Hahko Meets Lawrence Arabia
My guest on the podcast this week is Lawrence Arabia!
The longtime moniker of James Milne only tells half the story. Alongside the highlights of his solo career, I’ve always been enamoured with his collaborative projects, from his work in Fabulous / Arabia, to the standalone ‘BARB’ album and now his live-streaming VHS odyssey with longtime creative partner James Dansey called ‘Goin Live With Chabs & Milky’.
Personally, the ‘BARB’ album, created as a month-long collaborative project between Liam Finn, Connan Mockasin and Milne is a favourite of mine, a rare combination of tongue in cheek lyrics, free-flowing inventive songwriting and immaculate sounds, I still listen to songs from this record monthly and wonder what the hell ‘I’m Not A Bird’ is even about.
I also feel extremely impressed and excited by his new venture, ‘Goin Live With Chabs & Milky’ which is a live session series, featuring talented local bands such as ‘Na Noise’ & ‘Hans Pucket’ streamed through VHS technology. New Zealand lacks media platforms, so to see someone building an outlet for us is amazing, but to see it done as equally creatively as the music it’s showcasing is what has made me such a fan and prompted me to reach out to James for the chat.
We talk about their upcoming tour of Chabs & Milky sets featuring some of NZ’s top talent including The Bats, Ben Woods, Night Lunch, Wet Specimen & The Phoenix Foundation who also get a shout-out for the unique talent in writing interesting songs about the middle career, family-vibe lifestyle James also finds himself in, how the responsibility of promotion and content has been hoisted onto the artist more and more of the course of his storied career and finally the most important question: which Black Cap, past or present, does he see himself in the most?
This was a great chat and I’m very grateful to James for taking time out of his immense schedule to sit down with us, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Thanks to Poynton Studios for hosting, Benji for producing and Lawrence Arabia for his time.
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