BMA Mag 358 Oct 13 2010

www.bmamag.com

Clare BowditcH Superhero superego!

BOY & BEAR Bare all at Stonefest

#358 OCT1 3

Stonefest rolls

into Canberra

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I don’t think you’re ready for this belly

“High energy, the biggest bong hits, you can’t fuck with our vibe feel. This will be big.”

How big? Turn to page 33 to find out.

# 3 5 8 O C T 1 3 Fax: 02 6257 4361 Mail: PO Box 713 Civic Square, ACT 2608 Publisher Scott Layne General Manager & Advertising Manager Allan Sko T: 02 6257 4360 E: advertising@bmamag.com Editor Julia Winterflood T: 02 6257 4456 E: editorial@bmamag.com Accounts Manager Ashish Doshi T: 02 6247 4816 E: accounts@bmamag.com Super Sub Editor Josh Brown Graphic Design Nat Runko Exhibitionist Editor Yolande Norris E: exhibitionist@bmamag.com Film Editor Mark Russell Principal Photographers (The Flashbulb Posse) Andrew Mayo Nick Brightman NEXT ISSUE 358 OUT OCT 27 EDITORIAL DEADLINE OCT 18 ADVERTISING DEADLINE OCT 21 Published by Radar Media Pty Ltd ABN 76 097 301 730 BMA is independently owned and published.

Opinions expressed in BMA are not necessarily those of the editor, publisher or staff.

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Saturday October 16 will see the Kremlin Bar transformed into an intimate and inviting cabaret nightclub, as Bahirah Bellydance presents a cabaret spectacular, featuring top performing artists of bellydance, tango, and more.

The show will be headlined

by Jrisi, one of Australia’s top bellydancers, and will feature Canberra acts TengoTango, the Harika Bellydance Ensemble and renowned percussionist Jim Shorrock. Tickets are $40 and include finger food, and are on sale at www.kremlinbar.com. au. For more details head to www.bahirah.com.au .

Battered and Bruised He who has love in his heart has spurs in his side, and trigger-happy mongrels, Kira Puru and the Bruise stand steadfast, knee deep in the mire, beckoning the storms of a thousand decomposing divas to serenade them to the grave.

Oo er. With vocals that sound like they rise from beneath the earth itself, guitar lines wailing and slicing through the throats of nay-sayers like a chainsaw loose in a rosegarden, bludgeoning basslines and thunderous beats that slump heavy on your shoulders, they grip tight the soulful melodic growls of years past, married with the brutality of hardrockin’ rhythm and blues. They’ll be at Phoenix on Wednesday October 20.

Dream on Dreamers Formed in Sydney in ‘09, I Dream in Transit have spent the last five months in Melbourne creating a hauntingly beautiful and eerily engaging long player.

Full of contrasts, the album is light and dark; both intoxicating as it is unsettling. I Dream In Transit have drawn comparisons to the more recent Radiohead output and a minimalist Sigur Ros. Their songs are hypnotic, reverb-drenched soundscapes

which piece together multiple concepts and layers. They’ll be at The Front with A Dead Forest Index and Karoshi in support on Friday October 22.

Blue Sneakers It’s bigger than Ben Hur, your mum’s mu mu and Goulburn’s Big Merino combined! Good god. So you better start mentally preparing yourself for the biggest Purple Sneakers Canberra ever. The reason it’s so huge? Because not only are they throwing a Stonefest pre-party but they’re also bringing in Bluejuice for a super special guest DJ set. Joining them behind the decks will be a huge Purple Sneakers DJs combination with PhDJ, M.I.T and Fantomatique. Plus local lads Architect DJs and Lucky Punk will be there to help you make bigger dancefloor moves than ever before. It’s all happening on Friday October 29 at Transit Bar and it’s free.

wackadoo!

If you like a bit of folk, roots and funk on a spring afternoon then the upcoming Woden Valley Festival is definitely worth checking out. Dan Banks Band are again making their way up the Hume to play for their loyal Canberra fans and are joined on the bill by Julia and the Deep Sea Sirens, The Wedded Bliss, Minh Ha and a host of others. There will be free workshops, themed villages, a sustainability expo, Liftoff youth village, a great selection of multicultural food, and best of all it’s free. Woden Valley Festival is happening on Saturday November 6 at Eddison Park from 10am-5pm. Head to www.wodenvalleyfestival.org. au for more.

radio heads Community Radio 2XX is commencing general radio training courses over the next two months for people interested in learning basic radio presenting and producing.

In completion of the course opportunities may arise for involvement in regular radio shows, or submitting new show proposals. The course costs $195 (or $95 concession).

Courses go for a total of 12 hours and start dates are Wednesday evenings from October 13, Tuesday evenings from October 26, and Saturdays from November 20. If you are interested in participating in one of the courses email the station manager at manager@2xxfm.org.au to register your interest and get more information.

Our Paul From November until April next year, Paul Kelly will tour The A To Z shows, performing 100 songs from his vast catalogue alphabetically over four consecutive nights. Paul Kelly is a born storyteller. For the past 30 years he has written songs inspired by everything from cricket to religion, from social issues to literature, and of course the land and the history of Australia. His songs have the power to connect people of all generations. Tickets are on sale now. and will be sold individually or as multi night bundles. The more nights one attends, the cheaper the per night ticket price. Paul Kelly will be at The Playhouse from Thursday January 27 to Sunday January 30.

Tickets are available from www. paulkelly.com.au .

paul kelly

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YOU PISSED ME OFF!

FROM THE BOSSMAN Penny for your thoughts? – Cute phrase that, although this week I’d prefer to turn your attention to thoughts on your pennies.

Some time ago – when crow’s feet didn’t fleck a path across my eyeline and the price of milk was the same as Telstra shares – I wrote a wee piece on The Ole Fumbling Wallet Trick; the art of feigning to buy a round you simply had no money for.* The scene is thus: A round has been placed on the bench by, for the purposes of imagery, a busty bar wench, and the time has come for money to exchange hands. “I’ll get it!” you chime, hoping to GOD someone says, “No, this one’s on me.” They do, and you’re away. Your fingers slide past your rope belt, into your trouser pocket, and gingerly around your wallet. But would you Adam & Eve it! The damn thing seems to be stuck! Arching your elbow in a violent angle for dramatic effect – as if you really, really want to be the one to pay – you finally wrestle your reluctant money pouch from the button-and-lint festival that is your pocket.

You look up and – thank Christ – your mate is in the process of handing over a crisp 20 to aforementioned wench. Et voila. Drink paid for, face saved.

More peculiar behaviour surrounding money made itself evident recently at one of Canberra’s favourite drinking holes. Mid chat, the unmistakable clatter of a two dollar coin popping and bouncing into an unexplored cave was heard, followed swiftly by the scrape and shuffle of its owner desperately spelunking for the missing money. After a few seconds of neck-craning the man looked up at our table and proffered, almost by means of apology, ‘I wouldn’t normally bother, but it’s two dollars!’ Ten short minutes later a group of younger men went to leave same hearty establishment of ill repute and again dropped some coinage. The youth stooped to pick it up, spied it was in fact a mere 5c piece, immediately regained his vertical posture and briskly continued on his way hoping no-one had noticed, leaving the coin to shimmer unloved on the pub floor.

Has someone yanked yer chain recently? Well send an email to editorial@bmamag.com and have your sweet vengeance.

And for the love of God, keep it brief! [All entries contain original spellings] To the slobbering pack of shitfaced retards who blew their nappies at maccas on friday 8th october, especially the skinny guy in the white shirt. Just coz you and the ‘boys’ had one too many cruisers doesnt mean you have to fuck up the drive thru and that guys night.

The man is busting his balls getting those burgers to us at some odd hour, and you hardcorely stall at the drive thru yelling out pointless shit like ‘FAT FAAAAAAAAAGGGGGOT!?!?!’. Whoa. U little pricks are lucky he didnt have his way with you like all ur dads have done in the past.

Go scab some money from your prostitute mothers so you can actually afford a big mac next time wankers. Though its probably gunna be a steaming shit in a bun coz YOU PISSED US OFF.

Remarkable, that in a place where drunkenness and lechery were the main export, and even the smallest denomination could go some significant way to the purchase of more such fuel, our deep-seated fear of being judged by our peers outweighs the need to pick up our own money. Dropped $2? Acceptable. That’s a third of a pint after all (or a poofteenth, if you live in Sydney).

5c? Keep walkin’, buddy, there’s people watching; touching that would be like touching a leper, people would point and scream ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ and recoil in horror as if your arm had erupted into a plague of puss-filled boils and glowing scabs so favoured by the lower class.

I can see why - money is our ‘Survival of the Fittest’; the benchmark of success. It’s not about being stronger and faster any more, it’s about makin’ de moolah and that, in turn, has bred a society of people terrified of picking up their money for fear of looking poor (‘I couldn’t possibly arch my back for anything less than $2. Too common). But pennies look after the pounds kids, to use another cute phrase, and riddle me this; how many times have you cast away coin only to discover yourself agonisingly short for the bus/a beer/porn later on? Why just the other day I went to impress one of the gallery bigwigs by pur-chasing them a beverage but remembered I was 5c short; I had dashed said coin along the pavement a mere few hours ago. ‘Huh, damn wallet seems to be stuck!’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it…’ Thank yoooooou Ole Fumbling Wallet Trick.

Of course, this theory crumbles to pieces in Garema Place, where a dropped 5c coin often starts a hobo riot.

ALLAN SKO - allan@bmamag.com * further sordid details of which can be found on From the Bossman online (www.bmamag.com)

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and

another thing…

It’s been a strange week, starting with the news that my Mum finally seems to have overcome a protracted struggle with a cancer which has been doggedly harassing her for a couple of years, but ending with some very sad, not to say shocking news in regards to the death of a very dear school friend and regular at Sunday nights at the Pegasus, Simon Stocker.

43 years is no age really, and, if one’s own mortality is going to be brought into sharp focus, it’s events like this that do it. Simon, like all of our circle of friends, liked a drink. In fact he liked seven or eight, but the combined assault on his system of various strains of the good stuff had done him no good, and a year or so ago he returned to the family home in Marlow with the declared intent of getting off the sauce and on with his life. That he died of a burst ulcer, an ulcer which almost certainly came as the result of his over enthusiastic love affair with the booze, just as he’d realised the drinking couldn’t go on and had determined to take action is not only a cruel irony but also a sad and very big injustice.

Anyways, enough of the hand wringing, as he wasn’t a hand wringing kind of guy. Simon was always at the centre of activities, an Oscar Wildeian mix of base humour and higher ideals, and, as he wouldn’t want you thinking he was in any way responsible for my rather morose frame of mind, I’ll leave you with my favourite Stocker story.

