# 0 3 • 2 8 . 0 8 . 1 3 • P E R T H • F R E E • I N C O R P O R AT I N G
XAVIER RUDD L I F E A F T E R G L A S T O N B U RY
event
BIGSOUND SOUND
fashion
FASHION ASHION WEEK
games
REVIEWS VIEWS
drink
WINTER INTER WARMERS
the music | the lifestyle | the fashion | the art | the culture | you
ADRIAN BOHM PRESENTS IRELAND’S NUMBER ONE COMEDIAN
TOMMY TIERNAN STRAY SOD TOUR 2013 FRIDAY 1 NOVEMBER • RIVERSIDE THEATRE BOOK AT TICKETEK 132 849 TICKETEK.COM.AU TOMMYTIERNAN.COM | ABPRESENTS.COM.AU
FROM ‘WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?’
LIVE AND DANGEROUS IMPROV COMEDY
TUE 15 OCT • ASTOR THEATRE BOOK AT SHOW TICKETING 9370 5888 SHOW TICKETING.COM. AU
ABPRESENTS.COM.AU | COLINANDBRADSHOW.COM
ADRIAN BOHM PRESENTS
STAR OF
LOW: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE • DEUCE BIGA AL ANIM THE • UPS WN GRO MALE GIGOLO • BIG DADDY • WATERBOY
WED 16 OCTOBER ASTOR THEATRE BOOK AT SHOW TICKETING 9370 5888 SHOWTICKETING.COM.AU ABPRESENTS.COM.AU A D R I A N B O H M P R E S E NT S
THE LONG AWAITED RETURN OF
FRIDAY 1 NOVEMBER ASTOR THEATRE
BOOK AT SHOW TICKETING 9370 5888 SHOWTICKETING.COM.AU
ABPRESENTS.COM.AU | CLANNAD.IE
(-(Ä(.( BjggVn Hi# EZgi]# L6 lll#Vbea^ÒZgXVe^ida#Xdb#Vj YdlcadVY i]Z 6bea^ÒZg 8Ve^ida 6ee L:9 L:9
''& 6J< 7K=
Peter
! F[j[h Payne JSFWod[ vs Death Disco ! @I 86E>IDA ;G>96NH
'. C><=I IBL '( RETRO MASH
&&#%%EB -EB ;G> H6I
9pm
Fri 30 Aug
(% RETRO MASH ') H6I I=JGH
(& '.
CREAM OF THE 80S
SAT 31 AUG
+ UPNUP + Oak Street Suite + Sparks Vertigo Doors 8pm
9pm
Fri 30 Aug
B^Yc^\]i id AViZ
<J$
ABW
SAT 31 AUG 10pm
WED 11 SEPT
Doors 8pm
Sat 31 Aug
PURE POP
8adjY 8dcigda
Metropolis Saturdays FT. DARREN TUCKER + DR WAZZ + BEN CARTER + SHANE HWESON
DR WAZZ + DARREN TUCKER
Sat 31 Aug
+ Still Water Giants + Jack Stirling
i^X`Zih dc hVaZ CDL C:MI L::@
6J< 7K=
,#(%EB
THE ARSONIST
Indie, Electro, Alternative, Punk, Rock, Post Punk
KFIJ7?HI KFIJ7?HI
&&#%%EB &&EB
I=>H
86E>IDA ;G>96NH
6J< 7K= &%EB .#%%EB
i^X`Zih VkV^aVWaZ [gdb Doi^m CDL
FRI ;G>96N 30 AUG
KFIJ7?HI
6J< 7K= &%#%%EB
*- Hdji] IZggVXZ# ;gZbVciaZ# L6 lll#bZigdeda^h[gZbVciaZ#Xdb#Vj YdlcadVY i]Z BZigdeda^h ;gZbVciaZ 6ee
Wed 28 Aug
Genga =[d]W
.#%%EB .EB I=JGH ;G>
(-(Ä(.( BjggVn Hi# EZgi]# L6 lll#Vbea^ÒZgXVe^ida#Xdb#Vj YdlcadVY i]Z 6bea^ÒZg 8Ve^ida 6ee
ANBERLIN
i^X`Zih VkV^aVWaZ [gdb Doi^m CDL aVWaZ [gdb Doi^m CDL
Ft.
Eddie Electric Midnight–Late
Indie, Electro, Alternative, Punk, Rock, Post Punk
FRI 13 SEPT
Tues 3 Sept
Coming Soon
&&EB
CREAM OF THE 80S
KFIJ7?HI
&&EB
BEING AS AN OCEAN + Statues i^X`Zih dc hVaZ CDL
ONE LOVE PARTY ft. Spenda C and Leah Mencel
i^X`Zih VkV^aVWaZ [gdb Doi^m CDL Zih VkV^aVWaZ [gdb Doi^m CDL
BVX]^cZ <jc @Zaan 8Ve^ida ) HZei
HcV`VYV`iVa 8Ve^ida + HZei
I^bdi]n CZahdc VcY i]Z >cÒYZah 6bea^ÒZg + HZei
B^Yc^\]i ?j\\ZgcVjih 6bea^ÒZg , HZei
;dg i]Z ;VaaZc 9gZVbh 6bea^ÒZg &' HZei
9ZVY AZiiZg 8^gXjh BZigdeda^h ;gZbVciaZ '% HZei
?jc\aZ <^Vcih 8Ve^ida &- DXi
B^X`Zn 6kVadc 8Ve^ida &. DXi
JUSTANNOUNCED: ANNOUNCED:VIOLENT PRINCE RAMA 19TH JUST SOHO AT AT AMPLIFIER, AMPLIFIER, OCTOBER NOVEMBER 1ST Vaa egZhVaZ i^X`Zih id h]dlh VkV^aVWaZ [gdb lll#doi^m#Xdb#Vj THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 3
CHESTER STONE TEMPLE PILOTS WITH ALICE I BENNINGTON
MON
0 3 MAR
PLACEBO AFI KORN ALTER BRIDGE TRIVIUM ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT ASKING ALEXAN FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH AUGUST BURNS MOTIONLESS IN WHITE GWAR THE BLACK PULLED APART BY HORSES NANCY VANDAL B VOLBEAT AMON AMARTH TERROR WHITE 10 YEARS ILL NIﾃ前 HARDCORE SUPERST COLISEUM YOUR DEMISE HEAV ...WITH MANY MORE
TICKETS ON SALE THURS
FROM SOUNDWAVEFESTIVAL.CO
IN CHAINS ROB ZOMBIE MEGADETH
DOWN DEVILDRIVER NEWSTED BIFFY CLYRO NDRIA CLUTCH ALKALINE TRIO BARONESS RED TESTAMENT LIVING COLOUR LETLIVE DAHLIA MURDER MUSHROOMHEAD FINCH BOWLING FOR SOUP TRASH TALK SKINDRED ECHAPEL TESSERACT THE STORY SO FAR TAR WALKING PAPERS OUR LAST NIGHT VEN’S BASEMENT REAL FRIENDS TO BE ANNOUNCED!
SDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 9AM
OM, OZTIX.COM.AU & OUTLETS
S CH LO AW RG ER MO OU NN TD S LICENSED ALL AGES PHOTO ID REQUIRED LINEUP & VENUE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE
6 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
themusic 28TH AUGUST 2013
#003
INSIDE THIS WEEK YAYO The Aesthetics Of Disengagement
review
NEWS
Soundwave Jordie Lane The National Bluesfest
FEATURES Xavier Rudd
Mac DeMarco King Krule Helm Jennifer Nash M-Machine Anberlin Tigertown Edward Sharpe
REVIEWS Album: Nine Inch Nails
EP: Bastian’s Happy Flight Single: Seekae
THE GUIDE Cover: The Beatsitter’s Club Indie News On Tour: Stonefield Have You Heard: Sprawl Personal Best Records: Rich Widow
“’YOU CAN’T DESTROY THEIR FUN TONIGHT,’ JAMIESON YELLED MID-SONG AT THE SECURITY. ‘AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO DESTROY THEIR FUN, GO FUCK YOURSELVES’.”
MOANA’S THE AESTHETICS OF DISENGAGEMENT IN THIS WEEK [P10]
GRINSPOON STICKS IT TO THE MAN, AS WITNESSED BY DAN CRIBB [P44]
“MAD SONIC THE HEDGEHOG TRIBUTE FROM SYDNEY BLOKE INTENT ON BLASTING YOUR BPM TOLERANCE TO BILLIONS OF DAYGLO PIECES. GAWD HELP US IF THE FOLLOW-UP GETS NUTTIER.” MAC MCNAUGHTON ON WAVE ROCK’S NEW SINGLE, ROCK U TONITE [P42]
“WE’RE EXPERIMENTING WITH OUR PSYCHIC ABILITIES TO TAKE IT DIFFERENT PLACES.” EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZERO’S JOSH COLAZZO GETS NEW AGE ON KANE SUTTON [P34]
games “YOU’LL PROBABLY LOSE EVERY GAME, BUT FINALLY DEFYING THE ODDS AND HISTORY ITSELF IS A UNIQUELY SATISFYING EXPERIENCE THAT DEMANDS THE ATTENTION OF ALL BRAVE SOULS OWNING A PC OR MAC.” MIKE PENDLEBURY FINDS VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT IN PARADOX INTERACTIVE’S EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV [P47]
fashion 8 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
“ANHEDONIA: THE IDEA OF JOYLESSNESS. AND AT THIS WE ARE EXCITED. MOANA IS EVOLVING A SPACE AT THE BLADE-EDGE OF THE MODERN ART IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.”
“IT’S HARD BEING BEAUTIFUL.”
NATASHA LEE VERSUS MERCEDESBENZ FASHION FESTIVAL [P22]
FREMANTLE
WWW.YA-YAS.COM.AU
WED 28 AUG
RICH WIDOW W/
Yeti Resort, The Eerie Serpent
FRIDAY 30TH JORDAN MCROBBIE & MITCH BECKER SATURDAY 31ST TOBY TICKETS ONLY AVAILABLE FROM THE DOOR SUNDAYS THE ZYDECATS TUESDAYS QUIZ NIGHT WEDNESDAYS CHET LEONARD’S BINGOTEQUE
$5/7PM
THURS 29 AUG
BURY THE HEARD W/
The Dead Hours, Shouting at Camels, Tashi $5/7:30PM
FRI 30 AUG
THE SCOTCH OF SAINT JAMES W/
CITY BEACH FRIDAY 30TH ANGUS DIGGS TRIO SATURDAY 31ST (ARVO) THE RECLINERS SUNDAYS SALT SHAKER SUNDAYS W/ DJ BOOGIE & THE SALT SHAKER SELECTORS
THURSDAY August 29th CUSTOM ROYAL + SPECIAL GUESTS
Turin Robinson $10/7:30PM
SAT 31 AUG
JACOB AND THE RUDEBOYS W/
DJ DEGRAAF, + More to be announced FREE 6-8PM, THEN $5
MON 2 SEPT
BIG TOMMO’S OPEN MIC Our Solution to your Monday Blues FREE/7:30PM
TUES 3 SEPT
NATIONAL CAMPUS BANDS COMP Heat #1 $5/7:30PM
SUNDAY September 1st
DAY OF THE DEAD + SHOTDOWN FROM SUGAR TOWN
coming soon
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 5TH
GIRL YOK
+ New Animals + Odlaw SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8TH
THE DOMNICKS + SHOTDOWN FROM SUGAR TOWN THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH
TIRED LION
+ Bob Buildings + Lionizer SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15TH
THE ISOLITES
WED 4 SEPT
NATIONAL CAMPUS BANDS COMP Heat #2 $5/7:30PM Cnr James & Lake St Northbridge 147 James Street Northbridge 6003
FREE ENTRY
46 LAKE ST, NORTHBRIDGE 9328 2350 LIVE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK ENQUIRIES info@mustangbar.com.au www.mustangbar.com.au
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 9
CREDITS PUBLISHER
Street Press Australia Pty Ltd
GROUP MANAGING EDITOR Andrew Mast
EDITOR Callum Twigger
ASSISTANT EDITOR Cam Findlay
MUSO EDITOR Michael Smith
ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR Cass Fumi wa.arts@themusic.com.au
GIG GUIDE Justine Lynch wa.gigs@themusic.com.au
CONTRIBUTORS Aarom Wilson, Adrienne Downes, Amber Flynn, Andy Snelling, Annabel Maclean, Athina Mallis, Chantelle Gabriel, Christopher James, Claire Hodgson, Daniel Cribb, Eli Gould, James Hunt, Jeff Kit, Jeremy Carson, Jessica Tana, Kane Sutton, Kershia Wong, Kitt Di Camillo, Liv Gardner, Lukas Murphy, Luke Butcher, Mac McNaughton, Marcia Czerniak, Mark Neilsen, Matthew Tomich, Michael Caves, Natasha Lee, Rachel Inglis, Renee Jones, Ross Clelland, Scott Aitken, Simon Holland, Steve Bell, Tess Ingram, Tom Birts, Troy Mutton, Zoe Barron.
PHOTOGRAPHERS David Lewis, Daniel Cribb, Ebony Frost, Elle Borgward, Jacinta Mathews, Michael Caves, Kieren Chew, Rhys Machell, Ted Dana
NATIONAL SALES MANAGER Brett Dayman sales@themusic.com.au
ADVERTISING DEPT Bronwyn Bate bronwyn@themusic.com.au
ART DIRECTOR Matt Davis
ART DEPT Nicholas Hopkins, Eamon Stewart wa.art@themusic.com.au
ADMIN & ACCOUNTS Loretta Zoppolone Shelly Neergaard Jarrod Kendall Leanne Simpson accounts@themusic.com.au
DISTRO Anita D’Angelo distro@themusic.com.au Subscriptions store.themusic.com.au
CONTACT US Tel 08 9228 9655 info@themusic.com.au www.themusic.com.au 1/205-207 Bulwer St, Perth WA PO Box 507 Mount Lawley WA 6929
PERTH
THIS WEEK THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK • 28 AUGUST - 3 SEPTEMBER 2013
gig
Gatherings is a grass-roots fundraising effort pulled together by some of the best dudes in local music. Taking place at the Banks Reserve Amphitheatre on Saturday 31 August, ths gig is bring your own beverages and free entry, but the real reason you should be bringing yourself is to help raise some funds: the Gatherings crew’s vision (see Cam Findlay’s feature in this mag) is to restore a ‘60s bus, so WA bands can take their music abroad. You’ll score performances from French Rockets, The Novacaines, Foam, Sugarpuss, Flower Drums, Lanark, Mt Mountain, Electric Toad, and more.
Moana’s latest exhibition The Aesthetics of Disengagement deconstructs malaise, depression, and alienation, the three harpies of modern misery. In essence, anhedonia: the idea of joylessness. And at this we are excited. Moana is evolving a space at the blade-edge of the modern art in Western Australia. A selection of recent work curated by Chelsea Hopper, The Aesthetics of Disengagement features contributions by emerging Melbourne and Perth based artists Meg Stoios, Danielle Hakim, Nellie Rogerson and Chelsea Hopper, alongside Stuart Ringholt and Madonna Staunton. Takes place on Thursday 29 August at Moana Gallery, 618 Hay Street, Perth CBD.
dance
De jure post-stoner gloom trap night as it was Syrup is no more. Fuelled by the liquid genius of coven behind the hallucinogenic monthly dance night, Ya-Yo is a new incarnation. Starring a familiar rogue’s gallery of Leon Osborne, Manimal, Clunk, Kit Pop and Bazyl Zemplys, Ya-Yo’s promoter promises “It is not until now that I have returned to this very corner of the crystalline club, and my luminous reflection stands before me in a clustered constellation of atoms and algorithms, that I realise; THAT WAS YAYO.” Launching at Parker, 133 Aberdeen Street Northbridge on Friday 30 August.
look
It’s all well and good to be in your bedroom listening to a Yellowcard album, or in the crowd singing your favourite tune with the band. But... how about doing all that, meeting your pop punk heroes, and probably greeting them to if you’re not in too much shock. The Floridian five-piece are touring their Ocean Avenue Acoustic with a special run of stripped back shows, reimagining the songs that first put them on the map ten years ago. Yellowcard play the following headline dates: 25 Oct, The Tivoli, Brisbane; 26 Oct, Enmore Theatre, Sydney; 29 Oct, Palace Theatre, Melbourne; and 31 Oct, Capitol, Perth, and we have a meet and greet double pass for one lucky reader in each state. To enter, simply head to the giveaways tabs on our respective Facebook pages (still under Time Off, Drum Media, Inpress and Drum Perth), fill in your deets and you could be hanging out with the lads!
win
A Russian press conference invaded by a flying dildo. Watch that giant dong terrorise a group of stuffy suits – before being unceremoniously slapped out of the way.
watch
drink
Hangovers. They’re really the only crap thing about getting Hasselhoff drunk. But now that’s potentially set to change, with the mad partiers at Griffith University’s Health Institute in Queensland developing a more hydrating beer through increased electrolytes. A Gatorade ale if you will. The beer’s strength takes a hit, dropping to 2.3 per cent, but as we get longer in the tooth this creation sounds more and more inviting.
sad
Stand By Me star Corey Feldman is trying to become the next Charlie Sheen Hugh Hefner by surrounding himself with a bevy of faded looking ‘babes’, teaming then as ‘Corey’s Angels’ and holding parties at his home which he’s dubbed the ‘Feldmansion’. Feldman, who’s looking more like the aging spawn of Tommy Wiseau and a wet rat, requests dudes pay 250 bones entry into the shindig, while chicks can get in free on approval from him. Hollywood, you have a lot to answer for. THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 11
national news news@themusic.com.au GREEN DAY
SO BLUE FOR YOU
IT’S BAAAAACK!
The always massive monster that is Soundwave will stomp through with another series of dates in 2014, and once again there’s plenty of big names, old favourites and young lions ready to send out the best in metal, punk, hardcore, rock and more. First announcement presents those American-baiting punk idiots Green Day (pictured), Californian goth metal powerhouse Avenged Sevenfold, a Chester Bennington fronted Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, Rob Zombie, Megadeth, Placebo, AFI, Korn, Alter Bridge, Trivium, Down, DevilDriver, Newsted, Biffy Clyro, Rocket From The Crypt, Asking Alexandria, Clutch, Alkaline Trio, Baroness, Five Finger Death Punch, August Burns Red, Testament, Living Colour, letlive, Motionless In White, Gwar, Black Dahlia Murder, Mushroomhead, Finch, Pulled Apart By Horses, Ill Nino, Nancy Vandal, Bowling For Soup, Trash Talk, Skindred, Volbeat, Amon Amarth, Terror, Whitechapel, Tesseract, The Story So Far, 10 Years, Hardcore Superstar, Walking Papers, Coliseum, Your Demise, Heaven’s Basement and Real Friends. Earlier this year Metallica played one of the biggest festival sets ever seen in this country. How the fuck will that be topped? There’s only one way to find out. The tour hits RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane, 22 Feb; Olympic Park, Sydney, 23 Feb; Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, 28 Feb and Claremont Showgrounds, Perth, 3 Mar. Make sure you’re in the pit when the next chapter of Soundwave gets written. Tickets go on sale 5 Sep.
12 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
And in a massive week of announcements, Bluesfest has also surprised us by jumping the gun with the first names for their forthcoming line-up, four weeks ahead of schedule no less. But with a group of artists as varied and talented as this lot, you’d be itching to share your news with the world, too. Celebrating 25 years of the festival, the organisers assure us that this is just the tip of the iceberg – and what a way to set the tone for 2014! We’ve got John Mayer (pictured) returning to Australia for the first time in seven years, Dave Matthews Band, who continue to remain one of the most in-demand live acts in America, John Butler Trio, who’ll be performing for an incredible tenth time, as well as Erykah Badu, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Iron & Wine, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Devendra Banhart, Morcheeba, Gary Clark Jr., KT Tunstall, Allen Stone and Valerie June. The festival will be returning to Byron Bay once more, with all the music set to engulf Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm across five days, from 17 to 21 Apr (Easter long weekend). Festival and camping tickets can be purchased through the event website or via Ticketmaster, with the whole massive shebang proudly presented by The Music. JOHN MAYER
national news news@themusic.com.au
A HARD DAY DESERVES A HARD PARTY
JORDIE LANE
ANDREW WK [@ANDREWWK] MUST HAVE A LOT OF HARD DAYS.
Not Built To Last is the new EP from our ol’ bearded buddy Jordie Lane and he’s bringing songs written in Los Angeles back to Australia for our listening pleasure. The troubadour gets on the mic 27 Oct, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle (afternoon) and Ellington Jazz Club, Perth (evening); 31 Oct, The Spotted Cow, Toowoomba; 1 Nov, Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane; 7 Nov, Beav’s Bar, Geelong; 8 Nov, Theatre Royal, Castlemaine; 9 Nov, Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne; 10 Nov, Caravan Club, Oakleigh; 13 Nov, Street Theatre, Canberra; 14 Nov, Yours & Owls, Wollongong; 15 Nov, Clarendon Guesthouse, Katoomba; 16 Nov, The Basement, Sydney; 17 Nov, Grand Junction, Maitland; 18 Nov, Music Lounge, Manly; 20 Nov, Lizotte’s Central Coast; 21 Nov, Lizotte’s, Newcastle; and 22 Nov, Mullumbimby Music Festival. The full tour is proudly presented by The Music.
THE NATIONAL
ANYONE’S GHOST
After generating incredible amounts of underground with a stretch of cracking albums, The National broke out in a big way with 2010’s High Violet, a record of immense courage and presence. Since then they’ve ascended from indie favourite to chart topping headliner, with this year’s stunning Trouble Will Find Me solidifying their status as one of the most important and influential rock bands of today. But for all their recorded glory, you can’t appreciate the power of the American five-piece until you witness their life-affirming shows live on stage and now after captivating a Saturday night Big Top crowd at Splendour In The Grass last month, the band have announced their return in 2014. The National will play Sydney Opera House Forecourt, 8 Feb; Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne, 9 Feb; Riverstage, Brisbane, 11 Feb; and Belvoir Amphitheatre, Perth, 14 Feb, as part of Perth Festival.
VIOLENT SOHO
THE BARONS OF TANG
DOWN UNDER WONDER
SET IT OFF! SAVOUR THE TASTE
The result of six years on the road, with all the accomplishments and misadventures that have gone with their continual gigging schedule, Into The Mouths Of Hungry Giants is The Barons Of Tang’s debut record and showcases their epicly experimental approach to songwriting. With a gypsy mindset, the Tang team are delivering world music in our own backyard, so step outside the norm and dance with the seven-piece at one of these dates: Great Northern Hotel, Newcastle, 26 Sep; The Standard, Sydney, 27 Sep; Katoomba RSL, 28 Sep; The Rails, Byron Bay, 4 Oct; The Joynt, Brisbane, 5 Oct; and Peregian Originals!, Peregian Beach Park, 6 Oct; Moonshine Bar, Manly, 24 Oct; Yours & Owls, Wollongong, 25 Oct; Black Cherry, Sydney, 26 Oct; Corner Hotel, Melbourne, 8 Nov; and Inca Roads Festival, Mt Egerton, 30 Nov (all ages). Proudly presented by The Music.
They’ve barely sobered up after destroying some smaller venues along the east coast, but Violent Soho are alive and kicking once more, the Brissie quartet looking to launch their brand new record with some hectic headline shows in the coming months. Along with Straight Arrows, Mansfield’s finest bring their tour for newie Hungry Ghost to The Northern, Byron Bay, 24 Oct; Oxford Art Factory, Sydney, 25 Oct; The Zoo, Brisbane, 26 Oct; Mojo’s, Fremantle, 31 Oct; Amplifier, Perth, 1 Nov; and Corner Hotel, Melbourne, 4 Nov for a special Melbourne Cup eve show. This new record has been a long time coming so help the lads celebrate and be part of the tear up, with the tour proudly presented by The Music.
A RIOT GOING ON
Open yourself up to the psychedelic panache of The Brian Jonestown Massacre when they return this summer with The KVB. The tour starts 10 Dec, Astor Theatre, Perth, stops in 13 Dec at Meredith Music Festival, before carrying on 15 Dec, The Hi-Fi, Brisbane; 18 Dec, The Northern, Byron Bay; 19 Dec, The Hi-Fi, Sydney; and 20 Dec, Palace Theatre, Melbourne.
DUNE RATS ARE VOMITING THE JUNGLE GIANTS [@THEJUNGLEGIANTS] REPORTING. NO ONE IS SURPRISED.
PRIZE BUCK
Critical darlings Deerhunter will be making Australian east coast stages their own, with the Atlanta quintet presenting tracks from their latest album Monomania for the very first time Down Under. Hear why the record has been celebrated by pretty much every music website and publication the world over when Bradford Cox and his chums get ultra-freaky in their weird and wild indie way. Catch them 9 Dec, The Zoo, Brisbane; 10 Dec, The Hi-Fi, Sydney; and 11 Dec, The Hi-Fi, Melbourne. The band will also be appearing at Meredith, too. Tickets for all headline dates on sale this Thursday. THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 13
local news wa.news@themusic.com.au NILE RODGERS
MAC DEMARCO
MR NONCHALANT CHIC IT OUT
There can be little argument CHIC was, and is, disco’s greatest band; and, working in a heavily producer-dominated field, they were most definitely a band. By the time CHIC appeared in the late ‘70s, they bucked the trend by stripping disco’s sound down to its basic elements; their funky, stylish grooves had an organic sense of interplay which was missing from many of their overproduced competitors. CHIC’s sound was anchored by the scratchy, James Brownstyle rhythm guitar of Nile Rodgers and those indelible, widely imitated (sometimes outright stolen) basslines. With Rodgers currently back in the headlines thanks to a certain French duo, CHIC make their way to Astor Theatre on Sunday 8 Dec. Liveattheastor.com.au for tickets.
HEIRING OUT THE VIBES
The quirky, uncontained brilliance of Prince Rama is coming back Down Under! Disappear in the synth swirl created by sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson, who have drawn attention through their leftfield approach to art and life through music, manifestos or by presenting lectures from pools of fake blood... Yeah, we don’t understand either, but we want to! Prince Rama will also be presenting a screening of their new short film Never Forever, making these shows unmissable. Be challenged and surprised at Amplifier on Sat 19 Oct.
