Port Noise by day. (Image: Rachel Ashby)
Port Noise by day. (Image: Rachel Ashby)

Pop CultureMay 9, 2025

Inside Port Noise, the FOMO-inducing festival ‘by musicians, for musicians’

Guest writer
Port Noise by day. (Image: Rachel Ashby)
Port Noise by day. (Image: Rachel Ashby)

Rachel Ashby from In the Pits meets the organisers behind Lyttelton’s Port Noise, one of the most thrilling new events in the music festival calendar.

It’s already a hive of activity when we arrive at the Lyttelton Coffee Company, the temporary headquarters for the Port Noise music festival, to meet the organisers. Rose Smyth is on the phone to a scaffolding crew, coordinating the construction of two towering structures for Rowan Pierce’s installation BEACONS. Ben Woods is busy checking flight times on his laptop, shortly bound for the airport to collect Melbourne-based musicians Sarah Mary Chadwick and Simon J Karis. Outside, the Lyttelton Coffee Company owner Stephen Mateer is plumbing a huge sink especially for the festival’s use. Volunteers and contractors buzz in and out of the room getting ready to transform a large carpark into two outdoor stages. 

In less than 24 hours, Ōhinehou-Lyttelton will again become enveloped by Port Noise, a “made by musicians, for musicians” festival organised and programmed by locals Smyth and Woods. Now in its third year, Port Noise has built up a reputation among the musically-inclined as the hot new thing happening on the local live music calendar. It’s nestled right in the bosom of the town, where the base of craggy hills meets the industrial hum of the working port. Specifically, it happens just off London Street: in venues The Lyttelton Coffee Company, Wünderbar and Loons, plus two outdoor stages in their adjoining carpark. (There’s also a plethora of off-site secret show locations, but more on that later).

Last year, seething with jealousy and FOMO in Auckland watching Instagram videos of Mykki Blanco (a genre-bending American rapper who has worked with Madonna and Kanye) performing on the back stairs of the Lyttelton FreshChoice, I promised myself I wouldn’t miss out on Port Noise again. It didn’t take much to convince my friends Callum Devlin and Finn Johannson to join me making the trip down from Auckland. The day before the festival, I picked them up from the Devlin family home, and we all piled into my grandma’s Suzuki Ignis (thanks Jandi) to head through the hill to Ōhinehou. As former Christchurch kids, Callum and I treated Wellingtonian Finn to the highlights tour of school bus stops and buildings that no longer exist. 

By the time we neared the Lyttelton Tunnel, we were both reflecting on the aspirational coolness that Lyttelton held for us as music-obsessed city-side teens. Forever associated with songwriting and art, the town really cemented its reputation as a crucible for interesting sounds after the earthquakes, with artists like The Eastern, Delaney Davidson, Marlon Williams, Nadia Reid and Aldous Harding coming to the fore.

The sunset over Lyttelton. (Image: Rachel Ashby)

It’s this deep relationship with music that makes Lyttelton a prime spot for a festival concerned with the underground and avant-garde. This year’s Port Noise line-up spanned the breadth of alternative music scenes around Aotearoa – to name just a tiny handful, there’s Tāmaki bass-powerhouse Mokotron, jangly guitar wizard Jim Nothing, bona-fide Dunedin legends David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights, Ōtautahi techno thumper Mr Meaty Boy, and southern shredders Pearly from Ōtepōti. On top of this, rave demon Vanessa Worm jumped the ditch from Australia, while Nebraskan songwriter Simon Joyner & The Eucalypts and Puerto Rican dub master Pachyman joined the bill from further afield. It’s a truly genreless and expansive lineup. 

Since its inception in 2023, the festival has already grown and morphed beyond what Woods or Smyth could have ever imagined. “Every time the festival rolls around, new inspiration strikes and we think, ‘we can just add this little extra thing’ and that turns into significant changes,” laughed Woods from the bustling HQ. The programming is a joint endeavour for Woods and Smyth, and reflects their shared musical interests. Woods, a working musician himself, has spent many years forging networks of music makers across Aotearoa and overseas. Smyth brings a wealth of programming, hospitality and event management experience to Port Noise – she’s run cafes, organised and programmed festivals. Together they bring invaluable pragmatism and warmth to pulling off something as creatively daring as Port Noise.

