Excited to be bringing Maxine Funke over from Aotearoa. Giddy in fact.
Maxine Funke is a minimal folk / experimental artist. She spends most of her life working as a security guard in empty quiet Dunedin NZ. When she has spare time she writes and records albums, a project spanning over twenty years. She has four cats and is chipping away at a degree in theology. She has released albums on excellent local labels Brierfield Flood Press and A Colourful Storm as well as Disciples and World of Echo abroad.
Very lucky to have Hantu back in town and reformed for a rare performance along with support from Blue Communications and DJ Scar.
Hantu is the project of Philadelphia-based, Malaysian-Australian musician and ethnomusicologist Isobel D’Cruz Barnes. Drawing on her Western (flute) and Indian (bansuri) Classical training, Hantu’s sound world comprises field recordings, post-minimalist soundscapes and improvisation informed by spiritual jazz.
The show will be happening at the gorgeous Eastmint on Friday the 29th of May from 7pm.
Strictly limited to 100 tickets so jump on it quick via link in biography.
$5 Vegan Laksa / Bar / Card and Cash accepted
$25 / $30
Free First Nations tix.
Free companion tix
Late summer vibes at port noise, sound man did a super job, thanks for that! Special thanks also to bongo man clayton. Don't forget me when your bongo career takes off. I discovered you!
Maxine Funke builds creaky, tapey songs layered with guitar, organ, found sounds, and ethereal synths. The instrumentation holds space for the density of her intimate words and acrobatic melodies. Together, they give peaks of a beautifully complex and gentle world surrounded by the expansive stillness of the southern landscape.
We are lucky to have Maxine join the lineup, and can’t wait to see this reverent sonic world unfurl in front of us in real time!
Maxine Funke - Timeless Town
Kashual Plastik, 2026 edition
Second run of Timeless Town, that perfectly Maxine Funke kind of thing. Nine songs, enough to reasonably constitute a full ‘album’, released only to tape (and Bandcamp) in typically low numbers even on this latest edition and with minimal distribution, and announced with little-to-no-fanfare. Understated doesn’t cover the half of it, but would we want it any other way? It’s certainly fitting of the nature of the music, which remains typically intimate and gently melodic in a manner we might now consider signature. Still, there’s a dissonance at play here. Funke’s songwriting is better than ever, a sign of a developing voice hitting its true stride, and approaching something like classic in fact, moving between guitar and keys, and incorporating found sounds alongside her wonderfully morose voice in ways that represent a subtle evolution of approach. Unquestionably, this is the kind of writing and singing and communicating that justifiably deserves a much wider audience. That Funke’s still somewhat of a secret has, I would argue, very little to do with the songs and probably a lot more to do with geography and, I’d imagine, creative priorities. Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s better this way. While we wait for the world to either catch up or get caught out, an album like Timeless Town develops its own internal mythologies and charms. It’s those kind of albums, I’ve found, that end up sticking with you the longest.
FFO: Linda Smith, Cindy, Tara-Jane O’Neill, Joanne Robertson // @maxinefunke@kashual.plastik
Light at the end of the tunnel!
Pooped after the Xmas rush, up to 50 cuts a day. Bless all the people who tried to make conversation or tell me what they wanted and I just turned the music up louder. Service workers surely keep the rich fucks afloat. Merry Xmas. Speed metal was invented for a reason!! BLESS!
