Flip The Massive – where does all that energy come from? They blow me away.
So, as you can see, I’m really excited about this gig – it’s probably no surprise this show was my suggestion 
I thought: What’s the easiest way to see three of my favourite acts in one night without paying an entry fee? Oh, I know – I’ll invite them to play a show with Riverblind!
But seriously, this show is for you who loves creative music with intelligence, passion and intensity. Come on down to Happy Bar on the corner of Tory St and Vivian St next Friday the 13th of November. Just give us a fiver and we’ll play our hearts out for ya.
*Prog is a dirty word – as pointed out by Oran (spelling?), a goodly fellow who enjoyed our set last week. I am well aware of the word’s awful connotations, so I prefer the term Pretentious Rock which is clearly more honest. But here’s a question:
If you could slap a genre label on Riverblind, what would it be?
70 years ago last night, New Zealand declared war on Germany and entered World War II. Acting Prime Minister Peter Fraser called it “a dark day in the history of the world”. But something had to be done about the threat of Hitler, the man who intended to invade and take over the world. New Zealand joined the allies and entered a most horrifying war.
Today, 70 years on, we would like to invade the world in a more positive way. By spreading music around the world we can celebrate culture and freedom. And with the power of the net it is very easy for us to form a new group of allies and help each other.
Bandcamp.com is a brilliant site for downloading music. You can visit our page there, listen to our album, you can download it for free and you can share it around virtually any corner of the net.
Download it for free??
Yes, you can go to bandcamp and download our entire album Hour Of The Wolf for free as 128K MP3s. Just click on Download then look at the bottom of the box and you’ll see the “download the 128k mp3 for free” link. Higher bitrates cost the small sum of $1US per song, but if you’d rather not spend anything then please feel free to enjoy the music at no cost. All we ask is that you consider helping us by spreading the music around the net using the share function in bandcamp. (Of course if you’d rather just enjoy the music then that makes us plenty happy as it is).
Share and share alike!
You can share our songs by clicking on the share button in bandcamp. A drop-down menu lets you select which sites you want to place a widget on. The widget will make the album or song playable from whichever site(s) you choose, be it facebook, myspace, your blog, twitter, email. Check out the widget in the sidebar to the right. You can actually do everything from the widget itself – share, download and of course listen to the whole album. There are a few different sizes you can choose from too if you want something more discreet.
You can take over the world too
I know a lot of you are musicians too. And you contribute greatly to culture by playing and recording your music. There is nothing stopping you from uploading your songs to bandcamp and making them available to download and share. You don’t have to make anything free to download if you don’t want to – bandcamp’s options are very flexible. If you already have songs streaming on myspace then why not let bandcamp do it better? No join up fee – they don’t even get a cut of your sales. This blog could easily turn into a very long bandcamp ad, but the video on their home page says it all. Trust me, it’s worth it. And if your music is there then we can share your songs around the world too.
Let’s form a new group of allies for the love of music, culture and freedom.
Will you join us?
Due to good service by various postal services both online and off, Hour Of The Wolf is now available to buy on CD and for digital download the world over. You can order a CD to be delivered to you from amplifier and you can get digital downloads from both amplifier and bandcamp. Read on for more details.
This box contains the first 200 CDs of our new album Hour Of The Wolf.
Over 100 of these CDs are in the hands of those who attended our release show on August 15th. Another bunch of them are in the hands of those who missed the show and were so intent on getting copies they came to us directly. Another bunch are somewhere over the Pacific on their way to CDBaby in Portland USA. And finally there are the pile of CDs which have been successfully delivered to amplifier and are available for purchase.
That’s right, if you want a CD you no longer need to come up to my place and climb my windy path (thanks Carl). You no longer have to scramble to find cash when you’ve bumped into me or Dave at Jazz School or Airforce Band (thanks Nick Van Dyke and many more). You no longer have to get me to bring CDs to School of Rock (thanks Kane, Logan, Ben and the rest). You no longer have to ask me to bring a CD to your bass lesson (thanks Liam, Alex). You no longer have to figure out why your bank transfer didn’t make it into our account when you’ve asked me to send the CD via post (thanks Ngaio). You also don’t need to wait for me to find out what it costs to send the CD to the UK (sorry I haven’t done that yet Leah!).
You don’t have to worry about any of that (but we will still do it that way if you want a signed copy). Just visit amplifier and you can buy the CD, have it delivered and enjoy the album within a matter of days in most cases.
If you can’t wait that long then how about downloading the album from bandcamp where you can choose from a variety of bitrates ranging from 128K MP3 to FLAC and Apple Lossless.
Downloads are also the perfect option if you only want to get one or some of the tracks.
There will be more stores to choose from soon including itunes and CDBaby. I will continue to keep you up to date with all the stores that sell our music as they are setup.
