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I Am Giant are working hard to live up to their big name.

The New Zealand rock band based in London recently released their album Science & Survival, the follow-up to The Horrifying Truth, the nation’s highest selling rock album of 2011.

The band, British vocalist Ed Martin, drummer Shelton Woolright (ex Blindspott) and bassist Paul Matthews (Stylus/Tadpole), spent the best part of six months kicking the album into shape.

They hung out in France, at DC Shoes’ Drop In Studios in St Jean De Luz, working with longtime collaborator and acclaimed producer/engineer Forrester Savell (Karnivool/Helmut).

Matthews finished off the album in his London-based studio. It was then dispatched to New York where it was mastered at the Grammy Award-winning studio Sterling Sound.

I Am Giant has toured extensively in the last year, notching up passport stamps from Asia to Germany and Poland.

Last month they performed at Orange Warsaw in Poland on the same bill as Limp Bizkit, Outkast and Snoop Dogg before heading on tour with Queens of the Stone Age as part of the Hard Rock Truck Tour through Germany.

“We wanted to make a traditional album that you could play from start to finish. I was thinking Pink Floyd,” Matthews explains while pacing around the carpark outside his London studio.

“We spent a long time getting everything right. For some songs we recorded the vocals three times in some parts.”

From the opening chords of Guethary through to the band-polarising 13-minute closer Bought With Ignorance, Sold With Arrogance, he believes they’ve achieved what they set out to do.

“The songs we picked were, this time around, the edgier, darker tracks. We’re proud of the album.

“Bought With Ignorance, Sold With Arrogance caused a bit of debate in the band. It’s a long, epic outro. It’s got Gregorian monk chanting in the middle. I got my mate Andy from an Irish band from Kingston to come in for that.”

The title is drawn from a lyric on the album. Matthews talks of a “collision” between science and survival.

As a band they took risks, Matthews says, experimenting with different timings and time signatures.

“On Minefield, the intention was to take a non-traditional time signature and actually get the groove of it from beginning to end.”

Caught up in their French surroundings, they included field recordings of French dialogue, a choir and church bells from the historic village of Guethary throughout the record.

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“We were in France, so we decided to try to use some of the natural environment.”

First single Razor Wire Reality is accompanied by a video by award-winning Berlin-based director/producer team Soren and Martin (Bring Me The Horizon, Crystal Castles).

“They are really cool guys who do great videos.”

The video for the second single, Death Of You, was shot at Kingseat, a former psychiatric hospital considered by some to be one of New Zealand’s most notorious haunted locations.

I’ve often wondered why Woolright chooses to paint his face black in a their music videos and also live shows.

“You’ll have to ask him,” Matthews laughs. “It’s an artistic thing.”

Matthews has been in Christchurch recently, working on songs with rising band Setting Fire to Stacey.

“Doing a few drums, that kind of thing.”

I Am Giant launch the first show of their nine-date New Zealand tour in Christchurch on Thursday.

“Some of those songs will be played live for the first time,” Matthews laughs.

“We’re trying to remember the words.”

I Am Giant are touring NZ with ten shows from July 17
For more information visit iamgiant.com
Tickets $35 plus booking fee

– Canterbury

Apes created by our own Weta should dominate Kiwi cinema screens this weekend, while a Tour De France tie-in provides light relief.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (M, 131mins) 1/2
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Critically acclaimed dramas True Detective and Fargo have pushed their way to the top of the Emmy totem pole, but where was Girls And Brooklyn Nine Nine And The Good Wife

Why no nominations for James Spader Or Sofia Vergara

In true form, the nominations for the 66th annual Emmy Awards were full of surprises and oversights, though it is clear in the key drama, comedy and miniseries categories they are bulging under the weight of the world’s best TV programmes.

This year’s list of nominees is notable not for who appears in it, but who does not.

Where is The Good Wife, which delivered what many consider to be one of the finest seasons on record It is a show which delivers top-notch writing, with at least twice the volume of most of the nominated TV drama series: 22 episodes compared to a dozen or less.