TAKE NO PRISONERS
After rinsing it out at Stereosonic last year, Sander van Doorn is keen to keep the journey continuing, playing capital city dates around the country. Yet another premium product of the Holland electronic scene, 34-year-old van Doorn has been hard at it for the best part of a decade, taking his expert blend of progressive house, trance and electro to dancefloors across the globe. With new tracks and exciting recent collabs, the Dutchman can’t wait to turn the screws for Australian mentalists. Catch him on Thurs 3 Oct at Metro City.
ISLAND OF WONDER
Papua New Guinean born singer-songwriter Ngaiire (rhymes with ‘diary’) is building a reputation for herself as one of the country’s most unique and dynamic vocalists and performers. Gliding from folk soul to jazz hop to indie pop, Ngaiire has finally settled on an eclectic sonic identity that is uniquely hers, reflected through her longawaited and highly anticipated debut album, Lamentations. She heads to The Aviary for Rooftop Sessions on Sun 29 Sep, supported by Morgan Bain and Lucy Peach.
COLOUR TV
Local indie-rockers TV Snow launch their latest single Neon Night on Sat 14 Sep, 8pm at Amplifier. They’ll be filming on the night - making one of those slo-mo vibe vids - with Tired Lion, Apache and Fly Breeder. Neon Nights shows off TV Snow’s trademark sparkling pop melodies with anthemic ‘80s guitar rock sensibility. $10 on the door.
THE BELLRAYS
A SOUND ALLIANCE
After bringing Perth the best international artists that hip hop has to offer over the last two years, it’s time to celebrate Down Under Ground’s second birthday. The Alliance Tour will see Fluent Form, Mata & Must and One Sixth performing as The Four Aces, Melbourne’s Maundz with Discourse & Deece and Adelaide crews Dialect & Despair and Social Change. Joining them will be local talent Sound Magnetiks Affiliation and The Psych Ward. Head down to The Bakery on Sat 7 Sep to get your freak on, yo. Tickets through Now Baking.
EVERY @SUPERCHUNK RECORD BETTER THAN LAST. THEY LIKE REVERSE GREEN DAY
JADEDPUNKHULK [@JADEDPUNKHULK] SMASH! 14 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
Fall for the casual charms of Mac DeMarco when the American wins us over with some garage rock and a fun disposition that’s fairly impossible to pin down. You can catch him with full band in tow at The Bakery on Thurs 19 Dec. His two records Rock And Roll Night Club and 2 were released here a fortnight ago, which means we can all get up to scratch with the slacker pop muso and his tunes.
RAY OF LIGHTNING
Blues is the teacher. Punk is the preacher. It’s all about emotion and energy, experience and raw talent, spirit and intellect. Exciting things happen when these things collide. If you know what we’re talking about, then good, because a lot of people have been waiting for this. Californian garage rock legends The Bellrays hit the Fly By Night on Thurs 21 Nov in their one and only exclusive West Australian show. The four-piece are heading back to Australia for a lightning promo tour for their new album Black Lightning which also visits the Annandale in Sydney, Melbourne’s CherryFest and then Fly By as part the club’s 27th Anniversary celebrations. They were one of the biggest garage bands of the 90’s and into the new millennium, so make sure you don’t miss out. Tickets through flybynight.org.
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 15
local news wa.news@themusic.com.au DYSON, STRINGER & CLOHER
THIS IS THE MOMENT
The best collaborations are borne out of a fan-like admiration for one another’s songs, a passion that inspired Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer and Jen Cloher to work together for what is sure to be one of the indie roots highlights of 2013. With eleven albums, ARIA Awards, Australian Music Prize short listings and countless other accolades between them, make sure you catch the trio when they head to Fremantle Arts Centre on Thurs 5 Dec, The Bakery on Fri 6 and Quindanning Inne Sat 7.
A REAL LAFFER
Jae Laffer, lead vocalist and esteemed songwriter of The Panics, has ventured out on his own with debut solo album When The Iron Glows Red, out Sep 27. There may be safety in numbers, but for Jae there’s a certain freedom and spontaneity that comes with going at it alone. This is evident in Leave A Light On; leaping forth with a spread of Lennon-esque strings and classic pop hooks. Catch Laffer and band at Mojos on Thurs 24 Oct and upstairs at The Astor Fri 25.
KHAAAAAAAAAAN
Californian dude Valentino Khan has put out official remixes for artists such as Wiz Khalifa, Skylar Grey, Kreayshawn, The Bloody Beetroots, Benny Benassi, Congorock, Sean Paul, DJ Craze and Steve Aoki. He’s also remixed Jay Z and Kanye West’s album, Watch The Throne (he called it Mark The Throne). It’s genius. On top of that, he has produced music for multi-platinum hip hop artists B.o.B, T.I., Bruno Mars, 2 Chainz and Tyga. Catch him for Hiline at Ambar on Fri 13 Sep. Tickets $20 on the door.
16 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
DEEP SEA ARCADE
FEARLESS FREQUENCIES
Paying homage to experimental cinema and the dystopian sci-fi films of the 60s, Outlands is an accomplished debut full of kaleidoscopic pop songs including singles Steam, Girls, Don’t Be Sorry and Lonely In Your Arms. The band behind it is Deep Sea Arcade, and gosh, have they been raking in the smiles from critics and fans around the world (our previous incarnation gave it Album Of The Week). They’ve spent the best part of the last year living in the UK, soaking up the culture and imparting some of their own as they lay down their sophomore record, quickly creating the same buzz in their temporary home of London which lead to them being one of Sydney’s most respected acts. Now they head to Amplifier on Sun 6 Oct. Tickets through Oztix.
TAKE A DIP
Just beyond the half-way point of 2013, and it already stands as the busiest year for Australia’s hardest working, road dogging rock’n’roll band, The Deep End. In support of their debut album Cop This, the Melbourne pub rock’n’roll quintet left behind a trail of dropped jaws, eargasms and beer stained ceilings earlier this year in the form of a 23-show Australian and New Zealand tour, a massive undertaking by an independent Aussie rock band in this day and age. Now they do it again, with a 21-date run which hits Mustang Bar on Thurs 21 Nov and Prince Of Wales, Bunbury on Fri 22.
HAVE YOU EVER ORDERED AN OVERPRICED ARTISAN SANDWICH AND JUST THOUGHT TO YOURSELF, WHY DON’T I JUST GO AND GET FUCKED? RYE SAM SIMMONS [@SAMSIMMONSS], RYE?
8FEOFTEBZ "VHVTU
4*.0/ ,&--: "/% 5)& #*( #".#00
+ - , - + FRIDAY 30 AUGUST
SPEAKEASY FEAT.
5IVSTEBZ "VHVTU
#&9¤4 01&/ .*$ /*()5
ALISON WONDERLAND
1306%-: 4611035&% #: SATURDAY 31 AUGUST
SIGMA
'SJEBZ "VHVTU
7%&--* 4BUVSEBZ "VHVTU
FRIDAY 6 SEPTEMBER
NAVI
#-6& 4)"%%:
EDM ANTHEMS
4VOEBZ 4FQUFNCFS
450/&'*&-%
SATURDAY 7 SEPTEMBER
CRISSY CRISS
$0.*/( 400/ 4&1 ."/"-*0/ 4&1 $"3"7"/" 46/ 4&1 5*+6"/" $"35&-
& MC FELON
*** &&" &$ !## ! ' #( , + &&"!% )!## %! ' #( &$ (
X-WRAY 201 QUEEN VICTORIA ST NORTH FREMANTLE, WA PH: 08 9335 2725 | www.theswanhotelfremantle.com
FRIDAY 30 AUGUST
WHOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S YOUR DADDY
W/ THE KILLER HIPSTERS, THE COLOURED CHAIN, FLYBALL GOVâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;NOR
0- $//23 s %.429
SATURDAY 31 AUGUST
THE FIREPLACE SESSIONS event
KYLE BONSER, JOSIE CROSBY (DUO), AARON GWYNAIRE
FT/
0- $//23 s %.429 SATURDAY 31 AUGUST
BLUE LUCY
DUCKS ON A STRING, THE QUALIFIED SERVICE PERSONNEL, FRUM, AMY CHURCH FAMILY BAND 0- $//23 s %.429
Food â&#x20AC;˘
â&#x20AC;˘
Coffee days
7
â&#x20AC;˘ till
Sound late
Wednesday 28/8 â&#x20AC;˘ Acoustic Showcase with Kim McDonald and Ash Hendriks (7:30pmâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;9:30pm) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; free Thursday 29/8 Jazz Quartet
â&#x20AC;˘
The Jack (7pmâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;10pm) -
Doepel free
NO CHARGE!
Friday 30/8 â&#x20AC;˘ Leah Miche and The Regular Hunters with special guests Golden String and David Craft (8:30pmâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;11:30pm) - $5 entry Saturday 31/8 â&#x20AC;˘ DJ Dick Tracy (8:30pmâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;11:30pm) - free Sunday 1/9 â&#x20AC;˘ The Charisma Brothers Jazz (4pm â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 6pm) / DJ Click Brown Fox (7pmâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;10pm) - free Monday 2/9 â&#x20AC;˘ Exclusive Interview with Rock Bottom Aeolian Harpist Quindarious Gooch: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d gone right off the rails, mate. He was as fat as a boarding house pudding. â&#x20AC;? Tuesday Jazz
3/9 Quartet
Lot 4 â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ 9430
3 â&#x20AC;˘ 9399
â&#x20AC;˘
The (7pmâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;10pm)
13 â&#x20AC;˘
Tom -
Tale free
Essex St Fremantle xwraymusic@gmail.com
THE MUSIC â&#x20AC;˘ 28TH AUGUST 2013 â&#x20AC;˘ 17
music
ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S A SPIRIT THING
Words Tyler McLoughlan. Photos Kane Hibberd.
Surf, spirituality and stunning unsuspecting festival punters with his didgeridoo skills: Xavier Rudd chats to Tyler McLoughlan about a few of his favourite things.
W
ith the release of his seventh studio album, Spirit Bird, last year, Xavier Rudd has continued his soul journey as one of Australia’s most important and authentic voices on environmental and Indigenous issues throughout Europe and North America over the past three months. With a heavy tour load taking in festivals including Glastonbury and his own largely sold-out shows, Rudd has managed to sneak in some time for his love of surfing and the great outdoors. “It’s all been really cool…” he says with a relaxed voice. “I rented a bike and took in some scenics up through Sedona to the Grand Canyon; that was pretty friggin’ cool. That was on the three days off. Other than that we’ve just had a lot of shows, and the shows are goin’ off – they’re awesome. They’re really, really awesome right now; I’m just sort of stoked, with everything.”
three songs in, it was just pumping – the whole place – and the hands in the air just bouncing with me the whole time… It was a huge crowd – probably 20,000 people or something. It’s a great feeling – it’s cool. It’s kind of why I do what I do; I like to move people.” Announced as the first performer for Brisbane’s annual BIGSOUND conference and showcase in September ahead of a national headline tour, it’s a rare chance for industry folk to catch a roots artist of Rudd’s standing,
right spirit is coming out of it and hitting people in the right way… “In terms of [my use of ] the yidaki, I was adopted up in north east Arnhem Land into the Dhuwa mob, which is descendents of Yidaki, who was the man who found it 60,000 years ago. So I went through all that about ten years ago, and then, you know, it’s interesting, my music, because I’ve come to understand that I am just a vehicle for it; I can’t take responsibility for it a lot of the time. It’s obvious when a song comes from a personal thing that’s goin’ on with me or an emotion or something, but quite often it just flows out of me and it’s comin’ from somewhere else. It’s always been that way and in Western culture it’s trippy to put that into words, but I’ve understood it since I was a little kid and I hold space for that… It just flows out of me and a lot of time it’s spirit business.” Supremely spiritual, the ocean is also a great influence on Rudd’s musical approach. Part of a loose network of acoustic and roots musos that includes Brit Ben Howard and Australia’s Mat McHugh of The Beautiful Girls, they’ve each
“IT’S INTERESTING, MY MUSIC, BECAUSE I’VE COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT I AM JUST A VEHICLE FOR IT.”
Though his headline shows allow Rudd an opportunity to reconnect with crowds that already know and love his thought-provoking and physical music style, festivals give him the chance to watch the faces of new fans move from bewilderment to joy once the rhythm takes hold. “I’ve always had a great response from festivals and they’ve probably been pretty key to my following because I’ve always been an independent artist and not commercial and built quite a big, rootsy support base around the world – I think a lot of that probably comes from playing festivals. On this trip I did some amazing festival shows where it’s pretty clear when people sort of haven’t seen you and they’re into it, and that’s always a good feeling. “I did this big festival in Belgium, and there’s always my sort of core people at the front, and you know you can tell who knows it and who doesn’t. Some of the faces were pretty stunned...” he chuckles. “That one just springs to mind ‘cause I remember in the first song I was playing yidaki [didgeridoo] – I came out and I was playing didges and percussion pretty hard – and you could just see people that were sort of stunned in places, and lookin’ at the screen just staring, trying to figure out what was goin’ on. And then by the end of that show, even two or 20 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
and understand the significance of the Indigenous instrumentation he incorporates.
grown large and fiercely loyal fan bases through the assistance of the most well-travelled street teams ever – surfers. It therefore comes as no surprise to see who the Byron-based artist has chosen to team up with on his forthcoming Australian tour.
“The ones I use and the story that I bring is to respect the traditional story of it,” Rudd says of his didgeridoos. “I like to make a point of that and make sure people understand what the spirit of the instrument is. And that spirit travels with it and the sticks that I use are a spirit lord from up in Arnhem Land and that’s all part of the exchange when I’m using those instruments with the right permission and the
“I’ve known Donavon [Frankenreiter] for years, since years ago [when] I played with him and Jack Johnson on tour. He’s a classic; Donavon’s a funny guy… And I’ve got Nahko & Medicine For The People, they’re opening, and they’re opening here in the States as well and they’re a brilliant band… It will be groovy; it will be nice to collaborate musically together too and jump up with each other on stage and go surfin’ if there’s waves. “I’ve had heaps of shows in Europe and America and it will be just nice to get back and do the little, humble vibe of Aussies – it’s classic after being on these big tours overseas, to get home and feel like [I’m having] a home-cooked meal.” WHEN & WHERE: 28 Sep, 3 Oceans Winery, Margaret River; 29 Sep, Fremantle Arts Centre
INDIGENOUS INSIGHTS Rudd is passionate about offering insights into Indigenous culture through his use of yidakis, particularly considering the education system has left some gaping holes in the history lessons of our country. “The ones I travel with are the ones I have a blessing to play. They’re the only sticks I indentify with because of kind of where it came from…” he says, explaining that though the yidaki is thought to be a common Indigenous instrument, it is very specific to the people of north east Arnhem Land. “[It] eventually got traded around the rest of Australia ‘cause it only came from a small part of Aus, so a lot of the mobs didn’t use it in most of the country but it got traded over time down to the south and eventually it’s become a message stick for our Aboriginal people – a very important message stick in terms of awareness of our Aboriginal culture and oppression of our Aboriginal culture… “It’s sad – every Australian kid should know these things but it’s not offered [in school]… I grew up in southern Victoria and when I went through school we learnt about Captain Cook and all that, but nothing about Indigenous culture and it’s still not very much better now. It’s bullshit; it’s fuckin’ ludicrous that it’s not celebrated.”
fashion
FASHION WEAK In case you didn’t realise, the cocaine circus has rolled into town again. Words By Natasha Lee. Pics By Peter Sharp.
“HI, WE’RE HERE FOR ONE DIRECTION”
T
hat’s right, the Mercedez-Benz Fashion Week landed in Sydney this week to once again educate women that beauty only comes in a size six. Unless you’re a C-Grade Australian celebrity, odds are you probably haven’t been to this soul sucking bullshit fest that sees models parade in overpriced clothes down a runway while ‘fashionistas’ (eg: footy players and their soapie star girlfriends) clap and nod as they stroll past. Think of a dog show – only more depressing. Don’t believe me? Well, because we here at The Music love you, we saved you the brain cells and went instead. And now for a word from our photographer: “Most people looked like they hadn’t eaten in a week.” Well, duh.
I’M GOING TO START A WEBSITE CALLED “HYPSTER OR HOBO” AND IT’S GONNA BE FILLED WITH THIS ‘DESIGNER RIPPED’ SHIT.
DO YOU COME WITH THE CAR? HURR HURR.
SPOTTED: THE ONLY PIECE OF FOOD IN THE ENTIRE PLACE.
HEY GIRL, THOSE COLLAR BONES COULD CUT CHEESE.
22 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS SHIT”
THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THE WHOLE EVENT IS THE BOOZE, WHICH WAS APPARENTLY OVERPRICED AND AVERAGE AS FUCK.
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 23
music
RETURN OF THE MAC Mac DeMarco’s shaping to get lewd, rude and hopefully a little bit nude when he brings his “jizz jazz” down under this summer. He tells Samson McDougall about letting go of the lipstick.
M
ac DeMarco’s second ‘proper’ album, 2 (he’s got, like, hundreds of other self-released recordings), has summer good times written all over it. The Canadian slacker’s just announced he’s heading our way for an early-summer tour that incorporates Victorian favourite Meredith Music Festival (“I was just on the phone with another guy,” he says, “did he say something about a naked race at the end?”). This latest record is a bit of a jump from the rawness of Rock And Roll Night Club, his ‘debut’ of last year, but his lazy aura still sprawls throughout. Truth is, the dude’s been even busier than usual. He’s a bit of a natural travelling spirit and since being snapped up by über-cool NYC label Captured Tracks, touring’s been DeMarco’s MO. “I was from a town called Edmonton, Alberta, kinda like mid-western Canada, people call it, like, the Texas of Canada,” says DeMarco of his beginnings. “I played in a bunch of bands, that’s pretty much where I got my start. I ended up moving to Vancouver when I was, like, 18 and that was where I started playing a lot of shows in town.
somewhere down the line and then Captured Tracks picked me up and then this year has been very strange... I’ve pretty much only been on tour this year.” Somewhere amidst the madness DeMarco conjured 2, which in many ways grounds him as some kind of ‘serious artist’ more than continuing with the live-fast-die-young, frenetic nature of the debut and previous selfreleased stuff. “For 2 it was a big change from the first album, I went from weird rock’n’roll motif – like, stereotype
punk and the outer orbits of pop music converge, though the mid-tempos and sleepy vocals on Rock And Roll Night Club harbour a kind of sadness. 2 is a much brighter affair. Where the former slips into a kind of introspective daze, the latter clips up the pace and puts on a happier face. “The Kinks and The Beatles, big bands like that,” he says of his heroes early on, but also says he lowered the bar of his own expectations by listening to plenty of more musically challenged acts. “On the one hand I have these super great amazing perfect bands and on the other hand it’s bands with great songs that are pretty sloppy but they’re really cool. “On 2 I would run these strange effects through this really clean amplifier and try and get a good tone and bring in the microphone and make sure nothing was kinda weird sounding with the other instruments on the recording. I stopped playing the guitar like an ass and started trying to play more like a bass where it’s, like, complementary to the other things on the recording rather than just being this huge shredding centrepiece where you can’t really hear anything else.” As a result, the guitar tones are bright but brittle, twanging and warbling at the borders of tuned-ness. His instrument of choice is a weathered old basharound he’s been lugging about the countryside from the start. “I got it when I was 16 or something and it’s gone through a lot of different makeovers because it breaks all the time – it’s actually broken right now,” he says. “I’ve tried other guitars and I don’t like the way that they sound and I don’t like the way that they feel – unless I bought a $5,000 guitar or something, but if I had something like that I’d feel weird, I wouldn’t want to throw it around and stuff... [My guitar] has a problem where it breaks strings every show, the people from the label are, like, ‘You
“I STOPPED PLAYING THE GUITAR LIKE AN ASS AND STARTED TRYING TO PLAY MORE LIKE A BASS.” I did a little bit of touring and then eventually a couple of years later I ended up in Montreal.” Montreal proved a tougher nut to crack in terms of regular gigging and led DeMarco to spend more time messing around with recording. “It’s like nobody has jobs there ‘cause everybody’s doin’ their art project or something,” he says. “I mean, you’ve gotta play because you like playin’, y’know, it’s not about gettin’ money, but in Vancouver it just turned out I could make a substantial amount of money and support myself just from playin’ in town, which doesn’t really make any sense in the first place. So Montreal was a bit different but it gave me the opportunity to work on some other things.
leather boots, ride your Harley Davidson-style weird stuff – to, ‘Oh, this is who I am and I don’t wear lipstick all the time and check it out’: that was the second album.” He says that now the relative success of the more even-tempered 2 does put a bit of pressure on him to toe a slightly straighter line, at least in his recorded work.
“I kinda slowed down a little bit because I couldn’t really hustle it with just show money anymore... I started focusing more on recording I guess and I wound up making that Rock And Roll Night Club album
The origins of DeMarco’s sound lie somewhere around where the fringes of
24 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
have to get a back-up guitar, you break strings every show’... I just don’t like playing anything else.” For the purposes of touring he’s enlisted three buddies to bring his songs – which the folk at Meredith are labelling “The world’s most well crafted modern pop with brilliant duelling guitar interplay as a subplot”, but he refers to as “jizz jazz” – to life. His performances are famously wild affairs. “In the right circumstances it definitely can [get crazy] if the kids want it – if the kids want it, they can have it,” he says. “But if they don’t, then it probably won’t. That’s my main idea of doing shows; it’s about, like, an experience between... The kids have gotta be close; it’s for them and they’re there for me.” WHAT: 2 (Captured Tracks/Spunk) WHEN & WHERE: 19 Dec, The Bakery
the individual is a temple, a space to be explored,” Marshall says, of 6 Feet Beneath The Moon. “It’s very much a clear homage to the individual, to one’s self and the experience of yourself.”
music
Yet, contrastingly, this album about the individual as temple is just as much about dwelling amidst society; living in a city, surrounded by so many people, a sense of desperation in the air. “A lot of the [songs],” on 6 Feet Beneath The Moon, Marshall furthers, “are about feeling lost, about being lost. About feeling out of your depth. It’s about feeling simultaneously out of control yet still controlled by other people. That’s what the title means, 6 Feet Beneath The Moon: it’s about being buried beneath the darkness, underneath what you look up to, what glows in the sky.”
BORN TO BE KING King Krule (aka Archy Marshall) has been writing songs since he was eight. The teenage singer-songwriter tells Anthony Carew about his need for control.
I
t’s 2AM in London, and Archy Marshall is “currently in a girl’s bedroom”, sounding suspiciously like he may’ve just had a sly smoke. The lateness of the hour – and, indeed, the baked drawl – have much in common with the music Marshall makes as King Krule. Singing in a deep, dark, gravelly voice, Marshall paints pained portraits of urban decay over music whose spartan samples and glinting guitars play almost as some bluesy counter to The xx, sung in slurs that make him sound like South London’s answer to Tom Waits. It’s music that sounds weathered, world-weary, and woe-betold; quite a feat for someone who, at the time of his boudoir phonecall, was still a week shy of his 19th birthday.
The main narrative, when listening to King Krule’s music – and his debut LP, 6 Feet Beneath The Moon – is the contrast between Marshall’s tender years/ babyface, and the sound he makes. But, though still a teenager, he’s already an old musical soul – harbouring the desire to make sound as some of his most formative memories. “One of my earliest memories, I remember looking at maracas, a really nice set of maracas,” Marshall recounts. “It’s true. I still can remember that feeling: just being a kid, staring at them, and really wanting to be a musician.” Marshall wrote his first song as an eight year-old, and became a fully-fledged songwriter at 12, rolling tape on an eight-track recorder that allowed him to assemble songs in isolation; the feeling he recalls was “like being a scientist”, with every day a new experiment. Eventually, he’d end up at a place so many prodigious English talents have, doing his high school study at the Brit School, whose alumni have populated endless girl-groups and talent-quests. Marshall’s not so keen on talking about his school years, but wants to make sure that he’s never spoken of as some sculpted talent, steered by the hands of others. “My music has always been something I’ve done by myself,” Marshall says. “When I started, it was definitely
about wanting to reach out to other people, trying to find guidance, to get that from other people, but I never did. My biggest influence just came from within. Music was just something I really wanted to do. It felt so natural, so urgent. It was just like a fact of nature for myself.” By the time he made 6 Feet Beneath The Moon, music had become “a form of self-exploration” for Marshall. The LP marks a 14-song study of 19 years, its eldest tune dating back to when the songwriter was 12. In his early days, cutting his teeth as a home-recorder, Marshall initially called himself Zoo Kid, before switching to a handle inspired by Donkey Kong Country’s King K. Rool for a debut, self-titled 2011 EP, released when he was 17. Many of the songs have already trickled out on previous releases, and they chart Marshall growing up, and coming-of-age on tape. “It’s about finding dark parts within yourself, about how
While the press-release trumpets co-production by Rodaidh McDonald – who’s worked with The xx and Savages – an under-discussed contributor to the sound of the record is long time Stereolab drummer Andy Ramsay, who served as engineer, studio boss, and essential gear-lender to Marshall. The teenager met him when they were both at work on Mount Kimbie’s second LP, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, on which King Krule guested on a pair of vocal performances, and from which Marshall learnt more than he expected. “It was, in many ways, uncomfortable for me, because I had no control at all,” he says. “The music wasn’t created by me at all. And fitting my voice into their music, I couldn’t use the same tricks and techniques that I was used to using in my own music. I was mapping my style to them, and it couldn’t have felt more different. It taught me a lot about experiment, and different approaches.”
“IT’S ABOUT FINDING DARK PARTS WITHIN YOURSELF, ABOUT HOW THE INDIVIDUAL IS A TEMPLE, A SPACE TO BE EXPLORED.” Though sounding world weary, Marshall is still young enough that every experience is a learning experience. Touring the world for the last two years has helped him “open [his] mind”, and he’s unjaded enough to “fall in love with every new place” he stops at. Not just when he, say, plays a church in Warsaw (“It was weird: everyone was sat down to watch us play,” he recounts. “All the aisles were filled out, and all eyes were on me. There I was, at the front; it felt like I’d accidentally wandered in and been asked to do a service”), but by each crowd. “It’s still so early for me that I’m always fascinated by who’s actually going to come and see me play,” says Marshall. “I’m genuinely interested to meet the people who like my music. It wasn’t that long ago when I knew everyone who liked my music; it was just my friends. But now I can travel to somewhere like Nagano, Japan, and there will be people there, excited to see me play. It’s quite mind blowing. It’s unreal.” WHAT: 6 Feet Beneath The Moon (XL/Remote Control) THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 25
film
READY TO LAUNCH Not being able to speak the language of the locals didn’t bother Kim Mordaunt when he was in Laos filming The Rocket, as he was looking for “the truth in their eyes”, he tells Anthony Carew.