Simon worked, as a callow youth, a Saturday job in our local highend supermarket Waitrose. As the very intelligent often are, he was extremely short on patience with those of lower brain calibre, especially when trapped on the shop floor on a warm Saturday afternoon when he could have had a beer in hand whilst watching the cricket with some chums. This day found him at work in the fruit and vegetables area, where the queue was snaking around the aisles, choc full of slavering punters trying to stock up on their saladary needs.

Simon was reaching tipping point just as a ridiculous middle aged woman complained that the stick of celery she was buying was too big.

“I’m sorry madam?”

“This stick of celery. It’s too big. I don’t need a piece of celery this big.”

“I’m sorry madam. Could you not find a smaller piece? We have plenty here.”

“No I couldn’t. They are all the same size. Surely it’s your job to find something more suitable for me?”

At which point she thrust the offending piece of greenery into Simon’s hands, clearly expecting him to do something about it. He looked the celery up and down, savouring the moment as the woman, becoming drunk in her moment of power, turned to the now-evenlonger-queue, looking for approbation. When she turned back to Simon to see what he was going to do about things, he struck. Lifting his knee, he quickly broke the celery in half over his jutting thigh, before handing the stunned customer one half of the celery. “There you go madam, now, please move along.”

Simon threw the other piece of vegetation over his shoulder and flashed a winning smile at the next customer, a man, in the queue.

“Well, wasn’t she a dreadful woman?” he beamed. The man, goggle eyed with shock, stammered a reply. “Th...at.....was..mmmmy wwwwife!” I hope wherever you are now, old matey, the shifts aren’t too strenuous.

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scott adams thirtyyearsofrnr@hotmail.com

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with

katy hall

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WHO: Sophie Hutchins WHAT: Pick of the ish WHEN: Friday October 22 WHERE: The Street Theatre

Another brilliant gig from the marvellous gang at hellosQuare, Sydney wonder Sophie Hutchins is heading our way with a freshly released solo project Becalmed. Filled with instrumentals based around her piano playing sensibilities, and all the bows of the string instruments rainbow, it’s quite the Australian masterpiece.

If you know legendary quartet FourPlay, you’ll love band member Peter Hollo’s solo project, Julian Day and Raven. Sadly it’s the final hellosQuare gig for the year, but a well deserved break is in order, so spend your $15 well and be there at the respectable time of 7.30pm.

WHO: The Bon Scotts WHAT: Rollicking rock and/or roll WHEN: Thursday October 14 WHERE: The Front Café and Gallery

It’s important to note right up front that The Bon Scotts are not a cover band. It’s more a case of if Bon Scott had lived to an age to spread his seeds to seven fine women and the products all managed to meet one day on the street, all had the musical talent of their forbearer and happened to name the band after daddy dearest (may he rest in peace), they’d be this band. Their new album Oddernity is basically summed up in the name with a dash of unique delightfulness thrown in. Head to www.thebonscotts.com for a sampling.

WHO: Phatchance WHAT: Hip-hop overload WHEN: Friday October 29 WHERE: ANU Bar

I want to like Australian hip-hop a lot more than I do, which on a scale of one to ten is at a generous 2.5 at the moment, and only there because I adore the bald contributor of this rag know as Roshambo. But, guys like the aforementioned Phatchance will probably win me over in the end. He’s original, quick witted and cuts a sentence like Poe never could dream of. As part of his nationwide tour with compadre Coptic Soldier, he’s heading to the ANU Bar, with support from Johnny Utah. My gin n juice cup runneth over. Natch.

WHO: mcArtney WHAT: multiinstrumentalist madness WHEN: Thursday October 21 WHERE: The Front Café and Gallery

Back in the days of my youth, kids of 11 used to run around sprinklers, ride bikes, live for Frosty Fruits and think Destiny’s Child would shake it forever. But, as we get older, you find out there was a lot more to the world (I know… hard to imagine). Solo artist mcArtney spent his wayward youth with ears pressed to recordings of Cobain on a guitar; cliché in theory, but in practice, the now multi-instrumentalist has taken it many steps further and become quite the multi-instrumentalist. Heading to Canberra with his new album For Her, it’s definitely one to check out.

WHO: Reclaim the Night WHAT: Ladies (and gents if desired) night WHEN: Friday October 29 WHERE: Glebe Park and Garema Place

On a serious Tidbit note comes Reclaim the Night, an event hosted by the ACT Women’s Services Network. This annual rally is all about women feeling comfortable, reclaiming their own space, and acknowledging and speaking out about rape and sexual violence. The night will be filled with live music, food stalls, markets, dancing and all sorts of fun. It kicks off from 6pm in the park and later heads to Garema Place. One in three women experience unwanted sex, until the statistic sits at none, it’s an important night for all. Head to www.wchm.org for more info.

WHO: Lots of locals WHAT: Electric Lake II WHEN: Saturday October 16 WHERE: Commonwealth Park Ampitheatre

Electric Lake II is a free outdoor show and BYO picnic presented and supported by some of Canberra’s most active music labels. It will be held on Saturday October 16 from 12pm into the evening.

Set amongst the flora and fauna of Commonwealth Park’s amphitheatre the main vision is to showcase some of Canberra’s best live, thriving, emerging and original music to an audience of all ages. There will also be a collection of zines and merchandise available for you to get your mits on. Highlights of the day will be Danger Beach, Julia & the Deep Sea Sirens, Jonny Telafone, Cat Cat, Waterford, Kasha, Horse Macguyver and many others.

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ITEE UNIT AS UN NGAS RANG RA

IT AR IT BEAR D BE AND IN AN GR GRIN

JOSH BROWN

KATHERINE QUINN

CLARE BOWDITCH must be some kind of superwoman. There’s no other possible explanation for how the gorgeous redhead finds the time not only to write and tour her beautifully crafted albums, but question senior political figures on a variety of important social issues in her spare time and, on top of that, raise a family of three young children. Clare squeezed me in between loads of washing to discuss politics, her stunning new album Modern Day Addiction and the three ARIA nominations she’s received because of it.

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m having a terrible day. I couldn’t get a car park at uni so I missed my 9am lecture, then a friend stood me up for a coffee date, I stepped in a muddy puddle and rendered my white canvas shoe a suspicious looking brown, and prior to all of that I had a minor car accident with my front gate.

Bowditch, like many of us, was swept up by the soap opera that was this year’s federal election.

Some of her more casual fans might be surprised to hear that her recent pre-election appearance on popular ABC panel programme Q&A, voicing her opinion on topics including the proposed mining tax, wasn’t Clare’s first public foray into the political domain. She has somewhat of a history of hobnobbing with political leaders; pressing former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks for an increase to arts funding over afternoon tea a few years ago and, more recently, conducting an hour long interview with Prime Minister Julia Gillard for MySpace. So, did she convince the PM to really open up, one ranga to another?

I can’t live without ARIAs! We’ve only got two – I need at least 24 more before I mean anything

“She’s a very clever communicator,” Clare reveals. “But she was tired and it was a long interview. There were a few points where she veered onto the party line [but] I got a hopeful glimpse of who she is and it was enough for me to not feel as despairing as I had going into the election.” All of Clare’s hard work on latest album Modern Day Addiction appears to now be paying off, as she recently scored three nominations for the upcoming ARIA Awards. I begin to question her about how important such awards are, but before I can finish my sentence she jumps in, interrupting and shouting “Imperative!

Imperative! I can’t live without ARIAs!” she laughs. “More, more, more! We’ve only got two in our family – I need at least 24 more before I mean anything.”

Jokes aside, one of the more serious aspects of the ARIAs is the red carpet fashion. Last year Clare turned up to the awards wearing a dress entirely made out of garbage bags, in an attempt to draw attention to environmental issues. “I dressed up as Lady Bowdo, my superego,” Clare smirks. “I think that went down pretty well.” I enquire as to whether she might take a leaf out of Lady Gaga’s book for this year’s event and wear something from her local deli instead.

“I was going to do a sausage dress,” she responds. “But no, Gaga beat me to it. Fucken’ Gaga – always in my way.” Though perhaps, given the balancing act she performs between being a musician, a political commentator and a mother, a more appropriate choice of attire would be the cape of a superhero.

Catch Clare Bowditch and the New Slang at Stonefest at UC on Saturday October 30. Normal and VIP tickets through Ticketek.

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So I’m half expecting my interview with Jon Hart from BOY & BEAR to go terribly. One fifth of the Sydney-based indie folk band, Jon is responsible for vocals, keys and mandolin. And who knows what mandolin players are like. They seem like a volatile bunch. But when I tentatively answer my phone on the dot of 11am, a cheerful voice greets me. Jon seems relaxed and sanguine, just like Boy & Bear’s music, which he describes as “folk with a bit of a modern spin on it.”

You’ve got five ideas you can try out and see which one fits the vision of the song the best

The five members of Boy & Bear grew up playing in high school bands and dabbling with various different instruments, before forming Boy & Bear in 2008. With the band comprising of two brothers and three members who had been the frontmen, lead singers and chief songwriters in their previous outfits, I can’t help but wonder how they all get along.

“It means that there’s five opinions rather than four or three, so things might take a little bit longer to shake out,” Jon says. “But it also means you’re pooling from a bigger pool of resources in a sense, so you’ve got five ideas you can try out and see which one fits the vision of the song the best. It works well... I see it as a bit of an advantage.”

The boys must be doing something right, with their ethereal layered harmonies and fusion of old and new musical elements gaining them international airplay and comparisons to The Shins and Fleet Foxes, as well as supporting gigs with Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling.

“You’re not going to meet nicer people than those guys,” Jon says of Laura Marling and Mumford and Sons. “And Mumford and Sons, you don’t get a lot bigger than those guys at the moment. If anyone’s got a right to have a bit of an ego going on, maybe those guys do, but they’re just fantastic and they’re lovely humble guys... I’m not quite sure what I expected, but it’s nice to meet people who are doing something for real and they’re still real people as well.”

It is indeed, and Jon certainly seems to fall into the category, politely thanking me for the interview and bidding me to “have a nice day” as he hangs up the phone. You’re having a terrible day. And then Jon from Boy and Bear says “have a nice day,” and all of a sudden, you’re having a nice day.

Catch Boy & Bear at Stonefest at the University of Canberra on Saturday October 30. Normal and VIP tickets through Ticketek.

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ALL AGES The second annual Electric Lake festival will once again break the still waters of our beautiful and iconic Lake Burley Griffin on Saturday October 16. At the amphitheatre in Commonwealth Park you have a chance to dance yourselves silly to the thrilling and mesmerising sounds of Hoodlum Shouts, Kasha, Horse Macgyver, Heute-Und, Waterford, The Warm Jets, Jerkstore, Killing Birds, Ellis Collective, Julia and the Deep Sea Sirens, From The South, Voss and Cat Cat. This is a free event that is open to people of all ages who love a good ol’ groove. The show starts at midday and will continue late into the spring night. So get your picnic basket out and fill it with all things delectable! Or simply tie up your boot laces and brace yourself for a tiring night of solid dance.