Where is Ray Donovan, arguably one of the best cable dramas And, for that matter, where is a nomination for Liev Schreiber whose performance as the conflicted fixer is one of the most mesmerising on TV Schreiber’s performance is breathtaking.

Where is The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s brutal deconstruction of the modern television media

Where is Homeland, not just a former nominee but a former winner for outstanding drama series in 2012 and outstanding writing in a drama series in 2013. From there to no nomination at all That’s a fall from grace indeed.

Where is The Blacklist and James Spader Was it excluded because it’s a network drama and, for the most part, the key categories of the Emmys are now the province of cable programming Or simply because there was no room

And where is The Walking Dead A decade ago “genre” shows (fantasy, horror, science fiction) never placed in the key categories but in the post-Game of Thrones, post-American Horror Story world nothing could be further from the truth. So how come the world’s most successful cable drama is so poorly represented in the nominations

The two key categories – outstanding drama series and outstanding comedy series – once again proved to be near-impenetrable clubs.

Only one new series managed to push into drama, the HBO crime series True Detective. It will face off against five well established nominees: Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, House of Cards and Mad Men.

And only two new series pushed into comedy: HBO’s Silicon Valley and Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, joining The Big Bang Theory, Louie, Modern Family and Veep.

Of those, Netflix’s Orange is the New Black is the most contentious because it is, essentially, a “comedy/drama” which leans towards the latter and is basically pushing its luck with the Emmy’s self-submission rules.

Knowing it has no hope of getting traction in the drama category, and that it technically qualifies for either, it has instead been submitted as a comedy where it is up against three-camera half-hour comedies and single-camera cable comedies.

In a similar fashion, the FX drama Fargo technically qualifies as both a drama and a miniseries, and has, for the same reason, elected to submit as the latter, landing in the outstanding miniseries category where the competitive heat is less likely to burn.

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There, Fargo is up against American Horror Story: Coven, Bonnie and Clyde, Luther, Treme and The White Queen. And with a slip of the pen its chances go from zilch to very, very real.

True Detective, meanwhile, could have been submitted in either drama series or miniseries – it’s story and cast will change for the second season – but HBO elected to submit as a drama series, no doubt confident that the sheer force of the show’s film star cast could push it to a win.

Those categorical blips illustrate the biggest challenge an event like the Emmy Awards has in an era where genre boundaries are heavily blurred, and competitive force has never been higher.

They also illustrate the inequity of pitting one hour dramas against half hour sitcoms in the comedy category, or indeed using the short commitment of a miniseries to draw A-list film actors to a TV project and then using their force of personality to upset the apple-cart.

On a program basis, HBO’s epic fantasy drama Game of Thrones leads the tally with 19 nominations, plumped up in creative areas such as costume and makeup, but well represented in the drama, actor and actress categories as well.

The rookie drama, Fargo, which became one of the most talked about new series and a breakout hit on the US schedule, sliced off 18 nominations for itself and is the second most nominated program. Not bad for a kid on its first outing to the ball game.

American Horror Story: Coven took out 17 nominations and the HBO drama The Normal Heart a commanding 16 nominations. Coming fifth with 16 nominations was Breaking Bad, the critically exalted cable drama which bowed out last year with a compelling final season.

On a network or channel basis, HBO leads the charge with 99 nominations. Its nearest competitor, CBS, is a long way behind with 47 nominations. Proof, if you needed it, that the Emmy Awards have been overtaken by a wealth of quality cable dramas and comedies in the last few years.

The network NBC was third with 46 nominations, followed by FX (45), ABC (37), PBS (34), Netflix (31), AMC (26), Showtime (24) and Comedy Central (21).

The announcement of the nominations was made by comedian Mindy Kaling and television host Carson Daly at the headquarters of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in LA’s North Hollywood.

The winners will be announced at the Creative Arts Emmys on August 16 and the 66th annual Prime Time Emmy Awards on August 25.