W
hen filmmaker Kim Mordaunt and producer Sylvia Wilczynski were in Laos making Bomb Harvest – a profile of an Australian bombdisposal specialist working in the most bombed country on the planet – they found themselves drawn not just to their subject, Laith Stevens, nor the sordid history of the American “secret war” waged just across the border from Vietnam. Instead, they were most fascinated with the local children they found working as magpies, picking out pieces of scrap metal from the wreckage of ancient ordinance.
“We thought, God, we’ve gotta work again with these kids,” recalls Mordaunt. “And, next time, instead of doing it from an Anglo perspective for ABC TV, do it from the Lao perspective.” So, the pair wrote The Rocket, the story of a displaced family forced to carry the burden of a long-ago, half-forgotten war. Both Morduant and Wilczynski lost a parent at a young age; and so they made their character a young boy, so as to explore “the guilt you feel, the mentors that you search for, the chaos that you end up in” as a child dealing with loss. Even though the filmmakers already had
music
connections with locals – and, in associate producer Pauline Phoumindr, an Laotian-Australian to help bridge the cultural gap – their first steps were still tentative; understandable given Laos doesn’t have a film industry. “We learnt very early on that people were going to be very suspicious of us,” says Mordaunt. “This is a country bombed more than any other place on the planet, so you can imagine that people who lived through that, who thought they were literally seeing hell, that they’re not about to be trusting of any Westerners who come into town with a camera.” At first working with rural communities, they had to meet a succession of village chiefs, chiefs of neighbouring villages, district chiefs, country government officials – wanting everything to be official. “We never did the guerrilla approach, I don’t think it works in Laos,” says Mordaunt. “You need that government minder. At first I thought a government minder would just limit what we could do, but it proved the opposite: they can get you access to places, and they can help you earn the trust of the locals, because they see this is an official thing, and they’re not going to get in trouble for being a part of it.” Working with a cast of non-professional, rural-dwelling, non-English-speaking locals was, of course, a challenge. But Mordaunt, raised by a Mauritian-Indian mother, has spent his whole life – from childhood through his professional work – in migrant community. “So, in a funny sort of way, not being able to speak the language didn’t actually bother me at all,” Mordaunt offers. “You’re looking for truth in their eyes, in their body language, more than in their actual words.”
WHAT: The Rocket In cinemas 29 Aug
MAN THE HELM The late noughties saw a bunch of heavy rock bands born out of this country, Helm being one of them. Ryan “Ruckus” Lucas tells Cam Findlay about coming back from those heady days.
I
t’s pretty hard to doubt the clout that epic Australian rock bands have at the moment. Just look at the two biggest, Karnivool and Dead Letter Circus: two big releases, two huge tours and a collective national fever for their uncompromising progressive rock. As big as they are, it’s a bit hard to remember them in their early days, but what drove both bands back in the mid-2000s was a consensus in the musical sphere that progressive rock was back on the board. Helm, a bunch of guys from the Gold Coast, are one such band. Forming in 2008, Helm had a handful of releases before a slew of line-up changes put a hold on touring and releasing. Their new album, Part III: Panthalassa, fills a four-year gap between full-length releases. “Speaking as the second newest member of the band, it’s been a bit of a ride,” guitarist and vocalist Ryan “Ruckus” Lucas admits. “It’s kinda been this situation of realigning the band, and kinda figuring out what the new process of the band’s going to be. While doing that, we’re really putting a lot of emphasis on keeping the Helm sound that was in those previous releases, because we think there’s something good going on there.” Obviously excited to see Panthalassa released, and to get back out on the road, the band have decided to play
26 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
the entire album, front to back, at all of their upcoming shows. “We’ve all been in bands before, but I don’t think we’ve ever been more proud about an album than with this one. It’s taken a lot of work, but we’re really happy with it. It’s got that heavy rock side, but there’s also the melodic and progressive sides to it as well.” With three guitarists, they’ve injected a fair amount of heaviness into the whole progressive rock vibe. “Yeah, it has the chance to get messy, sometimes,” Lucas explains the convoluted nature of such intricate musicianship. “With three guitarists, it can
easily become way too complicated and heavy. You have to put in extra work to make sure it all blends together, but that’s something we’re happy to do, that’s what we’ve always done. You know, you never stop writing... even when you’re touring and stuff. It doesn’t really stop, so there’s always songs being fine-tuned all the time. When I came in, for instance, there was about four songs written that made it on to the album, but a few bits and pieces sitting around that needed joining together. So when I came in, it was pretty much writing and working on that from day one, and that’s really how we’ve gotten to the album now.” The Endless Storm National Tour will take Helm all around the country, including their first stop in WA. “Yeah, it’s been a long time coming. It’s a bit hard to move a band around with three guitars,” Lucas laughs. “But we’re definitely excited about it.” WHEN & WHERE: 13 Sep, Rosemount Hotel
BEYOND GENRES EDM with an indie twist, The M Machine have become festival favourites. Cyclone talks to Ben Swardlick about how they got there.
S
onny “Skrillex” Moore’s OWSLA is one of the most diverse dance labels around, but The M Machine (TMM) must be its boldest signing. The Californian festival favourites, who perform EDM with an indie twist, are supporting their DJ labelmate Porter Robinson in Australia. Yet they’re a drawcard themselves. Forming in 2011, Ben Swardlick met Eric Luttrell at the University of California in Santa Barbara and they then connected with Andy Coenen in San Francisco. Sharing an interest in sound design they’d collaborate on music. “We each have enthusiast musical backgrounds with
instrumental competence on the keys, guitar, drums, brass, et cetera,” says Swardlick. “But, generally speaking, none of us had serious music projects before we started writing together.” Today, when it comes to production, and even vocal elements, TMM is inherently democratic – and about spontaneity. “We share the load equally. It’s important to us that we don’t get lazy or stuck in a sound.” However, Coenen exclusively handles the visual side. “He sourced, built and programmed our LED ‘M’ stage piece, designs and performs our live video content, and even does all the scripting for our website.” The band knew Moore prior to signing to
OWSLA and airing Promise Me A Rose Garden/Glow. “Years ago we met Skrill at a tiny show of his down in Santa Cruz. He was flying to Australia out of SF a couple of days later, so he decided to come kick it at our warehouse in the city. We shared tracks during that visit and crossed paths here and there for about a year before OWSLA booted up. As soon as we’d written some content we felt was OWSLA-ready, Skrill gave us a shot.” Meanwhile, TMM developed their hybrid sound – something that Swardlick “struggles” to summarise. “Progressive electro?,” he teases. “Indie dance? Space jams?” TMM do have one objective. “There’s a chance that any one of our tracks could be the first song a potential fan hears. So, even if we can’t guarantee he or she will be a fan of its particular genre, we can make sure the experience is original, musical and effortful.”
music
TMM issued the concept album, Metropolis, inspired by Fritz Lang’s classic ‘20s sci-fi film, as two EPs over some months. But, Swardlick says, they “absolutely” will do a straight album. “Inventing album concepts, storyboards, video treatments, cover art and general imagery is just the best part of being in a band. ‘World creation’ is something writers talk about all the time. We’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to get involved – and there’s really no going back.” Arty they may be, purists they’re not. They’ve actually tweaked Bruno Mars’ Locked Out Of Heaven. (“Bruno’s team was thrilled with the remix.”) Robinson himself is plotting an ambitious album. Any chance of a collaboration? “We talk about writing something together all the time,” Swardlick says. “It feels like that will happen soon.” WHEN & WHERE: 26 & 27 Oct, Villa
INDELIBLE MARKS
body art
On her second trip to Australia, Malaysia-based tattooist Jennifer Neoh brings a style that mixes influence from a far afield, as Dave Drayton discovers.
T
his year the Australian Tattoo & Body Art Expo travels to Perth for the first time, bringing with it a slew of motorcycles and muscle cars, pinup paraphernalia and a host of heavily inked humans. Representatives of local legends like Perth’s Primitive Tattoo, Morley’s Artful Ink, and Wanneroo’s Abandoned Art will be joined by exhibiting international tattoo artists like Lius Ada from Bali’s Ada Tattoo Studio, Ra from Thailand’s Decorate Tattoo & Piercing Shop, and artists from Japanese studio, ToMs Tattoos. Jennifer Neoh, who works at Skin Nation Tattoo in Malaysia, first travelled to Australia in March for the Sydney expo, and will return alongside Skin Nation co-owner Mc Ng for the Perth expo, where they will be celebrating a year since opening. Neoh has been tattooing since 2007, honing her art at Mandala Tattoo, and says beyond the Gathering of the Tribes convention in Sarawak, Malaysia, expos like this are few and far between at home. “There’s not much expos or conventions here in Malaysia to begin with, but I managed to take part in Gathering Of The Tribes 2011 and Sydney Tattoo Expo. I do believe the opportunities come in the forms of experiences, exposures and meeting tons of awesome folks from these expos.”
The lack of expos in Malaysia is somewhat surprising giving that the tattoo culture there is, in Neoh’s eyes, only flourishing. “It’s sad to say that the tattoo culture in Malaysia is not as vast as other countries. Many are still blindly picking designs with the simple mindset of ‘because it’s nice’ without understanding the meaning of it,” says Neoh. With her work at Skin Nation, which promotes custom designs, and expos such as Gathering Of The Tribes and the upcoming Perth event, Neoh is trying to make her mark in an ever-growing tattoo culture. “Ever since the
public acceptance towards tattoos has widened with the accessibility of TV shows such as MTV’s Miami Ink and TLC’s America’s Worst Tattoos have somehow made an impact in changing Malaysians’ perspective and understanding the tattoo culture. With that said, I am very happy that a handful of my customers and friends are heading towards custom designs.” These expos help to generate inspiration, a healthy competition that sees each artist striving to better their own work and find their unique style. “I’ve been evolving from many different styles since I first started, but my love for realistic black and grey would always be my style,” says Neoh. WHAT: Tattoo & Body Art Expo WHEN & WHERE: 6 to 8 Sep, Convention Centre THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 27
and it’s just kinda like, ‘Well, that’s how I found you. If it wasn’t for your radio success I wouldn’t be at this concert tonight; you wouldn’t have my money, I wouldn’t be buying this T-shirt, I wouldn’t have your sticker on my car, so why don’t you just indulge us as fans, as followers, as believers of your music?’ So in that aspect, we want to play it all. We want to play the music that the fans found us with.”
music
NEVER LET YOU GO Stephen Christian is ready to rekindle Anberlin’s romance with Australia, and as he tells Benny Doyle, we’re the girl that they love.
O
ften, it takes doing something new to make you remember what you love about the old stuff you do. For Winter Haven, Florida melodic rockers Anberlin, this came by way of their recent Lite tour that they worked across their American homeland from the east to west coast. Though they’ve offered this side to fans briefly, even as part of their An Evening With tour Down Under in 2011, they used these dates as an opportunity to give longstanding fans 90 minutes of the band’s music in a different light: an evening driven by acoustic guitars, auxiliary drums, keys and a refined vibe. One would have a strong position to argue the point, though, that Anberlin’s music more than lends itself to such sessions, what with the huge choruses, considered bridges and a quiet/loud stadium dynamic that has earmarked itself as the quintet’s signature. Frontman Stephen Christian agrees, though he’s at pains to admit it. “I would like to believe so but I don’t think that’s something that you can selfanalyse, y’know, pat yourself on the back and say, ‘Look how good I am’. I know personally that I look at the other guys in the band, the musicianship, and a lot of what they do live other bands can’t pull off. They have to have drum machines or tracks or it has to be really loud. But these guys are just incredible musicians; I can definitely brag on that.” Keeping it fresh is vital, however, and it’s endeavours like Anberlin Lite that have helped the group carry on with relentless momentum for more than a decade. “I think it’s more important for us in the band than it is the fans. I don’t know if [our fans] would care either way, but for us as a band, this isn’t our job, this is still our passion. And there’s a big difference – if this was our job we could do it run of the mill and half-arse it every night. But people can tell, people can look up on stage and see if you really believe what you’re singing about; they can look at the stage and go, ‘What, is this band put together; do they even care if they’re here tonight?’ So we don’t want to phone it in, we don’t want to be fake. We try our best to be as genuine as 28 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
possible and I think part of that is just enjoying what we do – love what you do and do what you love. I think that’s why people like Anberlin, because we’re not rock stars and we try to sing about stuff that we go through and that people can relate with, so if all that becomes a facade then I think that’s the day this whole thing starts to crumble.” Although maintaining enthusiasm is paramount for Anberlin, don’t expect a Vitalheavy set during their forthcoming shows. The musclier and at times darker 2012 record will still get decent play, but the band’s setlists are always structured with the fans in mind, regardless of what album they’re supposed to be ‘promoting’. “I think it is [important to do that]. I think if not you alienate, you think you’re better than them. It’s obnoxious. Radiohead is probably [in the] top three of my favourite bands – I love their music. But they don’t play any of their radio songs
And you can be assured that those favourites – pulled from the group’s six-record catalogue – are going to be delivered with vigour and conviction, traits that Anberlin’s live shows have always held. Christian himself couldn’t imagine anything less. “If you’re not going to give it all then don’t give anything. If you’re not going to put it all [on the line] on stage and be exhausted when you walk off and ready to collapse on the bed then just don’t even get on stage. These are the moments we live for, we dream for, and people would give their right arm to even go to Australia once, let alone many times, so if we’re not going to pour it all [out] then [we should] just stay at home, just quit, just go find another job.” This is where Anberlin circa 2013 are at. The dynamic and chemistry among members remains as strong as ever. New music isn’t even on the radar. All that’s in the planner are dates, cities, venues; the chance to live their dreams over and over, week after week. Returning to what they call their “second home”, the Floridians are excited to continue a love affair that stretches back almost their entire career. And like everything during our interview, Christian is unhesitant to let his emotions be known, showering praise down on Aussie audiences while recalling the moment this relationship first started blossoming.
“WE WOULD CONSIDER ENDING OUR WHOLE CAREER IN AUSTRALIA – THAT’S HOW MUCH WE LOVE IT.” “If there was ever a day, if we were going to break up, we would consider ending our whole career in Australia – that’s how much we love it,” he gushes. “It’s just a different feel. Australia and Anberlin, I think we fell in love at the same time. We had never ventured outside the United States as a band, and [then] here we [were] in the middle of Adelaide, and we go upstairs and we sell out this little club and we were, like, floored; we had no idea that anyone had even heard of Anberlin. We go thousands of miles away [from home] and people are screaming along every word; and it was this feeling, like we are from a much smaller town than Adelaide, we are 27,000 people in our little city, and yet we’re halfway around the world and people loved us. That’s why I think there’s such a mutual respect and adoration, and that’s why we’re always like, ‘When are we going back, when are we going back, let’s go back’. It was just like one of those moments when you find the girl you love, you just hold on with both hands, and that’s what Anberlin and Australia are like.” WHEN & WHERE: 11 Sep, Metropolis, Fremantle
WELCOMING A JUNGLE Two years ago, Tigertown were a young married couple jamming and recording at home. Now, they’re at the top of the Aussie indie-folk pile. Cam Findlay talks to Chris Collins about that heady rise. ntil around two years ago, what would eventually become Tigertown had a pretty nondescript existence. Formed by the songwriting partnership of the recently-married Chris and Charlie Collins, the group’s first EP immediately shot them into the “cool indie scene” and national airplay. Fastforward, and already the whole Tigertown thing seems like a serious part of Chris Collins’ life.
third EP, Wandering Eyes. “So we’ve just been gathering all the feedback we’ve had from the EP. We did some support shows last week with Bastille from the UK. So we got to practice there.
“We’re actually having our first rehearsal tonight for the tour,” Collins explains preparations for the tour around
“Since it’s focused on the new EP, it’s all the songs from that, and basically a whole lotta stuff we haven’t done live before. It’s funny now that we’ve got three EPs, trying to cut the set down. We’ve never really had to cut it down that much, because we haven’t had that much music out,” he laughs.
U
All three EPs – Tigertown, Before The Morning and now Wandering Eyes – have
gone straight from the band’s collective hands to music store to hearts and minds. It seems there’s a pretty voracious appetite for Tigertown’s emotive and powerful storytelling folk at the moment. It’s something that Collins doesn’t want to take for granted.
music
“I mean, it’s only really been two years since we released the first EP. I guess it wasn’t that deliberate, that release, because Charlie and I had just got married and we’d written all these songs and recorded them all in our bedroom. We just put out the EP by ourselves, which you can do these days and is probably one of the main reasons we’ve stuck with EPs so far. I guess it was when triple j started playing it that pretty much instantly we thought we had to get serious and get all our brothers and sisters involved.” And boy did triple j start playing it. Dom Alessio and Zan Rowe both championed Tigertown from the start on their respective shows. “Yeah, it was pretty crazy when all that happened. I mean, we hadn’t really taken it that seriously up until that point. I know a lot of people say it, but it’s a strange experience hearing your music on the radio with someone talking about how good it is. You suddenly realise, ‘I can actually do this as, like, a job.’” Now, and already with a few very successful tours under their belt, Chris, Charlie and the family they’ve made into Tigertown are on a roll. “Three EPs is probably enough now,” Collins laughs. “It’s just an idea, but we’re probably looking at an album next. I think we’re comfortable with ourselves and as a band to take that next step.” WHEN & WHERE: Sun 22 Sep, Newport Hotel
DEATH DEFYING
circus
Breathtaking feats! Fire breathers! Walking on air! What’s not to love about the circus? Sarah Braybrook goes behind the scenes with Circus Oz’s Laurel Frank to discover how the show is put together.
N
owadays they might be an iconic fixture on the Australian performing arts circuit, but back in the day Circus Oz was just a glint in the eye of a group of young performers. A member of the circus since the very beginning, costume designer Laurel Frank has been with the troupe since 1978, when small Carlton-based group Soapbox Circus merged with Adelaide’s New Circus to become Circus Oz. “We were kind of making it up as we were going along!” She says. “We had started to practice circus skills and got very interested in it as a genre [because] ...we wanted to take theatre into the streets and workplaces.” Their ultimate goal was to make home-grown, playful yet socially conscious shows that broke the mould in the performing arts scene of the day. “When we started, a lot of formal theatre was still based on English plays.” Frank says. “There wasn’t a lot of material to fall back on. We came very much from a niche within the theatre world, wanting to make work which was about Australia; which was written by us and performed by us.” Without any formal training in theatre, Frank initially drew on what she knew already to become a lighting technician and costume designer: “My mother was a dressmaker, and I had those skills. My father had been an electrician, so I was using skills that I had from training
with dad.” She focused on costumes after finding working in lighting too physically demanding. “When I was doing it, all the equipment was much heavier than it is today,” Frank says, “I was getting more injuries from lighting than I was from being a seamstress and part-time acrobat!” Frank - who also designs and makes costumes for theatre, cabaret, dance and film - is responsible for making sure that the circus performers’ outfits look striking but also hold up under the pressure of the big top. “You are working with people who are moving a lot and are putting in a lot
of hard work, basically” Frank says, adding, “they sweat, and you have to take that into account.” For the latest show, Cranked Up, Frank had to create light, flexible outfits the acrobats could wear which were in keeping with the theme of the show: construction. She sourced stretch fabrics which looked like denim and drill to make outfits modeled on work wear. Other shows have had themes such as Steampunk, challenging her to create ensembles which drew on Victorian fashion and punk to look fabulous but still worked for circus. Over the decades Frank has seen a multitude of themes and styles for the shows come and go. She hasn’t chucked out all the old outfits though - after so many years with Circus Oz, she takes the long view. “We’ve got out eighties phase in the costume store: it looks fairly outrageous and wacky now, but I’m sure it will come back,” Frank says. WHAT: Circus Oz Cranked Up WHEN & WHERE: 28 to 31 Aug, His Majesty’s Theatre THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 29
politics
POWER TO THE PEOPLE After a yawnsome first debate between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, the general public are set to fan the flames of discontent. Benny Doyle brings matches but has trouble finding fuel. here’s nothing flash about the foyer of the Broncos Leagues Club. It’s welcoming, it’s got a smattering of neon flair, but it’s hardly extravagant. The setting is working-class and it’s meant to be; this is the ‘real’ Australia that’s supposed to represent us 110 undecided voters. It’s 5.30pm in Red Hill, an inner city suburb of Brisbane that’s roughly ten clicks across the river from Kevin Rudd’s electorate of Griffith, and our small snapshot of the Australian voting public is filing into the venue before the people’s forum, the second televised debate that marks the halfway point of the campaign trail.
T
that are making metres, moving through the doors swiftly to take the plum seats on the floor. However, most, like me, choose to sip post-mix and juice from tiny plastic cups before trays of quiches and muffins cause an intense scrimmage in front of the empty bar area.
Pulling up outside the club 30 minutes ago, it was the expected scene, with photos and slogans supporting the Prime Minister outnumbering those for Opposition Leader Tony Abbott ten-to-one. Probably a polite estimate and one that doesn’t even count the amount of Labor-affirmative horn honking heard from passing motorists. But apart from a banner regarding sand mining on Fraser Island and some work rights threats for the future, there weren’t many agendas being addressed in the streets. It was generally positive but all fairly subdued.
Media and members of the general public mill about listlessly for the next 20 minutes, with everyone seeming a bit lost. There’s a bloke in a high-vis shirt, a lady dressed like a mystic psychic and a few pairs of knee-length socks and sensible shoes shuffling about. I take a seat next to a bearded man in shorts who promptly falls asleep. Smartphones shoot snappy tweets
As we move forward to get our wristbands my spirits are immediately lifted when I gaze up at a huge photo of my childhood hero ‘King’ Wally Lewis. He’s in attack mode and seems hungry to put points on the board; I imagine the two leaders will be looking to do the same shortly. For now, though, it’s just the faithful 30 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
into the ether, while the last of those muffins are snaffled by a couple of cameramen before show time. To the right I spot Bill Glasson, the LNP candidate for Griffith, sitting in front of various national journalists. He seems somewhat smug, but is forced to feign a smile through gritted teeth once the Rudd family get comfortable in the same row. Then it kicks off. You hear it. It’s not a roar; it’s more of a shriek. It’s a sound you’d associate with a pop star, not a politician. And although his popularity is far removed from the heights that were seen when he first took control of the country in 2007, there’s no denying the love that Brisbane still feels for the Prime Minister. He goes by K-Rudd and this be his ‘hood. Through all the commotion no one really notices that Abbott’s sauntered in also, sweeping in behind the cameras to shake hands with Sky News political editor and moderator David Speers, his gaze immediately focusing over Speers’ shoulder at his opposition. While all this takes place, cameras whir non-stop. It’s announced that Rudd has won the toss, Abbott shoots a wink to a clearly smitten Glasson and so it begins. If you followed the Twitter worm for the first televised debate from the National Press Club in Canberra you would’ve been led to believe that the PM walked away the victor. But the social website is known to pull left. All other media outlets called the result in the favour of Abbott, and
considering K-Rudd was scrambling at notes like a nervous high schooler, it was a fair assessment. This time, Rudd’s on the offensive immediately. He’s dropped a “Brissie” in by the first minute and is up in Abbott’s grill throughout his opening speech, striding towards him with every challenging statement. He’s left the cheat sheets at home and wheels out all sorts of new hand gestures as he sweeps, waves and points his policies home.
“THERE’S NO DENYING THE LOVE THAT BRISBANE STILL FEELS FOR THE PRIME MINISTER. HE GOES BY K-RUDD AND THIS BE HIS ‘HOOD.”
As members of the public question the two party leaders on everything from paid parental leave to same-sex marriage, the pair verbally joust, trading subtle (Rudd: “Mr Abbott seems to be suffering from just a little bit of amnesia”) and not so subtle (Abbott: “Does this guy ever shut up?”) barbs, the latter eliciting the biggest response of night. When Abbott claims there’s a “trust deficit”, Rudd gives a bored sniff and looks away. The Labor leader looks far happier when Abbott delivers a cringe-worthy “cut cut cut, build build build, jobs jobs jobs” monologue. They both have their moments of glory and obvious stumblings. Abbott – cutting a lean figure in a sharp navy suit – is considered with his answers, but also cagey when pressed for additional information on potential job and funding cuts. Rudd, meanwhile, has unbridled passion, but he’s behind in the opinion polls and it’s clear he doesn’t like it. By the end of the
debate, he’s the only man to have cracked his water bottle. Later this evening all corners of the media will proclaim this as a “feisty” debate, which it is, if compared to the first stale head-to-head that took place in the nation’s capital a few weeks ago. Overall, though, it was still tame – a trademark of contemporary Australian politics. There have probably been more lively bingo nights held in this room. And while we still try and dot the numbers from all the figures thrown out over the last hour, the two men assume their expected positions: K-Rudd posing in selfies, Abbott face-to-face with an attractive blonde. THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 31
music
VIVA LA NINA With House Party Vol. 2, Nina Agzarian smashes together everything from Tame Impala to TNGHT. Matt O’Neill speaks to Nina Las Vegas about being altruistic amidst the musical mayhem.
