2nd November 09



You know we couldn’t end a year that has seen James Duncan rocking and shocking the nation with his ‘Hello–Fi’ album and 7”, Unitone HiFi and Jefferson Belt re–uniting to spread 45 love, and plenty else on the RTM dancecard – without a bit of a splash. And do we have a splash for you? You will be metaphorically drenched in the goodness!

Over on the Vision part of our site (which is permanently switched On, in honour of the wonderful Tony Hart RIP) you can check, right now, the brand new video for ‘All Of This’, the Alt Chart decimating scorcheratory single from The Naked And Famous. Once again Joel Kefali and Cam Hooper from Special Problems have delivered something exquisite, with more achy breaky vid action than a Cyrus family re–union.

But wait… there’s more. It would be churlish if not downright rude if we were to keep ‘All Of This’, all to ourselves, so we have made the arrangements for a very special digital–only EP–ette. Joining the original monster is a sublime flambient remix from the lair of Mr James Duncan which casts the song in a completely new light, the trepidatious or faint hearted may need a play or two for this to work its charms but trust us… it will! Also in the packagio is Pace which as the title suggest is little more than a minutes worth of undistilled spazmotronics, recorded before the band had arrived at their settled, svelte and downright stonking current line–up, this track features Paul Roper (of the delightful Mint Chicks) bashing them pots and pans…yeeha!

Bandcamp availability is real soon (like in the next day or two), iTunes/Vodafone/ Telecom/Digirama etc will all be following on the 16th.

Look out for TNAF and James Duncan doing the gig thing around town, we try to keep all that updated on the Around section but them cats is slinky so you’d always be best to check their facespaces and mybooks too.

23rd October 09

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!!!

JAMES DUNCAN VIDEO COMPETITION DEADLINE GETS ROUNDTRIPMARSED TO OCTOBER 1ST…

We are reasonable people and having been informed that there’s a couple of contestants who are not going to be able to get their clips of ‘The Cupboard’s Bare’ in, in–time, and also that the original schedule was ultra–optimistic we have graciously decided to stretch the deadline by a week to 5PM, October 1st. Actually the graciousness isn’t really ours, it’s all care of Juice, Universal and Cheese On Toast who have all been super understanding and muy simpatico.

So…what you reading this for? …get to the phone cam, the super 8, the photocopy machine and knock our socks off… Judging and airing dates obviously fall back a week too… thanking you for your attention, over and out!

12th October 09



You’ll be needing to imagine a little bit of a fanfare … right here… because now that it’s been on telly and whatnot we can finally announce the winner of the James Duncan ‘The Cupboard’s Bare’ video competition, as well as unveiling it (and it’s a corker too) in the Vision section right here.

The winning clip, and the decision was unanimous, was by David O. Gifford from Fielding and while we’re not hipster enough to offer mad thanks, we would certainly like to extend slightly deranged salutations to David for a job very well done, and subsequent top geezerlyness. While we’re on the thanks thing, max respect goes out to Juice TV, Cheese On Toast and Universal for their part in this highly entertaining and most excellent fandangle. The other competition entrants also cop crazy love or at the very least unhinged gratitude from our end… big time.

So skip on over to Vision and have a gander.

In other RTM news The Naked And Famous’s ‘All Of This’ is currently sitting atop the Radioscope Alt Charts, joining two labelmates in what amounts to a sneaky Top Ten takeover. James Duncan has already warmed the top spot up by baring his cupboards (in fact he’s been a recidivist pest in the upper reaches of the chart for several songs and some time) and is still throwing his weight around in the Top Five, while Unitone HiFi have propelled their ‘Sneeze Off’ into the #10 slot for a quick shufty before they shuffle off.