Experimental/ambient/acoustic trio I Dream in Transit will be celebrating their self-titled debut full length album on their duo launch tour of the East Coast with A Dead Forrest Index from Melbourne, who will be launching their new EP Antique. They’ll be striking Canberra with all they’ve got on stage at The Front Café and Gallery in Lyneham with the assistance of special guests, Canberra’s own Karoshi. Tickets cost a mere $5 at the door when they open at 8.30pm on Friday October 22.

The annual Woden Valley Festival will once again provide you with a fun-filled family day in the scenic Edison Park in Woden. In 2010 the festival will include breathtaking performances from indigenous live performance group Wiradjuri Echo, Julia and the Deep Sea Sirens, roots/folk band The Wedded Bliss, hip hop/funk duo D’Opus and Roshambo, spectacular experimental electronica pair Paqman, the Woden Youth Centre’s Lift Off Band Competition and many more exciting live entertainers. There will also be circus performers, activities for all and delicious ethnic foods to tantalise the tastebuds. Tickets are unnecessary, of course. The free festivities will take place between 10am and 5pm on Saturday November 6.

See the Woden Valley Festival website for more details and a full schedule for the event.

At the time of writing there is still some confusion surrounding Despised Icon’s last ever Canberra show, which is scheduled for Friday November 12 at The Holy Grail in Civic. What is certain is Thy Art is Murder and The Red Shore are coming along for the ride, but it is unclear whether the show will be all ages. I’m on the case however and will be sure to present the facts in my next column, so stay tuned.

So, you’ve got a lovely couple of free events at your disposal. But I promise you, there are many more to come in the next issue. Soon it seems all of Canberra’s main districts shall be celebrating their existence as a community, as has the Woden Valley. On top of these literally priceless pleasures, you have the wonders of spring time settling in. Go enjoy the great outdoors!

NAOMI FROST allagescolumn@gmail.com

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LOCALITY

A little while ago I met with frontwoman of local gypsy pop collective Lady Grey, Luciana Harrison, to discuss her latest musicology assignment. Luci is compiling a musical map of Canberra; through interviews with members of Canberra’s music industry she’s looking at how it is affected by geography. Two of her main theories are “that a lack of venues in Canberra creates a shared soundscape and more flexible audiences”, and “that the comparative lack of things to do here compels people to be more creative and produce more”. I couldn’t agree more.

I had a theory growing up about my constant compulsion to expand my record collection and musical horizons; I figured that because I was non-musical I consumed more music than my muso friends, simply because I was not producing my own. Could it be that because Canberrans, unlike Melburnians, do not have a bevy of big name acts to see every night they produce more music of their own? I know it’s a sweeping statement and one that could never be statistically proven, but it does seem to me that the nash cap has more than her fair share of artists. And good ones that.

In her interviews Luci is asking questions such as “What do you see as the place of live local music in Canberra?” and “Does Canberra have a musical character of its own?” Civic, or the inner north, is naturally what springs to mind immediately because of ANU Bar, Transit, Phoenix and The Front. Recently however the Bossman and I have been bowled over by the number of tour press releases that have not listed these venues, but The Maram, way out in Wanniassa.

It seems to be bagging all the big names of late, along with a sizeable swag of locals at an astonishing rate, skewing Canberra’s centrally located place of live local music significantly. And let’s not forget The Basement and Pot Belly Bar in Belconnen, and the myriad suburban backyards that host local music too. Once these outer suburbs and backyards are in the picture, Canberra doesn’t really seem to have one place of live local music at all. It’s happening everywhere.

I’m majoring in Film Studies at ANU. At the end of last semester we had a lecture on Australia and the globalisation of music and images.

“Does Australian music have a character of its own?” asked the lecturer. “No. That’s impossible,” I replied. I also think it’s impossible for Canberra to have a musical character of its own.

I’ve been editor of BMA for almost two years, and in that time I’ve been exposed to countless genres, band formats and individuals who blur the line between musician and artist. On top of BMA I also manage a small clutch of Canberra acts, and even finding a musical character uniting the three is impossible. What does unite all Canberra musicians however was expressed perfectly by Glen Martin, frontman of Waterford, in an interview appearing on page 30: “Because it is small and because everyone’s doing different things, people just kind of feed off each other. There’s competition in a way, but it’s the healthy kind of competition that makes you go home and try and make a better song.”

JULIA WINTERFLOOD julia@bmamag.com

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DANCE THE DROP Contrary to popular belief, the life of a die hard disc jockey is not an easy one. Sure, you get free drinks, a high five from the bouncers and a healthy pay packet at the end of the night but the price for all the beguiling fringe benefits is that you are reduced to an eternal night owl fueled by MP3s and imported beer. Your weekends revolve around dark rooms and loud tunes, an underground world of high heels and sweaty foreheads where seas of square toothed vampires huddle in loose circles to avoid sleep. To live where other people come to play is a demanding profession, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

One of the main motivating factors for any DJ is a love for music, and my love for music came from listening to artists like Hybrid. The UK two piece are legendary in these parts for their amazing extended sets and are returning to the bush capital on Friday October 15 for an unmissable show in the Academy main room. Local lads Karton are also rocking the support slot so it is guaranteed to be the best $10 you will ever spend!

On the same night on the other side of town, The Maram is being shaken to its very foundations by a night of broken beat mayhem called Junglism 8 (now with more sequels than Police Academy). The sonic earthquake is headlined by none other than drum n bass star Mechwarrior (Canada) who is ably supported by a plethora of local talent including Benjammin, Dred, Escha, Twisted System, Shifty Business and Rabid Munkeys.

Rounding off another epic night of clubbing mayhem is a special edition of 4Sound Sessions at Lot 33. This particular event plays host to the long lost art of break beat, featuring exclusive breaks sets from Tim Galvin, Rideckulous DJ’s, LYLT and Legodancer.

The party doesn’t stop there, with the red light district backing it up on Saturday October 16 with Sydney based house music connoisseur John Glover, who will be heaving a flight bag of exclusive new material up to the Lot 33 turntables alongside your regular flight crew of Captain B-tham, First Officer Team Wing and Flight Technician LYLT. What do Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Muhammad from legendary US hip-hop gods A Tribe Called Quest, Chip Fu (Fu Schnickens), Krafty Kuts, Diafrix and local lads Koolism and D’opus & Roshambo all have in common? They have just been added to the already ridiculously impressive Foreshore lineup for 2010. I warned you that we were in for a treat this year! Tickets are flying out the door, so make sure to grab yours as soon as your cheque clears to avoid disappointment. To round off the issue, I’ll leave you with a top prediction for your summer clubbing season. Local electronic producer/DJs Peking Duck have proven themselves to be one of the best young acts to come through our scene since Chris Fraser first grew facial hair. Keep an eager eye out for the strapping duo in a dark throbbing room near you.

TIM GALVIN tim.galvin@live.com.au

myspace.com/pangnight

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playing synths and sequencing from two separate stations set up on stage, and we will be playing all the music live. It’s going to be the most involved performance we have ever put on. We have done live shows in the past, but nothing this ambitious.”

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ART ALISTAIR ERSKINE Out of the explosion of the new wave of electro dance music in the middle of last decade across Australia’s eastern seaboard, the name that rang with equal unbridled reverence amongst both dancefloor dwellers and crate digging DJs was BAG RAIDERS. Known for their barnstorming club DJ sets, as well as a nous for production and remixing that placed them ahead of their peers in terms of overall quality, the duo are collecting fans ‘Katamari’ style as they roll around the country.

On the eve of their first tour of their new live show, Chris Stracey explains just how different the Bag Raiders’ upcoming tour will be to their previous performances in clubland. “It’s a whole ‘nother ball game. This tour will have us set up on stage playing a set that includes about 90% of the music on the album, involve us singing,

We have done live shows in the past, but nothing this ambitious

Best known production-wise as remix geniuses, how did these masters of the remix face the challenge of putting together an artist album? The friendly Chris explains, “the main difference when doing remixes is that you have a starting point, all of the parts of a track and you can pick what you want to use. But when it came to writing our own songs, it was a process of starting from scratch, but sometimes that’s a good thing. It took longer to write them, involving a lot of jamming and different ideas and it was the first time in our music making process that we had started most of the ideas separately, and then sent them to each other to explore and expand upon in our own studios, sharing copies of the sessions, and that change is reflected in the album.”

And the album truly is a diverse beast – an example of musicians trying their hand at a bunch of different moods, textures and flavours. “We heard albums like MSTRKRFT’s, where every single track was an individual club stormer, that album might as well have been a compilation of singles, and for our artist album, that is something we didn’t want to do. Whilst our roots are in the club, both of us come from classical music backgrounds. We sort of fell into making and playing this type of music because it was fun, but when it came to making a record we decided to do whatever, explore songwriting of all types, whether it would work at midnight or not.”

Friendly, fun-loving and looking for love from a town that loves Raiders of all types, Bag Raiders along with Flight Facilities and The Holidays play Academy on Friday October 22. Presale tickets available from the Kicks Entertainment website.

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SIBLING RIVALRY SHAUN BENNETTS Although I was one in a queue of about a dozen on hold to speak to GRAFTON PRIMARY frontman Josh Garden, when I finally get him on the line he still cannot hold back his excitement to be on the forefront of writing catchy electro pop songs again.

Things have been quiet for the ex-Canberra Garden brothers for a while. Since playing at Academy nightclub with the Cassette Kids last August, Josh and bandmate/brother Ben have been busy deciding the future of the band. “I had some questions about where I was going and whether I wanted to keep doing what I was doing. I was feeling a little flat and was unsure of what I wanted to do at that point,” he says. “My brother and I were also having trouble seeing eye to eye on some things about future directions for the band.”

When we work together well we can accomplish anything

Like other famous songwriting partnerships such as Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall of Massive Attack and James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich of Metallica, their partnership needed time to counteract and coexist again before they could move forward. “After a break from touring, we started writing again back in February. Then I took a break from the band for a few months in April when my wife had a baby,” Josh says.

“Since then everything has made more sense and we’ve been in the same mindset about a lot of things.”

Josh is so rejuvenated and cleansed that he believes this recent period in the band’s history has been the best ever. “It’s been really harmonious which has enabled us to get so much more done and ignite our passion for the band again. When we work together well we can accomplish anything and now we’ve got lots of plans and ideas and can see the future a bit more clearly and it’s become a big part of my life again.”

He says that he and his brother can work together with ease, with both being able to express their own views and opinions freely. “At the moment things are flowing really well and we’ve grown up as people and we can still have differences but still have a shared goal and meeting point. Sometimes that tension can create great music and is just a natural part of the process.”