A
s Nina Las Vegas, Nina Agzarian is one of Australia’s most celebrated radio personalities. Helming triple j’s House Party and Mix Up programs, she’s a key tastemaker in Australian dance music. Her House Party Vol. 2 mix is a testament to her ear – sporting global stars (Disclosure) and rising impresarios (Tyler Touche) alike. “I was so much more prepared [for Vol. 2]. The first time, I was so stressed out because I didn’t know the process,” Agzarian says. “I’m such a flippant DJ. I play old tunes, rip stuff from Soundcloud, play remixes
music
that aren’t out – and you can’t do that when you’re doing something official. This time around, I was prepared... I got all the songs I love!” There’s significantly more to Agzarian than her considerable accomplishments as a radio DJ, though. For starters, she’s something of a social worker. In 2007, she co-founded Heaps Decent alongside Wesley Pentz (aka Diplo) and fellow Sydney DJ Andrew Levins – an organisation devoted to giving disadvantaged youth access to musicmaking. “When the initial workshop with Diplo happened, it was a link I’d set up through
my mum who was working at a juvenile justice centre in Wagga Wagga,” she explains, “and he had all this gear that he wanted to donate. After doing some research, I realised there weren’t many places you could leave gear. I said, ‘Leave it with me, I’ll make sure it get used’. We were just a resource, originally. We’d drive computers with Ableton on them to various organisations. It’s just grown since then, really. Eventually, Fuzzy came on board and that really took it to the next level. We have workshops running every day now, which is amazing.” Beyond that, she’s also an aspiring producer herself. In actual fact, she originally intended to dive fully into production following the release of last year’s debut House Party mix. Unfortunately, she dove into a tour and another compilation (among her countless other commitments). She’s not optimistic she’ll pull it off on the second go-around, either. “Oh, man. I have like 50 things that are not finished and mastered. It takes so much time! I’m a perfectionist. I don’t want anything shit going out there,” she laughs. “Even just finishing three mixes on the side of what I do every week for House Party took me three months. I just literally don’t have the time. It’s still very much a goal and maybe I’ll try... But it seems like last year just went crazy after that tour. I had maybe four weekends off. And a full-time job. I don’t even... Like, I don’t think you’ll see an EP for me anytime soon. I just want to do remixes and that sort of thing. Build up some industry cred. Even just producing for someone else, I don’t need to be out the front. I kind of like the idea of just me and someone else. I come from a hip hop background, so it’d just be nice to do something along those lines, I think...” WHAT: House Party Vol. 2 (ABC) WHEN & WHERE: 29 Aug, Capitol
CREATIVE GATHERING Three guys, a bus and a shindig in Bayswater: that’s what Gatherings is all about. Cam Findlay chats to organisers Damian Diggs, Cody Osbourne and Mark John about it. Pic by Alex Proud.
P
erth is facing something of a cultural revolution at the moment, in case you haven’t noticed. Well, revolution might be a bit strong, but it does seem that every day in this fair city, there are more and more opportunities opening up for those that harbour some passion in the arts. Enter Gatherings, a new festival-ish event set to hit Banks Reserve in Bayswater. Its creators – Damian Diggs, Cody Osbourne and Mark John – have a true calling for it; they’ve all been involved, in some way or another, with the simmering cultural scene in Perth for a good long while. It helps that, at the moment, there’s been a certain renewed passion for space redevelopment; the old Fremantle Myer building, for instance, is being reinvigorated as a multi-faceted space dealing in everything from large-scale music events to crafting workshops. Gatherings aim to present that excitement in the little things – a few bands, some stalls, a chilled-out atmosphere – without the financial obstacles of a huge festival. The twist? It’s all about a beat-up, 50-year-old bus. “It pretty much started when Mark came over with this idea,” explains Diggs. “He was just like, ‘hey, we’re all involved in the scene in some way, do you want to do something with it?’ That was a few weeks ago, and pretty
32 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
much it’s been a process of us sitting out the back of the house nutting out ideas and putting a bunch of calls out to as many people as possible. It’s the first festival we’ve ever put on, so it’s a bit... it’s pretty nerve-racking at the moment. Two weeks before, it really feels like that time that something’s about to go wrong, you know what I mean? But I think it’ll be okay.” The bus angle comes in as a unique fundraiser for the gig. A few friends got their hands on a bus that had previously served as a mobile production facility for film crews. “We basically got hold of the bus three years ago, and where we’re
at now is a culmination of ideas that I’ve had over that time,” John explains. “You know, the whole idea of the festival is to create some traction to renovate it and maybe see if it can be used by the community. From the start, I had this idea that it could hold all these things, like a mobile stage and the dirty great generator that’s in the back of it already, to hold all these community things that we want to. Because, you know, the ideas are there. It’s just getting those ideas out there that’s the next step.” It’s an interesting idea that’s already gained a lot of interest. The bands are basically doing it for the love, while those others helping have chipped in a fair bit. “I want to make sure I thank all the people who’ve really made this doable,” Diggs says. “Fat Shans, RTR, Life Is Noise, all these people have got on board. We just rang them up. It’s really exciting to know how much people care.” WHEN & WHERE: 31 Aug, Banks Reserve, Bayswater
ROAD TOLL Most people may have wondered about the stories behind those white crosses on the side of the road; Tim Winton has written a play about them. Paul Ashcroft talks to Zoe Barron about Shrine.
A
n 18-year-old is driving himself and his friends home from his parents’ beach house. They crash, he dies. The rest of the story is grief and recovery. The 18-year-old is Jack, a character in Tim Winton’s newest play, Shrine, being played by Perth-born, Melbourne-based actor Paul Ashcroft in the Black Swan Theatre production opening the last day of August. The play is named for the iconic white crosses that appear on the roadside sites of fatal crashes, placed there and maintained by friends and families of the victims. Noticing these shrines on his frequent drives through the country, Winton started wondering about the stories behind them. Ashcroft too, in the process of rehearsing Shrine, has found himself wondering about the crosses. More
specifically, he’s been thinking back to his indestructible late teenage years, when one of those crosses could easily have been erected for him. “All the men in the play would certainly agree that we would have been in similar situations where that could have happened,” Ashcroft suggests. “I think a lot about some of the situations I went through as an 18, 19-year-old, and the sort of bluff that men go through, specifically growing up in WA, and thinking, you know, there were a few close calls.” Ashcroft’s character represents the ones who weren’t so lucky. This, of course, poses its own dilemma: the problem
of your character being killed off at the very beginning of the story. Fortunately for Ashcroft, Winton’s style relies on flashbacks and fluid narrative, instances where the ghosts of the dead are conjured by the recollections of the living. Ashcroft says Winton’s writing in general tends to follow a very different format to that which he’s used to. His plays are heavy with imagery-based monologues. Characters describe their thoughts directly to the audience, almost Brechtian in style. Ashcroft says it can be a lot more poetic than the sort of theatre he’s used to. “For me, approaching it as an actor is like you’re using the other hemisphere of your acting brain. It flexes different muscles. I enjoy that sort of writing.”
theatre
Winton has been heavily involved in the production aspects of the play as well, another new experience for Ashcroft. “Usually you just get a script and away you go and learn the lines,” he admits. For Shrine, the process has been more involved. Last year, the content was workshopped with the actors. Winton then worked on it for several months and returned with close to a complete script. “And then you mould it once you get on the floor. Tim’s been in rehearsals, especially for the first week or so, and even up until now you can sort of still nudge a few things here and there. There’s almost a continual exploration of the characters. As you’re discovering them on the floor as a performer, he’s there as a writer. And that’s kind of cool. It’s a very interesting process to have the writer on the floor.” WHAT: Shrine by Tim Winton WHEN & WHERE: 31 Aug to 15 Sep, Heath Ledger Theatre
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 33
music
NO ‘I’ IN TEAM Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros is a roving community experience, and as Josh Colazzo tells Kane Sutton, it’s often hard for the ten members to keep up with each other, let alone themselves.
“W
e’ve only been home for a few days so I’m just trying to get the house in order and make sure the wife and baby are all set before leaving again on Friday”, begins Josh Colazzo. “We were on the road for about three months touring through the US and Canada and Europe – it was a crazy long tour. We’ve got a week off and then we’re going back out again to do some shows with Mumford & Sons – I love going out with the Mumford guys, so that’s exciting.” Such is the way of an international group who found fame with their first single, 2009’s Home, and who are now continuing to ride that wave after the release of their self-titled third album. This new record sees the band inspired by the soulfulness of The Supremes, the raw, exuberant pop of The Beatles and the psychedelic echoes of Jefferson Airplane. More than anything though, the album showcases a band that has evolved and is hopeful for the future. “I’m pretty happy with the way fans have reacted to it,” Colazzo beams. “We’ve got some bad reviews in a few publications but I guess that just comes with the territory. Most of all, I’m just really proud of this album – I think everyone in the band is. We’re reaching for different styles and sounds in a way and we’re not really going in any particular direction, we’re just letting it out and that feels really good.” Many of the songs featured on this latest release were originally recorded as the bookend piece to their second album, 2012’s Here, but as the band continued to tour, the songs began to take shape as something separate. “We ended up recording about 30-something songs and at the time, it made sense, like, it was massive debate deciding whether or not we put out a double album or a few split albums between a few months of each other. Ultimately, it worked out that we’d release Here, which is a lot more methodical and introspective – what was left over was this collection of songs that were kind of wild and rampant and all over the place. So, when it came to releasing our self-titled album, we essentially had all the songs we wanted and it was still very current for us. We didn’t really go in with the intention, it was kind of like an exorcism of music from everybody – just
trying to get it out.” Having been a member of the band since its inception, Colazzo, the drummer for the ensemble, has seen the group evolve and change between releases. “We’ve definitely become better musicians!” he chuckles. “When we first started, I mean, I’ve been there from early on and it took me about a year to understand how I wanted to play those songs, and I think everybody else was in the same boat, thinking about [how we could] make it work. I think now we’ve kind of flushed all that stuff out – we’re not only playing better individually in the musical aspect, but as a group of people onstage, we’re vibing off each other in a different way. We’re at that point where we know how to get somewhere – Alex will just stop the song and do his thing and we kind of just psychically follow him. I think that’s a huge thing that’s different from the beginning. We’re experimenting with our psychic abilities to take it different places.” The group currently boasts ten people among
its ranks; however, that can rise to as many as 12. While most people would see this as a huge challenge for an internationally successful group, Colazzo wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s pretty liberating having so many people in the band because we’re able to explore all these different sounds and different things you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do with four or five people. The process is pretty mellow – when we started doing the recordings for Here and the self-titled album, it was basically like, we worked out lunch time and when we’d be in the studio and it was basically like, ‘Well, I’m going to be here on these days and you’re going to be here on those days’ – it was pretty much an open door policy. And that happened for the most part, although having so many people gave us nightmares in terms of scheduling. [But] we prefer being in a band as large as we are; we’re all pretty much like family.”
“IT WAS KIND OF LIKE AN EXORCISM OF MUSIC FROM EVERYBODY.” Having put together three albums, as a collective the Zeros are looking towards peripheral projects to keep themselves busy outside of music. But that doesn’t mean they’re neglecting their main trade in any way. “We’re already talking about recording the next album. I think everyone’s feeling really energised now that this album’s out, especially because so much of it was written around two years ago. I think touring’s another big aspect of where we’re going next. We’re also starting The Big Sun Foundation, which is a charity that helps with things like building wells – we get schools here in the United States to link up with schools in Africa and they basically start a pen pal program, which becomes a fundraising thing, which then results in the village getting a well made. It’s not directly tying in with the music, but I think it’s something that we’re really trying to push for as a whole, to actually make a difference. I think that’s a really cool thing.” When the proposal of an Australian tour is brought up, Colazzo is optimistic. “I have a feeling we’ll be down there in February. Not sure on the dates, but we can’t wait to get down there and play some shows. We’ll keep you posted!” WHAT: Edward Sharpe And the Magnetic Zeros (Create/Control)
out in the country, and it was very much a change of pace moving from travelling and being on the road all the time to just working on music and being creative and being by myself, so in some ways I was kind of in this paracosm: a place away from everything and free to do whatever [I] [wanted].”
music
Greene went big on the album, incorporating over 50 instruments, clapping, chatting, chirping and laughter, indecipherable blurps and snaps, all rolled together under his paracosmic dome. “I’m probably pretty terrible at [project managing] so I definitely needed someone to do that,” Greene continues. “The mixes were definitely a lot more complicated than anything I’ve done before. I had kind of a rough draft already before actually taking it into a real studio and finishing off the rest of recording and mixing – we were sort of mixing all along, which made it a lot easier... There was a lot of conceptual stuff that made it so much easier as well, like, I knew that I wanted to use a lot more analogue effects and get away from digital.”
COUNTRY HOUSE Washed Out’s Earnest Greene moved into a house in the country post-touring and stumbled upon the new word that would become his latest album title via the internet. “In some ways I was kind of in this paracosm,” he tells Samson McDougall.
A
n album title can be a contract of sorts between artist and listener/consumer; expectations can be raised or lowered depending on the promise of the cover. You know exactly what’s inside just looking at Slayer records with names like Reign In Blood and featuring the demonic artwork of Larry Carroll; Battles’ Mirrored album also springs to mind, all reflective angles and hard lines. Some artists set out to subvert this. Deadmau5’s >Album Title Goes Here< is a classic example, as is Faith No More’s Album Of The Year. Some of the best titles employ subtle plays on words: The Beatles’ Revolver (so good it was subsequently aped by Fugazi with their debut Repeater, and taken one step further with Public Enemy’s Revolverlution) and Rubber Soul, Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks and so on. There are, of course, inherent pitfalls: too earnest and you’ll be labelled a dag, too cryptic and you’re a wanker, too funny and you’re not taken seriously, not funny enough and you’re a twit. Earnest Greene’s musical outlet Washed Up’s latest album is called Paracosm – a kind of detailed imaginary world, an invented alternate reality. It’s a bold statement but Greene has by and large managed to live up to the premise and the promise. “As soon as I started work and figured out a sonic palette that worked it became almost this full-blown kind of concept album, which I never really anticipated,” he says. “I toured for quite a while with the last record and it didn’t leave a lot of time for writing new music, so I had a lot of ideas that I’d just had in the back of my mind for the last couple of years and one of them was I wanted to write a pastoral-influenced record. For me that meant a lot of acoustic instruments and a lot of warm sounds and I think that was pretty much the first jumping off point.”
Dense birdsong opens the record as watery keys and percussion creep out of the surrounding emptiness followed by a flourish of strings and choral voices that lead you into the bubble. It’s a lightweight listen; you could even say nothing really stands out. “I was very much thinkin’ of it as a daytime record,” continues Greene. “I was trying to write an optimisticsounding album and because of that I was writing mainly in major keys, so there’s a little bit more light and it’s a little bit more colourful [than past releases].” The title itself was an accident – Greene stumbled across the word on the internet about halfway through the writing/ recording process. “[It’s] certainly influenced some of the lyrical content on the record,” he says. “I’d moved into a new house after touring,
On this album Greene reckons he wrote each part with live performance in the back of his mind, though he’s still had to strip away excess to take Paracosm on the road: “We don’t have the means to travel with a string section. I feel like the songs are strong enough on their own to shear a lot of parts away and they’ll still sound like the record. That’s been an important part as well, to just kind of work on a skeletal version of a song and see what works and what doesn’t.” From the bones of such an abstract and unplanned concept, ultimately Greene’s happy with the results. Listening to the thing, it does become its own feathery little cosmos. He says that working within the limitations of this world actually made the process easier. “There’s definitely some lyrics on the record that don’t have anything to do with
“IT BECAME ALMOST THIS FULL-BLOWN KIND OF CONCEPT ALBUM, WHICH I NEVER REALLY ANTICIPATED.” the Paracosm idea, but sonically I think there is [a narrative thrust]. I had these limitations kind of set up from the beginning where I knew to use a certain type of sound, which really kind of helped with the songwriting because I was able to just jump straight into the actual writing of songs, whereas before, on the past few records I’ve done, there was a lot more experimenting and trial and error, kind of stumbling across sonic ideas to work with... There’s a few songs that ended up taking on a life of their own but there’s also quite a few that – the original idea I had in my head, the finished product is pretty close to it. I think it had a lot to do with this project in particular: I had a lot of ideas in the beginning of what I wanted it to be, but I see in the future it being not that easy.” WHAT: Paracosm (Sub Pop/Inertia) THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 35
bigsound
BIGSOUND TOURIST TIPS
PIC BY STEPHEN BOOTH
So you’re thinking about heading north to BIGSOUND 2013 and experiencing Brisbane’s vibrant Fortitude Valley Entertainment Precinct in all its squalid glory? Here are just a few tips to help you survive and some experiences to look out for:
TAKE THE TOUR OF PREFITZGERALD INQUIRY BRISBANE Fancy a bit of Underbelly-esque action? Basically walk anywhere in the Valley and you’re amidst the epicentre of the former ‘Crime Precinct’ – just assume that any shop you go into used to be a brothel or an illegal casino and you can’t go wrong!
READ THE MUSIC PLAQUES IN THE MALL The Brunswick Street Mall has its very own music Walk Of Fame, where bands such as The Go-Betweens, The Saints, Powderfinger, Custard and many more fine Queensland acts are honoured. It’s not quite Hollywood, but what is, right?
MEET THE LOCALS Sure the folk of Fortitude Valley might like to “borrow” the occasional coin or ciggie, but be open to their myriad conversational charms and you might just make a new friend for life!
PERUSE THE LANEWAYS These days there are bars and shops aplenty in the least likely of places – keep your eyes and ears open; some of the coolest Valley hangouts are really hidden away. Perhaps quiz one of your new “local friends” for their fave hangout.
ORDER SAKE AT HARAJUKU GYOZA The food at this central Valley location – mainly dumplings and the like – is lovely, but order yourself a sake and wait for the staff to sing your praises for the true Harajuku Gyoza experience! 36 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
PIC BY STEPHEN BOOTH
DROP A CIGGIE Feeling lonely? Put out a cigarette on the ground anywhere near the Mall and prepare to meet both a member of the council and one of his friends from the constabulary! They charge like a wounded bull for the experience, but YOLO (whatever that means)...
TAKE A PHOTO OF CLOUDLAND No one who likes bands knows what it’s like
inside, but the exterior of this Valley nightclub sure is cool! Take a photo of the hanging things and waterfall sorta action on the exterior - everyone else does!
EAT AT SUPERBOWL Everyone who’s anyone has eaten at Valley Chinese restaurant Superbowl – it’s a veritable rock’n’roll institution. Take your camera and autograph book; you never know who might be there eating salt and pepper calamari!
HAVE FUN The Valley might seem daunting at first for newbs, but its bark is far worse than its bite. Relax and stay out of mischief and we guarantee* that you’ll have the time of your life! (*not an actionable guarantee)
FIVE BIGSOUND PANELS YOU MUST SEE OPENING KEYNOTE: Q&A WITH BILLY BRAGG (11 AUG: 10.15AM – 11.15AM JWCOCA PERFORMANCE SPACE) He’s always been a man who does things his own way, and he’s been very successful while being relatively uncompromising. Billy Bragg’s view of the music industry will be fascinating for young and old.
FESTIVALS (HYPOTHETICALS) (11 AUG: 2.00PM – 3.00PM JWCOCA PERFORMANCE SPACE) Hypothetical situations are posed to a team of festival experts and they will tell us how these issues must be solved. You won’t get a better insight into the running of a music festival than this.
ARTISTS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STAGE (12 AUG: 11.15AM – 12.15PM JWCOCA PERFORMANCE SPACE) Members of Jet, You Am I, The Middle East and more discuss how they came to be on the business side of the music industry. Where does art meet commerce?
POP IS NOT A DIRTY WORD (12 AUG: 3.30PM – 4.30PM, JWCOCA EXPRESSIONS DANCE SPACE) It can be hard to know where the ever-changing pop music landscape is going to go next, so this discussion between the likes of Michael Chugg and representatives from Nova and Mercury Records could be very illuminating indeed.
KEYNOTE AND ARTIST Q&A/ PERFORMANCE: GURRUMUL (13 AUG: 2.30PM – 3.30PM, JWCOCA PERFORMANCE SPACE) Here is a rare chance to hear the story of one of our most unique and celebrated musical talents and the men who have supported his career for so long. Gurrumul’s story is one that will no doubt inspire many.
PIC BY STEPHEN BOOTH
FIVE MUST-SEE ACTS AT BIGSOUND
bigsound
BAD//DREEMS Already critics love and hate them in equal measure. We are on the side of love. This Adelaide foursome have re-fired-up a long lost pub and garage rock amalgam that glasses your soul – in a good way.
BAD//DREEMS
DAMN TERRAN These Melbourne postangular punks are able to switch from shambolic time signatures to synchronised stopstart playing with brattish expertise. We are watching closely.
BLOODS Golden Fang has the golden touch – Sydney garage punk that’s noisy and fun.
CITIZEN KAY
BLOODS. PIC BY JOSH GROOM
Potential to become a leading light in Oz hip hop, done White Stripes style. When did Canberra get this uplifting?
BORN LION D For Danger and R for riotous punk rock from S for Sydney.
ALSO RECOMMENDED: The Orbweavers – their gentle melodies make for atmospheric shows; King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – a live Gizzard show is different kind of atmosphere; The Delta Riggs – bringing dirty denim rock back; The Love Junkies – next in line for Violent Soho-type adulation?; Tigertown – big harmonies underpinned by family connections – these bonds work; Patrick James – things are about to change for the young troubadour – in an upward direction; Adalita – of course.
EMI PARTY. PIC BY JOHN STUBBS
BIG ART This year the annual BIGSOUND conference expands its art element with their Music+Design program. On board are Nick Cave (via satellite), Tomato’s John Warwicker and V Squared Labs’ Vello Virkhaus (they’re the US company who took Amon Tobin’s live show next level). Latest speakers added are music video directors Stephen Lance and Mairi Cameron (Washington’s Holy Moses); 3D sound engineer Joe Hayes and Audiofly’s Dave Thompson. There’s also news of two showcase spaces for this side of BIGSOUND: The CMD Live Design Lab (where speakers and delegates work on developing actual solutions to issues that arise during the conference) and The Artisan Beer+Design pop-up “lounge experience” (that’s alcohol and art, together at last). WHEN & WHERE: 10-13 Sep, Fortitude Valley Entertainment Precinct THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 37
38 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
reviews
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
This week: Nicole Kidman is emotionally unstable in Stoker, the return of Nine Inch Nails and we conquer the world in Europa Universalis IV.
VOLCANO CHOIR Repave
Jagjaguwar/Inertia Justin Vernon doesn’t know when to quit. Not content with conquering the world under his Bon Iver nom de plume, Vernon has flirted with soft-rock grooves (Gayngs) and R&B schmooze (Kanye West cameos), as well as pitching in with other artists both in front of and behind the scenes. Yet the itch to take the reins has kicked in, and the result is another band, Volcano Choir. Repave is actually a follow-up to 2009’s debut Unmap, yet will serve as the first taste of the band for many – and what a smorgasbord it is; Vernon’s lyricism has reached a personal high watermark, and the amount of time the band have spent honing their own aesthetic provides the perfect foundations for Vernon to soar.
★★★★½
TRACK LISTING 1. Tiderays 2. Acetate 3. Comrade 4. Byegone
5. Alaskins 6. Dancepack 7. Keel 8. Almanac
Opener Tiderays uses a swirling organ to bleed on the sonic canvas, a broken hymnal, before fingerpicked guitar joins Vernon’s falsetto to provide a bedrock of beatific platitudes. Yet the track builds incrementally, a sonic swelling of the breast, and the power that lays within effectively sets Volcano Choir on high seas. Acetate sails even more, Vernon trading highs for baritone lows on a spacious track that starts small before the echoed vocals of band members coalesces like the crashing wave on the cover. Vernon plays with form, utilising Auto-Tune with shimmering eclecticism on Cmrade; rocking a cavernous outro on Byegone, his voice ragged and torn. Electronic pulses feed throughout, and as the staccato beat of closer Almanac smashes the glass ceiling of expectations, it’s bluntly apparent that Repave stands tall. Brendan Telford
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 39
album reviews
JACKSON & HIS COMPUTERBAND
NINE INCH NAILS
Warp/Inertia
With minimal techno and industrial slamming together in an uncomfortable, unforgiving manner, it’s interesting to conclude that Hesitation Marks is perhaps Nine Inch Nails’ most accessible body of work to date. There’s still plenty of depravity, but it’s easy to slip into and get tied up with.
Hesitation Marks Polydor/Universal
Glow
For all its romance, for its sights, Paris has a dark underbelly. While the City of Lights has more than once spewed forth musicians famous and infamous – from Debussy to Daft Punk – the dark rues de Paris hide a seething beast. Abrasive and aggressive, it slithers through the sewers ready to attack. Today, Jackson rides that beast. There’s nothing particularly ‘French’ in Jackson Fourgeaud’s music, although Glow’s sound draws parallels with the industrial tones attributed to the stereotypical ‘Berlin sound’. Throw in the schizophrenic nature of Aphex Twin (Blood Bust), the occasional electroballad (Memory) and a seriously fucked-up carousel sound (More), and the general vibe of Glow becomes apparent. Jackson creates his work for those who appreciate music as art. In this, it is unsurprising he calls
★★★★ Paris home. His debut Smash dropped around the time the Ed Banger dance scene – Justice, DJ Mehdi, Sebastian – was broadcasting French dance music to the world. Jackson, however, carried on doing his own thing, and with Glow he’s ready to remind global audiences that French dance music in 2013 is not confined to a couple of guys dressed in robot suits. There’s something very disturbed about Glow, but for all its viciousness and passion, it’s clear that Jackson, with the help of his Computerband, is a visionary artist who derives pleasure from the aural assault he delivers. Dylan Stewart
After some textured fuzz to warm the ears, the first two cuts doing the rounds online (Copy Of A and Came Back Haunted) are delivered backto-back, with Trent Reznor sounding as menacing as ever. It’s like he’s drugged you and is smugly sitting across the bar, waiting for you to collapse on the floor. The 48-year-old has this incredible ability to let intensity swell to a critical point of combustion, then rip it away before it bursts completely. He knows that an album is more than a collection of songs, and Hesitation Marks
THE JUNGLE GIANTS
THE PAPER KITES
Amplifire
Wonderlick/Sony
There’s been an influx, and arguably a surplus, of wavyhaired, tight-jeaned youths pumping upbeat indie-pop tunes out of Brisbane lately (think Ball Park Music, Millions, Last Dinosaurs). So what makes The Jungle Giants and their debut LP Learn To Exist any different from the rest of the chino-wearing crowd?
States is beautiful. There’s probably a better word to describe it – some polysyllabic adjective that encapsulates the extraordinary soundscape and detailed texture of the multilayered tracks. But ‘beautiful’ does the job just as well.