James Duncan is also gearing up to unleash his hot rocking combo with a support slot for day–job Dimmer at Bacco on the 24th of October and with The Veils at the Windsor Castle on the 15th of November… loins are girded/breath is bated etc

The Naked And Famous also have a bunch of dates lined up (check their bookspace/myface for detailia) and SJD also has gigs on the horizon and a brand new project on the go… And there’s more to come in the very near future, keep this frequency clear.

23rd September 09

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!!!

JAMES DUNCAN VIDEO COMPETITION DEADLINE GETS ROUNDTRIPMARSED TO OCTOBER 1ST…

We are reasonable people and having been informed that there’s a couple of contestants who are not going to be able to get their clips of ‘The Cupboard’s Bare’ in, in–time, and also that the original schedule was ultra–optimistic we have graciously decided to stretch the deadline by a week to 5PM, October 1st. Actually the graciousness isn’t really ours, it’s all care of Juice, Universal and Cheese On Toast who have all been super understanding and muy simpatico.

So…what you reading this for? …get to the phone cam, the super 8, the photocopy machine and knock our socks off… Judging and airing dates obviously fall back a week too… thanking you for your attention, over and out!

21st September 09



MAKE A VIDEO FOR ‘THE CUPBOARD’S BARE’ COMPETITION…LAST FEW DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Regrettably we’re Larry Last on this hot comp at the RTM site, what with traveling and goodbye–ing and being crook and allsorts else – it’s been a blur. Thankfully the ever supportive sorts at Cheese On Toast, Universal and Juice TV as well as the venerable Mr Duncan himself have been plotting this one out and tooting the promotional horn in suitable blasts, and hopefully there’s a raft of vid–veloping folk out there makerating right nowest. Below is the blurble with a link to the track and ting. All we can say is get amongst it, there’s a few days until it closes and this is an opportunity to get something unique, brilliant and hopefully different – to accompany a frankly downright stunning song, out to people, without any of the palaver video–makery usually requires. Read on…

Cheese on Toast in association with Juice TV and Round Trip Mars Records are giving you the opportunity to make a music video for James Duncan’s current number one single in the Alt Chart – The Cupboards Bare!

James says :
”Shoot on any medium you can, from a camera phone to 16mm, laptop camera to the latest ‘Red’ camera and everything in between. I’m more interested in a good idea or a feel in the video than overblown production and ten thousand chocolate chip cookies for a crew of 35. You can star in it yourself or use an egg timer with a face on it to perform an epic head turn. Any un–convetional interpretation of the song totally valid and encouraged. The songs meaning is ambiguous at best but I guess it involves… ahem… a fleeting admiration and the sadness and madness that inevitably occurs the next day.”

Entries must be delivered on DVD playable disc to Universal Music – Site 3, Stables Building, 30 St Benedicts Street, Newton or PO Box 617, Shortland St,Auckland 1140, no later than 5pm Thursday 24 September (date extended, see above).

The Judging of the entries will be filmed on Friday 25th to be screened on NZOwn on Juice TV and the winning entry will become the OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO for this amazing song – and will be played on hi–rotate all the following week on Juice TV.

The Judging Panel are :

James Duncan – the man himself
Jim Pinckney – head of Round Trip Mars Records
Aroha Harawira – presenter of NZOwn on Juice TV
Joel Kefali – Director at Special Problems who have directed clips for Cut Off Your Hands, Tame Impala, The Naked and Famous, Gin Wigmore, Mercy Arms, Midnight Juggernauts, Dimmer, The Mint Chicks, and more.
Scott Maclachlan – Universal Records A & R Manager
Andrew Tidball – head honcho–guy from Cheese on Toast

You can download a copy of the song from in mp3 format here – but the audio on the winning video will be replaced with a much more high–quality audio track before it goes to air.

The winner will receive, not only the accolade of making such an awesome video and having it playlisted on Juice TV, but also, the ENTIRE Round Trip Mars back catalogue, including James’ album and a very limited GOLD cover ‘Cupboards Bare’ 7”.