Rachel Ashby, Rose Smyth, Ben Woods. (Image: Callum Devlin)

Because this isn’t just a one-day outing, either. In the lead-up to the main event, there was a week of gigs around the town – a sound bath and tāonga pūoro gig at the church, noise music happening in the cafe upstairs, and a family show before the main festival kicked off. Not only that, alongside the main lineup came a whole raft of off-site secret shows, which ticket holders randomly receive a pass to when they enter the festival. This pass contains just a time and location – if you choose to take it up, you might find yourself watching Kāi Tahu witch-hop artist KOMMI in a tiny room at the top of the Lyttelton Club, or Melbourne’s Georgia Knight performing with auto-harp in the blackness of the Lyttelton Arts Factory. 

It certainly seems that the wider Lyttelton township has embraced this sprawling and ambitious festival. On festival day, the queue for wristbands snaking down London Street revealed many local faces, as well as a fair few music nerds shipped in from elsewhere. As the evening progressed, and we traversed around stages that ranged from packed bars, to scenically appointed open-air grandstands, a friendly camaraderie permeated the crowd. Banter between bar staff and security was genuine and relaxed, and punters looked out for each other on the naturally steep rake of the hills. There was a collective excitement about navigating the rabbit warren of the Port Noise layout, and a shared understanding that we weren’t just a passive audience, but co-conspirators in making this festival work.

KOMMI performs in the Lyttelton Club. (Image: Rachel Ashby)

Moving from the glow of Pachyman’s outdoor twilight set into the thumping fug of DJ Caru in the Wünderbar was a particularly fun vibe shift, the disco ball glinting with reflected light from a wall of CRT televisions. Every space had a different atmosphere, and the artists seemed to embrace this too. Uncle Quentin, crooning into a vocoder through a neon balaclava, came with his own matching green inflatable tube man which flailed surreally alongside him throughout the set. Meanwhile, inside The Loons (formerly the old Working Men’s Club) Sarah Mary Chadwick played piano alone to a totally transfixed crowd. Walking back down to the main stage from a secret set at the church, we were hit by a wave of bass rising from the beginnings of Mokotron’s set. Melodica, breaks and tāonga pūoro soon reverberated around the natural amphitheater of the Whangaraupō Harbour, drawing focus towards the water.

By the time the festival had shifted to kick-ons (at beloved bar Civil and Naval, naturally) Port Noise was starting to feel like being at a very strange and exciting house party hosted by the whole town. And much like a good house party, it required a solid team of friends mucking in on the dishes and decorating to make it all work. Whether it’s taking a shift on the bar, hauling PAs up and down stairs, or hosting out-of-town artists on spare mattresses, you could feel the village wrap around Port Noise. “We have to work out how we keep it like this, using the community,” Smyth said the day before. Woods agreed. “We want it to be sustainable. At this point I start to really miss making music”. 

Mokotron on the mainstage at Port Noise. (Image: Rachel Ashby)

Despite their creative aspirations, the organisers said they are not interested in infinite growth for Port Noise. “I think a huge part of it for me is not trying to go into things with that ever-expanding mindset. I don’t want things to explode and it loses itself,” said Woods. What does appear to be important is finding ways to grow the festival’s potential as a site for collaboration and connection. “We don’t have the industry here like Auckland does, and we don’t always have the events for artists to get together,” said Smyth. “We’re interested in bringing people here, to meet artists here and see what happens from that. Introducing artists to each other is really important. For us it really is about that manaakitanga”.

All weekend I was struck by the ways in which the pair facilitated that kind of connection throughout the festival. The day after Port Noise wrapped, I blearily dragged myself out to a barbeque hosted at a friend’s house. When I arrived, sausages were already cooking, and artists and organisers alike were debriefing the previous day’s events. Despite having a bloody good time, the FOMO crept back in as I heard about all the excellent sets I didn’t manage to catch. Maybe the joy of a good music festival is in its choose-your-own-adventureness. You can’t see every cool, weird and exciting performance, especially if the festival is as stacked as Port Noise has proven to be. I guess I’ll just have to come back next year. 

Click here to watch the Port Noise episode of In the Pits, an independent video-podcast series created by Tāmaki Makaurau based music die-hards Rachel Ashby, Zoë Larsen Cumming and Sports Team, aka Callum Devlin and Annabel Kean.

Keep going!
Ben Macdonald returns to the Masterchef kitchen in Masterchef Australia: Back to Win (Photo: TVNZ / Design: TIna Tiller)
Ben Macdonald returns to the Masterchef kitchen in Masterchef Australia: Back to Win (Photo: TVNZ / Design: TIna Tiller)

Pop CultureMay 8, 2025

Meet the New Zealander on his second lap of the Masterchef kitchen

Staff writer
Ben Macdonald returns to the Masterchef kitchen in Masterchef Australia: Back to Win (Photo: TVNZ / Design: TIna Tiller)
Ben Macdonald returns to the Masterchef kitchen in Masterchef Australia: Back to Win (Photo: TVNZ / Design: TIna Tiller)

Tara Ward talks to Ben Macdonald about the highs and lows of competing on Masterchef Australia: Back to Win. 