Learn To Exist
Opening tracks Come And Be Alone With Me and I Am What You Want Me To Be are filled with catchy hooks and irresistible choruses – but they could easily be mistaken for the work of any of the aforementioned bands. Lines like, “Come and be alone with me/We could get stoned/We could hang” don’t exactly demonstrate any kind of lyrical mastery. And yet there’s significant talent there. Lead singer-songwriter Sam Hales won the 2011 Billy Thorpe music scholarship for his promising musical abilities. She’s A Riot, 40 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
★★★★ demands you take the ride until the last stop. Everything is one of the more foreign tracks here, and ironically it’s through its normality. The pop verses will polarise fans, but it works well as a halfway marker between the musical and lyrical disdain that surrounds it. Various Methods Of Escape is another accessible bullet, though it comes with a guitar line that’s practically loathing. Sure, the fingerprints of Atticus Ross are all over this record, but it’s yet another dark Reznor opus. And by the end of the ordeal you’ll be begging him for more. Benny Doyle
States
★★★ from their 2012 EP, has been included to keep their fans sated, while the twangy acoustic Devil’s In The Detail and the hip hop beat of Home are definite earperkers. But it’s the barrage of woos, ahhhs and pop rhythms that really dominate this album. The alternative songs here serve as more of a distraction than an emphasis of the band’s expanded musical direction. Anyone who listened to The Jungle Giants’ first two EPs or has seen them perform live knows that they are a fun band and, for the most part, that’s what Learn To Exist is. But ‘fun’ alone isn’t going to help them stand out in the crowd. Ash Goldberg
The Paper Kites have created something truly remarkable with their debut LP. Produced with Wayne Connolly (You Am I, Josh Pyke), States is laden with a diverse array of instruments. The band even collaborated with up-and-coming composer Tim Coghill on several tracks. You have to wonder how this album is going to translate live, but nonetheless, it’s a unique, eclectic and frankly brilliant result from the Melbourne quintet. The mournful cry of the guitar in middle track Tin Lover will leave its mark and the sweet and light Tennenbaum has traces of Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans, while the harmonic Never Heard A Sound
★★★★ ½ belongs on a Sunday afternoon playlist along with some Bon Iver. Coghill’s input is prominent on the final two tracks, filled with delicate, understated sounds – particularly the final three-and-ahalf minutes of closer I Done You Wrong. As the vocals slowly fade and only the symphonic strings remain, it’s evident that States is a record with a professional polish, atypical of your everyday indie-folk production. Apparently, there was in-fighting over the inclusion of some of the tracks on this record, but in the end The Paper Kites will be glad it turned out as it did, as will you, because States is stunning. Ash Goldberg
album reviews
★★★★
CALIFONE Stitches
Dead Oceans/Inertia This first album in four years for Chicagoan roots experimentalists Califone – recorded out of their hometown comfort zone for the first time in various locales in the American southwest – is a typically assured and defiantly offbeat collection. Tim Rutili’s expressive voice is again one of their chief assets, alongside their patchwork arrangements, instrumental dexterity and willingness to utilise sounds from the past and present. There’s always something slightly unnerving underpinning Califone’s rustic ruminations, but the inherent beauty that’s also omnipresent completely mitigates any such petty concerns. Steve Bell
★★★
★★★★
BLACK JOE LEWIS
EARL SWEATSHIRT
Shock
Columbia/Sony
There’s more than a garage rock swagger on Black Joe Lewis’ Electric Slave, a change in band line-up and new label having given the formerly soul/blues/ R&B artist inspiration to make things a little dirtier. Openers Skullduggin and Young Girls feel like JSBX cuts, before Dar Es Salaam sees him in more familiar territory, tight horns and Lewis’ impressive high-pitched, raspy hollering making it an album highlight. Come To My Party proves they make a better soul than garage band, but Electric Slave shows that Lewis and co. have more grit and versatility than many might have expected.
Tyler, the first of the Wolf Gang to break big, came out chanting, “Free Earl!” It was difficult to imagine that OFWGKTA had a more interesting rapper up its collective sleeve. Earl, once freed from his Samoan brat camp, has proved Tyler right again with this gem. Chum stands tallest; Earl honest, unrelenting and engaging on the mic over his own bouncy beat. Frank Ocean’s star turn rapping on Sunday is a revelation. The confronting teenage brutality of 2010 debut Earl has been left behind. Only our hero’s skill and charisma remain. Doris is a triumph. Earl’s free.
Modern Life Is Rubbish, Blur once asserted. Or to put it another way, everything that presents itself as new has already been round the block before. Hookworms might’ve been identified as one of the UK’s most promising new bands but they don’t hide their influences, as shoegaze guitars, Spiritualized organ drone and hypnotic Krautrock grooves combine on the nine-minute, momentumbuilding Away/Towards. Progress is evident, though, on the codeine-induced crawl of Since We Had Changed, which aches with a melancholy grace. A band for the future maybe, whatever shape that takes.
Dan Condon
James d’Apice
Christopher H James
Electric Slave
★★★½
Doris
★★★★
Spunk/Caroline
Made Up Mind
Once you overcome the shock of hearing this new-sounding Okkervil River and the at-timecheesy ‘80s production that litters the Texans’ seventh album and realise that it’s a concept piece set in frontman Will Sheff ’s rural hometown in 1986 – a fictional rendering of his childhood just as MTV and the information age hit – it all begins to make sense. Sheff ’s natural aptitude as a wordsmith still shines, not nostalgic but with childhood innocence; a time before the inner struggles which informed Okkervil’s early work. A somewhat strange but mostly satisfying detour.
The 11-piece’s second studio album, Made Up Mind is, put very simply, a wonderful treat and rings true to the global excitement around them. Tedeschi’s smoky vocals draw the listener in, establishing undivided attention, and Trucks’ intuitive and expert slide solos then blow expectations away. Subtle horn arrangements and rhythm section grooves complete the sheer auditory richness of it. Highlights are the opening title track – which kicks the momentum of the album right into motion – Whiskey Legs and Sweet And Low, for the contrasting tenderness it brings to the album.
Parlophone/Warner
Glenn Waller
Steve Bell
HOOKWORMS Pearl Mystic Domino/EMI
★★★★½
★★★★½
BABYSHAMBLES OKKERVIL RIVER TEDESCHI The Silver Sequel To The Prequel TRUCKS BAND Gymnasium There’s something rotten in Denmark when someone like Pete Doherty starts pumping out music that seems like it was recorded with Blur at the mixing console. Sequel To The Prequel has a quality that harks back to the heyday of Britpop, bizarre as that may sound. Be that as it may, this is a blaster of a pop album, Doherty’s vocals slurring over jangly guitars with kicking drumbeats. Less shambolic than Down In Albion or Shotter’s Nation, this album may alienate die-hards, but with work this measured, why would Babyshambles care?
★★★½
Sony
VISTA CHINO Peace
3Wise/Sony The Immortal Bard apparently once said: “What’s in a name?/ That which we call a bud/By any other name/Would still smell as pungent”. Such is the case with the first record from Vista Chino, aka Blues From The Red Sun-era Kyuss minus Josh Homme. Peace comes across like a sun-drenched, acid-fried, slow-burning classic and sounds like everything we all hoped John Garcia, Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri could still do. Blending the rocky accessibility of Kyuss’ …And The Circus Leaves Town and the jam-o-rama of Blues…, Peace is a groovy stoner rock behemoth. Welcome back to Sky Valley. Tom Hersey
Lukas Murphy THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 41
singles/ep reviews
★★★½
WAVE ROCK
Rock U Tonite futureclassic Mad Sonic the Hedgehog tribute from Sydney bloke intent on blasting your bpm tolerance to billions of dayglo pieces. Gawd help us if the follow-up gets nuttier!
SEEKAE
Another futureclassic If when people ask you “What do you want for Christmas?” you instantly say “Oooh - Body Shop vouchers, please!”, then Seekae’s liquid synths and pensive vocals will soak away your first world problems very nicely.
TALES IN SPACE
In A Million Places At Once
★★★
BASTIAN’S CHET FAKER HAPPY FLIGHT FT KILO KISH Heart/Works
Melt
Just as a dandy toe nudges the blurred line between pop and pastiche, Bastian’s Happy Flight fake out and flare their nostrils. Heart/Works is belligerence in pastel suits, (think Adam Ant and George Michael pre-crazy), from the five Perth beard-racks who never gave up on The Goonies – and they’re serious.
Downtown
The sometimes languid synths, stabs and snares splash neon over six tracks. Come For The Early (Stay For The Late) reeks of crème de menthe and Rothmans. Vodka Ginger is literally named after a cocktail. These songs were made for parties and riding with chicks, or dudes.
Wonder if Nick Murphy ever thought his lazy pun alias would still be happening some time later? It seems to have worked so far; he’s now signed to the label of Gnarls Barkley and Santigold, among others. Lead song has the necessary detached cerebral passion to possibly go in that latest ‘alternative R&B’ pigeonhole in this postFrank Ocean world, but while utterly stylish and obviously constructed with care – right down to Kish’s vocal interjection – you’re not quite sure that if you drilled down you’d strike oil, or just Evian water.
Tom Birts
Ross Clelland
★★½
ESKIMO JOE
Got What You Need Dirt Diamonds Does the reviewing of something crowdfunded come down to whether the investors think they got their money’s worth? Should a band as ‘established’ as Eskimo Joe even resort to passing around the hat? On musical grounds, Got What You Need comes built on an ‘80s synth spiral, and Kav up near falsetto wooting. It marches along, perhaps treading a little too lightly. And then it’s done. And you feel like not a lot’s happened. Which is a bit of a shame because they could be better than this. Ross Clelland
Independent Swaggersome, bolshilly riffed taster from Sydney electropop duo’s forthcoming debut album. A $5 bet on Tales In Space earning a modest Hottest 100 placing wouldn’t be a total waste of money.
TITANIUM
Come On Home Work Hard Kid Music Fuck, I really hate Train’s Hey Soul Sister. Why a Kiwi boyband would remind us of its existence by changing the words and ‘tweaking’ the tune serves only to justify illegal downloads so dreck like this doesn’t earn its creators any money.
KASKADE
Atmosphere OneLove Safely played summer club fodder that fills the all too tiny gap between Harris and Guetta releases with nothing of any substance. Gym bunnies will orgasm. Many times. Mac McNaughton 42 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
★★★
★★★
HAYDEN JAMES
SNAKES GET BAD PRESS
Future Classic
Art As Catharsis
We all know everyone has had a boner for Flume for the past 12 months, but have you heard of Hayden James? His electronica pop will make you want to gyrate to affectionate synths and meticulous beats. Spring is on the horizon and soon it will be summer – time for beach parties, summer lovin’ and some great tunes. This EP will be an immense summer pop-jam with soulful vocals and single Permission To Love climaxing the party. Really, to sum it up, this is an album you unquestionably should dig.
Cower, the opening song from this Sydney four-piece, is a fastpaced hardcore track that sets the benchmark high for a relentless noise-driven EP. This unyielding level of sludgy hard rock is followed up in Dead Horses, both tracks displaying harsh, screamostyle vocals that are steadily maintained for Residues’ duration. No Secret is somewhat distinct for its stoner-rock edge, as is First World Leech. In contrast to the rest of the EP, this ominous latter track employs a more varied dynamic and slower pace, highlighting flexibility within this energetic post-punk offering.
Hayden James
Adrienne Downes
Residues
Stephanie Tell
★★★½
THE SURES
The Night Hero Waste Time Getting Better Ivy League The layers are beginning to collapse into place. The guitars wiry, the vocals drifting in from down the hall. Sometimes it skews to the dreamy end of melodic, like in the quietly nervous Waste, which itself even outbreaks into an internalised yell. They seem to really let themselves go only occasionally – then contradict that as Time is an utterly assured thing that engages while simultaneously holding you (and the object of affection) just out of reach. Young and intriguing. And potentially very fine. Ross Clelland
live reviews
GIGNITION
The Railway Hotel, North Fremantle 25 Aug Dreary weather aside, last Sunday’s Gignition was a chilled, easy way to finish off the weekend. A crowd of roughly 30 littered the armchairs at the Railway Hotel listening intently to acoustic artist Luke Argall. Lyrically, Argall was very focused and maintained a steady, consistent albeit slightly repetitive style for the majority of the set. His standout song, Pretty
Final band The Devil In Miss Jones (potentially named after the 1973 pornographic film) gave the impression, with their black skinny-leg jeans, long side fringes and drummer David’s Misfits shirt, of a sound much heavier than that delivered. Despite their unpolished new song, which was a little unsteady, the four-piece band of youngsters played out a relatively tight, instrumentally-heavy set. Overall the evening showcased a talented mix of up-andcoming Perth musicians. Tash Edge
BERNARD FANNING @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: KIEREN CHEW
Girl, was simple yet catchy and saw the always-one-atevery-gig Fremantle local make his first dance appearance. Relatively new four-piece band Oddlaw were on next and covered The Pixies’ Where Is My Mind? and despite the occasional overpowering bass guitar, their rock with the intermittently punk-influenced set was funky and foot-tappingly good. Their tribute to long weekends rang loud and true with the crowd, especially the aforementioned Fremantle local.
Bernard Fanning’s soldout show on Sunday night. With what was supposed to be the final show of the current tour, before the sheer popular demand brought about another, the crowds came in early to see the supports, and everyone was home by bedtime on the dreary Sunday evening. The night kicked off with triple j newcomer Vance Joy. Playing a set of fairly basic acoustic numbers, he brought the audience in with a sweet and smoky falsetto and finished with his hit of the moment, Riptide.
BERNARD FANNING @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: KIEREN CHEW
BERNARD FANNING, BIG SCARY, VANCE JOY Astor Theatre 25 Aug The songs were short and snappy, the band was tight and the booze was flowing, and that’s pretty much exactly what everyone needed at
BERNARD FANNING @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: KIEREN CHEW
Next up were Big Scary, a two-piece consisting of Tom Iansek and Jo Syme, who are also well circulated on the j’s, playing their quirky brand of indie rock. True to that description, Big Scary (plus a very talented bassist/synth player) performed songs of bizarre and adventurous drum beats, flourishes on the piano, low drones and ominous tones, all held up by the bassist. After a very lengthy soundcheck (totally worth
it) it was time for Bernard Fanning himself to grace the stage, everyone of course making sure he knew he was welcome. The sound was immediately and immensely more pristine and precise than the previous acts, and the band really showed that they were worth their salt from the get-go. Two songs into the set, they all launched into the latest single, Battleships, which if you have enjoyed at all on record, is a hundred times better on stage: it was a monstrous performance of the tune. It also became apparent in this song that the drummer
was very used to losing his drumsticks; as one went flying halfway through the song, he had another in his hand and didn’t even miss a beat. All in all, it was a pretty rock’n’roll set, but probably the most profound moment saw Fanning singing the title track of his latest album, Departures, all about the loss of his brother and father, which really reached out and touched the audience in its harmonious choruses. Lukas Murphy THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 43
live reviews
GRINSPOON, EMPERORS, THE LOVE JUNKIES Astor Theatre 23 Aug Shuffling into the lobby of Astor Theatre, early-comers were met with what sounded like a fistfight between blues and grunge. The Love Junkies have had a solid year and treated their opening support slot as another chance to win over the uninitiated. With a quick changeover, it was time for Emperors to do their thing. You couldn’t find a better band to get an audience into party mode on a Friday
It wasn’t long before they began laying out the hits, with No Reason surfacing first. In keeping with the festival vibe they had going, the floor space near the front erupted into a violent mosh, which saw security rush to break it up. “You can’t destroy their fun tonight,” Jamieson yelled mid-song at the security. “As much as you want to destroy their fun, go fuck yourselves.” Having become a staple of Australian music, a majority of punters had no doubt listened each of the band’s singles to death. A nice acoustic rendition of Just Ace injected new life into the tune and showed the band could probably nail a strippedback set too. The word “adios” out of Jamieson’s mouth meant little considering the fact they hadn’t played their biggest songs yet.
LOVE JUNKIES @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
night – or any night, for that matter. They’ve taken everything great about Australian rock and bundled it together to produce infectious tunes that translate extremely well to the stage. With frontman Adam Livingston shaking his head in a bobbleheadlike manner, the locals finished things off with the dangerously catchy Be Ready When I Say Go. There was a vibrant red Eski perched upon the drum riser when Grinspoon strolled out to eerie background music. Led by what appeared to be an intoxicated Phil Jamieson mimicking the dance moves of Michael Jackson, the band took their positions on the festival-esque stage and kicked things into gear with Run. By the end of tune number one, it was clear the vocalist was off his face. However, when he put a guitar on for Branded, it was clear he could more than hold his liquor. 44 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
TEN POINTS FOR GLENROY
Rosemount Hotel Aug 22
Returning to their favourite Perth stomping ground, Australia’s biggest “punk” band at the minute The Smith Street Band afforded Ten Points For Glenroy the pleasure of opening the bill, which they did with suitable aplomb. As the first of the night’s proponents of a thriving Perth scene, the punk’n’roll quartet were gruff without being messy showcasing plenty of new songs, and were at best when affording plenty of space to their Brian Fallon-like vocals. Grim Fandango further solidified the Perth quality with another
LOVE JUNKIES @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
Resurfacing with an acoustic guitar, he made amends with the security before serenading the audience with Repeat, and having his band mates join him for Lost Control and DCx3. The only thing higher than the band’s blood alcohol level at set’s end was the energy flowing through the room. There’s no other Australian rock band quite like Grinspoon, and few acts can match the intensity of their live show. Daniel Cribb
THE SMITH STREET BAND, CHEAP GIRLS, GRIM FANDANGO,
to totally warm to the trio, and the lack of audience interaction didn’t help. Suffering from a muddy mix, the articulation of the lyrics unfortunately left much to be desired, which was a shame as what could be heard was plenty of great melodies and guitar solos. There was no mistaking whom everyone present was here to see though as The Smith Street Band took to the stage. Opening with a couple of newies off the recently released Don’t Fuck With Our Dreams (of which all five tracks were played; Self Control a transcendent standout), Will Wagner and Co. were typically magical, demonstrating to everyone that intangible quality that even the sincerest form of flattery can’t create. With so much passion shared and
GRINSPOON @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
damn good set of catchy as heck punk rock. Having added more strings to their increasingly impressive bow, the jangly riffs and raw, blemished vocals just keep on coming in more little nuggets of gold (see newie, Play Forever). Ending with a couple of oldies off their debut album, Birthmark Blues, demonstrated the group’s strong local support, before being left with a bit of a Michael Flatley jig from several audience members and the question asked that it must be about time the Perth favourites received some well-deserved wider recognition? Over from the big ol’ US of A for the first time, touring support guests Cheap Girls took a while to get going, and perhaps never quite hit their stride in the way the other acts did. Perhaps due to their slower tempos and lack of strong dynamic shifts, the largely unfamiliar audience didn’t appear
GRINSPOON @ ASTOR T
shouted at the top of half the audience’s collective lungs, the PA came off second best, and if any criticism could be given, it was that the set was too short, several of the group’s more well known or fan favourites neglected. But we are demanding people, we music fans, aren’t we? Luke Butcher
DIANAS, RABBIT ISLAND, HAYLEY BETH The Bird 23 Aug The Bird was as warm and inviting as ever for a night of awesome local music, the main
live reviews attraction being the all-girl group Dianas, who would be launching a new single that evening. Kicking things off was Hayley Beth, who belted out some of the strongest vocals I’ve heard in quite a while. It was entirely clear listening to her sing that she has an amazing talent for melody. The diminutive Beth housed an intimidating big, deep voice, and she delivered kitchen-sink lyrics with a bluesy honesty you could just get lost in. The maturity in her style and lyricism kept each individual onlooker rooted to their spot, mesmerised by the strength and fullness of her vocal delivery. It truly was a pleasure to experience. Rabbit Island crept onto the stage a short while later, easing into their performance with a soft and tender tune. Amber
HEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
singles the girls were there to launch, Cruelty and Origami, may just be some of their finestsounding music yet. Beginning with some lush vocal harmonies between the two vocalists, Cruelty picks up with drummer Ashley Ramsay coming in at full force as the front-women reach soaring peaks with their vocal deliveries. Origami begins slower, with the vocal chanting of ‘Fall into me’, but picks up speed and drive as the song goes on. The girls sound strong but also haunting, and the crowd loved every second of it, following the style with a slight sway, absolutely captivated by the performance. They seemed really pleased with the response they were getting and pulled out a paper bag full of CDs, gesturing for us to take a free copy. They were all gone within seconds, and
GRINSPOON @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
Fresh was true to her form with a hauntingly beautiful vocal delivery and it was nice to see her switching the tempo, jumping between the guitar and the piano. Her awkwardly humorous little comments between songs kept the crowd on its toes; however, it was a great opportunity for the growing crowd to relax and let themselves be engulfed by the lullaby-sounding tunes. Dianas finally took to the stage brimming with confidence, having placed as the runners up in the recent Big Splash competition. The talent of this group is undeniable as Caitlin Moloney and Nathalie Pavlovic swapped back and forth between bass and electric guitar throughout their set, enchanting the crowd with their catchy-asall-hell, dream-poppy surf rock reminiscent of a more upbeat version of Warpaint. The two
Kane Sutton
THE LONG LOST BROTHERS, MUDLARK/ ALOÏ, DOCTOPUS
Mojo’s Bar, North Fremantle Aug 23
Love Junkies frontman Mitch McDonald, fresh from a performance at the Astor, jumped onstage to play drums with Andrew Ryan and Steve S in rock trio The Long Lost Brothers. From opener, China, onwards, the lads’ set was heavy with Ryan’s droning dirge-like guitar combined with the tight rhythm playing of McDonald and Steve S with tracks All My Nights and Snakes And Ladders being clear highlights.
Garage rock three-piece Doctopus kicked off the night in fantastic discordant fashion with the ultra-lo-fi Good Times On The Reg. “Big shout-out to Steve and his fridge,” said bassist/vocalist Stephen Bellair referring to the massive Ampeg bass cabinet supplied by The Long Lost Brother’s bassist that dwarfed each of the bands that played tonight. Bellair
GRINSPOON @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
I’m sure many people will be enjoying those two tunes on many occasions from now on, as the band continue to prove that they deserve all the hype they get. Hopefully we’ll be hearing a full-length album from them soon; I’ll certainly be getting my hands on it.
through the set, mixing in verses from Ghost Poet and others into the jam while the band laid down a pulsating rhythm together.
After a long time waiting, everyone’s favourite doomcore/ alternative/noise rock group Bone have returned and chosen Mojo’s Bar for the launch of their long-awaited debut album, For Want Of Feeling. The band cited depression as a major influence on the new album so while it wasn’t going to be the most upbeat gig, it certainly wasn’t going to be the quietest.
As the night reached its climax, it was finally time for Bone to take the stage, greeted by a warm reception from the audience. Choosing to play through the entirety of the new album, For
GRINSPOON @ ASTOR THEATRE. PIC: TED DANA
put it to good use, firing off heavy feedback-laden bass solos throughout their set that fitted the punk vibe well. At one point, eager to test out his new loop pedal, Bellair started beatboxing and looping his voice, threatening to freestyle rap over the top before launching into the slow jam, Man I Think You’re Cool. Experimental two-piece Mudlark saw Steven Bovenizer’s reverbdrenched, effects-laden guitar sound pulling off quick stop-start rhythms alongside drummer Warsame Hassan on openers Proud Nubian Princess and Troy Buswell Sniffing On Seats. Vocalist Nora Zion, who had been sitting cross-legged by the side of the stage while the band played the first two songs, joined them for their RnB/soul alter-ego ALOÏ. Zion’s smooth sultry vocals were put to great use during a full-spread jam midway
Want Of Feeling, the band started with slow-burner Perfect, the overdriven guitars bashing out dark, dissonant harmonies with each other. Then it was onto track two, Pedestal, bringing in some death row drum beats combined with a wailing guitar sound akin to an ambulance siren. For such melancholic, dark music though, the guys played a surprisingly tight set, giving more energy and volume to the songs, adding another layer to the manic-depressive madness of the music and showing why the guys have been playing together for so long. By the time it came around to the epic eight-minute-long Bath Time, the band had powered through all 42 minutes of the album to great effect and proven that while their music is certainly unique, nobody does it better than them. Scott Aitken THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 45
arts reviews
STOKER Film
In cinemas 29 Aug Directed by Park Chan-wook and written by Wentworth Miller (yes, the Prison Break star!), Stoker is a psychological thriller with just a hint of the supernatural. After India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) father dies in an accident, her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), whose existence was previously unknown to her, comes to stay with her and her mother (Nicole Kidman). Both mother
There are twists within ambiguous scenes – these snippets that flip your perceptions perhaps even more satisfying than the overarching mystery as a whole – and the film constantly keeps you guessing.
STOKER
and daughter develop a strange fascination with this suspiciously charming man who has appeared out of nowhere and seems to be hiding his real motives. Artfully shot, with striking compositions aplenty (even the violence is made to look disturbingly beautiful), the story of Stoker is masterfully told with suspenseful reveals and charismatic, beguiling characters who – while a little too fantastical to be realistic and relatable – are richly portrayed by the strong leading cast. Goode’s piercing blue-green eyes should have their own credits, his stare 46 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
the most profitable companies in the world, Apple. Jobs is merely a player, a figure who puts certain events into action, rather than a character. The film is a pioneer in one sense then, that it is one of the first biopics that takes a company as its subject. Admittedly Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) does have a lot of screen time. But he remains frustratingly elusive and the audience leaves being none the wiser on Jobs as when they went in. Motivations matter little, only the actions.
evoking a mixture of fear and attraction. Wasikowska is stunning as the guarded yet quietly confident India, a young lady simultaneously in mourning, self-discovery and sexual awakening. Kidman nails the mother with no maternal instincts, a woman who never learnt how to look after anyone but herself.
