A Wellington band’s clever music video that shows them making their own instruments has won them a showing at a big film festival in London.

THE Thomas Oliver Band’s video has been selected from over 1,000 entries to show in an international competition alongside videos from bands like the Gorillaz and Franz Ferdinand.
The Wellington five-piece blues/rock/folk band, led by front man Thomas Oliver, had their debut music video feature at the 2010 Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival, in London last week.
The video for song Goin’ Home also happened to be a first for the director, Jennifer Quinlin, which makes the success all the more impressive.
The video is delightfully Kiwi, and shows the band creating instruments out of whatever they can find ­– woks for cymbals and a rake for a guitar neck.
It looks like a simple enough concept, but the execution took a lot of work, says Oliver.
“We had a couple of weeks sourcing the pieces and there were a few trips to the dump shop, followed by some long nights in the workshop. They had to build the instruments so they worked, but also so they could be broken down – we still have them at home, they fascinate me,” says Oliver. “My girlfriend came up with the idea for the video, and she became the art department lead, taking care of the instruments and artistic props, along with my two flatmates.”
Handily enough, in their other lives his flatmates are a builder and an industrial designer, and his girlfriend, a production coordinator.
“It was important for me to keep it in the family, and it’s nice to know that three of my best friends were responsible for making this with us,” says Oliver.
He says New Zealand’s small size means the nature of playing music is incestuous – in a good way.
“New Zealand is a small place, and there’s not enough people to earn us an income. At the same time, there’s a lot to be said for the New Zealand music scene, and because it’s a small community, there’s a lot of crossover that happens,” Oliver says. “If a drum and bass outfit wants to find a vocalist and can’t find a drum and bass specialist vocalist, they have to find another one – for example, the Upbeats and Jess Chambers.”
The Thomas Oliver band has created it’s own little community called the Et cetera Collective, alongside Wellington bands Elston Gun and the Andrew Moore Trio.
“Elston Gun are friends of ours, and Andrew and I play in each other’s bands. It’s always nice to share the stage with friends,” says Oliver.
In the past, the collective did regular showcases together (which would double as huge parties), playing all sorts of music, including Oliver taking out the DJ decks.
“I’ve been a DJ for a few years now, and I’ve had a sideline obsession with drum and bass,” he says. “I’ve just finished a track with Concord Dawn, and I’ve worked with Trei a bit too.”
These showcases had a large cult following, and hundreds of people would turn up to be entertained ‘til the early hours at venues such as Hope Bros and the San Francisco Bathhouse.
“The emphasis was on good music and not worrying about scenes. You can really feel that in the audience, and it’s conducive to an amazing atmosphere,” says Oliver.
The singer/guitarist is also kept busy by a variety of solo projects.
He’s been one of the North Island Rockquest judges for the past four years, which he loves because he was involved in the competition as a school kid,  “so it’s nice to be in touch with checking out what kids are doing well.”
He’s also played in front of crowd of 30,000, as the opening act for Eric Clapton in Napier at The Mission in 2007 (Check).
“That was sweet – funnily enough playing to 30,000 people is the same as playing to a few hundred, maybe because you can only see the first few hundred anyway,” Oliver laughs. “I’d heard that [Clapton] was an asshole, but he was gentle, unassuming, and really nice.”
Oliver is now focusing on getting The Thomas Oliver Band’s debut CD out in the shops, hopefully by October.
Like their debut EP Every Penny, the as yet unnamed album will be recorded and produced independently.
“We started working on the album in June last year. Ideally it would have been out sooner, but when you’re self-funding everything, and it’s a completely independent release, it stalls the process, but that’s the way we like to do it. Going independent is increasingly the way of the future of the music industry,” says Oliver.
He reckons technological advances, including iTunes, make it much easier for musicians to self-promote and release their songs, eliminating the need for a “middle man” record company.
“It’s nice it’s heading that way, although there is also much more music [available online] that consumers have to wade through to find what they want to hear,” he says.
Hopefully The Thomas Oliver Band’s success at the Rushes Soho Shorts film festival means people won’t have to wade through too much music to come across this quality band.