*** oh and btw it should say available Round Trip Mars catalogue which is thirteen CDs, one 12” and four 7”s…Oh my good gosh! If the clip makes us grin massively we’ll try and find something extra special to stick in there too…

23rd August 09

We have been searching, wandering in the digital wilderness as it were, for many a moon seeking a high–quality mp3 joint that doesn’t come with the trappings, trippings…and let’s face it …stench, of most of the main players or outfits who look like they might not last the course. With Bandcamp we may have found the perfect solution – reasonable, clean and straightforward it’s by far the easiest, and most economical way to get your hands on the depth and breadth of the RTM catalogue in a range of ‘suits you sir’ high quality bitrates, file formats and flipping fandangles. Is a $1 US a track with albums at $10 US or less! Very cheap for you my friend. Crucially, outside of Paypal taking a snip, that money comes straight back to the artists and RTM, which allows us to continue overwhelming your ears with very finest fineness from now till infinity.

The only thing is… their on site searching is a little average (and they don’t cater for labels yet – plus ca change – funny how we’re always being lambasted and castigated for not being on the case yet most of the time we are shut out of the door or face things like iTunes not even including label on their basic info… for which they will never be forgiven…tossers!) and there was a couple of issues with names which makes the whole searching thing a tad tiresome…

So here’s the links to your top rankulating, pop chart decimating monster RTM artistes and their respective bandcamp pages. Also the entire Unitone HiFi back catalogue is up there too, available for the first time ever digitally, exclusive to Bandcamp, at least for right now. We’ll be linking these links into the site and the soon come Mars Mall presently.

Phase 5
SJD
Phelps & Munro
James Duncan
Jefferson Belt
The Naked And Famous
Unitone HiFi

If you’d like some visual grazing to accompany that purchasable audio feast then avert your mince pies to the recently established RTM Vimeo channel. Again it’s the cleanliness and fusslessness of the site and process, that gets our tick but it’s also the chance to get top quality big vids up there (though you can always find RTM vids up first, flashest and quickest loading right here at the Simplex, behind the velvet rope in the Vision section.)

There'll be more High Quality versions going up soon but in the meantime there's a fair swag of visual astonishizers and totally top flight vid action up there right now, for one and all. Come on, we’ve got 22 clips crying out fer a bit of looky love, you wouldn’t deny em that…would you?

3rd August 09



HELLO–FI IN STORES, DIGI OUTLETS AND WHATNOT NOW!!!!!!!! JAMES DUNCAN AND UNITONE HIFI/JEFFERSON BELT 7”S LANDED – RELEASE IMMINENT
JAMES DUNCAN ALBUM CELEBRATION AT D.O.C. 08.08.09, SEE FLYER BELOW… AND THAT’S JUST THE STUFF WE CAN TELL YOU ABOUT!

29th July 09

Donner und blitzen it’s release a go go, video a va va voom up here at RTM Acres. #1 on our good look chart is James Duncan’s ‘Hello–Fi’ which has been limbering up on the sidelines for a Mt Eden minute and is coiled and rrrrrrrready to worm its way into your affections. Resistance is infantile, compliance is not optional.

The CD contains five utterly essential exclusive mp3 tracks that will not be available digitally or elsewhere at all. That may be against the flow and cocking a snoot at current conventional wisdom – but we have an endless amount of love for the peeps that still go into the shops, and not too much respect for internet experts, evangelists and the excrement they tout and spout… so we’re doing it our way.

Ultimately it’s an expansive fifteen tracks for disc devotees, a pert ten (out of ten) for digital dallyers and a sonically superior, tonally terrific two for wax heads with the 7” release of ‘The Cupboard’s Bare/…Of Everyone Around You’ on 10.08.09.

There’ll be a fair bit of James Duncan in the media, starting with a top notch two page feature in the August Real Groove and even more on TV screens with a unspeakably wicked video for A Obvious courtesy of the emperor of the edits Joseph Jowitt for Headspread Media. Give your mouse a nudge and have a gander at it in our super stuffed Vision sectioneration.