Kutcher proves that he may be the dullest actor currently
JOBS
Once what’s really happening begins to dawn on you, it’s almost exhilarating. Park manages to keep the atmosphere at just the right balance of creepy, gripping, uncomfortable and sensual; watching Stoker is a brilliantly conflicting experience. Stephanie Liew
JOBS Film
In cinemas 29 Aug Jobs is less the story of Steve Jobs the man and more the story of the origins of one of
THE LITTLE MERMAID
Blue Room Theatre 22 Aug
All I could recall of Disney’s flick was an innocent seadwelling adolescent and an annoying crab, but this performance expressed a deeper re-adaption of the lesser-known, original gothic fairy tale, evoking provocative and sensual themes. Houston Sinclair’s rework proved to be more of a reflection on rejected youth rather than every twelve year-old girl’s
LITTLE MERMAID
working in American cinema. It isn’t just the fact that he is bad – there are plenty of bad actors but most have charm and energy in spades. Kutcher proves to be in a deficit of both (and they are pretty important traits for the role of Steve Jobs). Jobs will be quickly forgotten, but it is worth waiting for this story, as Aaron Sorkin, writer of The Social Network and The West Wing, is currently working on his own Jobs biopic. Until then, audiences that do go along to this Kutcher vehicle will at least have their iPhones to ease the boredom.
favourite film. Statements such as “I felt like it” or “I want it” reflected on the corruption of adolescence. Explicit sexual themes were further neutralised by the use of playful colours, bubbles and disco lights, which offer an insight of how contemporary theatre has been able to get away with adultery through the power of Disney. The Little Mermaid sways away from the generic performance with its use of devised contemporary dance and powerful performances, creating something far more interesting and dark.
Samuel Hilton
Sean McKenna
games
★★★
DUCKTALES REMASTERED Capcom
PC/Mac/Xbox 360/PS3/ WiiU Originally released in 1989, DuckTales was a critical success. Its colourful palette and smooth animations differentiated it from its 8-bit counterparts, securing the games legacy amongst the best on the NES. Skip forward 24 years and Capcom have gifted us with DuckTales Remastered, a HD remake with new additions.
Players reprise the role of Scrooge McDuck in the classic 2D adventure. After the entertaining new tutorial, DuckTales opens up into a MegaMan-type format. Players can choose from five levels to be played in any order, taking Scrooge on a trip around the world (and beyond) in search of treasure. Visually, DuckTales ranges from fluid to unsightly. Character models are hand drawn and animated with care and precision. Conversely, the 3D backgrounds are often dull and uninspired. The soundtrack is raucous, and lends itself well to the frantic action. The gameplay retains the old school difficulty of the original, requiring precision platforming which is rewarding but occasionally frustrating. Some levels are split into two distinct areas, but a ‘game over’ knocks the player back to the very start. This design choice is confusing and lowers the accessibility for new players. DuckTales Remastered is a charming title with inventive level design and boss battles, but unless you hold a strong degree of nostalgia to the original, look elsewhere. Andrew Sutton
PAPERS, PLEASE
★★★
Lucas Pope PC/Mac
Lukas Pope’s latest title seems leftfield even for the indie scene: the player takes the role of an immigration official on the border of the fictional oppressive totalitarian East-European state of Arstotzka. Basically, it’s stop the boats: the video game. Your job is inspecting and verifying immigration documents. Basic signs of forgery can be found
week to master. It’s drop ‘n’ drag with machine guns followed by a blue screen of death and burning plastic smell. You’re gonna want some friends on board as the AI attempts to be helpful and at times really pack a punch, however, busting out of a shop front and through the onslaught of cop bullets takes balls that just aren’t programmable.
PAYDAY 2
★★★
Overkill PC
Payday 2 is the follow up to one damn good idea for a video game. A team of four career criminals busting up banks and shop fronts amid the endless flow of minimum waged SWAT teams trying to interfere with the five-year tropical island plan. Kill them, kill them all! Payday 2 makes being the bad guy damn fun. Instantly accessible to all gamers, Payday 2 takes about five minutes to learn and a goddamn
So what is missing? Payday 2 is a mid-priced game and cuts corners on a definable campaign. There is no real direction – as in, say, a GTA – so it lacks sustainability; however, if you are the type that will plug in cheats and start lighting up hookers then the Payday model is all you need. It’s overwhelmingly good fun; get a team, charge a mission and level up. The amount of money you make in the game is staggering, and this could be potentially classed as a career change tutorial. Four missions in and two million in the offshore account from 30 minutes’ work and you’re suddenly casing Bankwest like a hawk. Hello Caymans. Simon Holland
★★★★ ½
EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV Paradox Interactive PC/Mac
In 2012, Paradox Interactive annihilated the social lives of grand strategy fans with Crusader Kings 2, a stunningly immersive medieval romp that married historical conquest with the gratifying subtleties of preserving a noble bloodline via feudal bureaucracy. Europa Universalis
in mismatches between the passport’s supposed place of issue and the guide maps given to you. The person’s stated sex might conflict with their suspiciously bearded visage, but the final test – a surprisingly graphic body scan – may unexpectedly swing the balance of truth in their favour. A mother registering an unexplained weight surplus presents a curious puzzle – that is, before your eyes scan the daily bulletin to spy her face on the list of wanted Kolechian terrorists. Weighing in at just 8MB, the 16-bit puzzler positively drips atmosphere. The bleak fauxSoviet setting gratifies with blue-grey ferro concrete, shuffling lines of black-pixel migrants, and garbled voice prompts that seem to have been fed through a cryptographic scrambler. But the scenarios above were conspicuous highlights of a concept stretched too thin. There’s too much padding in the form of migrants with uninteresting scenarios, whose puzzles rest in the pedantic comparison of expiry dates. The gameplay treads too close to recreating the soul-eating bureaucracy it aims to satirise. Michael Pendlebury IV trades away murder and medieval love triangles for greater scope and a more comprehensive toolkit for world domination. EUIV starts where CK2 left off in the mid-15th century and finishes in 1821. The game steers players through the European Renaissance and colonisation of the Americas; unlike CK2 (set in the socially anaemic Dark Ages), EUIV features a deep system of culture and technology progression that reflects the rapid evolution of ideas over the period. EUIV continues Paradox’s tradition of challenging gameplay. Rebellions flare up unless crushed or converted, while neighbouring nations brew resentment. A coalition of aggressors will manifest out of nowhere and declare war, your sworn ally suspiciously cops out, and bam – you’ve been consigned to the trashcan of history. You’ll pretty much lose each game, but finally defying the odds and history itself is a uniquely satisfying experience. EUIV supports multiplayer, but presents such a sprawling arena that you’ll rarely encounter your human counterparts. Michael Pendlebury THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 47
muso
PRODUCT NEWS MALMSTEEN WORKSHOPS Thump Music has announced an extremely rare and exclusive Australian masterclass tour by master of the vibrato, Yngwie Malmsteen, talking about his experiences as well as performing at one of four venues across the country. He’ll be at Queensland Conservatorium Theatre from 7.30pm on 9 Dec; Wesley Conference Centre 7.30pm on 10 Dec; George Wood Performing Arts Centre, Ringwood at 7.30pm 11 Dec; and Hale School’s John Inverely Theatre, Perth at 7.30pm 13 Dec. Witness two hours of “jaw-dropping wizardry and six-string dexterity”. To purchase tickets, go to the Thump Music website.
MATT REDLICH WINS AT QMA AWARDS Congratulations to Brisbane-based producer Matt Redlich, whose work was recently recognised at the Queensland Music Awards. Opening his new studio, Grandma’s Place, in south Brisbane earlier this year, Redlich has worked on, among other things, Emma Louise’s album, Vs Head Vs Heart, Ball Park Music’s Museum, The Trouble With Templeton’s Rookie and Holy Holy’s forthcoming album. Part of his unique sound revolves around his use of a vintage 2” tape machine for tracking. Emma Louise won Album of the Year, Ball Park Music Song of the Year and Pop Song Of The Year for Surrender, and The Trouble With Templeton Rock Song of the Year for Six Months In A Cast, all of which were produced, engineered and mixed by Redlich, while Emma Louise won Most Popular Female and the Export Achievement Award.
48 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
WHO’S ON SOUND?
If you’ve ever aspired to be the person behind the desk at your fave venue, controlling the sounds coming off the stage, SAE and The Hi-Fi have the course for you. Michael Smith talks to one of the architects of the Diploma of Sound Production (Live Sound), Lance Krivé.
S
AE (School of Audio Engineering) is the world’s leading educator in creative media industries. Established in 1976, SAE has 53 campuses in 27 countries offering certificates through to degrees, students getting practical, hands-on training with dedicated teachers in world-class facilities. SAE and The Hi-Fi have gotten together to provide the opportunity to study a Diploma of Sound Production (Live Sound) in a real venue, The Hi-Fi, in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, under the guidance of SAE’s worldclass audio production team.
“With live sound, if something doesn’t work or it doesn’t happen right, there’s no saying, ‘Go get a coffee, we’ll fix it in a minute’,” he continues. “You’re in front of people who want to see a show go non-stop with no problems, so everything’s very ‘in the moment’. Every room is different and what you’re doing is taking your sound monitoring system, which you know well, and you’re putting it into rooms that are unknowns, and in addition to that, you have your soundchecks, which are empty rooms that are going to be completely different that night when people are in them.”
Lance Krivé, Head VET coordinator/lecturer for SAE Institute, Melbourne, is one of the people behind the development and implementation of the course, and his CV is, to say the least, positively mindboggling. Between 1984 and 2001, he worked as monitor engineer/studio engineer for Stevie Nicks, was the playback engineer on Madonna’s 1990 Blonde Ambition World Tour, crew chief backline and guitar technician on Michael Jackson’s Dangerous and History tours, house engineer at The Palace in Hollywood (when not on tour) between 1993 and 1998… You get the picture. Since arriving in Australia in 2001, Krivé has been house engineer for The Mercury Lounge, East Brunswick Club and Ferntree Gully Hotel, and still does live sound every weekend.
“WHEREVER THERE ARE BANDS THERE ARE NEEDS FOR ENGINEERS.”
“I’m really excited about this course,” Krivé admits. “I’ve been trying to get something like this going for seven years with SAE. When I first got there I said, ‘You need more live sound!’
Then of course there are rooms that have inhouse systems, “and sometimes there can be a great system and sometimes it can be a really lousy system, and you just have to make it sound good”. All these aspects and much, much more are covered in the course, and students get to learn it on the latest stuff – Avid digital consoles and so on – which fits in perfectly with the gear students will encounter when they go into any of The Hi-Fi venues for the practical part of their course.
“Hands-on is critical,” Krivé reminds us. “The only way to learn is to be thrown into it – you learn to swim and swim well. The Hi-Fi set-up is great – it’s got a Line Array in there [ten Outline Butterfly Line Array speakers in Melbourne, 20 in Sydney and 12 in Brisbane, and six Outline Subtech 218 Sub Speakers in all three], they’ve got a Avid venue console for front-of-house and an Avid SE48 for monitors, Way Loud wedges, which are fantastic for the musicians up on stage, and great microphone choices. You can do any international or national act there easily. “The point is, you can’t find big recording studios any more so really this is the only way to make a good living from sound engineering. [And] even if we go into a recession, people will always be performing to liven people up and make them happy, so wherever there are bands there are needs for engineers.” The course will provide practical, professional training using a combination of live and classroom sessions. Course work will include bump-in, soundchecks, watching live mixes and bump-out, which all means eight or nine hours per gig. On completion, the industryfocused diploma is a career pathway to higher education with the option to transfer into the SAE’s Bachelor of Audio Production. You’ll find SAE Melbourne at 235 Normanby Rd, South Melbourne, SAE Sydney at 55-57 Wentworth Ave, Surry Hills and SAE Brisbane, Riverside Drive, West End, so for details on this and any course on offer call 1800 723 238, and VET fee-help is of course available.
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 49
muso
GRAPHTEC RATIO MACHINE HEADS
B&W NAUTILUS 803D Graphtec is a company that constantly impresses me with its simple revolutionary innovation, and a constant focus on improving the experience of playing for every guitarist. Many years ago I purchased a set of black Graphtec string saddles that instantly improved the tone of my Strat, while at the same time increasing the longevity of my strings. Now the company takes on something completely different by moving into the field of machine heads (or tuning pegs as most people refer to them). And while the idea of wrapping a string around a post multiple times to get it into tune hasn’t changed much over many hundreds of years, Graphtec’s new Ratio machine heads have to be one of the best improvements in the history of tuning, the idea making each individual tuning peg respond equally by changing its turn ratio to match string diameter.
The B&W 803D has a diamond tweeter, which is the main difference between these and the previous S model, and the D also has an extra bass cone. The quality of sound from these is inexplicable. The diamond tweeter has a smooth, sweet high end that never fatigues, compared to the S model which has a little more high end, which I actually prefer when used with my valve amp. The tweeters are isolated on top of the cabinet in a separate housing and the midrange driver is surrounded by gel. Adjusting the tension against the driver and gel is accomplished via an adjustable axel that runs to the back of the cabinet, which adjusts the sound staging. Ridiculous! In a good way! Abbey Road and Skywalker studios among others use B&W. Need I say more? These are simply amazing. Perfectly balanced, exciting and legendary sound, expect to pay around $12,500.
Reza Nasseri
Barry Gilmour
PRESONUS SCEPTRE S8
THE NEW PEARL EXPORT SERIES The number one-selling drum kit of all time, the Export is back as a new, redesigned kit with enhanced tone, new hardware and improved features. The new Export series features blended shells combining premium poplar and Asian mahogany together for a warm, rich tone. The shells have been put together through Pearl’s own “Superior Shell Technology” by choosing the perfect woods, milled to a precise thickness with overlapping seams resulting in amazing tone, projection and resonance. Other improvements include new low-mass lugs that further enhance resonance, and Opti-Loc mounting system that doesn’t penetrate the shell, allowing the drum to vibrate freely with greater adjustability and only three points of contact for an incredibly secure mount that doesn’t alter tone. All new 830 hardware is now included as well, with three-stage stands of Zildjian Z series cymbals. Reza Nasseri 50 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
This is a difficult product to review briefly so let’s cut to the chase. The PreSonus Sceptre S8 active monitor looks completely unconventional and it is. They call it CoActual technology. For the price they offer pretty good detail and sound staging, a 32-bit processor running Fulcrum Acoustic’s TQ Technology in a pretty tech-heavy coaxial setup running TQ DSP. All that really means is that the user has a pretty hi-tech piece of hardware for around the $1000 mark and everyone’s going to poke and prod them wondering what that crazy square horn is! The onboard amps are pretty good, with convincing imaging. If you’re looking for a pair of quality project studio monitors without spending a fortune, give these a try. Barry Gilmour
classies FILM & STAGE
MUSIC SERVICES
EMPLOYMENT
OTHER
ADMINISTRATION
West Coast Entertainment are now offering competitive marketing & publicity packages to make sure your band gets the media attention it deserves! So if you have a new release, an EP launch or even a national tour coming up contact bookings@westcoastentertainment.com.au for more info on our extensive range of services. iFlogID: 22770
MUSICIANS WANTED
FREMANTLE RECORDING STUDIOS We’ve had bands on JJJ, now you can have us for $120/hr! Book professional recording sessions at one of the best rooms in WA w/ 10% off when you mention this ad. NEW: Live video shoot w/ recording, editing & mixdown $750. Perfect for your reel or presskit. Call 0415738155 for booking. iFlogID: 22756
SINGER
FOR SALE
CAMERA
DRUMS
CAMERA MAN with music video experience available for hire. Has own Canon HDSLR and lighting kits. email: immimagery@gmail.com
High Definition YouTube video demonstrations of cymbals. ZILDJIAN, SABIAN, PAISTE, UFIP, MEINL, WUHAN, STAGG, PEARL... www.youtube. com/user/sydneypollak
iFlogID: 22187
iFlogID: 19832
PRODUCTION MUSIC VIDEO PRODUCTION We offer high quality, creative music videos to suit your style & budget. Portfolio of over 30 artists. Seen on MTV, Channel [V], CMC, rage www.immersionimagery. com
MUSIC SERVICES BAND MERCHANDISE
iFlogID: 22185
LEAD VOCALIST WANTED Sydney based progressive rock band looking for male lead vocalist. We are looking for a professional, creative and motivated individual who has a strong voice, is a dynamic melody-writer and connects well with the music. To hear current demos: www.reverbnation.com/ borahorza Email us: borahorzaband@ hotmail.com Feel free to call- Tom: 0411288190 Rich: 0414997996 iFlogID: 22905
Get your Band/ Business online with affordable website design. From $299 Services include Seo, Social network marketing Includes free 1000 Facebook likes, 22k twitter followers. Contact info@earthgoat.com iFlogID: 19089
Seo Marketing ~ Facebook likes, YouTube, Twitter views Promote your business online with Seo services Facebook likes 1k - 10k Youtube views 1k - 100k Twitter followers 1k - 100k Prices start from $20 iFlogID: 19091
HOSPITALITY & TOURISM
SOUND & MUSIC Video sound pro recording, editing, mixing & mastering for film. Video editing full HD. Music arranging / composition & production for film. Voice overs dubbed into video etc. $40 hr. Enquiries ph: 02 98905578 iFlogID: 21481
Video sound quality recording, editing, mixing & mastering for film. Video editing full HD. Music arranging / composition & production for film. Voice overs dubbed into video etc. $40 hr. Enquiries ph: 02 98905578 iFlogID: 21489
Graphic design & high quality screen printing. Soft feel discharge pigment printing. No nasty plastisol prints, transfers or digital prints! 02 9531 7752 info@25wattsprint.com iFlogID: 22859
ATTN:BAR/VENUE OWNERS. Need a “quiet” night filled? Comedy Hypnosis Show looking to replicate current venue success to other areas . We bring the crowd, take the door. You take F&B. 1300 660490 iFlogID: 19059
W! NE
CLASSIES
BUY JOBS SELL WANTED MUSICIANS
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 51
with
5 PIECE BAND
Saturday 31 August 9pm Clancy’s Fish Pub Fremantle Catch her before she heads off on her European tour www.tobymusic.com.au
# 0 2 • 2 1 . 0 8 . 1 3 • P E R T H • F R E E • I N C O R P O R AT I N G
JAPANDROIDS “ W E ’ R E A P R E T T Y B L A C K A N D W H I T E BA N D ”
music
BIG SCARY
film
CHLOËË GRACE MORETZ
travel
HOLI LI FEST
fashion
ONESIES NESIES
the music | the lifestyle | the fashion | the art | the culture | you
52 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
MORE MUSIC THAN EVER AND A SHITLOAD OF OTHER STUFF!
the guide
The Beat-Sitters Club are Pussymittens, Tina Says, Doorgirl Mafia, and Miss Demeanour.
THE BEAT-SITTERS CLUB
Pussymittens: If you could give one record to the Prime Minister, what record would it be? Does It Offend You Yeah?, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You (Insert big rant about global warming). Tina Says: what’s something that should never be worn on the dance floor? Popper pants! they are yuckay. Doorgirl Maf ia: Who’s the worst person you’ve ever turned down at the door of a club? Worst is so subjective, ya know? My ban list is becoming a full dossier. Probably the “Guy Who Should Not Be Let In The Most” award should be given to someone who was bleeding from both eyes who had a fully tattooed head - he kept screaming “FUCK”. Quickest “Not tonight, buddy” I’ve ever done. Pussymittens: What’s a record you’ll still have when you’re 80? You Am I, Hi Fi Way. I grew up listening to my parents old tattered copy of this as a kid, they happened to re-release the album recently, so I now have a shiny new copy. I can imagine myself still belting Tim Rogers when I’m even shorter and more Italian. Tina Says: What’s a record you’d give your mum? My mum is a crazy a$$ German lady! So probably a record of some crazy a$$ German musik. Doorgirl Maf ia: One record that changed your life is… Portishead, Glory Box. Perfect teenage fingerbanging music. The Beat-Sitters Club takes plays Fri 30 Aug at Flyrite. Free entry, drink specials and a craft corner.
fashion
eat
drink
travel
culture
the guide wa.live@themusic.com.au
FRONTLASH
LIVE THIS WEEK
DO YOU WANT MORE?
One of the most influential bands in r’n’b in, well, ever, The Roots have been announced as part of the headline list for Soutbound. As big fans, The Music are now on a hell-bent path to growing our afros big enough to slot combs into between now and January.
CLOSER In other tour news, legendary industrial band (and, lo, another The Music favourite, obviously) Nine Inch Nails are in fact coming to Australia. Crossed fingers they make it over our way.
TRUMPLED Donald Trump’s getting sued for setting up Trump University, a semi-pseudo educational organisation that promised high-paying jobs to people who sunk thousands of dollars into his program. As people who definitely aren’t billionaires, we’re pointing our fingers and grinning.
ALTERNATIVE CAREER THELMA PLUM If you weren’t doing music, what else would you be doing? I would be hanging out with dogs all the time. Thelma Plum will perform at the Boomerang Indigenous Festival in Byron Bay. Check The Guide for dates.
HARD N’ HEAVY
A BINDING NIGHT
The Academy plays host to a big night tonight, Wed 28 Aug at Amplifier as Sensory Amusia, Iconoclast, Hollow Ground, Blkout!, Idle Eyes and Protest all throw out the heavy stuff from 8pm. Tickets on the door.
Tonight, Wed 28 Aug, get ready to Kick Out The Yams as Doctopus, Thee Gold Blooms and Aborted Tortoise all get freaky from 8pm. $5 entry, plus there’s cheap boags schooners.
I SEE SEEKAE
IN THE ROOTS
The breakthrough of Seekae has seen them come a long way since their initial bedroom experiments. Now filling stages with all sorts of equipment, they head to The Bakery this Saturday 31 Aug from 8pm.
Jordan McRobbie is the latest local acoustic export, with a couple of tours under his belt and a debut EP to be released in the coming months. Catch him at Clancy’s Freo on Fri 30 Aug. Free entry.
WILD, WILD HORSES
PLAYER PIANO
Melbourne’s own Whitehorse have gathered together members from all over to create crushingly heavy, doom/sludge metal layered with electronics. They bring it to The Civic Hotel on Sat 31 Aug with our own Drowning Horse and more.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to play a grand piano for the first time in front of a room full of people? Well, Holly Norman has just done that, and now she heads out for more on Mon 2 Sep at The Ellington for a night of intimate original music.
BACKLASH BEN IN BLACK
So Ben Affleck is Batman now. That’s the news we know. Within hours, the internet and various subsidiaries exploded with nerd rage on the development. Our advice: chill. Old mate Ben’s been doing well of late, so it might turn out as a good choice.
RISE UP INDEED Here’s for your weekly crazy election campaign news: the Rise Up Australia Party federal candidate for Capricornia has said that the UN are responsible for the floods in Queensland in 2010-11, subcontracting a private company to do so. That... that probably tops the rest right now.
BOY BANDS’ BACK Five (or 5ive, whatever) have reformed and are touring, despite being only four in count now. And N*Sync have reformed for the MTV Awards. Darn, now we have to decide between the aforementioned afros or terrible, terrible undercuts. 54 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
SWEET CHRISTMAS
ULTIMATE GUEST SAM RASMUSSEN FROM THE PAPER KITES If you could have any artist join you on the album, who would it be and what would they be doing? I’d get a real buzz out of collaborating with Ryan Adams. And by collaborating, I mean let him perform while I watch. The Paper Kites new album St Clarity out soon.
Heroes For Hire have a fine resume, touring the world representing Australia and pop-punk in all its glory. They head to Fly By Night this Sun 1 Sep, supported by our own punkers Alex The Kid. Flybynight.org for tickets.
ART AND SOUL
ONE- MAN BAND
Odette Mercy & Her Soul Atomics blend the styles of Motown, Verve and Stax to create their own acclaimed good times. It goes down at The Art Gallery of WA for AGWA Nights this Fri 30 Aug. Momaseries.com.au for tickets.
Andrew Winton is an independent solo artist combining acoustic guitar, lap slide, dobro and a seven-string lap guitar/bass (the “Wintonbeast”). He brings the whole kit to The Charles Hotel on Tues 3 Sep, supporting the indomitable Wolf Mail.
FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU
the guide wa.live@themusic.com.au
LIVE THIS WEEK
HAVE YOU HEARD
SPRAWL With Edric Matviev How did you get together? We’re folks looking for a sweet-spot between all the music we enjoy as listeners, acoustic and electronic.
IN VOGUE Direct from sell-out seasons around the world (including Edniburgh Fringe), Jersey Boys star Michael Griffiths takes you through a journey of Madonna’s greatest hits at His Majesty’s Theatre on Thurs 29 and Fri 30 Aug. Tickets through the venue box office or Ticketek.
Sum up your musical sound in four words? Personal apocalyptic noise pop.
ALTERNATIVE CAREER ILLY If you weren’t doing music, what else would you be doing? Probably practicing law, or just sitting around. Illy is touring nationally. Check The Guide for dates.
BACK IN BLACK 2011 ARIA Blues & Roots nominees and iTunes Australian Blues & Roots Album Of The Year winners, Backsliders have been playing, touring the festival circuit and recording for 25 years. Catch them at Clancy’s Dunsborough on Sat 31 Aug.
FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU
If you could support any band in the world – past or present – who would it be? Supporting Blur after they released 13 would be aneurysm inducing, but any time after Parklike would also bring on palpitations. Why should people come and see your band? To see a three-headed creature attempting to figure itself out, the joy is the journey. Also: loud, thumpy, hooks, hollering. When and where for your next gig? Gatherings Festival on the 31 Aug at Banks reserve. The local line-up is stellar, it’ll be a time and a half. Website link for more info? facebook.com/sprawlseek
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 55
the guide wa.live@themusic.com.au
SINGLE FOCUS
STILLWATER GIANTS
ETEANA
With Tom Godden
With Peter Mcavan and Lana Rothnie
Single title: Insane What’s the song about? Coping with life by having moments of insanity, or at least wishing you could. How long did it take to write/record? As usual with our songs the bulk is written in a single jam session with tweaks occurring over the following weeks. Is this track from a forthcoming release/ existing release? Stillwater Giants’ debut album to hit the stereos early 2014. Currently in production, there are some sweet new directions for us... What was inspiring you during the song’s writing and recording? Recent tours which exposed us to some cool experiences as a band, but left us little time to get in a rehearsal room and jam out ideas filled us all with pent-up musical energy. We’ll like this song if we like... It’s always really hard to compare music. Actually, you will like this song if you like toasted sandwiches. Do you play it differently live? Our music is generally a touch different from studio to stage... We have a live connection which always harder to capture in a studio, everything is a bit rockier. When and where is your launch/next gig? 21 Sep at our much loved homeground, Amplifier Bar in the Perth CBD. We’ll be launching Insane with some insane bands to a typical SWG insane crowd. Website link for more info? facebook.com/ stillwatergiants
LIVE THIS WEEK
TASTE TEST
The best record I stole from my folks’ collection was… Lana: Talking Heads – Remain In Light. Peter: Parents don’t listen to music really; Leonard Cohen, I guess. The f irst record I bought with my own money was… Lana: John Coltrane – A Love Supreme. Peter: Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West. The record I put on when I’m really miserable is… Lana: Beach Boys – Pet Sounds. Brian Wilson understands my insanity. Peter: Postal Service – Give Up. The record I put on when I bring someone home is… Peter: The Weeknd – House Of Balloons. Lana: Ye, das it mayne, das da one. My favourite party album is… Peter: TNGHT EP. Lana: James Blake – CMYK.
