{"id":64346,"date":"2025-10-08T00:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/64346\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T00:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:51:07","slug":"on-the-up-kerikeri-teen-band-bandwidth-riot-scores-major-gigs-after-rockquest-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/64346\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Up: Kerikeri teen band Bandwidth Riot scores major gigs after Rockquest win"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe played Rockquest and continued from there.\u201d <\/p>\n

The teens, who are all in Year 13 at Kerikeri High School, have been playing music in separate bands since 2021, and have competed in previous Rockquest events. <\/p>\n

Lawler and Jarman formed part of indie band Moberf<\/a>, which won the People\u2019s Choice Award at the 2022 Northland Battle of the Bands. <\/p>\n

\"KerikeriKerikeri band Bandwidth Riot are Luc Lawler, Freddy Jarman, Alastor Fairhurst, and Jack Laird.<\/p>\n

Bandwidth Riot play mainly punk rock, pop rock, and \u201charder stuff\u201d, Lawler said, and are influenced by bands like Muse, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age. <\/p>\n

Following their Far North Rockquest win<\/a>, the band was invited to play at the Turner Centre\u2019s 20th anniversary concert in August, with multi-award-winning musician Troy Kingi. <\/p>\n

They placed second in the adult Whang\u0101rei Battle of the Bands event, held at Beer and Loathing in Whang\u0101rei on August 30. <\/p>\n

The band is opening for Hello Sailor and Jason Kerrison\u2019s new band Sonar Flare at Waitangi on Labour Weekend – \u201cthe biggest gig so far\u201d – followed by a gig with Wellington punk band Love Party at the Turner Centre on November 1. <\/p>\n

After that, the lads open for Auckland, indie pop-rock band Coast Arcade in Whang\u0101rei on November 8. <\/p>\n

They have also been selected as finalists in the Play It Strange Peace Song Competition for two consecutive years, in 2024 and 2025, earning the opportunity to record at Roundhead Studios in Auckland. <\/p>\n

\"BassBass player Al Fairhurst performs at the Turner Centre\u2019s 20th Anniversary in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s awesome, we\u2019ve had much more success than we\u2019ve had in previous bands,\u201d Lawler said. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll in this year, it\u2019s been pretty crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Next year, the music mad mates, who have all been through the Be Free programme, will move to Wellington after securing scholarships at Victoria University.<\/p>\n

All four friends, apart from Fairhurst, are studying music.<\/p>\n

They will continue to chase a fulltime career in music \u201ctrying to get as many gigs as we can and get as many opportunities\u201d, Lawler said. <\/p>\n

Bandwidth Riot\u2019s original track, Talk Is Cheap, is available on Spotify. <\/p>\n

Jenny Ling is a senior journalist at the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering human interest stories, along with finance, roading, and social issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe played Rockquest and continued from there.\u201d The teens, who are all in Year 13 at Kerikeri High…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,28358,23930,34726,25177,156,8231,3011,4968,16571,661,21494,40940,111,139,529,69,90,5415,10903,52301,5914,52298,52299,14729,52300,544,5163,47066,223,1961,810,6027,1530,80],"class_list":["post-64346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-alongside","tag-band","tag-bands","tag-bandwidth","tag-entertainment","tag-event","tag-four","tag-gigs","tag-kerikeri","tag-major","tag-monster","tag-musicians","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-playing","tag-popular","tag-racking","tag-regional","tag-riot","tag-rockquest","tag-scores","tag-smokefreerockquest","tag-some","tag-teen","tag-teenagers","tag-the","tag-this","tag-up","tag-win","tag-years","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}