21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Taane's ground-breaking sound and vision experience a hit
Tiki Taane. PHOTO: ODT FILES
A fully immersive sound and vision experience delivered by Tiki Taane enveloped the large audience at the Glenroy Auditorium on Wednesday night.
Chamber Music New Zealand shows itself prepared to showcase Aotearoa's avant garde music and encompass a new audience. The stage is set with a light drawing of full-facial moko wearing headphones.
Tiki Taane is one of Aotearoa's award-winning and experimental artists in improvisation and bass culture from his beginnings in Salmonella Dub. He has expanded his artistic range to include directing and producing film and collaborations with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. He is an multimedia artist of extraordinary stamina and versatility. His improvisational skills mean that each performance is unique.
For this tour Taane has collaborated with digital artist Kereama Taepa, whose transformation of traditional Māori patterns into the digital realm are mesmerisingly beautiful. Three-dimensional figures of Atua slowly rotate and twist. The stage is darkened as Taane deftly moves between his instruments. The intricacy of his rhythmic patterns wax and wane with timely innovation. Taane's charm takes a cheeky twist as he employs a hammer against bamboo, a stick against a cheese grater and dramatically pulses the motor of an electric drill. His artistry is boundless.
The listener travels with the pulse of karakia and sometimes too static images of three Atua, te Uira, god of lightening and therefore electricity, Tanemahuta, who kicks open the earth's creative space and Hine te Iwaiwa who inspires weaving and manipulates visual imagery.
Taane remains aware of how far he can take his audience. The performance closes with a grounding guitar solo from Salmonella Dub and with him leading the audience in Hine e Hine.
Everyone left the auditorium with smiles on their faces having experienced something uniquely ground breaking, performed and produced excellently.