O CANADA Canadian beat-makers Ryan Hemsworth and Kaytranada are on a vibe right now, with a slew of remixes and originals up and down the charts. They head down under for a special series of co-headline club performances, hitting The Bakery on Fri 30 Aug. Tickets through Now Baking.
PATH OF THE HUNTERS
TAKE ME HOME
Taking a step back from roots, local songstress Leah Miche has a new sound brewing with The Regular Hunters. They bring it to X-Wray on Fri 30 Aug from 8pm, supported by Golden String and David Craft. $5 entry.
2012 saw pop-punk septet Make Believe Me release their debut album …Where The Heart Is. Now they’re back in the game, with a show at The Rosemount Hotel this Thurs 29 Aug, supported by Vice Versa and Afraid Of Heights. $10 entry.
LIKE AN ANIMAL
OUT OF THIS WORLD
Catch local rockers Creature launching their debut album Sat 31Aug at The Rosemount Hotel with some dynamite guests: The Insinnerators, Welcome To Loko and The Shakeys. $10 entry.
After taking out the award for best music show at Perth Fringe, Stratosfunk’s Tell Mama: The Music Of Etta James is back for one night only at Fremantle’s Fly By Night Musicians Club on Sat 31 Aug from 7.30pm. Tickets through flybynight.org.
YOU’RE THE BAND
LANA! LANA!
Clare Bowditch is celebrating the release of her new single One Little River by playing at Fly By Night... where you could be her support act! Head to clarebowditch.com for full details, tickets to the show on Fri 30 Aug through flybynight.org.
Archer & Light are proud to be launching their debut EP Our Love Is Confetti at The Rosemount Hotel on Fri 30 Aug. The EP is already garnering the band attention, drawing comparisons to Arcade Fire and Of Monsters & Men. $10 entry.
The best album to comedown to is… Peter McAvan: Primal Scream – Screamadelica. Lana Rothnie: Air – Moon Safari. Honorable Mention: Spiritualized – LAGWAFIS. The most surprising record in my collection is… Lana: Space Jam soundtrack. Peter: Neutral Bling Hotel; it’s a rap remix of NMH’s ITAOTS. The last thing I bought/ downloaded was… Peter: AlunaGeorge – Body Music. Lana: Boards Of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest. When and where are your next gigs? Bakery on 22 Aug. Sublime Tree at Matches on 28 Aug. Website link for more info? soundcloud.com/eteana
FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU 56 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
the guide wa.live@themusic.com.au
LIVE THIS WEEK HIP TO BE SQUARE
EAST MEETS WEST
Tease your hair high, dress in your best ‘80s garb and dance with Razorjack and HollyDoll at Deville’s Pad on Fri 30 Aug for Why Be Normal? Classic New Wave, Synth Pop and more all night from 6pm. $10 entry after 8pm.
Jazz guitar virtuoso Glenn Rogers joins tabla maestro Gupreet Singh, percussionist Josh Hogan and viola sensation Aaron Wyatt to form Nadis. The quartet fuse Indian rhythm with Western jazz at Kulcha on Fri 30 Aug from 8.30pm.
YOU’RE THE VOICE
FOLLOW THE LEEDY
Devilles Pad’s weekly Rock’n’Roll Karaoke night goes down Thurs 29 Aug. Strut your stuff on stage with sizzling stereophonic sound. Plus, there’s $10 “demon dinners”, “happy hour in hell” between 6 and 7pm, and free entry all night.
The Leederville Hotel has a hell of a night tonight, Wed 28 Aug: Downstairs inside is Bliss Ladie’s Night with DJ Ben Renna plus special guests, upstairs is DJ Kreem until midnight, while one of the biggest dance nights goes off on the main floor.
PERSONAL BEST RECORDS
RICH WIDOW With Brayden Edwards Best record you stole from your folks’ collection? I never stole anything from my parent’s collection but they stole my Marshall Mathers LP when I was about 15.
STUDIO BAR STEWART HILL FROM DEAD LETTER CIRCUS What would we find in the studio fridge when you’re recording? Fat Yak beer was very popular with myself and Tom (Skerlj). It’s a proven muse and pain killer. Luke (Williams) our drummer had this weird vinegar/ tea concoction that smelt like feet and mushy peas and tasted worse. Dead Letter Circus’ new album The Catalyst Fire out now.
SOUND AND VISION This Thurs 29 August, the Gallery Sessions continue at Fremantle Arts Centre as Big Old Bears frontman and soulful crooner David Craft and prolific lady-about-town Hayley Beth host two intimate solo gigs from 6pm. Presales through fac.oztix.com.
First record you bought? When I bought my first stereo Cash Converters threw in a free Oasis – Morning Glory album. This was just after the whole Brit-pop thing died down I guess they were trying to shift them. Most surprising record in your collection?: Presidents Of The United States of America’s Dune Buggy: Australian Tour EP from 1996. Most surprising thing is that it actually exists. Last thing you bought/ downloaded? 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields. Had a massive road trip for work recently so went for pure quantity. Website link for more info? facebook.com/richwidow
FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU
BOOMTICK PAPERBACKS
FRIDAY 30 AUGUST
DOORGIRL MAFIA | MISS DEMEANOUR PUSSYMITTENS | TINA SAYS
FREE ENTRY ALL NIGHT | DRINK SPECIALS | CRAFT CORNER
110 ABERDEEN ST. NORTHBRIDGE WWW.FLYRITE.COM.AU FACEBOOK.COM/FLYRITEPERTH THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 57
event
58 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
event
CAGED FASHION
Caged by Coveted Events. Photography by Jo Bevis. Designs by Wild Horses, Seth Cray and Rosie & Broken. Hair & Makeup by High Maintenance, JuliaAnne Cockman, Clint Wilson and Sangeetha Smith.
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 59
opinion
OG FLAVAS
BLACK FLAG
CULTURAL CRINGE
URBAN AND R&B NEWS WITH CYCLONE
PUNK AND HARDCORE WITH DANIEL CRIBB
A LOOK AT THE FINER THINGS WITH MARCIA CZERNIAK
The urban/EDM crossover is met with antipathy from the cool kids when Americans, but not Brits, attempt it. The UK scenes have long been interconnected and so any exchange appears more grassroots. Those recent acclaimed albums from Rudimental and Disclosure are both stashed with (alt.) urban guests. Rudimental’s drum’n’bassy Home has Angel Haze, Emeli Sandé and Alex Clare, while Disclosure’s future garage Settle has AlunaGeorge, Jamie Woon and Jessie Ware. In fact, as Disclosure introduced Sam Smith on Latch (he’s since sung Naughty Boy’s La La La), Rudimental launched John Newman – a soulster from Settle in northern England. Newman performed (and co-wrote) their smash Feel The Love and Not Giving In (a duet with Clare). He’s lately premiered with his solo Love Me Again, a UK charttopper. It was co-produced by Steve Booker, the mastermind of Duffy’s Mercy, and Mike Spencer, the guy who helmed Sandé’s Heaven. An eponymous album is due next month, and this rising star has included Australia in his promo trail! Newman gave up on becoming a mechanic to pursue music, moving to Leeds, then London, where he joined a band with future Rudimental member Piers Aggett. The Yorkshire lad is a polymath: a singer/ songwriter, guitarist, producer and DJ. Newman has a husky, twangy voice that has already been compared to Plan B, circa The Defamation Of Strickland Banks. Admirably, he’s determined to revive Northern soul for the masses. Just don’t lazily tag him ‘the guy Adele’. ogflavas@themusic.com.au
JOHN NEWMAN 60 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
As Chaucer said, there is an end to everything, to good things as well, and this is no truer when I say this will be the last Cultural Cringe column I put fingers to keyboard to.
SUPER BEST FRIENDS
Michelle Obama teaming up with Blink 182’s Travis Barker to work on a hip hop record? Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott making cameos in a punk rock music video? It’s been one hell of a confusing couple of weeks. An artist singing about politics is just as common as love ballads and songs about partying, but when politicians start engaging with music, it can be interesting. It’s like a good actor trying to become a musician – it’s often a disaster. Politically-driven, passionate musicians are, most of the time, ready-made politicians – take Peter Garrett, for example. They know how to win an audience over and can articulate their beliefs in an efficient way. Most politicians, however, would make lousy musicians. By reading this column, it’s somewhat safe to assume you’re a fan of punk and/or hardcore, and thus may have aligned your political views with what most bands playing the genre preach, right? If not, you’re listening to the wrong genre, and Rise Against, Anti-Flag, Dead Kennedys and Propagandhi may not be the bands for you. Either way, it should be no surprise there’s some Abbott bashing below. If you were to give the opposition leader a guitar and stick him in a recording studio, and it was the 1950s, you’d end up with charttopping singles. But it’s 2013; can you imagine the backlash an artist would receive these days if they released a single
against same-sex marriage? Agreeing to appear in Canberra band Super Best Friends’ new music video was no doubt an effort by both Abbott and Rudd to look like fun guys, which is probably why Abbott thought it would be a good idea to call up Sydney’s 2DayFM when Katy Perry was on-air to ask when she’s coming back to Australia because his daughters love her. It was hilarious when she jokingly asked his views on same-sex marriage and he continued like the question hadn’t been asked. You can imagine him on the phone next to his publicist and the look of pure horror on their face when Perry uttered the topic. I would have assumed Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl would be off limits in the Abbott household. Being a huge fan, as he declared on-air, surely he’d know one of her most popular songs? Trying to fit Labor into a suitable musical environment would also be an awkward task. Kevin Rudd is like the Art Garfunkel of Australian politics. He plays an important role and does it pretty well, but he’s no one’s favourite. If you haven’t had a chance to check out Super Best Friends’ music video for Round And Round yet, it’s up on their YouTube account and is a great watch. As far as the Michelle Obama hip hop CD goes, I’ll keep you posted.
So as I fondly reflect on the two years I’ve been writing Cringe (and those not so fond memories of blank screens and impending deadlines), I’m drawn to noting how elements within Perth’s arts community have changed so much in that time. In the last two years we’ve had two big arts festivals cement themselves into the events calendar as Fringe World Festival and Perth International Comedy Festival. How could Perth audiences resist seeing some of the best emerging and established cabaret, comedy, circus, theatre and music acts? Especially in venues like the Spiegeltent! And comedy lovers have been treated to some top comedians in the last few years courtesy of the PICF. Perth Festival has also garnered a lot of attention. But then, how could you forget a city covered in layers of white in the height of summer? And then there’s the City itself, which has undergone some massive changes. Perth’s small bar scene is burgeoning and we’ve been given two new major venues in Perth Arena and State Theatre Centre of Western Australia. Just as Buffy sang, the question is, where do we go from here? While we can safely say not into an apocalypse, the answer is what you make it. You can sit at home and complain about how there’s nothing to do or you can go out and discover what is out there. And of course, you can keep reading this lovely publication to help guide your discoveries. Happy travels!
JOEL CREASEY
THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 61
the guide wa.gigguide@themusic.com.au
THE MUSIC PRESENTS JOSH PYKE: SEP 7 Astor Theatre
XAVIER RUDD: SEP 28 Three Oceans Winery, SEP 29 Fremantle Arts Centre
RUDIMENTAL: SEP 13 Metro City
HORRORSHOW: OCT 3 Prince Of Wales, Bunbury; OCT 4 Amplifier; OCT 5 Mojos
ARTLAB CREATIVE CONFERENCE: SEP 14 Perth Convention Centre DEAD LETTER CIRCUS: SEP 20 Prince of Wales, SEP 21 Metropolis Fremantle FOALS: SEP 22 Metro City
JINJA SAFARI: OCT 4 Settlers Tavern, Margaret River; OCT 5 Prince Of Wales, Bunbury; OCT 6 Astor Theatre THE BREEDERS: OCT 31 Astor Theatre
TWELVE FOOT NINJA: SEP 26, Prince of Wales, Bunbury, SEP 27, Rosemount Hotel
BOY & BEAR: NOV 22 Metropolis Fremantle; NOV 23 Astor Theatre
ILLY: SEP 28 Villa, SEP 29 Prince Of Wales
ONGOING: GIG OF THE WEEK CLAIRE BOWDITCH, FRI 30 AUG, FLY BY NIGHT
GIGNITION: Upcoming band showcases 4-8pm last Sunday of each month at The Railway Hotel
THE PAPER KITES: SEP 21 Fly By Night
WED 28
Open Mic Night with +Chris Gibbs: Carine Glades Tavern, Duncraig
Chet Leonard’s Bingoteque: Clancys Fish Pub, Fremantle 5 Shots: Crown Perth (Groove Bar), Burswood Night Cap Session + Ali Bodycoat Trio: Ellington Jazz Club, Perth Fenton Wilde: Hale Road Tavern, Forrestfield Simon Kelly: Indi Bar, Scarborough
ALISON WONDERLAND, FRI 30 AUG, VILLA
Howie Morgan : Lucky Shag, Perth Fremantle Blues & Roots Club feat+Ensemble Formidable: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle
CLUB GUIDE
WED 28
Lokie Shaw: Captain Stirling, Nedlands
Famous+Various DJs: Gold Bar, Subiaco
FRI 30
Fresh+Various DJs: Club Red Sea, Subiaco Flava+Various DJs: Metro City (Solace Lounge) , Northbridge
Going Solo feat+Shontay Snow + Little Skye + Lucas Jones: Moon Cafe, Northbridge
Frat House Friday+Various DJs: Metropolis, Fremantle
Blue Gene + DJ James MacArthur: Mustang Bar, Northbridge
Andrei Maz + Paradise Paul: The Aviary, Perth DJ Screech: The Aviary (Birdcage) , Perth Rhythmmatism feat.+Them Move DJs: The Bird, Northbridge
SAT 31
Doctopus + Thee Gold Blooms + Aborted Tortoise: The Bird, Northbridge
Whitehorse + Drowning Horse + Goat + Grandmothers: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle
Bashamm + Graphic Fiction Heroes + Craig Skelton: The Paddo, Mt Hawthorn
Custom Royal + DJ James MacArthur: Mustang Bar, Northbridge
Retriofit: Universal Bar, Northbridge
Stonefield + Stillwater Giants + Jack Stirling: Prince of Wales, Bunbury
Rich Widow + Yeti Resort + The Eerie Serpents : Ya Ya’s, Northbridge
THU 29
Open Mic Night with +Rob Walker: Brighton Hotel, Mandurah
House Party 2013 feat. +Nina Las Vegas + Flight Facilities (DJ Set) + Cassian + Tyler Touche + Wave Racer: Capitol, Perth Dr Bogus: Crown Perth (Groove Bar), Burswood Monarchy: Crown Perth (Lobby Lounge), Burswood Pat Nicholson: Dunsborough Tavern, Dunsborough
Make Believe Me + Still Water Claims + Vice Versa + Afraid of Heights: Rosemount Hotel, North Perth Ivan Ribic: Rosie O’Gradys, Northbridge Clayton Bolger: Rosie O’Gradys, Fremantle Open Mic Night with +Claire Warnock: Settlers Tavern, Margaret River David Fyffe: Sovereign Arms, Joondalup DJ T King: Swallow Bar, Maylands Lucidity Farewell Party+Various: The Bird, Northbridge Jen de Ness : The Boat, Mindarie
Bury The Heard + September Sun + Lying Dying + Mitch Jones: Rosemount Hotel, North Perth David Fyffe: Rosie O’Gradys, Northbridge
Zel + Paradise Paul + DJ Samuel Spencer: The Aviary, Perth
James Barclay: Sovereign Arms, Joondalup
CLOUD CONTROL + PALMS, SAT 31 AUG, CAPITOL
$5 7.30PM EACH NIGHT
NATIONAL CAMPUS BANDS COMP Heat #1 (Tues), Heat #2 (Wed) Heat #3 (Thurs) 62 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
2 X TICS
FRIDAY 30 AUGUST
THE BACKSLIDERS (SYD)
EMAIL: WA.GIVEAWAYS@THEMUSIC.COM.AU
Night Cap Session + Quincy: Ellington Jazz Club, Perth
The Mystery Men: The Shed, Northbridge
David Craft + Hayley Beth: Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle
Tashi + Shouting At Camels + In The Dead Hours + The Heard: Ya Ya’s, Northbridge
Greg Carter: Gate Bar & Bistro, Success Bex’s Open Mic Night: Indi Bar, Scarborough
FRI 30
DJ Grizzly: Kalamunda Hotel, Kalamunda
Heymus + TJ O’Donovan: 78 Records (In-Store 4.00pm), Perth
DJ Peta: Leisure Inn, Rockingham
The Arsonist + UPNUP + Sparks Vertigo + more: Amplifier Bar, Perth
James Wilson : Lucky Shag, Perth
1000S OF GIGS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS. FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU
the guide wa.gigguide@themusic.com.au AGWA Nights feat. +Odette Mercy & Her Soul Atomics: Art Gallery Of WA, Perth Mike Nayar: Balmoral, East Victoria Park Jean Proude: Belgian Beer Cafe, Perth Chris Gibbs: Belmont Tavern, Cloverdale Carbon Taxi: Best Drop Tavern, Kalamunda Almost Famous: Boab Tavern, High Wycombe Jewel + George Greene + Vicktor: Brass Monkey Hotel, Northbridge Acoustic Aly: Brass Monkey Hotel (5pm), Northbridge DJ Peta: Brighton Hotel, Mandurah Az-T: Carine Glades Tavern, Duncraig
Better Days: Peel Alehouse, Halls Head
James Wilson : Boab Tavern, High Wycombe
Jonny Dempsey: Port Kennedy Tavern, Rockingham
Simone & Girlfunkle + The Dianas + The High Learys: PICA Bar, Perth
DJ Peta + Jewel: Brass Monkey Hotel, Northbridge
Blackbirds: Quarie Bar & Bistro, Hammond Park
DJ Mel: Brighton Hotel, Mandurah
Rock For Cancer feat. +The Remakes + ATM + Somethins Come A Gutza: Railway Hotel, North Fremantle
Stonefield + Stillwater Giants + Jack Stirling: Players Bar, Mandurah Dirty Scoundrels : Port Kennedy Tavern, Rockingham Rock The Vote feat. +The Brow Horn Orchestra + Ensemble Formidable + Lu$$ Dat V!lla!n: Railway Hotel, North Fremantle
Cloud Control + Palms: Capitol, Perth Whitehorse + Grief Contest + Drowning Horse + Ourobonic Plague: Civic Backroom, Inglewood Backsliders: Clancys Fish Pub, Dunsborough
Archer & Light + Anton Franc + These Winter Nights + The Atlas Mountains: Rosemount Hotel, North Perth
Backsliders: Clancys Fish Pub, Dunsborough
Nightshift: Sail & Anchor (Upstairs), Fremantle
The Recliners: Clancys Fish Pub, City Beach
DJ Mikeee: Saint, Innaloo
Toby: Clancys Fish Pub, Fremantle
Velvet: Carine Glades Tavern (5pm), Duncraig
Freo Grasshoppers: Settlers Tavern, Margaret River
Antics feat. +From The Dunes + Casino Sunrise + Antics DJs: Claremont Hotel, Claremont
James Wilson : Chase Bar & Bistro, Baldivis
Ang3l: Sovereign Arms, Joondalup
DJ Anaru: Como Hotel, Como
Adrian Wilson: Citro Bar, Perth
Greg Carter: Swinging Pig (3.30pm), Rockingham
Faces + Why Georgia: Ellington Jazz Club, Perth
DJ Boogie: Clancys Canning Bridge, Applecross
Frenzy: Swinging Pig, Rockingham
Jordan McRobbie + Mitch Becker: Clancys Fish Pub, Fremantle
Ryan Hemsworth + Kaytranada: The Bakery, Northbridge
Tell Mama: The Music of Etta James+Various: Fly By Night, Fremantle
Angus Diggs Trio: Clancys Fish Pub, City Beach Philly Blunt: Como Hotel, Como Moondog J: Denmark Hotel, Denmark
Ben Merito: The Boat, Mindarie Easy Tigers : The Paddo, Mt Hawthorn B.o.B: The Principle Micro Brewery, Midland
Jamie Powers : Gate Bar & Bistro, Success Nitro Zeppelin: Gosnells Hotel, Gosnells Cargo Beat: Greenwood Hotel, Greenwood Helen Shanahan: Hotel Rottnest, Rottnest Island
Why Be Normal?+Various: Devilles Pad, Perth
Crush + DJ Glenn 20: The Shed, Northbridge
Q ynn: Dunsborough Tavern, Dunsborough
Jinx Project: Vic, Subiaco
Howie Morgan Project: Hyde Park Hotel, North Perth
Alison Wonderland: Villa Nightclub, Perth
Blue Shaddy: Indi Bar, Scarborough
Jonny Dempsey: East 150 Bar, Ascot The Spread + Jade Webb + The Seals: Ellington Jazz Club, Perth
SIMONE & GIRLFUNKLE + THE DIANAS + THE HIGH LEARYS, FRI 30 AUG, PICA BAR
Astrobat: Kalamunda Hotel, Kalamunda
Soul Corporation: Moon & Sixpence, Perth Adam Hall & the Velvet Playboys + Cheeky Monkeys + DJ James MacArthur + Swing DJ: Mustang Bar, Northbridge
Seekae + Oliver Tank + MmHmmm + Kucka: The Bakery, Northbridge Camp Doogs Fundraiser+Various: The Bird, Northbridge Huge + DJ Andyy: The Shed, Northbridge Huge: The Shed, Northbridge Sigma: Villa Nightclub, Perth Jacob & The Rudeboys + DJ DeGraaf: Ya Ya’s, Northbridge
SUN 01
Andrew Winton: Balmoral, East Victoria Park Belleville: Belgian Beer Cafe (2.30pm), Perth Dove: Belmont Tavern (4pm), Cloverdale
The Zydecats: Clancys Fish Pub, Fremantle
Vdelli: Indi Bar, Scarborough
The Backsliders + Morgan Bain: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle
Tandem: Swinging Pig, Rockingham
Chasing Calee: Chase Bar & Bistro (2pm), Baldivis
Travis Caudle: Hyde Park Hotel (Courtyard / 5.30pm), North Perth
House Party 2013 feat. +Nina Las Vegas + Flight Facilities (DJ Set) + Cassian + Tyler Touche + Wave Racer: Metropolis, Fremantle
Greg Carter: Swinging Pig (3pm), Rockingham
Acoustic Aly: Carine Glades Tavern, Duncraig
DJ Hages: Hyde Park Hotel, North Perth
Retriofit: M On The Point, Mandurah
The Arsonist + Sam Perry: Settlers Tavern, Margaret River
Gerry Azor: Brooklands Tavern, Southern River
Greg Carter: Greenwood Hotel, Greenwood
DJ Grizzly + DJ Merqury: Lakers Tavern, Thornlie
Childs Play: Sail & Anchor (Upstairs), Fremantle
Nate Lansdell: Brighton Hotel (2.30pm), Mandurah
Clare Bowditch + Guests: Fly By Night, Fremantle
Nadis: Kulcha, Fremantle
Better Days: Sail & Anchor, Fremantle
Chris Gibbs Duo : Boab Tavern, High Wycombe
Shawne & Luc: Empire Bar, Rivervale
Dean Anderson: Inn Mahogany Creek, Mahogany Creek
Creature + The Shakeys + Welcome To Loco + The Insinnerators: Rosemount Hotel, North Perth
The Scotch Of Saint James: Ya Ya’s, Northbridge
Shawne & Luc: Indian Ocean Brewing Company, Mindarie
Exanimis + Fallback + To Catch A Fox + Let The Evil Go East + Defy The Leader + The Vultures: YMCA HQ (All Ages), Leederville
The Miracle Band: Kulcha, Fremantle
Jack & Jill : Crown Perth (Lobby Lounge), Burswood Kris Buckle: Dunsborough Tavern (2pm), Dunsborough Heroes For Hire + Guests: Fly By Night, Fremantle Greg Carter: Gate Bar & Bistro (2pm), Success
Shoot The Wicked Witch+Various: Newport Hotel, Fremantle Danni Stefanetti: Novotel Vines Resort, The Vines Sophie Jane : Peel Alehouse (1.30pm), Halls Head Better Days: Quarie Bar & Bistro (3pm), Hammond Park DJ Jon E + Az-T: Saint, Innaloo Stirling Rangers: Settlers Tavern (Verandah / Afternoon), Margaret River Anthony Nieves: South St Ale House (4pm), Hilton Jonny Dempsey: Springs Tavern, Beechboro Shotdown From Sugartown: Swallow Bar (5pm), Maylands Travis Caudle + Pat Nicholson: Swinging Pig, Rockingham Rooftop Sessions feat. +Dj Ben Sebastian + Troy Division + NDorse: The Aviary, Perth Adrian Wilson: The Principle Micro Brewery (12pm), Midland The Healy’s + Renogade: The Shed, Northbridge James Wilson : Whistling Kite (2pm), Secret Harbour Shontay Snow + Tyto Kings + Life In A Glass House + Disguises + Bee Anchor: YMCA HQ (All Ages / Afternoon), Leederville
MON 02
TV Snow + Guests: Amplifier Bar, Perth
Wire Birds: Brass Monkey Hotel, Northbridge Open Mic Night+Various: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle Triple Shots: Mustang Bar, Northbridge Big Thommo’s Open Mic Variety Night: Ya Ya’s, Northbridge
TUE 03
Open Mic Night with +Josh Terlick: Brass Monkey Hotel, Northbridge Andrew Winton + Wolf Mail + Braxton Hicks: Charles Hotel, North Perth Hans Fiance: Crown Perth (Lobby Lounge), Burswood Open Mic Night with +Anthony Kay: Kalamunda Hotel, Kalamunda
Great Gatsby Party+Various: Leederville Hotel, Leederville
Stonefield + Stillwater Giants + Jack Stirling: Indi Bar, Scarborough
Hideous Sun Demon + Red Engine Caves + Mt Mountain + Mudlark: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle
Rhythm 22: M On The Point, Mandurah
Retriofit: Indian Ocean Brewing Company (1pm), Mindarie
Danza Loca Salsa Night: Mustang Bar, Northbridge
SMRTS: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle
Kizzy: Kalamunda Hotel (2.30pm), Kalamunda
Wolf Mail: Perth Blues Club, North Perth
Seekae: Mojos Bar, North Fremantle
Swervedriver: Rosemount Hotel, North Perth
Retriofit: Balmoral, East Victoria Park
The Continentals + Milhouse + DJ James MacArthur + Rockabilly DJ: Mustang Bar, Northbridge
It’s Time To Jam+Various: Mojos Bar (Afternoon), North Fremantle
Little Nicky + Lokie Shaw: Bar 120, Hillarys
Easy Tigers : Newport Hotel, Fremantle
Mike Nayar: Belgian Beer Cafe, Perth
Tequila Mockingbird: Peel Alehouse, Halls Head
Tailgate Sundays feat. +Day Of The Dead + Shot Down From Sugartown + DJ Holly Doll: Mustang Bar, Northbridge
The National Campus Bands+Various: Ya Ya’s, Northbridge
SAT 31
Stonefield + Stillwater Giants + Jack Stirling: Amplifier Bar, Perth
1000S OF GIGS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS. FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 63
eat/drink
THE KING HAS ENTERED THE KITCHEN Forget g those culinaryy p pleasantries – Southern home-style cookin’ is back in a big big, delicious way. Natasha Lee finds out why and learns that everything tastes better fried. Pics By Peter Sharp.
