I am…

    My real name is Sarena Close, I’m 24 and I live in New Brighton with my husband Chris who plays drums for the Mousey band. We are both musicians and work full time in music. Our main hustle is working for a small company called Rattle & Strum, we book all the music for Fat Eddies, Craft Embassy, The Brewery while performing a lot of background music at all of those venues. I also teach piano at Heaton Intermediate. The thing that fulfills me most is writing my own music. I hope to make Mousey a full time deal in the future.

My idea behind the mix… 

    All of these songs on this playlist may look incohesive to a passerby but all the tracks have one common denominator which is me. I love each one of these tracks and every single song speaks the language of my heart (wow so cheesy). I’ve gone on such an intense and sometimes frustrating journey trying to find myself and my tastes. I had to fight for my own voice to be the loudest when it comes to what I like. Ever since high-school I’ve found myself trusting the tastes of others more than my own. For example, my teacher really loved Snarky Puppy and so I somehow tricked myself into thinking I liked Snarky Puppy too, it was like I was looking for a right and wrong in music. Well anyway, I’ve definitely come out of that and all you need to know is that all of these recordings comfort me.

My favourite spots in Christchurch…

    Because I play covers gigs as a super side hustle, I actually don’t go out much to just hang out. If I just had a 9-5 kind of job I’d hang out at Smash Palace. The record store, Ride On Super Sound, that was at the Darkroom is now at Smashies on the top floor, it’s amazing up there.

A trend I’m really into at the moment…

    I wouldn’t say I follow fashion trends, I actually wear a kind of uniform like a cartoon character. I don’t have heaps of spare cash lying around so I save up and buy one expensivish outfit and I wear it pretty much every day for 6 months or so. I have two different shades of Docs (brown and cherry red) that I wear almost every day and they’ll probably last me for most of my life. Unless I’m going to a wedding or it’s super cold, you’re going to find me wearing in a long bright blue jumpsuit with my Docs. I guess you could say the trend I’m into is ‘anti-fast fashion’.

Five people I would invite to Friday Beers at Infinite Definite…

    Seth MacFarlane, Ryan Gosling, Graham Norton (to make sure the conversation flows all good), Thom Yorke and Alan Rickman’s Ghost.

My fashion icons…

    Marc Jacobs, Lana Del Rey and David Bowie

My go to performance outfit…

    This was last seasons uniform (while I was on tour).

How can we support you?

    Nostalgia Festival is coming up this week! I’m going to be playing with my full band and we’ll be performing some new tunes from the album I’m currently writing so it’s pretty much worth buying a ticket just for that.