There’s release celebratory hooha for Aucklandeers, muy caliente… check the flyer below, and the rest of the country is put on notice that Mr Duncan is assembling a shit hot combo and it’s going to be ON soon!

Also ramping up the release schedule, Unitone HiFi and Jefferson Belt put the lit into split 7” biz with their ‘Sneeze Off/Creeping Tings Of The Earth’ which is released in tandem with James’s 45. It’s major league nonsense of the very best kind, these two distinctly unclassifiable, sub sapping tracks are so large it defies science that they could even be squeezed onto a 7”, watch out!!

14th July 09

New SJD video! Click to view

Late June 09

To the untrained eye it may appear as if there hasn’t been a great deal of activity (or should that be slacktivity…) at the RTM Simplex of late, but that is why we only deal with people with trained mince pies. When it’s quiet around here it means there is plotting and prepping, pre–production, production and post production and lots of other p’s, including procrastination. That produces a lot of fruity friction and excess excellent energy and when that has built up to a suitable head, we unleash… like now.

On the right of nows, James Duncan’s dastardly duet with Bachelorette (someone we have an incalculable amount of time and reeespeck for here at the RTM cosomonautical compound) ‘My New Flumes’ has been unleashed to the b–Nets, and other radio stations of discernment and quality character. Racing ahead of the ‘Hello–Fi’ full–length like Usain Bolt on the lam, ‘Flumes’ is a firecracker of a track from an album that will almost undoubtedly raise eyebrow levels and the world of musical listening pleasure to heights never before witnessed… or something like that. It really is a very, very good record.

But wait… there’s more. Sean Grattan (the man who got a wrestler in a twist for SJD’s ‘Black Is A Beautiful Colour’ and made the Mint Chicks yet spazzier with his clip for ‘If My Arm Was A Mike Stand’) has made an eye–poppingly brilliant vid for ‘My New Flumes’, which you can check in the ‘Vision’ pod of this very site/sight right now. There will be more non–Govt. sanctioned James Duncan videos appearing here in the weeks leading to release on August 3rd, so don’t be a stranger.

Talking of videos, as we were, them that Taylor’s are on the final stretch of completing the video for ‘Baby You’re Oh So’ from SJD’s ‘Dayglo Spectres’ which should on screen, and youtubed and most importantly up here – early July style and fashion.

On the subject of style and fashion there is nothing more stylish and chic audio accessory wise as a svelte split 7”, it really is twice as nice. Following on from their ‘Gold Dust’/‘Up To Eleven’ 45 boomshot of last year, Jefferson Belt and Unitone HiFi have linked again – conjuring up a pair of tunes that defy easy description or categorisation. That may sound like a cop out but the best I can muster is that Belt’s is a Rastafarian monologue set atop Elizabethan Perrery–esque madness while the Unitone cut is a 65/130 syrupy stepper/stomper that might have a little bit of a late night wobble (or wibble) on … you see it was easier to say they defied categorisation.

So fresh, that titles are still in the mulling mode, they’ll be heading off to the vinyl presses very soon for a late July/early August release. There will also be a James Duncan 7” at the same time featuring the staggeringly stupendous, hook drenched ‘Cupboards Bare’ – it’s fair to say that we have it on lock Jock.

On the slightly more distant horizon The Naked And Famous are heads down, no nonsense – settling in a new rhythm section and producing a fearsomely fine, new single, which will be emerging in the near future with live dates to follow. Yipee all round, fuck winter!

March 09

Now that we’re all settled in to our rather sumptuous new web surrounds, it’s probably about time for a bit of an updatery.