GROSS THINGS HOMER EATS Donut burger w/ cheese Rotten oversized sandwich 64 slices of cheese Five pound bar of spaghetti Poisoned éclair (until he found it was low-fat) Microwave burritos (left partly-frozen in the middle)
The entire buffet at The Frying Dutchman An apple made from ham cubes Tiny clown bicycle
E
lvis Presley might be gone, but (apart from his music, of course) the King still lives on in a culinary kingdom made from his finest, butteriest, sweetest and greasiest creations. Elvis Cuisine is now a ‘thing’ built around the King’s diet, which consisted of a classic mix of home-style, Southern-fried goodness, and butter. Lots and lots of butter. Legend has it that in his dying months Presley had developed an affinity for ‘Fool’s Gold’ sandwiches, which consist of a hollowed out loaf that’s been filled with both a jar of peanut butter and jam, before being topped with bacon and fried in butter. Apparently, he’d polish off two before bed.
Our fascination with the King’s cuisine has seen the recipes for some of his favourite creations, including the now infamous peanut butter and banana fried sandwich, recreated in books like Are You Hungry Tonight? and Graceland’s Table: Recipes And Meal Memories Fit For The King Of Rock And Roll. Restaurants are now taking note of the King craze, with many offering a more modern tilt on Southern-style comfort food. Miss Peaches Soul Food Kitchen in Sydney’s trendy innerwest suburb of Newtown is one such eatery that’s jumped on the soul (food) train. Apart from sharing the same initials as the King, Miss Peaches head chef Ernie Priestly says he believes the burgeoning interest in soul food is more or less about us getting back to basics. “Think about Elvis,” begins the heavily tattooed Priestly. “I think he just liked his food, and although he became this massive superstar, I think he was a pretty grounded guy. That’s why he wanted comfort food that reminded him of being back at home.” 64 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
Priestly, who rocks ‘HEAD CHEF’ knuckle ink, says he’s noticed that home-style cooking is becoming more and more appealing for punters on a night out. “It just works in a bar,” he explains. “When people go out they just want tasty, rich fodder that can soak up all the beer.” Since opening just under four months ago, Miss Peaches has enjoyed a steady stream of diners looking for their Americana fix. The menu showcases what Priestly calls a “greatest hits” of Southern-style cooking. There’s a heady, delicious selection of fried chicken, hushpuppies, fried catfish, gumbo and cornbread sliders – a dish Priestly says we’re going nuts for: “The things that are most popular here are the things the Australian clientele find the most approachable. Like, for example, the fried chicken. People want to give that a try because they’ve had KFC. Our cornbread sliders are also really popular. We go through about 900 a week now and tomorrow I’m going out to inspect a new oven that will only be used for making cornbread.” As for the taste? It’s jaw achingly good. The kitchen’s crawfish pies are bursting with soft, sweet yabby flesh (Priestly’s Australian equivalent to the Southern staple), while their biscuits – soft, doughy morsels equivalent to a fluffy, savoury scone – float in thick, moorish gravy so delicious you’ll be licking the bowl clean. It’s that kind of licking-the-plate-’til-it’s-clean sensibility that Priestly is trying to encourage Australians to embrace: “Soul food is just the American version of bangers and mash,” he laughs.
Huge gummy log Free goo Nuts & Gum
Merciless peppers of Quetzlzcatengo (best episode ever) Pizza from under the couch (with Hot Wheels)
Gummy Venus De Milo (not really disgusting except that it had been on the babysitter’s butt)
eat/drink
DID YOU KNOW? FACT
Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not make you warmer. In fact, it does the opposite, by decreasing your core body temperature – regardless of the temperature outside.
HOT STUFF
FACT
Vodka needs to be cooled to around 8-10 degrees before drinking. If the vodka is colder, then its true taste will be hidden, that’s why cheap vodka is always served too cold
FACT
A 2010 Italian study found that most winter sporting injuries occurred in men who had been drinking.
These cold times call for warming drinks. Natasha Lee discovers the best boozy hot drinks to get us through the final (freezing) dying days of winter.
H
ot drinks bursting with oodles of booze are one of the few saving graces of winter. Imagine snuggling up to a warming cup of rum, mixed with sugar and spices on an icy cold night. Sure as hell beats a cup of hot cocoa and marshmallows. To help stave off the cold, bars are serving warming mixtures of wine and whiskey to the scarf- and coat-wearing masses. Here at The Music, we’ve put our bodies on the line to test out a vast array of popular alcoholic winter drinks in order to find the best to share with. So, after a few long nights and queasy day afters, check out The Music’s top five winter warmers.
REKORDERLIG – WINTER CIDER
Oh, those crazy Swedes and their jaw-achingly sweet take on cider. Hipster favourite Rekorderlig has now released a ‘Winter Cider’ – a blend of the traditional apple, vanilla and cinnamon. Plus, if you’re feeling really crafty, you can drink this variety warm, and (as the company suggests) in front of the fire… if you have one.
HOT TODDY
Apart from sounding like the kind of silky negligee worn by a heavily set mature-age woman, a hot toddy is one of those classic cocktails that pretty much anyone can drink. It’s made with your choice of rum, whiskey or brandy, which is then warmed together with honey, lemon and tea.
FACT
Bonus points: with all that tea and honey floating around it’s (almost) practically medicinal.
HOT BUTTERED RUM
This drink marries two of the greatest things on earth in perfect harmony: butter and booze.
The most popular boozy winter warmer is mulled wine, with more than 20 countries around the world creating their own special recipe for the drink.
A deliciously spicy and comforting concoction, a hot buttered rum mixes soft unsalted butter with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and dark rum to create a drink akin to the nectar of the Gods. The puritan commands drinkers put all ingredients in a mug before ramming a red-hot poker into it until it steams. Or you can just, you know, mix it atop the stove.
IRISH COFFEE
An Irish coffee is one of those special kinds of cocktails that lets you get sloshed in stealth. For example, the alcohol (which in this particular case is Irish whiskey) is mixed with coffee and sugar, and served in a special Irish coffee mug that looks remarkably similar to a regular coffee mug. Follow my drift? It can also double as a dessert when served with whipped cream.
FLAMING SAMBUCA
If you’re in the mood to get very, very shitfaced, very, very quickly, then give this baby a whirl. Toss a few coffee beans with a shot of Sambuca into the blender, whiz it up and then gulp it down. Best taken before a big night out. THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 65
eat/drink
FOOD IS ART
WHO’S COOKIN’
BEN MCDONALD WAITING BY SAMUEL HUI URL: VISUALDOCUMENTARY.TUMBLR.COM
FOOD TRIPPIN’ EATING AROUND THE USA WITH SOFIE MUCENIEKAS AND LLOYD HONEYBROOK
Which cafe/bar/ restaurant do you cook at? Toastface Grillah Address: Grand Lane, Perth Three words that describe the place? Coffee, cheese, chillax. If you were a patron of your establishment what would you select from the menu? Entree: Monte Carlo Biscuit Served with? Flat white Main: Apple Gouda toastie (white onion, ham, apple, gouda) Served with? (Bickfords Old Style) Orange Cream soda
MISSOULA
We started our four day straight drive to Chicago. Our first night was in Missoula Montana, where we visited Famous Dave’s BBQ. What an amazing experience! Great wings, ridiculous burnt ends and baby-back ribs. We got so excited they took @lloydhoneybrook & I to see the meat smoker. Oh what a night!!! #bbqgold #smalltownbigmeals — with Lloyd James Honeybrook.
BAR PROFILE THE NEWPORT HOTEL Answered by: Deb Carranza
Address: 2 South Terrace, Fremantle Briefly describe the design/ atmosphere of the bar? An eclectic blend of heritage with a modern face-lift finished off with a portside/maritime feel. Caters to all from young to old. 66 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
Does the bar have a music component? The Hotel has always been the centre of live music in Fremantle and embraces all types of genres; from Tiki music, electronic music, indie touring acts and karaoke. What drinks are you serving? Do you have a specialty? The brand new Tiki Beat Bar takes you away to a
Dessert: Pear Grillz toastie (pear and blue cheese with lime chutney on fruit bread) Served with? Chai latte What’s the average price of a main? $7.50 Three ingredients everyone should have in their pantry?
Mixed herbs, ground cinamon and garlic. If your food was compared to music what style would it be? Apart from Wu Tang Clan, I’d say The Beach Boys in summer and John Coltrane in winter. What music is likely to be playing in the kitchen when you’re cooking? Yes, The Doors, Cream, Jurassic 5, jazz, Tom Waits, Queen, Bowie, Motown, local bands The Sleepy Jackson, The Chemist, Pond, Sugarpuss.
“THE ONLY TIME TO EAT DIET FOOD IS WHILE YOU’RE WAITING FOR THE STEAK TO COOK” JULIA CHILD
Where do you usually eat after your shift? At home. What’s your dish of choice to enjoy after work? Funnily enough sometimes I get home and make myself a toastie. I don’t really eat them through the day (much) and it’s a good way to experiment with possible future recipes. Is your chef lifestyle more Anthony Bourdain or Pete Evans? Pete Evans simply ‘cause he’s younger and also an Aussie! Website link for more info? toastfacegrillah.com
Polynesian paradise with tropical cocktails and the option of the Newport’s own spiced rum. Briefly describe the crowd that frequents your bar? Best described as a mix of all ages enjoying the same spectacular venue. Who’s cooking and pouring and what makes them special? A healthy assortment of backgrounds in the music, arts and entertainment scene as well as
experienced travellers, all keeping the place running like a well oiled machine. Anything out of the ordinary on the horizon? The next installment of our Full Moon party
series on 25 Sep, with some major acts coming up like James Reyne (The Crawl), Snakadaktal and The Jungle Giants. Website: thenewport.com
travel
DARWIN DREAMS
Jess Ribeiro and the Bone Collectors performing at The Lighthouse
Festival Park at night
National Indigenous Music Awards
When Jess J Ribeiro went to Darwin recently to perform at the Darwin Festival, the wonderful memories she made when she “accidentally” moved there seven years ago came rushing back. Pics by Mark Dickson.
T
wo great events take place in Darwin during August. The Darwin Festival and the National Indigenous Music Awards. It’s a bustling time for locals and tourists as they try to devour as much music and art as they can. Each year these events are drawing more and more people up north for the tropical celebrations. I was there as a performer with my band recently and my love for the NT returned as strong as ever. You see, I have a past with Darwin. Seven years ago I accidently moved there. I got on a plane I thought was taking me to the desert. On arrival however, I stepped out into a landscape filled with coconut trees, lush, green, prehistoric vegetation and a glittering blue sea. I wondered where the red sand and tin shed I had envisioned was and how I could have possibly gotten Alice Springs and Darwin mixed up. But I did. And there I was, taking a 50 cent bus trip into town that stopped outside the casino to pick up some local blackfellas. They got on. In one hand they held gold coins from the pokies and in the other they held freshly killed magpie geese. “Fresh goose, boss!” The bus driver grumbled. The men sat next to me with the dead birds. I tried to look relaxed. The hotch potch culture and people of Darwin got under my skin and that’s how my love begun. This time though, when I got off the plane there was a driver waiting to pick me and the (handsome) Midnight Juggernauts up. We got in the van and took off. I was instantly reminded of one of the reasons why I love Darwin. On the side of the road was crazy Trevor the local garbage collecting poet who tried to run for mayor. His motto was: “Vote one. Homeless bum.” But I’m here to talk about the festival – the two-week, action-packed extravaganza, full of performances from local, national and international artists of every type. I was there for seven days and in that time I saw You Am I perform to about two thousand 40-year-olds moshing like it was the ‘90s again. I stood at the back eating ice cream, counting the bald spots. I watched a
group of long grassers emerge from the bushes, drunk and leery. They danced with the tourists. The tourists took photos with them. The security guards didn’t flinch. You Am I played strong. Tim Rogers shouted out, “Jess Ribeiro is the original punk rock chick!”, and bass player Andy Kent looked good, like a Ken Barbie doll. The night (and my life) was complete. On day two I did a songwriting workshop with Mama Kin. It was in a church. Mama Kin preached the good word to the people: “Write everyday.” And so we wrote. Next was the National Indigenous Music Awards, an outdoor concert and award ceremony that draws a heavily mixed audience of people. This year, three and a half thousand came. The awards celebrated its tenth year in existence and commemorated Yothu Yindi and Doctor Yunipingu with a special concert. It was an emotional celebration. Winners on the night included Archie Roach and young 83-year-old Seaman Dan. Both inducted into the Hall of Fame. Thelma Plum, Shellie Morris and Jessica Mauboy all brought in the gold too. Then it was Geoffrey Gurrumul time. He won an award too. Who cares what for. His presence is phenomenal. Like some kind of spiritual initiate or King. He walked onto the stage escorted by his faithful musical comrade Michael Honan, who spoke on behalf on him. The audience applauded. Then silence. Gurumul let rip a, “Yo, family!” The crowd went wild. They screamed and cheered. Some people even cried and a flash flood of mobile phone photography took place. It was a tremendous evening. Besides those two days, though, I didn’t see any other shows. There are so many great acts it’s hard to keep up. The real beauty of the festival is the outdoor nightlife. Sitting on the grass. Under the trees dressed in lanterns. People gathering together. Eating and drinking before, during and after shows is the most magical part of the Darwin Festival. THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 67
culture
THE ZINE SCENE Communication,, community Communication community, y, connection: makingg zines is not jjust a form of self-expression, but a way to find likeminded individuals. Helen Stringer chats to Vanessa Berry about the longevity of the humble zine.
WHERE TO GET ZINES MELBOURNE
Sticky! Institute, 10 Campbell Arcade, Degraves Subway, Melbourne Bryce Galloway will discuss the rise of Zines in NZ at Sticky on 4 Sep
SYDNEY
Take Care Zines, 91 Railway Pde, Marrickville Rizzeria Printer, 5 Metcalfe Arcade, The Rocks
NEWCASTLE
Bird in the Hand Zine Shop, 100 King St, Newcastle
BRISBANE
Smells Like Zines, 4/203 Margaret St, Toowoomba
W
hen Madonna sang, “We’re living in a material world/And I am a material girl” she probably wasn’t intending her chorus to become an ironic call-cry for a digitally fatigued generation. But it very well could be. We do indeed live in a material world, one where value is rarely recognised unless it comes in the form of a dollar sign. We’re all material girls, consumed with amassing stuff. But we’re now also irreversibly enmeshed with an intangible beast – the internet. The world in which material objects reigned supreme is quickly becoming a past viewed in the sepia tones of nostalgia. It’s in this contradictory mess that the humble zine – a material but ephemeral product with little dollar value – finds itself. Some trace the history of zines to the moment Martin Luther staple-gunned his religious manifesto to 16th century posts, although the proposition that a pissedoff German monk with reformation on the brain was the world’s first zinester seems unlikely. More credibly, today’s zines are the mutated descendants of science fiction fanzines – the nerd communication networks of yore – but a closer relative of the punk zines in which the alienated youth of the ‘70s and ‘80s expressed their otherwise impotent fury. Reductively a zine is something with original content, occasionally appropriated imagery, the making of which involved – and this is important – the use of a photocopier. But that’s too dry a description for a creation that’s so treasured and lovingly made. Writer and veteran zine-maker Vanessa Berry has been putting out her own zines since 1996. Those were the days when a Walkman was high technology and the most valuable skill the social misfit could hone was the ability to simultaneously depress the ‘play’ and ‘record’ buttons on your tape player with lightning speed. With her 15 years’ involvement in the zine scene – not just a witness to the evolution from tape player to iTunes but a participant in the transition from print to ether – Berry is well-placed to comment on the strange longevity of the zine. At its heart, she explains, a zine is about communication and community. Not the moderated communication cultivated between conventional publisher and purchaser
68 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013
but between readers and between readers and writers; one only has to look back at the sci-fi and punk traditions to see that zines have always been based on building community. As Berry says, she too started in order to find a connection with other people. “Before I made my zine,” she says, “I didn’t really feel like I had found my people... Making zines I found that I connected with people who understood me... It was the community that really got me hooked. Today still.” Importantly, the medium increasingly stands as a loud, albeit small, ‘fuck you’ to a world built on the instantaneous and on commodification. Zines defy the information age’s demand that bigger is better; the capacity to reach absolutely everyone is now so lauded that in self-publication it’s practically sacrosanct. Zines are the opposite: “It’s like you’re sending out a letter to a few people in the world,” says Berry, “[to] people who appreciate not having to reach everybody, people who are happy to keep things small and contained.” To make a zine you need only an idea and the patience to work through the unavoidable rookie fuck-ups of photocopier operation. But it also takes time; in the information age time has been so sped up that we lose our minds if a Vimeo video takes more than four seconds to buffer. The idea that someone would bother spending a night standing by an Officeworks photocopier only to reach a limited audience and make no money is anathema to modern idea of selfpublishing. So much so that the question arises: will the blog kill the zine just as video killed the radio star? “When blogs started appearing there was a dip in zinemaking,” concedes Berry. “It didn’t die out, but there was a time when people questioned why you would make a zine. It picked up again and I think it was response to so much being digital… It’s nice to either make things by hand or even hold something that’s been made by hand. The internet has failed to kill them so far,” she continues. They’re a small thing, Berry says, but perhaps these days we need small, good things to rip us from the ether.
ZICS, a three day event starting 30 Aug to 1 Sep, The Edge
ADELAIDE
Zine Shop, 15 Peel Street, Adelaide
PERTH
The Perth Zine Collective, Paper Mountain, upstairs 267 William St, Northbridge Planet Video, 640 Beaufort St, Mount Lawley
ONLINE
We Make Zines, URL: wemakezines. ning.com Parcell Press, URL: parcellpress.com Tiny Paper Hearts, URL: tinypaperhearts. wordpress.com
VANESSA BERRY
fashion WHAT TO CHECK OUT THIS MELBOURNE SPRING FASHION WEEK
GLAMOUR IN GREENERY
British Style Genius Check out this doco about Vivienne Westwood by Anna Gravelle. Go inside her studio where she revisits the transgressive techniques behind her early collections that electrified the fashion world.
MSFW s onlyy catwalk-exhibitingg MSFW’s milliner Richard Nylon talks to Kirsten Law about being inspired by plants, drinking champers and eating cake during a short film shoot, and what he really thinks of beanies.
WHAT: British Style Genius (Part of Twiggy to Westwood: Great British Fashion on Film) WHEN &WHERE: 1 to 7 Sep, ACMI MSFW Emerging A look into the future of Aussie fashion. Two runway shows featuring students from RMIT and a new designer market. WHAT: MSFW: Designer New Market WHEN &WHERE: 8 Sep, City Square
Carly Hunter Carly Hunter’s previews her SS14 collection; Inspired by the ‘90s, Hunter’s women’s wear has an emphasis on layering. WHAT: MSFW: Designer Program WHEN &WHERE: 6 Sep, Town Hall
M
illiner Richard Nylon is famous for his imaginative designs and has been creating hats, fascinators and bridal headwear in Melbourne since the 1980s. Now, as part of Melbourne Spring Fashion Week 2013, Nylon will present a catwalk show to sate the sartorial urges of fashion plates and botanists alike. “The whole range is based on plant life,” tells Nylon. It all began when his sister gave him a book called Green Universe, by Professor Stephen Blackmore, which details plant life through microscopic images of flora at the cellular level. “Most organic life, when it is pulled right down to the cellular level, is all little spikey bits and circles-within-circles, and is incredibly detailed,” Nylon explains. “What I’m doing is exploding it to the macro-scale, like the photographs [in Green Universe] do. The pieces for the catwalk are very big, and not necessarily hats that sit on the head either. They’re more ‘millinery pieces’ that you put around the body.”
Nylon is certainly no stranger to working with close detail. Intricate beading, innovative uses of plastic wire and an ability to intuit the best application of millinery fabrics have earned him the prestigious place as MFSW’s only catwalk-exhibiting milliner. It is his high-concept creative vision that made him an ideal cameo performer in Folie à Deux’s new short, Reflections, which will premiere this Friday at MSFW. The film features model and MTV VJ Kate Peck traipsing through the streets of Melbourne, interrupting all manner of fashion goings-on, and continues Fashion Week’s love affair with the cinema. “It’s a very clever, self-referential film,” says Lord Mayor Richard Doyle. “What it shows you, of course, is that fashion and creativity are an integral part of the canvas of Melbourne.” In Reflections, Richard Nylon appears alongside such local celebrities as Jenny Bannister, Philip Boon and, Nylon’s long-time friend and collaborator, Gwendolynne Burkin. “It was actually a lot of fun,” Nylon says of the shoot. “We got to drink champagne and eat a lot of cake.” The scene depicts a glamorous dinner party with a sumptuous colour palette of crimson and black. A fitting setting for Nylon’s character, known by the moniker
‘The Bored Lord’. “We were asked to bring our own outfits and, of course, I like dressing up, so it was a good opportunity to wear my ruff and my bowler hat,” he says. Nylon hopes to continue his relationship with the moving image; he wouldn’t shy away from expanding his practice into creative directing, or costuming, for film clips. Movement in general is a source of inspiration for him, whether that be in the expanding and contracting cells of a plant or the wings of tiny flying insects. “Movement is life, and a lot of the pieces I’m putting on the catwalk have an element of movement in them,” he explains. Very soft feathers and springy components that move when the models move are just some of the elements of Nylon’s creations for MFSW 2013. In addition to his catwalk show, Nylon will appear at Reflections’ Southgate premiere event, in ‘Bored Lord’ regalia. He will also be exhibiting a brand new, fully win-able creation, entitled Amour Pétillant (Sparkling Love). Attendees can also see a storyboard from Reflections, which offers a unique insight into the natural partnership of fashion and film. Over his decades-long career, Nylon has often been amazed by the level of support Melburnians show for fashion. “It’s quite extraordinary, the energy that surrounds fashion in Melbourne,” he observes. But it’s not just sellout fashion week shows that makes the city Australia’s catwalk capital, it’s the intrepid forays into couture that even the impish youths of the inner-north make on a regular basis. “I was at an event the other night,” tells Nylon. “And there was this young boy there, wearing an ’80s batwing-sleeve acid-wash denim jacket. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I would have thought that was poison, back when I was his age’, but now it has that retro appeal. And I thought, well, good on him, you know, that’s kind of fun!” What does Nylon think of young people’s penchant for beanies, then? “I don’t care what they wear as long as they’re wearing a hat,” he insists. “Someone who gets used to wearing a hat in their young life might wear one into the rest of their life. All milliners can do is put ideas out there and hope that people take them up. You can lead a horse to culture, but you can’t make him wear a hat!” THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013 • 69
the end
BATMEN
ADAM WEST KNOWN FOR?
Being TV’s swinging ‘60s Batman. Getting a reputation for going ‘batty’.
CAPE-A-BILITY Pop art chic, West played it straight amidst the camp villainy.
ARCH-NEMESIS Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Black Widow, the lesser-known but most memorable Frank Gorshin (and his green Riddler onesie) and more.
PROS? “Na na, na na, na na, na na, Batman!”
CONS? He only made one Batman movie (1966), and it was eventually out-camped by 1995’s Batman Forever.
CHRISTIAN BALE KNOWN FOR?
Putting the ‘dark’ into The Dark Knight.
CAPE-A-BILITY He was one with the Batsuit.
ARCH-NEMESIS Bale dealt with Scarecrow, Joker and Bane much the same way he dealt with Terminator: Salvation’s Director Of Photography.
PROS? He method-acted the fuck out of Gotham.
CONS? He then got the fuck out of Gotham.
LEWIS G WILSON KNOWN FOR?
Being the first big screen Batman in the 1943 B&W serial, The Batman. It became a college cult hit in the early ‘60s and was revived by ABC TV in the ‘70s – screening, ironically, on magazine show, Flashez.
CAPE-A-BILITY His tights often sagged and nowadays his usually crumpled costume wouldn’t even be acceptable for dressing pets in at Halloween.
ARCH-NEMESIS Japanese spy Dr Daka, who turns people into zombies.
PROS? He gave us the batcave (called The Bat’s Cave). The comics followed suit.
CONS? This Batman was a tad un-PC. 70 • THE MUSIC • 28TH AUGUST 2013