With his daughter now audible in the background, Josh continues to enlighten me on the band’s progress in the studio. “We started on an EP called The Eagle, our new single at the moment, which we nearly finished and would be out by now but then we thought we would do a full length album instead,” he says. “We’re not big believers in putting out an EP and putting out an album with the same tracks on it – we feel it’s a bit cheap – but unfortunately it means fans will have to wait longer.”

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In the meantime, Grafton Primary unleash their eagle on Friday October 22 at The Maram with Yacht Club DJs and Astrochem. Tickets are $18+bf through Moshtix. Doors open at 8pm.

E X H I B I T I O N I S T

“In recent decades, there has been talk of the ‘death of painting’ as new technologies are introduced, but there’s an attraction to the process, particularly the sensuality of engaging with materials: the visual, tactile and bodily tension created by the painting process.

Marie Hagerty Incubus III, 2008

“Students find a deep enthusiasm in themselves as they explore an ongoing relationship with painting and the rich history of the art form.”

This Way Up explores the individual painting process through a myriad of forms: in the ANU exhibition the focus is on bold colour, while M16 shows a more lyrical collection and ANCA presents works on paper.

UP, UP AND AWAY sarah mason “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” We all know the feeling. Geoff Newton’s painting, which screams the words from a dynamic and colour-saturated canvas, makes an arresting centrepiece for the new exhibition THIS WAY UP, a celebration of abstraction organised by the ANU School of Art. The F-word has never looked so lovely.

Water lilies it ‘aint, but the exhibition, which spans the School of Art Gallery, ANCA and M16 Artspace, is an engaging exploration of 37 very different artists - current and former students, teachers and academics - who are all committed to expressing the intangible.

Far from the fruit bowl reproductions and landscapes that many of us suffered as an introduction to the subject at high school, abstract art is a genre that often defies explanation. The viewing experience can be at once exciting and disconcerting as we rely on personal criteria rather than universal criteria to establish meaning.

Ruth Waller, head of the School of Art’s Painting department, agrees. “The paintings represent sensations or experiences that we can’t readily name, but they can catch someone’s imagination, hold their eye, or engage their brain in more interesting ways.

“These paintings can open up a space of contemplation or thought.

That space asserts itself from the world, which is full of distraction, incident and activity.”

Ruth is optimistic about the continuing popularity of painting and a resurgence of abstract forms in particular. She suggests that artists who are overwhelmed by the impersonal “imagery deluge” of the digital age are moving intuitively toward the physical practice.

The intricate web of gold acrylic paint woven by 2005 ANU Honours graduate Karena Keys towers toward the ceiling in two pointed tee-pees in the School of Art gallery. Working with dried acrylic paint like fabric or thread, she transcends the regular painting process to create three-dimensional objects – a painting the audience could almost enter and inhabit.

Peter Adsett built his work by embracing the environmental afflictions to his canvas over time. Starting with a series of six black discs, the ANU PhD candidate painted thin white acrylic paint in layers, each attracting hairs, dust and other particles as it dried.

What is usually the bane of a painter’s process has become the focus of this series, which is sanded back to reveal the impressions left by accidental phenomenon.

Many of the works do not deal with the third dimension but with texture and colour, involving viewers in spectacle, scale and mood.

The intricate webs in Elefteria Vlavianos’ canvases are unable to be untangled but contain, according to the artist, “historical sites and names of towns from the Ottoman empire”. The illegible forms are evocative and involving because of their scale and complexity, and while I can’t read the script, I want to run my fingers through the painted streams of colour.

The space inhabited by Noel Skryzypcazak’s melting masterpiece, Where did I come from? Where am I going? feels claustrophobic. The poured masses are poised to flow off the canvas and into the room.

An ANU Honours graduate, Skryzypcazak is more accustomed to inhabiting vast architectural spaces and has been commissioned for several commercial premises. Her painting process, which is as top-secret as KFC’s seven secret herbs and spices, creates the impression that paint is flowing from space like anarchist lava.

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UP, UP AND AWAY CONTINUED Geoff Newton, meanwhile, isn’t known only for proliferating the f-word. Since graduating from ANU in 2000, he has gained a reputation for his energetic and witty practice, producing colourful canvasses that challenge convention. Exhibiting nationally and internationally, and holding 14 solo exhibitions since graduating, he also directs Dudespace and co-directs the influential Melbourne gallery Neon Parc.

Far from the necessary isolation of the painting process, exhibiting in a gallery allows artists to communicate directly with their audience. While there is a lot of excitement and satisfaction to be gained from working in private and taking creative and explorative risks, a public showing is the true test of how meaningful that process is.

Waller explains, “by putting their paintings into the world and seeing how people respond, artists can gain insight into whether the meaning they imagine is actually being communicated to an audience.

“Once you leave university, it can be really isolating and hard to know if your work is meaningful. Exhibitions like this connect artists with a community who shares their interests. Practically, it’s difficult to make a living as an artist, so it’s important for artists to find an audience to connect with. It’s their bread and butter so they need people to see their work and want to acquire it.”

Whether you scratch your head and ponder that age-old question ‘what is art?’, or find validation of that occasional “Fuck!” feeling, This Way Up makes for an involving exhibition that’s well worth a visit.

Elena Papanikolakis MassMarcher, (viewed horizontally), 2009

This Way Up runs from October 13-24 at the ANU School of Art Gallery, Acton, ANCA, Dickson, and M16 Artspace, Griffith.

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inhabit an industrial underworld steaming with sweat and machinery while the managers luxuriate in spacious skyscrapers. Below the worker city lies a subterranean mass of catacombs within which the final scenes are dramatically played out. Brigette Helm’s iconic Maria is the centre of a dramatic interplay of goodies and baddies set against futuristic art deco sets reminiscent of modern New York architecture.

METROPOLIS NOW SARAH MASON Maria, the irresistible metal-clad woman from Fritz Lang’s future city METROPOLIS, is equal parts golden bitch, barely dressed dancing queen and humanitarian goddess. The cult 1927 film, starring the original fembot, is being released in a newly restored edition at Arc this October with 25 minutes of newly found footage.

It is the first Australian screening of the new edition, discovered in Argentina in 2008.

First screened in Berlin on January 10, 1927, Metropolis earned notoriety as much for its grand scale and quality visual effects as for its plot. The film explores a dystopian future; the relationship between the main characters illustrating an intense struggle between upper and working classes.

Metropolis takes place in layers of an organised regimen. The workers

The original version of the film, at 153 minutes, was cut substantially for commercial viability, so by its first American screening it was 90 minutes long. Lang fiercely criticised the cut version of Metropolis, which in his opinion had been mutilated beyond recognition. At its release, he famously commented to a British journalist, “I shall never go to America. Their experts have slashed my best film so cruelly that I dare not see it.” Since the 1960s, a few attempts at restoration have been made. This includes a pop version released in 1984, accompanied by a modern score composed by Giorgio Moroder and featuring performances by Queen and Bonnie Tyler. In 2001, the most ambitious restoration was released, combining footage from four archives, including an original print from the National and Film and Sound Archive.

This 124 minute version was thought to be definitive. But in 2008 the curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine discovered a negative that was considerably longer than any existing print. Its restoration took a year to complete, at a cost of approximately $900,000.

Despite the benefits of new digital restoration techniques, damage to the newly discovered film is obvious, allowing audiences to see exactly where the original film was cut. The new edition includes entire additional subplots and re-orders some incorrectly assembled scenes.

This month Metropolis will screen at Arc cinema at the National Film and Sound Archive, one of only a few cinemas worldwide with silent film projection facilities. Phone 6248 2000 to book tickets or visit www.nfsa. gov.au for the full program of upcoming Arc films.

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ARTISTPROFILE: Leah Bullen

What do you do?

I’m a painter. I make images that draw from photographic and screen based imagery seen daily on the TV, the internet, and in newspapers.

My paintings are developed through a combination of processes including collage, drawing and photography.

When did you get into it?

BIG IS BETTER Vanessa Wright Goulburn you can have your Big Merino. Coffs Harbour, keep your Big Banana. Canberra has got PRINT BIG and it’s going to be HUGE. Megalo Print Studio + Gallery is celebrating 30 years of printmaking in Canberra and everyone’s invited. Printmaking has always been nurtured in the ACT, from the print studios at the ANU School of Art to the National Gallery’s dedication to collecting works on paper by Australian printmakers. Megalo started as a small-scale screenprinting facility in 1980, founded by members of the Earthworks Poster Collective from Sydney and artists from Canberra. Later it merged with Studio One, taking over their intaglio, relief printing and lithography equipment, allowing Megalo to offer a broad range of printmaking facilities. It now boasts the largest printmaking studio open to the public in Australia, all right here in Canberra.

Alison Alder, CEO/Artistic Director of Megalo Print Studio + Gallery, believes that printmaking is “the most democratic art form” and promotes the community focus of the print studio as Megalo’s fundamental role. Megalo runs a comprehensive range of affordable classes for beginner to advanced printmakers, giving access to the hefty equipment and studio space that is essential for printmaking.

With residency programs for established and emerging artists, Megalo promotes a collegial atmosphere in which young artists have the opportunity to work alongside and learn from well-known professionals.

Alder has handpicked ten artists for Print Big, all who have had an association with Megalo over the last 30 years. It’s an impressive list, comprised of Surya Bajracharya, GW Bot, John Loane, Liam Garstang, Mike Parr, Ampersand Duck & Byrd, Mini Graff, Annie Trevillian, Robert Boynes and Julian Laffan. The exhibition is being held at the cavernous Fitters Workshop at the Kingston Foreshore (the prospective new home of Megalo) and the space has been divided equally between the artists. Each has the opportunity to express their individual style, sense of place and history through a dynamic and diverse use of the print medium.

Print Big aims to dispel notions of the print as a small, static image, instead showing the potential of the medium with large, ambitious and unexpected work from some of Australia’s leading printmakers.

The show will also include an enormous multi-panelled mono-print, created by the public on site to commemorate Megalo’s 30th year.

This exhibition is a celebration not only of Megalo’s impressive history but also the craft and technique of printmaking; a rare, tactile and impressive handcrafted art form in an age of technological reproduction.

Print Big opens 6pm Friday October 15 but runs for only three days, continuing Saturday and Sunday October 16 & 17 at the Fitters Workshop, Printers Way, Kingston (Near the Bus Depot Markets). Visit www.megalo. org for more information.

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I did a lot of drawing at high school, but didn’t start painting until during my degree at the ANU School of Art. Who or what influences you as an artist?

Stories; be they momentous, odd or ordinary. I’m also influenced by other contemporary and historical artists, music, literature and photojournalism.

What’s your biggest achievement/proudest moment so far?

