Short Biography
Second Wellington Show announced!
Due to popular demand MGMT have added a second concert date in Wellington.
The band will now perform a second concert at The Hunter Lounge, Union Hall, Victoria University.
Tickets for the second concert are on sale now!
Don't delay, get yours before they sell out!
PERFORMING IN AUCKLAND AND WELLINGTON IN 2011
The Frontier Touring Company is excited to announce the return of MGMT to NZ for two exclusive shows!
After three sell out shows in a row at Auckland's Powerstation last year MGMT couldn't wait to get back to New Zealand and party some more! MGMT has become an international festival favorite with performances at South By Southwest, Coachella, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo in the states and the Glastonbury extravaganza in the UK. The band has toured with Beck, Yeasayer and Of Montreal, among others, while becoming a headline concert attraction in its own right.
2008's Oracular Spectacular established the band as a visionary force in pop music whilst follow up 2010's Congratulations unlocked a new musical odyssey that mirrors the psyches of the band's core duo Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser and exhibits hints of music from the last five decades.
With two revolutionary pop albums under their belt MGMT is primed to tour. MGMT has declared their love for the NZ market by announcing these very special concerts. Why not show them the love in return and catch MGMT live in New Zealand this March.
In-depth Biography
Finding an unlikely middle point between Suicide's hostile, proto-electro punk art noise and the sardonic, pop-friendly sound of the Flaming Lips, MGMT started as electroclash musical terrorists but quickly grew into an eclectic, brainy pop group with psychedelic overtones. MGMT first formed in 2002, during Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden's freshman year as art students at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. The band was initially known as the Management, and its shows consisted mostly of backing tapes, synthesizers, and prerecorded vocals playing as Goldwasser and Van Wyngarden engaged the audience in a manner somewhere between performance art and good old-fashioned punky hostility. By their senior year, things had toned down considerably on-stage and the duo began augmenting its live sound with backing musicians.
After graduating, MGMT released an electro-rock EP, 2005's Time to Pretend, on the tiny indie label Cantora Records. Good reviews (particularly for the title track, which would later crack the U.K. Top 40) and extensive touring brought the duo to the attention of British producer Steve Lillywhite in his role as an A&R executive for Columbia Records, which signed the band to a major long-term deal in 2006. Regrouping in Brooklyn, the duo partnered with another producer, Dave Fridmann, and recorded Oracular Spectacular, a far more musically expansive album that was released digitally in late 2007. A traditional CD release followed in January 2008, and Oracular Spectacular ultimately enjoyed both critically approval and commercially success, with the album selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. and going platinum in Australia, the U.K., and Ireland.
MGMT served as Of Montreal's opening act for their extensive 2007 tour, during which Van Wyngarden and Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes began sketching out ideas for a side project called Blikk Fang. Although Blikk Fang planned on releasing an album in 2009, touring commitments kept the members of MGMT busy, and all side projects were temporarily shelved as the band spent the better part of two years on the road. In 2009, MGMT began working with producer Sonic Boom on their second album, Congratulations, which was released in the spring of 2010. The following year, the band dug deep into their record collections to curate and installment of the LateNightTales mixtape series. ~ Stewart Mason & Andrew Leahey, Rovi
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