With most of the RTM camp on writing, demo–ing and what–have–you–ing lockdown it’s old duffers and nouveau kids on the block Unitone HiFi who have actually been eeking something out. As well as a number of exceptionally exciting vocal collaborations on the way, their remix of Overproof Soundsystem’s ‘King Step’ has just been unleashed digitally for purchase here, you can listen to the full version here and we’ll let you know when the soon–come wax is available. Check the blog for the unreleased dub version, which really is the one in our humble hopinion, but don’t delay (no reggae punning intended) it will only be up for a limited time.

A bunch of Orientation gigs up and down the country have definitely returned The Naked And Famous to their normal orbit, after what was a stingingly successful support for NiN, that had the Reznor posting a pic of the band on the ninblog and allsorts. Right about now they are predominantly in writing, demo–ing and all that sort of –ing thing mode for the meantime.

Progress is progressing progressively with James Duncan’s ‘almost imminent/def not that far away’, debut solo splendidopiece (it will be a mid–winter NZ release seasonwise), containing the Alt Chart topper ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ and a whole heap more magical majikment in Duncanese.

Following a raft of gigs stretching from Beer Festivals to the Famous Speigeltent, proving that the band can play to all sorts of brows of any vertical disposition, SJD is easing off the circuit to hunker down and come up with his next round of scintillating songcraft, yip and ee!

We working…

The Simplex salutes you…

February 09

Ahoy and warmest welcomings to the brand new – good for you, Round Trip Mars Simplex. We’ve had to wave a sob–some adieu to the dancing spacebots, who’ve been doing hard time on our home page for many moons. Regular RTMees will notice new sections, including snatches from the catalogue in ‘Sound’ and artist links and dates in ‘Around’, as well as a link to Stinky Jim’s blog where there’s an exclusive Round Trip Mars mp3 or two, amongst the musical miasma and deranged mutterings. There’s a somewhat sophisticated new spin to our webular residence, and once again the mysterious Cherry Sprinkles has done us proud, and then some. News–wise it goes a little like this…

SJD – Last seen at the Zoo, wowing the (human) crowd with the whole band animalistically attired with ears, tails and allsorts. There’s a bunch more live action (check the Around page) on the way, with the Speigeltent gig on the 20th of March, particularly having the look of the must book.

PHELPS & MUNRO – Clickings, whirrings. The awakened dragon stifles a mighty musical yawn and then threatens beats for weeks. Please.

JAMES DUNCAN – While the city sleeps James has been fiendishly (but not grimly) plotting and perfecting his debut long–player, and trust us, this is going to be a humdinger of a rekid. We thought that the mesmeric shoegazery vibes of his ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ would be a gentle introduction, but it’s been charming the pantaloons of all and sundry from the District of Rodney to merry old Mosgeil, and reaching the lofty heights (#2 to be precise) of the National Alt Chart in the process. Check the blog button pon yer right to link to StinkInc, where the track is available for free download for a limited spell, and keep on eye on right here for all the latest from planet Duncan.

JEFFERSON BELT In our possession we have several new demos from El Jefe Jeffy and what more can be said than we are re–smitten, totally and utterly. One tune in particular has such strenuously strong properties of bowled–over–ness, that it is has already been singled out and requisitioned to appear on a forthcoming split 7” with Unitone HiFi, since that combination worked such a treat last year.

THE NAKED AND FAMOUS By the time you’re reading this The Naked And Famous will have probably already done their support at Nine Inch Nails only NZ show. Given that the big homme Reznor chooses his own supports, this is a biggest of big kind of deal. Now a fully fledged five piece with Aaron Short stepping out from behind the mixing board the group have dates on the horizon (including make it down to Welli again, where they were the most played group on Active in 2008) and have been writing and demo–ing like the on–the–move peoples they is.

UNITONE HIFI Diverse depth charges and rhythmic rumblings from the Unitone camp hint at album activity in the future… at some point. In the meantime, the word is that their heavyweight remix of Overproof Soundsystem’s ‘Kingstep’ will be doing the rounds soon, and then some 7” action in the almost forseeable future.