That I haven’t quit and gotten a ‘real’ job.

What are your plans for the future?

Hmm...In light of the last question, maybe not to take out a mortgage?

What makes you laugh?

Probably too many things…

What pisses you off?

Ignorance. And the fact that I’m not multi-lingual.

What’s your opinion of the local scene?

There are a lot of opportunities here in Canberra when you’re starting out, with a supportive network of fellow artists, art groups and art spaces.

What are your upcoming exhibitions?

In 2011 I’ll be having a solo exhibition at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Braddon. Next year I’ve also been invited to undertake a onemonth artists residency at Cataract Gorge in Launceston.

Contact info: www.leahbullen.com or email leah@leahbullen.com .

Most fans of visual tomfoolery will know Darby best for his role as bumbling band manager Murray Hewitt on Flight of the Concords, a typecast he has found hard to avoid.

“The number of times people basically want me to be Murray again, I mean it’s going to happen but it’s all about trying to change onto another track now and then a little bit later on when people are bored I’ll go back to what’s brilliant” he laughs.

MORE THAN MURRAY tim galvin If you were to examine a Fantale wrapper containing clues like ‘born in New Zealand’, ‘served in the armed forces’ and ‘Hollywood movie star’, you’d probably have a fiver on Russell Crowe. It might surprise you then to learn that the answer to that particular cryptic confectionary catechism is in fact RHYS DARBY. It has been quite a spiffing year for the genial kiwi, who has appeared in several A-list features alongside actors like Jim Carrey and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. “That’s what this live show is all about; It’s about me telling everyone how brilliant my agent is!” Says Darby.

“It’s a bit like Paul Hogan’s success in the ‘80s, Crocodile Dundee and that kind of thing... Shit I better make Crocodile Dundee 4 or something like that!”

Lucky for him the offers just keep rolling in, with Darby even being rumored to replace Steve Carell’s character in TV’s The Office. As far as confirmed roles go, Darby is injecting a bit of testosterone into his resume by playing the lead in an upcoming feature film called Love Birds. “(A character) that’s more attractive to ladies instead of just being a nerdy dick. I thought, ‘why don’t I just do my hair up a bit and work out a couple of times at the gym and be sexy?’” says Darby. “so now we’ve done that, we’ll see if people believe it”.

The first few pavers in Darby’s yellow brick road were laid in the smoky confines of New Zealand’s small comedy clubs, his energetic routines highlighted by a penchant for rib tickling sound effects; a talent he mastered as a kid in the sand pit. “Whenever I played with my cars or my Star Wars figures I would do the sound effects of all the laser guns and space ships. I thought anyone could do it, but a bit later on when I started doing comedy people would come up to me and say ‘wow how did you do those sounds?’ and I was like ‘what?

You can’t do them?’” he laughs.

Finally, I ask the electric copper-haired larrikin: who would prevail in a battle to the death between him and the man he is often compared to, Ricky Gervais? “Oh me hands down, although I don’t know about a dance-off, probably even Stevens!”

Rhys Darby appears at the Canberra Theatre on Sunday October 24. For tickets phone 02 62752700 or visit www.canberratheatrecentre.com.au .

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IN REVIEW La Traviata OzOpera, Canberra Theatre September 23-25

Hello You Crack Theatre Festival, This Is Not Art September 30-October 1 A couple of weeks ago Marcus Westbury, founder of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival, blogged about where Australia Council funding goes, in response to “recent scare campaigns” suggesting that “heritage arts” (like opera, for instance) were in financial danger from the influx of avant-garde projects. The horror! In fact, as any struggling artist knows, most of the funding goes to Key Arts Orgs and opera gets a flipping enormous slice of the pie.

So it’s apposite, I think, to compare what would seem to be apples and oranges – OzOpera’s lavish La Traviata vs. Hello You, performed as part of This Is Not Art, to see if your hard earned tax dollars are going to the best place possible. OzOpera’s stated purpose is “to inspire and engage with adult and student audiences in Australia” through “a national tour of a fully staged opera that performs in metropolitan, regional and remote communities.” This year, it’s Verdi’s La Traviata.

La Traviata is a tragic tale of doomed love: consumptive courtesan Violetta (Annabelle Chaffey) and romantic Alfredo (Benjamin Rasheed) fall for each other at a decadent demi-monde party. They make a go of it, but his father asks her to leave him for the sake of his family, she does, she gets sicker, and it’s all downhill from there.

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Now, if OzOpera’s aim is to “inspire and engage” with audiences, and if it’s doing so at the expense of other projects (and you can certainly see the money in it), then one would hope that it would, in fact, inspire or engage. Sadly, it was all a bit, well, sad.

The design by Jo Briscoe and Genevieve Dugard, referencing Toulouse-Lautrec and Aubrey Beardsley by way of Tim Burton, was glamorous but intellectually wilted, some of the staging seemed contrived or blockish, the performances were solid but not exactly soul-catching, and the whole thing was pretty bloody yawnsome.

In contrast we have Hello You, a “kamikaze cabaret” performed as part of TINA’s Crack Theatre Festival. In a bare hour, vocalist Emily Taylor and pianist Quinn Stacpoole guided the audience on a path through desire and joy in an endearingly original take on cabaret.

A mini-trampoline, some icy poles, a blue spangled dress and a spray gun were all Taylor needed to hook her audience completely, showing just what one could do with approximately $100 and a brainful of fresh ideas. In fact, the whole weekend at Crack was like that; young performers making amusing, engrossing, gross-outing, and generally fascinating theatre art with nothing but their starving bodies and teeming minds.

Seeing these two shows barely a week apart showed up the morbidly crusted-on attitude of the major press outlets (who have praised La Traviata to the skies) and funding bodies. I’d like to say that it’s ironic young artists are starving in order to make something original, while Opera Australia makes ever-more-lavish and ever-more-boring productions of old classics, but it isn’t. It’s a tragedy.

NAOMI MILTHORPE Note: Naomi was a volunteer panel facilitator at the 2010 Crack Theatre Festival.

bit PARTS WHO: Min Mae & collaborators WHAT: Performance Still Standing WHEN: October 28 to October 30 WHERE: The Street Theatre Tableau artist Min Mae presents her new performance work Still Standing as part of Made in Canberra 2010. For three shows only, from Thursday October 28 to Saturday October 30, Min Mae and her three central performers – Jordan Best, Alison McGregor, and Michael Ellis – experiment with the human animal’s most essential means of communication: the wordless gesture. A multi-form piece, Still Standing combines live music with the distinctive theatrical elements Min Mae has become renowned for. The work seeks to translate the rich and complex history of its performers’ lives in an empathic exchange with the audience. Stripping back the layers of clothing, ego, and language in a quest to rebalance the mind/body battle, the performers reveal something deeper than mere flesh.

WHO: Contemporary Dancers WHAT: Short Sweet+Dance WHEN: 8pm October 20 – 23 & 2pm October 23 WHERE: Courtyard Studio, The Playhouse Short Sweet+Dance Canberra will hit the stage from Wednesday October 20 to Saturday October 23. A range of dance styles will be on display in palatable 10-minute morsels by established and emerging independent dance artists from Canberra and interstate.

This year’s extraordinary line-up will present everything from dancing on glasses, sliding on point shoes through to physical ramification on nuclear technology and atomic theory. Short Sweet+Dance premiered in Sydney 2007 and is now an International Festival including Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and India. This year is the very first Canberra season! Tickets available through Canberra Theatre Centre WHO: Roller Derby Dames WHAT: Art & derby lecture WHEN: 1pm Wednesday October 20 WHERE: ANU School of Art Lecture Theatre Have you noticed that a bizarrely large number of ladies in the Canberra Roller Derby League are also amazing visual artists? Yeah, I know, why is that? The ANU School of Art has also realised and asks the same question. Like any good university they’ve decided to investigate the phenomenon and in doing so will be presenting a public lunchtime lecture on the crossover between derby and the arts. The hour-long Wednesday lecture at the School of Art is totally free and all are welcome. Derby stars (and amazing artists) Roulette Rouge and Bullseye Betty will be teaching us a thing or two.

WHO: James Turrell WHAT: Skyspace Installation WHEN: Daily 10am–5pm and until 10pm on Wednesdays and Fridays WHERE: National Gallery of Australia

WHO: Michelle Day WHAT: Exhibition Elka Mar Is Lost WHEN: Until October 17 WHERE: Canberra Contemporary Art Space Manuka Emerging from somewhere between niggly fine wires, cyborg insects, attics, antiques and biological creatures is the work of up and coming local artist Michelle Day. Elka Mar is Lost presents Day’s light and silicone sculptures and is her first solo exhibition since graduating from the Sculpture department of the ANU School of Art. While she continues to engage with bodily notions, Day has moved away from works encompassing darker medical themes toward lighter, more whimsical reflections with a touch of nostalgia and future gazing. See how this multimedia installation transforms the gallery at CCAS Manuka until Sunday October 17, or visit www. michelle-day.com for more.

You might have noticed the grassy, geometric protrusion in the grounds out front of the extended National Gallery of Australia building. It’s not some whim of landscape architecture, but actually one of the NGA’s most recent and most sizable acquisitions – an artwork entitled Within Without by American artist James Turrell.

Turrell constructs what he calls ‘Skyspaces’; beautifully sculptural structures through which the audience views the sky, therefore seeing it in new ways. The artwork is breathtaking any time of day, but because its features emphasise changes in light it is most amazing at dusk or dawn. The NGA has adjusted the viewing times accordingly, so check their website for full details at www.nga.gov. au but you can have a daylight experience of the Skyspace for free seven days a week.

WHO: Melissajay Egan WHAT: Solo Exhibition WHEN: Opens October 13 & continues until October 20 WHERE: The Front Gallery & Cafe Artist Melissajay Egan is interested in notions of portraiture and self-identity, the construction of those portraits and the creation of images in the digital age. After capturing imagery with both video and still photography Egan then works into this raw material with Photoshop, as well as organic methods of drawing and painting, to maintain a visibly human presence. A preview installation of Egan’s latest body of work is on show at The Front in Lyneham until October 20, so drop on by for a chai and a leisurely look.

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DOWN BY THE WATERFORD zoya patel Glen from WATERFORD looks exactly like the kind of man you’d like to introduce to your mother. Wearing a button down shirt and a sweater, with his hair tidy and his glasses on, he fits nicely into the surrounding Civic landscape when we meet to chat about the band’s upcoming performance at Electric Lake, a one day festival made up entirely of local acts.

Waterford have been around for over two years now, and yet their formation has remained a mystery to me for quite some time. After discussing starting a band for years, Glen and Pete Huet, the bassist for the band, finally decided to quit talking about it and get started.

“Pete was overseas and I guess he realised that he was ageing and had never gotten a band together.