EMMY NOMINATIONS IN KEY CATEGORIES

Outstanding Drama Series

Breaking Bad (AMC)

Downton Abbey (PBS)

Game of Thrones (HBO)

House of Cards (Netflix)

Mad Men (AMC)

True Detective (HBO)

This post was originally published on Mashable.com.

Not all princesses get a fairy-tale ending.

It turns out, Elsa had to do a little time for freezing over her hometown.

Hollywood actor Cliff Curtis has been disqualified from driving again after pleading guilty to driving while his licence was suspended.

Curtis, 45, appeared in the Rotorua District Court today.

He was caught driving just two days after having his licence suspended on June 25.

The original suspension will lapse on September 25, and the six-month suspension imposed today will start from then.

Curtis was also ordered to pay $500 and $130 in court fines, the Herald reported.

The maximum sentence for driving with a suspended licence is three months’ imprisonment and a $4500 fine.

In 2004, Curtis had driven his four-wheel-drive into the living room of an Otaki house when he looked down to check a text message on his cellphone, he said at the time.

The car flipped, skated between two power poles, hurtled through a property clipping the house, crashed through the fence of an adjoining property, turned sharp left and smashed through a large window, coming to a stop in the house.

Curtis has always lived in New Zealand, although his work often takes him to Hollywood.

He has appeared in films such as Collateral Damage, The Majestic, Blow, Training Day, Bringing Out the Dead and Three Kings as well as New Zealand films including The Piano, Jubilee and Whale Rider.

In his upcoming film, The Dark Horse, Curtis plays New Zealand chess guru Genesis Potini who has bipolar disorder and tries to coach a motley bunch of Gisborne youths to a national chess championship.

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– Stuff

Australian Melody Pool has had a busy year. In July 2013 she released her critically acclaimed debut album The Hurting Scene through a major label and in the months since has played a sold-out tour of Britain, shows in the United States and has somehow found time to begin writing her follow-up release.

Pool, who used crowd funding to record the album in Nashville, has a sound that’s been compared to an early Joni Mitchell or Jackson Browne. With jet-setting across the globe, it’s little surprise that inspiration for the follow-up to The Hurting Scene can strike at any moment.

“It comes at the most inconvenient times when I’m staying at people’s houses and they’re asleep or something and I have to whisper into my phone. But I feel like the best [songs] come at any time, they’re not planned,” Pool says from her home in Kurri Kurri, a small town about 150 kilometres north of Sydney.

What is the creative spark: a lyric, a note, a thought

“I don’t really know, it’s really impulsive, I tend to just – I can easily go a while without writing because I don’t think of anything – but if I start playing one day it just kind of falls out,” Pool says.

“If I’ve got one line, it’s almost like verbal diarrhoea, it just comes out and I just scrawl on the page and I’ll be playing guitar at the same time. It kind of all just comes at once.”

Like many musicians, Pool says songwriting is its own therapy: “The way that I write is a lot like that; it’s mainly when I have something to say or feel like I want to vent about something – whether I’m angry or mad or just empowered.

“When I have something to say it kind of flows out, I don’t always know consciously when I write the song. [Later] I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately, that’s what’s going on in my life’.”

The next stumbling block is being ready to unleash the songs into the public arena, especially those that might share Pool’s most intimate thoughts and feelings, showing herself at her most vulnerable. Pool was particularly hesitant about two songs from The Hurting Scene: On the Morrow and Henry.

“I wrote them thinking no-one would ever hear them and I showed them to my producer and he was like, ‘You have to put that on the record’, and I was like, ‘I can’t do it, it’s too close’. He was like, ‘That’s what people want, they respond to it and relate to it’. I’m really glad I put them on there even though it was scary at the time.”

Fan feedback since the album’s release has only reinforced her decision to bare her soul. Her album even helped salvage a friend’s broken relationship.

“It’s really amazing, I’ve had a lot of people who feel they relate to the songs a lot and they’re going through similar things,” Pool says.

“A friend of mine had broken up with his girlfriend and knew that she was listening to my record a lot.

“He started listening to my record to see how she was feeling and why she liked my record so much. He realised how much he was hurting her and he changed and now they’re totally in love.”

