Christmas Carols
A nice lead up to Christmas was us doing sound for beautiful choirs as part of carol services for two schools at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. We recorded the choir of a third school in their own chapel and they plan to make a cd from it. The beautiful voices make the recordings sound amazing.
Summer Road Trips
The Rock Factory team (including ‘Tailor the Ten Tonne Truck’, and a morning-sick Michelle) braved the savage rains and windy roads to travel to Coromandel for New Years.
For New Years Eve M & M (Mark and Michelle) jumped in on sound for Mile High and Transit of Venus at the Whangamata Summer Festival. The weather was far from summery but nevertheless there was an excellent turnout of people and the bands put on a great show.
On January the 2nd the Rock Factory provided sound, stage and marquee for the Coromandel Keltic Fair. This was the first outing for our brand new marquee! There was a great range of entertainment such as amazing acrobats the ‘Twisty Twins’, music highlights included Yebiisu, Mamaku Project and The Managers, the opening was really cool with a call and return style powhiri with Te Awaawa Omania and the Thames Pipe Band.
On the 7th we provided sound, stage and marquee for Tairua Food and Wine Festival. It was fun watching people dance in the rain in their makeshift rainwear (including the legendary black sack of course!), and in spite of the weather the atmosphere was awesome.
November last year we went on a tour of 5 New Zealand theatres with Vortex Tribe from San Fransico. We took along a PA, a lighting rig and stage, backline (luckily we have two sets now so the Auckland team wasn’t left in the lurch) a sound engineer, a truck driver and a lighting tech and had a lovely time. The theatres were really beautiful, and had amazing acoustics. A nice change from rock venues in a way. The theatres were Bruce Mason Theatre, Wellington Opera House, TSB Showplace New Plymouth, Hastings Opera House, and Baycourt Theatre Tauranga.
And speaking of theatres, the Auckland Town Hall looks amazing! We suplied PA, backline and sound for Roots Festival there the very next weekend after the tour.
Studio News
We recorded a Christmas song for a band called Interconnector just before Christmas, you can listen to it here. This was part of our Annual Mid-Winter Christmas Song Competition, Interconnector won first place and runners up were a band called Anna Sasson.
Christmas in the Square
Aotea Square Christmas in the Square and Christmas Markets was 9 days of music and festivities. We provided a sound system to reinforce the volume of an assortment choirs, acoustic musicians, bands and cultural groups. Also DJ gear including CDJ’s and our brand new exciting shiny turntables! We gave our new powered PA a run for the first time, it handled 9 days perfectly and we’re really pleased with it. It’s going to be available for bands to hire to take away with them on tours. New gear is exciting!
