Cut Off Your Hands

When Artrocker was still in its infancy, a wave of kiwi bands helped bolster the fledging New Rock n Roll scene. Bands like The Datsuns, The D4 and The Rock N Roll Machine helped ignite everyone's new found love of all things rock.

Several years later and a new crop of New Zealand bands seem intent on doing it all again. Conan and the Moccasins made it to Tom Artrocker's 'ones to watch in 2007' list. So So Modern are bringing their brand of ecclectic, frenetic artrock to the club on August 28th . And Cut Off Your Hands – with an ear for an awesome tune and a fondness for speedy guitar pop - could well take the UK by storm when they tour in September with Foals.

“There certainly seems to be a new generation of quality bands forming all around the country” explains Nick, singer with Cut Off Your Hands. “A lot of that is due to guys like Blink from 'A low hum' putting on tours around the country every month, and exposing kids to good music. The effects of such tours is most evident in the christchurch all ages scene, where a bunch of bands have formed in the past few months, predominantly still in high school and all really good! (check out tiger tones, Bang!Bang!Eche! or Not So Experimental)”

“A lot more kids in NZ are coming to shows and forming bands, and are genuinely willing to participate in the local D.I.Y music scenes...rather than sit at home watching mainstream music videos of American and UK pop stars.

It's nice because, like all of the bands we've toured /played with here we've struggled away playing crappy shows to know one, and now things are starting to change, where for instance we just completed an extensive NZ tour with So So Modern (something like 22 shows in 25 days) where alot of the shows were packed out.”

With the release of their Blue on Blue EP, people are really starting to take notice of Cut Off Your Hands. They recently supported unfathmobly popular dullards Bloc Party at an enormo dome in Auckland, and have a busy few months coming up.

Nick explains: “ as of the 7th of august, we have ahead of us; a month writing in preparation for our debut album, before heading to Australia for a 2 week tour, then off to UK for the dates with Foals, then CMJ in NY, followed by Airwaves festival in Iceland, and then another tour of UK which leads us into late november/december which will see us returning to Australia/NZ for summer tours etc, and possibly recording the album!!”

Check out the band's 'Still Fond' track on their Myspace site. It's the soundtrack to a Factory Records funded remake of the Italian Job, with Ian Curtis, Pete Shelley and Julian Cassablancas chasing each other round the centre of Manchester in minis.

It deserves to be the hit of the late Summer.