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Though Pool is planning a move to Melbourne by the end of the year and feels the pang to tour when she is home, she will always consider Kurri Kurri, in New South Wales’ winery-rich Hunter Valley, her base.

“I get homesick when I’m on the road and then when I’m home I get tour sick, like I want to be on tour again,” she says.

Pool also plans a return to Nashville this year to record her second album. She hopes to work with the same musicians she did on The Hurting Scene, with the addition of a strings section. She’ll also increase the recording time, to somewhere around two to three weeks. It might sound short, but Pool prefers to record live takes of the band playing as one in the studio.

“We did the first record live and in about six days it was all done and I’m hoping to do that again, and try and do it really full on as a live band,” she says.

“It’s a mixture of actually capturing the song in full and how it is played live, so I guess to me that’s how a song is meant to be played. It’s also good for me because I do so many gigs. It’s kind of like it’s more normal and natural for me to play live, so I play my best when I do and I want my best to be on the record.”

First, though, Pool heads for New Zealand for a co-headline tour with Kiwi Marlon Williams, who has made a name for himself in Australia since relocating there last year. The shows will give Pool a chance to road test some of the material she’s written for album No 2.

“I’ve been playing a few new ones lately at live shows so I might sneak in a few really new ones and see how people respond to them,” she said.

She’s looking forward to her home-town show, always a highlight.

“It’s amazing, it’s awesome. I know so many people [in the crowd], I’ll look out and it’s like my birthday party or something – all my friends are there.

– Melody Pool and Marlon Williams play Wellington’s San Francisco Bath House tomorrow with support from Aldous Harding.

Not sure what’s good on TV The TV Guide has rounded up the five best shows this week.

Live fast and dive young

An extreme sports fanatic takes his passion to fatal extremes when he plunges off a cliff in a ball of flames in TV1’s British murder mystery, Young Gods, this Saturday. Next minute, Vera’s on the scene looking at the mess he made. That’s DCI Vera Stanhope, by the way, played by Brenda Blethyn in the latest instalment of her award-winning crime drama series, Vera. We say this because TV1 has for some reason decided to drop the “Vera” from the title of the episode. The DCI wouldn’t be best pleased with that! (TV1, Saturday, 9.35pm)

Unsung heroes of Erebus

While the nation reeled at the shock of the Erebus disaster in November 1979, a small group of police officers and mountaineers quietly packed their bags and prepared for the job from hell: finding and recovering 257 bodies from the frozen wastes of Antarctica on the slopes of a volcano. They risked life and limb to do it and theirs is a story that has needed telling ever since, and the TV1 documentary drama Erebus: Operation Overdue does just that this week. (TV1, Sunday, 8.30pm)

Last man standing

Is the last man standing from the original cast of Two And A Half Men about to go down on bended knee and propose marriage Why, yes, he is, in the two-part season finale of the long-running US sitcom. Gretchen is the latest object of Alan Harper’s seemingly insatiable desires and he has convinced himself that she is the one for him. All he needs to do now is tell Gretchen’s brother, Larry, about his earlier relationship with Larry’s bride-to-be, Lyndsey. (TV2, Tuesday, 8.55pm)

Do it yourself!

It’s not only in New Zealand where real estate prices are putting home ownership further and further out of some people’s reach. The same is happening on the other side of the world – to the extent that some people are wondering if it would be easier and cheaper to design and build their own homes from scratch. The reality series, The House That 100K Built follows some of these ambitious self-builders to see exactly what they expect from a relatively small budget. (TV3, Tuesday, 7.30pm)

Back from the dead

If you were a fan of Lost, you may want to check out the latest, critically-acclaimed supernatural mystery series out of the US, titled Resurrection. It all begins when a boy believed drowned in a small Missouri town in 1982 turns up in China – apparently having not aged a day. So far, so Close Encounters, you may think. But the boy is not the only one, and pretty soon, more dead people begin knocking on the doors of their former homes. And it’s not even Halloween. (TV2, Wednesday, 8.55pm)

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– Stuff