So he came back and sort of I think because forced me into getting it of the size of the together and writing some Canberra scene, songs,” Glen remembers. there’s not much

room to be a wanker, so people just tend to be lovely

What eventuated was Waterford, and a brand of indie pop that is irresistibly catchy. Their new single, London, England, has a Britpop sound that will have feet tapping all over Canberra. “London, England is stupidly pop, isn’t it? It’s almost annoyingly pop,” Glen laughs. “No, no, you can’t go past a big chorus for so many reasons. I’m definitely not anti-pop!”

Waterford have recently joined forces with local label Birds Love Fighting, run by Warwick Smith, in order to start work on their upcoming debut album. I joke that you can’t really call it ‘signed’ when you talk about local labels, especially when they have such a grassroots, collective ethos like Birds Love Fighting. “Look, I wanted Warwick to produce something in blood like Tony Wilson,” Glen says, grinning. “It’s great, though. We’ve been friends with Warwick for a while, and I guess we’re the acceptable pop edge of what’s really an eclectic roster.”

The community aspect of the Canberra music scene is something that Glen is really a fan of. “I think because of the size of the Canberra scene, there’s not much room to be a wanker, so people just tend to be lovely,” he explains. “More importantly, because it is small and because everyone’s doing different things, people just kind of feed off each other. There’s competition in a way, but it’s the healthy kind of competition that makes you go home and try and make a better song.”

There’s a lot coming up for Waterford over the next few months, with plans to record their new album, and hopefully some more shows. “I suspect we’ll be having a low key summer while we record, and then coming back in February to inundate people with all our new crap,” Glen says. ‘Crap’ might not be the best word to entice people with, I point out. “Our awesomeness. Our sonic majesty!” Much better!

See Waterford play for free at Electric Lake, held at the Commonwealth Park Amphitheatre on Saturday October 16.

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D’Opus and Roshambo, playing at Lift Off

can’t-buy exposure in Canberra’s fabulous, illustrious, incomparable BMA Magazine!

The Woden Festival is trying to promote artistic development in the community

“[Last year] we got a lot of interest from local bands, and we just saw there was an emerging youth culture there and a lot of new sounds,” festival organiser Ben Trudinger tells me. “The Woden Festival is trying to promote artistic development in the community, so the band comp is a way of those bands getting some exposure.”

3, 2, 1, LIFT OFF KATHERINE QUINN It’s not often that you get bands, DJs, pro skaters, circus performers, rides and market stalls all in the one place, let alone for free. But Canberrans have the opportunity to experience all of this and more this November at the LIFTOFF FESTIVAL, the youth-based element of this year’s Woden Valley Festival. Now in its third year, the Woden Valley Festival is a free event which aims to bring together the Canberra community under the theme of ‘Health, Sustainability and Lifestyle.’ The festival celebrates diversity and provides something for everyone, with several different ‘villages’ and stages within Eddison Park, all providing different forms of activity and entertainment.

On the Liftoff stage this year, festival-goers will have the chance to see performances by local musicians D’Opus and Roshambo and Paqman, as well as the six finalists in the annual Liftoff band competition. The finals will be judged by industry heavy-hitters from First Base Music, Phat Track Entertainment and Rock Nation, and the winners will receive recording time, festival gigs and money-

Inspired by street parties in Melbourne and Barcelona, Trudinger and his team have turned what was originally simply the Liftoff band competition into a complete sensory experience. As well as the musical element, there’s travel and careers information, cultural cuisine including wood-fired pizza, Japanese pancakes and Spanish tapas, roving performers, visual artists, circus acts and much more, all in the geographical heart of Canberra. The festival aims to make the most of the new and improved Eddison Park, which has recently been given a facelift by the ACT government. Among other things, the area now features a skate park, and young skaters will have the opportunity to show off their prowess in a skate competition, as well as observe the experts in a pro skater display.

It all sounds like an overwhelming smorgasbord of fun and excitement, but word on the street says it’s only going to get bigger and better in years to come. “We’re trying to push the boundaries a little bit with Liftoff, just to see what inspires people,” Trudinger says. “This is just the beginning; this is a seed of something that could grow. We’re trying to give people more options, so if they just want to go to the festival and get into the music or watch performers then they can do that, but there’s more there if they want to explore it.”

The Lift Off Festival takes place at Eddison Park in Woden on Saturday November 6. The festival runs from 10-5 and is free!

31

THE REALNESS G’day – first up this month is the slammin’ new album from Dialectrix. Entitled Audio Projectile the man D-Trix has linked up with Plutonic Lab to create a unique synergy of sound that pays homage to classic ‘94 boom-bap. D-Trix’s flow is unparalleled once again with rapid fire precision and sharp intelligent topics – check Fly On The Wall, one of the tunes of the year. Delivering on the hype and promise shown on his debut, Dialectrix has stepped up his game to deliver a true hip-hop record – made by a fan, for fans. I don’t even need to tell you how dope the beats are from Pluto – coz you already know how dude gets down. Guest slots from Hau, Joe New, Fluent Form, Maundz, Tommy Illfigga and Rigby. Oh, and the cuts from 2Buck are killer too.

Hot on the heels of winning the triple j Unearthed M-Phazes comp, Gold Coast’s Seven has released his brand spanking new EP. Out on Born Fresh Records, the EP features Seven’s undeniable talents alongside Michael Tomlinson (Yves Klein Blue), Joyride, 4th and Claire Waters. Production comes from DJ Butcher, One Above and M-Phazes.

Sydney king and Elefant Traks representative The Tongue has returned with his second LP Alternative Energy. Showcasing his catchy flow, insightful nature and love for weed (haha) the album is highly original and showcases The Tongue’s ability to try out new sounds and styles successfully – check his singing! Production comes from some big names including El-Gusto, M-Phazes, Dizz1 (yes!!!), Cam Bluff, Kid Fiction and P-Major. Guests from Ngaiire, Gift Of Gab, Urthboy and Joyride. Big! On the bass tip, Raffertie is launching a brand new label entitled Super to showcase a new direction in sound. Having previously released on Planet Mu and Seclusiasis, Raffertie is moving away from the broken beat/dubstep vibes and looking forward to garage/house tempos.

The label’s first release Rank Functions will be in the EP format and from the man himself. It is due for release late October.

Show-wise there’s big, b…i…g, BIG things on the horizon for Canberra – more news on that in the next few issues I’m sure.

But close to poppin’ off is the Evidence show at Transit Bar on Thursday October 21. With Total Eclipse in tow, expect the Dilated People’s representative to put in work and show you how it’s done. Miss at your peril basically. Supported by D’Opus and I, Alikeminds, Cross Culture Settlement and Nu-Leaf, it will be a huge night for hip-hop in the capital. Tickets are limited and available from Moshtix for $20 + booking fizzle.

Saturday October 23 is a big one again – so get your calendar set and synchronised as you’ll need to pop between a few venues. Mercury Switch is back with Low Freqz at Hippo for the third instalment of all things bass. This time around Ced Nada is joined by Canberra’s finest bass aficionados in Dredd, MGO and DFP. $5 on the door from 8pm. The same night at Trinity the Pull Up Crew is flexing the reggae/dancehall/ dub vibes. Big sounds at both nights for all those who love quality music from two of Canberra’s finest crews.

To hear music from all the above releases and more, tune to The Antidote on 2XX 98.3FM every Tuesday night from 9.30pm.

ROSHAMBO roshambizzle@yahoo.com.au

32

LICK IT UP

STUDYING THE EVIDENCE

palimah panichit

palimah panichit

THE TONGUE is cool. Not because he is considered a fiery battle MC and can probably use such a skill to make other grown men cry with only words upon merely meeting them. Not because he can get away with saying things like, regarding his brand new second record, Alternative Energy: “I wanted to make a record that would stimulate the listener’s body and mind... kinda like when a girl talks dirty into your ear while giving you a really good hand job.”

EVIDENCE, of legendary hip-hop savants Dilated Peoples, is coming back with a vengeance. With two records on the horizon, one being a solo record and the other being a collaboration with the equally talented Alchemist, Evidence knows he has to work hard and has claimed before that he is up to the challenge.

Not because he actually seems at least somewhat aware of the current state of the modern world: “Free information / Pay with your attention,” or, “It’s about time we realise / That we gotta spot these real lies / With our real eyes.” No, the Tongue is cool simply because he loves what he does; a firecracker of an MC spouting [Music] either makes me feel lyrical witticisms, playfulness something or it and, at times, sharp incisiveness.

doesn’t

As he called me up and I asked him how his day was, he at once compared his day to a skit on the mighty Chappelle Show: “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong,” which is indeed something which plays out exactly as it sounds. “People don’t handle honesty or an honest opinion very well,” he muses, the clatter of restaurant dealings banging about around him. “I think normally they don’t like an honest opinion when they agree with what you’re saying. If you accuse someone of being what they’re not, then it doesn’t upset them. But if they secretly agree with what you said, then that’s when they get upset.”

Speaking of honest opinions, MC Tongue has a lot of them: including his inability to listen to music that “has no soul” or a love for complex subject matter and hip-hop that doesn’t just swagger, but hip-hop that narrates stories and breathes and thrills and enraptures.

“If I listen to Jay Electronica, or I listen to Pharoahe Monch or even Kanye West or Jay-Z, I find the lyrics and the subjects of their words can get to me,” he pauses, thoughtful. “[Music] either makes me feel something or it doesn’t.” He pauses again, considering how to illustrate it to a bewildered and hazy uni student, “Like, when I listen to an instrumental beat, I know straight away whether I want to use it. The emotion or soul speaks to me.”

Even an MC as incredible as Tongue, who has supported such names as Public Enemy, De La Soul, and the aforementioned Pharoahe Monch, started from humble beginnings. “I started off freestyling.

I wasn’t one of those guys who started off writing raps in their bedroom with a book full of rhymes. For me, it all started with freestyle. I used to meet up with MCs on the weekend at this place we called Rhyme School and cipher; just get together and play [rapping] games and improve.”

And, judging by his noteworthy second record, he has improved quite a lot.

Catch The Tongue at the ANU Bar on Friday November 5. Tickets through Ticketek.

On his upcoming duo record with highly acclaimed DJ Alchemist, Evidence seems utterly confident and convinced by its potential, describing it as “Cypress Hill meets Beastie Boys meets Diamond D type shit. High energy, the biggest High energy, the bong hits, you can’t fuck with our vibe feel. This will be big.” biggest bong

hits, you can’t fuck with our vibe feel. This will be big

As established as Evidence is, he still defies any one method of writing: “[There’s] no method to the madness. My best work comes fast, when I don’t think much of it. When I plan an epic, it can be difficult to reach the same goal, being that the innocence can get damaged a hair.”

