By Eve Cheesmur & Daryl Habraken

Date / Venue: Thursday October 4th, 2018 - Spark Arena, Auckland

Hub-bubbing around the foyer area at Spark Arena were familiar faces from the NZ music scene; some old, some new, but all legends in their own lunch breaks.

After a beautiful powhiri, we entered the arena to be cascaded with some beautiful waiata and speeches - stage set, now on to the music and awards. Anika Moa takes to the stage with her guitar and kicks off with a creative medley of past winners songs and we were into the first performance of a finalist's song with the North Shore's Con Brio Children’s Choir, The Black Quartet and band performing Unknown Mortal Orchestra's ‘Hunnybee’ - some endearing talent on the stage, we knew we were set for a good night of covers, which to be fair is what everyone loves about the Scrolls.

Legends, Ria Hall and Tiki Taane take a win of the Maioha Award for their song ‘Te Ahi Kai Pō’. Teeks and kapa haka group Ngā Tūmanako from Hoani Waititi Marae in West Auckland then did a performance of the winning song. We met the Ngā kaihaka o Ngā Tumanako at the after party, their passion and purpose for kapa haka was contagious and this translated to the stage and with general interactions.

Jacinda Ardern inducted Jenny Morris into the Hall of Fame, and we rose to applaud the well deserved new member of this honourable award. LadyHawke then marked the occasion with her rendition of Jenny's Break In The Weather.

After a few technical glitches we moved on to the SOUNZ Contemporary award, with Michael Norris taking it out with Sygyt.

The awards continued with David Long taking Best Original Music in a Feature Film for McLaren and then Best Original Music in a Series went to Conrad Wedde, Lukasz Buda, and Samuel Scott of Phoenix foundation for the TV series Cleverman.

TEEKs, Reb Fountain and Nadia Reed were some other highlights on stage as we were anticipating the winner for 2018.

Marlon Williams collected for his beautiful track Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore.

......and with that, we signed off and went to the after party to have a well earned drink or 10.

Hangover - tick.