Anyone who watches Masterchef Australia will know about the Masterchef pantry. It’s a feast for the eyes, a room filled with endless shelves of colourful produce and huge fridges stuffed full of delicious delicacies. Few of us will ever experience its culinary wonders in person – apart from New Zealander Ben Macdonald, who has experienced the delights of that luxurious larder not once, but twice, and reckons there’s no other kitchen cupboard like it.  

“Oh my god, the pantry is amazing,” MacDonald gasps down the phone. “You go in and there’s all these crazy things you dream of cooking with: truffles, pigeons, salt cod.” 

Macdonald is back among the truffles and salt cod for the new season of Masterchef Australia: Back to Win, which began this week on TVNZ. Back to Win features 24 former contestants from across the show’s 16 seasons, who are returning for a second – and in some cases, third – chance to win the esteemed title of Masterchef and $250,000 in prize money. Macdonald is the season’s only international competitor, having first appeared on the show in 2014, and he believes the contents of the pantry have only gotten more impressive since then.

Ben Macdonald on Masterchef Australia: Back to Win (Screengrab: TVNZ)

Back in 2014, Macdonald was a keen amateur chef living in Brisbane and working as a software consultant when he applied for season six of Masterchef Australia. He came sixth, cooking for guest judges like Heston Blumenthal and Marco Pierre White, and describes his original Masterchef experience as “an absolute rollercoaster”. “You go from winning something and being elated, to a few episodes later doing something wrong and you’re one step away from being out the door,” he says. 

By the time Masterchef came calling again a decade later, Macdonald had spent several years working in restaurants in Australia and Aotearoa. He was back working in software in his hometown of Auckland and showing his season of Masterchef to his two young daughters, when the offer to return to the show came through. He’d always considered his stint on the culinary series to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and says he couldn’t resist from donning the famous Masterchef apron once again. 

Ben in the Back to Win kitchen (Screengrab)

While he knew going back to Masterchef wouldn’t be easy, Macdonald was surprised at how challenging the series had become. “I thought I’d just step back in, but then you can’t find a peeler and you can’t find the panko crumbs in the pantry, and it’s like, ‘oh my god’.” Those early nerves were magnified by the intense competition and a far higher standard of cooking than in 2014 (one contestant is even a judge on Masterchef Singapore). “There are no bad chefs,” says Macdonald of his fellow competitors. “It was super competitive, right from day one.”

Macdonald prepared by memorising recipes and practicing certain techniques, but quickly realised that the knowledge he’d gained over the past decade was his most valuable asset of all. Masterchef demands quick thinking and steady focus, and he found that being creative – choosing an unusual ingredient from the pantry, for example – was the best way to stand out from the competition. “You’ve got to put a lot of thought into it, because if you choose wrong from the beginning, it’s very hard to change halfway through.” 

It’s only the first week of the Back to Win season, but Macdonald has already proved he’s the chef to watch. In the show’s second challenge, he cooked for Gordon Ramsay and won the coveted immunity pin, impressing the hot-headed celebrity judge with his calmness under pressure and attention to detail. Ramsay called Macdonald’s meal of roasted duck breast “exceptional” (despite Macdonald mixing up his sauces), while Macdonald described cooking for Ramsay a “money can’t buy” experience. 

“When things go well, it’s an unbelievable feeling,” Macdonald says of the show’s intense, fast-paced challenges. “As long as you can stay cool in those situations, there’s a massive opportunity to flourish.”

Ben’s meal is tasted by the Masterchef judges, including Gordon Ramsay (Screengrab)

No matter how stressful those frenetic pantry raids get, Macdonald has no regrets about returning to what he thinks is the best reality show on television. “Masterchef Australia isn’t there to make heroes and villains,” he says. “It’s there to showcase people’s true personalities and the food they make.” What you see is what you get on Masterchef, he believes, and while cooking on the telly was hard work, Macdonald was determined to make his second time in the Masterchef kitchen his most enjoyable yet. 

“It’s really, really hard, but it’s also really, really fun. Sometimes you have a disaster, but you just have to laugh about it.” As for anyone who wants to follow him into the Masterchef pantry, Macdonald reckons they should just give it a go.  

‘It’s just cooking,” he says. “What’s the worst that could happen?” 

Watch Masterchef Australia: Back to Win on TVNZ+ here. 

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