His growth as an MC in particular is interesting almost on its own, as he speaks fondly of his evolution through improvisation. However, as with any craft that is slowly perfected over years, he now views his rapping with the experience that age and wisdom brings.

“The true art of emceeing is very important, but not a badge that is needed to be worn on your sleeve all day everyday. I can walk by a cipher and appreciate it without having to say I rhyme,” he says. “I’ve been rapping a long time and that aspect played an important role in the genesis of my career, but if I see Jay-Z I have to know that asking him to jump in a cipher might not be the best thing at that moment.”

Evidence compares finding and being inspired by new music to eating a finely crafted sandwich, in which the elements are the same as any other sandwich, but the approach is different: “We all have had a sandwich before, when someone makes one with good produce, with time and energy, I want more. Same with music. A kick drum is a kick drum, a snare is a snare – it’s how you freak the elements.”

It’s this approach that inspires him to step his game up. Still, it appears that Evidence still has both feet firmly planted on the ground, after commenting on any upcoming bands, claiming that he respects “…anyone selling out a show. Don’t care if it’s 300 or 3,000 people. If you have a direct connection with an audience, I respect the hell out of you.” But, as with any experienced star, he still has a last word of warning to aspiring musicians. “America is America.

You gotta be over the top or really at the bottom to get noticed. I met Bliss n Eso, good vibe and killer stage show. It ain’t about the location or the accent to me – it’s just about a vibe.”

Catch Evidence, D’Opus & Roshambo, Alikeminds, Cross Culture Settlement and Nu-Leaf at Transit Bar on Thursday October 21. Tickets are $23.30 through Moshtix.

33

METALISE It’s been an international bonanza of late so I thought some all Aussie coverage was overdue. Acid King’s riffs are still ringing in my ears; thanks to all who came out for the show.

Never let it be said that BMA doesn’t care about the country. We do. Regional NSW has long provided the metal scene some gems from far flung corners from Lord Tim or Lord out in my hometown of Broken Hill through to Wagga’s Manticore extreme thrash. Helping to develop arts out in the regions is a group called Wired Lab. Established in 2007 to consolidate the work of Alan Lamb, who has been working with disused telegraph wires since the ‘70s, the group evolved into utilising the wires to reproduce environmental and human interactions with an enormous dynamic range of harmonics and frequencies with a visceral effect. The experiments have captured everything from earth hums to electric pings to insects colliding or crawling over the wires to the facility in south west NSW. What has all this arty farty-ness have to do with metal I hear you ask? Well the group are presenting a coup for fans of ambient dark heavy music with one of two Australian performances by Sunn o))) alumni Stephen O’Malley and internationally renowned ambient artist Oren Ambarchi combining forces for a special performance at the Cootamundra Arts and Cultural Centre (16-20 Wallendoon St, Cootamundra) on Saturday October 16. For a mere ten bucks for adults and seven dollars for concession, you can witness the two sonic voyagers on guitar with some electronic instruments and other instrumentation. Well worth the hour or so in the car for a country jaunt. The show kicks off at 7pm, more info at wiredlab/org .

Locals Kill For Satan have some new songs up on their myspace for you to check out, www.myspace.com/kfs666 is the address for your previewing pleasure.

More website preview goodies come from Queensland stoner doom band Shellfin that features members of Defamer amongst other Brisvegan local bands. You can download their entire new album Secondhand Family from here, www.shellfin.bandcamp.com – click ‘buy now,’ enter an amount you wish to pay, from $0 to an amount you feel appropriate and follow the on screen instructions. Of course then fall into hailing thick riffs and driving fast, though the band aren’t nearly as generous in paying for speeding fines as they are in putting their album up online using the honour system!

The Basement in Belconnen has two weekend shows on Friday October 22 and Saturday October 23 with Melbourne bands Bricks and Septerrus being joined by local doom merchants Futility and Vintage Vulva on the Friday. The next night features Sydneysiders Sagacity, who are being joined by Frostbite, Dark Nemesis and System Addict.

Megafauna is a great local festival that is in its fourth year this year (I think!) and is on again at The Basement in Belconnen on Saturday November 6 with The VeeBees, Hoodlum Shouts, Disavow, The Red Vest, Leisure Suit Lenny, Yeti, Chasing Rabbits, Mr Fibby, Inside The Exterior, Cracked Actor and some circus performers doing crazy circus stuff all in the name of raising money for the Australian Cancer Research Foundation.

Josh NP: With A Cold, Life Extinguishing Elegance – Thou – Tyrant JOSH NIXON doomtildeath@hotmail.com

34

ESCAPE HATCH A PLAN

MATCH POINT

allan sko

KATIE CUNNINGHAM

Formed four years ago with a fist-pumping sound the band themselves describe as “groove based alternative/rock/punk/metal with a pinch of funk,” ESCAPE SYNDROME can safely be heralded as one of Canberra’s finest exports. A recent testament to this is Syndrome’s selection by interstate promoters Axxis Management to grace the Capital Rock Festival. With a long-awaited EP Daydreams in the wings, it seemed high time for a good ol’ fashioned BMA knees up. “Ah yes, that damn EP!” laughs drummer and lovable scallywag Matt Tennant. “It’s been way too long in the making, but we are proud and relieved to say that it will be released in time for Capital Rock. We started Daydreams two years ago and it has been a frustrating battle of different studios and recording challenges.”

Going to meet a local band to interview is a bit like going on a blind date. You can stalk their Facebook page, slyly ask your mutual friends about them and painstakingly prepare everything you’re going to say in advance, but when it comes down to it, you never know until crunch time whether you’re going to have to fake an emergency to escape, or actually enjoy the experience. Thankfully, Canberra’s own POINT OF VIEW fell squarely into the latter camp. I met the five man troupe of Jesse, Joe, Mark, Nik and Ryan for coffee and to talk about their impending EP launch, and after the awkward identification process (damn it, I left my red carnation at home!) it was all smooth sailing.

We get managers from smaller interstate bands coming up after the show saying ‘Wow, why don’t more bands come through Canberra?!’

Proudly wearing the axiom ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ on his black ‘n’ tattered sleeve, Tennant is positive the toil has been worthwhile – “We’re loving the new material, and the direction our music is taking us! Our sound has definitely matured. We started this band in our teens whilst trying to find our identities.

Listening back, you can definitely hear us mimicking our influences. Like ‘Oh yeah, that’s our Sevendust song!’ or ‘That’s our odd time Karnivool-ish song!’ Our sound is a lot more personal and refined now. We’re still writing with those same influences, but are able to express them in a more interesting way.”

Canberra music’s incestuous nature sees Escape Syndrome’s members play for other bands; a practise that hones their sound and introduces new influences into their work. “I am also the drummer in Spoil and singer Matt (Faulkner) has recently started a project with a few of the guys from Using Three Words, called The London Circuit. For me it’s a completely different musical approach playing in Spoil, which is a great thing to have for any player! It keeps you on your toes and stops you from essentially becoming a one trick pony.

The trickiest thing is that Spoil and ES both get put on many of the same bills, so sometimes playing twice in a row can get a bit tiring.”

With Capital Rock yet another in a seemingly endless run of bigger shows coming to Canberra, do the fellas think this is a sign of our beloved ‘Berra growing up? “Canberra has a ridiculous amount of awesome musical talent, and I think these bigger festivals are just proof that other states are catching on to how great Canberra music really is. We get managers from smaller interstate bands coming up after the show saying ‘Wow, why don’t more bands come through Canberra?!’ That’s a really cool thing to hear.” Indeed it is, and with more material promised in January 2011, you and you alone can continue the love with the ES boys this November.

Escape Syndrome play at the Capital Rock Music Festival at The Maram on Saturday November 20 alongside Sydonia, Jericco, The Blaqk Year and many others. Tix $25 + bf from Moshtix, $30 at the door, or $35 for both Friday and Saturday.

Point of View, together for nigh on two years now, came together in typically Canberran style: their members a miscellany of high school acquaintances, karaoke bar scoutings (no, seriously) and friends of friends who “just clicked,” picked up their instruments and went from there. Their sound is what Incubus, Nirvana and Pearl Jam’s Aussie-born lovechild would bleed – and I mean that in the best possible way. They call it “barbeque rock” or “Seattle retro”; I call it a damn pleasing amalgam of rock, light-metal and good ol’ fashioned crooning. Nik explains that the band doesn’t feel comfortable labelling themself as one particular genre, telling me “if I have an idea I bring it to the rest of the band and hand it over, let it run and it sort of evolves from there. We don’t really have a vision before we write something; it becomes its own entity – which is why you’ll find all of our different influences come out.”

We basically just do it because we love it

It’s clearly an approach that’s working for the band. In April of this year the lead single off their EP, One More Chance to Live, reached number one on the triple j Unearthed charts. Shortly after, the guys placed second in the Jack Daniels band comp in Sydney, scoring, along with the glory, the offer of a record deal with an independent label – one which they declined to take. It was a unanimous decision that they had simply put too much blood, sweat and tears into the work they had done so far to scrap it and start over. Instead, the band got heads down and bums up and, after eight intermittent, yet devoted months of recording here in Canberra, are excited to release their first EP – the delightfully titled Pistols at Dawn, Shotguns at Brunch. And they’ve no regrets so far, although as Joe explains “recording, there’s a lot of things you can do better if you have the money.”

But modesty reigns with Point of View, and the band explain that for them, music is as much about fun as it is success. Nik tells me “we basically just do it because we love it” – and as Mark so succinctly replies, “why else would you?”

Catch Point of View at their EP launch at PJ O’Reilly’s in Tuggeranong on Saturday October 16. $10 will get you entry to the gig and a copy of the EP.

35

the word

on albums

Amaya Laucirica Early Summer [Departed Sounds]

album of the issue antony and the johnsons Swanlights [Spunk]

Antony Hegarty’s haunting, overwhelming vocals and his collaborator’s ability to craft beautifully disarming songs from simple arrangements has meant that both have rarely needed to dabble in indulgent experimentation to engulf the listener with the intimately powerful emotions present within Hegarty’s lyrics. However, on the sprawling and at times dense Swanlights, new depth is added to Hegarty’s always resplendent chamber pop style via delicately placed layers of percussion, alongside some minor, yet conspicuous experimentation with shoegazestyle reverb. Thankfully, the group’s discipline means that the exotic, surreal tones they’ve toyed with on Swanlights have been masterfully executed; the only possible criticism being that at times these moments, if anything, have the potential to over-stimulate. Alongside this, the album is discernibly more hopeful and optimistic than its austere, confronting predecessor, The Crying Light a departure which, while saying nothing of quality, is likely to please as many fans as it will disappoint. It’s hard to say whether Swanlights will imbed itself in the minds of listeners in the same way that The Crying Light did, but its immediate impact is sure to be just as deep.

BEN HERMANN

36

Big Boi Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty [Def Jam Recordings]

Deerhunter Halcyon Digest [4AD]

On the sleeve of this prerelease copy of Early Summer, Amaya Laucirica cuts a mysterious, intriguing figure: eyes obscured by her fringe, peering out from a crevice in the ghostly rockface at Hanging Rock in Victoria. And there’s a lesson here for others, which is never to skimp on artwork.

When you’re up against such photoshopped atrocities as the latest Soundgarden record, a sharp cover like this is enough to set your disc apart from the deluge of hopefuls littering the office floor. Adelaide-viaSydney-via-Melbourne singer and songwriter Amaya trades in country-inflected pop – alt-country, most would call it.

While 2008 debut Sugar Lights was a relatively straight-downthe-line affair, with this, the second full-length, Amaya and band have created a darker, more melancholy atmosphere that engulfs the listener.

Though the instrumentation itself is quite sparse, it all combines under Amaya’s harmonies to form a dense, slow-burning set of songs which gradually unfold in layers of shimmering keyboards and guitar chords that hang in the air, lingering. When Amaya stretches her syllables, there’s a touch of Hope Sandoval’s hushed delivery. At the other end of the spectrum, on the breezy Anywhere She Went, there are echoes of Jenny Lewis with a country twang. Of course these reference points only tell part of the story, as Amaya’s style is very much her own. One can only hope that Early Summer, excellent as it is, will alert people to this.

Many will find this album an acceptable addition to the realm of hip-hop and even a testament to Big Boi’s ability to stand apart from Outkast. The beats are solid, sometimes even imaginative. (General Patton is a standout with a fantastic ball-slapping booming choir loop.) Further, Big Boi’s lyrical flow is deliciously honed and his Georgia twang is undeniably infectious. So with all this in its favour, what is the album missing? Well, it’s missing something new. With a couple of exceptions the sound of the record is exceedingly familiar.

The 808-esque vocal loops and electro-synthesised tunes have been the norm for forgettable mainstream hip-hop for over a year now. When someone whose status as an innovator has been well earned produces a record that is reminiscent of the flash-in-the-pan chlamydia music made by B.o.B., there is something unfathomably disappointing about it. Big Boi’s choice of topics is unimaginative also. Besides the odd offhand reference to Obama and New Orleans, this album is essentially about blowjobs, drugs, how much better Big Boi is at stuff than other people, and blowjobs.

While accepted tenets of the hip-hop genre, these are tired and superficial paths to walk for an entire album. Not only should more be expected of highprofile creators such as Big Boi, it should be demanded. While it should be noted that the album’s release was long delayed, compromising its potential originality, this can only begin to soften the anti-climax.

Deerhunter vocalist Bradford Cox is a rather interesting bloke who seems equally attuned to the dream-pop scene of the late 1980s with its beautifully ethereal psychedelia, and the Brian Wilson school of sublime melody writing. Either way, his contributions to this fantastic album contain the right amount of sweet tunefulness and unsettling lyrical traits that make this band’s music a totally engaging experience. Opening track Earthquake begins with unusual atmospherics while Cox’s slurred, distorted vocals that include such stark utterances as, “do you recall waking up on a dirty couch in the grey fog,” blend with multi-coloured arrangements that require repeat listens to fully absorb. Unlike the equally compelling Microcastle/ Weird Era Continued album, Deerhunter has toned down moments of shoegazer distortion on Halcyon Digest so that all those great tunes skewed in the proper direction can shine through, along with little stand out bits like the liquid percussion on Helicopter which anchors a radiant melody. Deerhunter has once again broken free from merely coming across as the sum of its influences on this fourth album, and arrived at something that distorts reality in a not unpleasant way which the greatest psychedelic music has always sought out. But it has done so in an understated manner which likeminded bands like The Flaming Lips are seemingly incapable of these days. And so on Desire Lines, Cox sings, “Walking free. Come with me.” I think I might.

peter krbavac

ASHLEY THOMSON

Dan Bigna

singled out

with Dave Ruby Howe

swans My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky [Young God Reecords] Michael Gira can rightfully claim to being years ahead of his time. Swan’s apocolyptic brand of neo-noise, swirling avante-dissonance and harsh metallic grind can be found in artists as disparate as GSY!BE and Marilyn Manson. Critical adulation was one thing, but the latter years of Swans Mk. I were bitter and terse. Maybe that’s why his solo work and Angels of Light output was, at times, so bucolic and dare I say it - joyful.

And now all these alt-rock marquee acts are filling theatres and Gira struggles in Upper New York State to turn a profit running his label, Young God Records. Gira does it for the passion, those visceral moments where slack-jawed audiences can only stare at him, stunned (witness his highly lauded 2009 Australian tour) – not the cash. But bills need to be paid.

And so 14 years after their ‘last’ album, Swans Mk. II are here.

But this is not a nostalgia trip, whatever this is. If you came across Swans late night on Rage assaulted by epic, verdant Love of Life you’ll find much to love on this album – Inside Madeline and My Birth are natural progressions whilst Eden Prison has all the crushing urgency of Swans circa 1991, thank a returning Norman Westberg for that. A singular triumph for Gira, My Father... will please fans familiar with any part of his incredible canon.

JUSTIN HOOK

The Deckchairs Ur [Independent]

Unruly Child Worlds Collide [Frontiers/Riot]

After a promising start with their 2007 EP Some Strangers Ship, this roots band from Brisbane hit a speed bump last year when the failure of their record label was accompanied by energy sapping legal wrangles. Now wiser in the ways of the music industry, they have bounced back with Ur. On My Way Back Home sets the bar high right from the start, displaying awesome musicianship as notes fly from Tim Loydell’s 12 string guitar, creating melodies of hypnotic intricacy. Moaning and wailing like a wild animal, as it cuts across this musical canvas, is the air shredding lap steel of Josh Catt. United with Alex Mitchell’s bass line and Joe Brisick’s many-faceted percussion, these guys form a potent combination. Look beneath the surface lyrics to find richly illustrated themes that dissect contemporary values. The muddy blues of Hello Friends spotlights the all prevalent self-centredness and other songs explore attitudes varying from the self-imposed manic pace of living to the bovine acceptance of the status quo. The band’s musical mastery and story telling ability, exemplified by such tracks as the beautiful The Owl, puts them up there with such roots stars as the mesmerising Jeff Lang.

The Deckcahirs have adopted a revolutionary marketing strategy, sending the beautifully packaged CD to whomever emails them for a copy, with the request that, if you like it, please send money. If you don’t, then pass it on to someone who does.

I’m not giving mine away!

After an initial moment of confusion – the opening bars of Worlds Collide replicate exactly Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express before morphing into a gratuitous revisit of Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song - listeners to this album will be immediately comforted by the familiar aural surroundings couched within its environs. Unruly Child initially exploded onto the hard rock scene in 1992, just as Kurt and company were sweeping this kinda schtick out of music’s back door, and were thus lost to the world in short order. This is a shame, because their Zeppelininfused hysteria was rather fine, and pleased though your reviewer is to announce that not a lot has changed 18 years down the line, it’s hard to see them having much widespread impact now either.

One major change has occurred – vocalist Mark Free is now Marcie Free, but whatever nipping and tucking has taken place has mercifully not had a deleterious effect on Free’s vocal chords, which still deliver a grittier version of Robert Plant with pleasing results. Opener Show Me the Money exhibits this state of affairs perhaps too well; elsewhere the less heavy duty AOR of When We Were Young and Tell Another Lie both allow Free more personality beyond mere lemon-squeezing apeage, whilst the excellent Love is Blind finds Marcie really stretching out on an excellent chorus that brings heady memories of Hard Rock titans House of Lords flooding back into the ol’ memory banks.

Good stuff.

Chiddy Bang The Good Life [EMI] Thankfully for, well, everyone, Pharrell has stepped in and told Chiddy Bang, “hey, maybe don’t sample an indie track this time ‘round?” and polished these hipsters into something that’s more palatable and interesting than it is of the moment.

Sheesh.

Rihanna Only Girl (In The World) [UMA] So Rihanna’s back to making tracks for Mooseheads now, huh? Fair enough, and this is probably better than anything off Rated R, but it’s hardly exciting with its epic-bynumbers Stargate production, production line lyrics and Rihanna’s shitefully shrill wailings.

Starsmith Give Me A Break [Neon Gold/Island] The whole producer going solo schtick has become rather worrisome of late thanks to the over-saturated turns of Timbaland and David Guetta wanting to be stars in their own rights, but next kid out of the block, Starsmith, should hopefully have more luck and be a little easier on the ears.

Producer du jour for Ellie Goulding and a swag of other UK types, 22-year-old Starsmith steps out on his own here with a punchy slice of stadium electro.

The diva vocals kind of clip the personality of the tune but in the end it’s a pretty ecstatic jam that’s ready for summer.

Scott Adams

RORY McCARTNEY

37

the word

on films

WITH MARK RUSSELL

There’s a camaraderie about so-called ‘chick flicks’ that you don’t get with any other genre.

Men will whoop and fist-pump at the occasional Rocky experience but it’s totally different to what I’ve encountered at showings of Sex and the City, He’s Just Not That Into You and Eat Pray Love.

These seem to provide a communal experience that allows louder than usual laughter, appreciative or disparaging murmurs based on the male lead’s actions, and very audible commentary on the lifestyle and clothing choices of the heroine. Take note, James Cameron, you don’t need 3D to create a cinematic ‘experience’ – just give the blue chick a makeover montage.

quote of the issue “When a man who looks like Yoda hands you a prophecy, you have to respond.”

Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) Eat Pray Love

eat pray love

Legend of the Guardians...

buried

It should be reasonably obvious (to myself included) that I’m not the direct target market for this particular bit of celluloid.

It’d hardly be a further stretch to think that this meant I didn’t totally ‘get’ its appeal. But I’ll do my best to give an unbiased account. Julia Roberts plays Liz Gilbert, a woman whose current American existence is lacking in spark. She’s lost, unenthused and searching for... something. After a divorce and a failed love affair, she hops a plane to distant lands in the hopes of reinvigoration.

First on the list is Italy, where gorgeous food gives back some of the necessary buzz. Then on to India for prayer and Bali for (hopefully) love.

Budding wide-eyed fantasy authors dreaming of having their work come to life on the big screen would have exactly this in mind. Put simply, Animal Logic’s CGI in Legend of the Guardians is nothing short of breathtaking, and is worth the price of admission alone.

I’ll give it to you straight - Buried consists of one and a half hours of Ryan Reynolds (as contractor Paul Conroy) held hostage inside a wooden coffin, buried somewhere in the Iraqi desert. If his ransom isn’t paid, he’ll be left there to die - unless someone can find him. No other actors appear onscreen, there are no other locations, and the screen is lit by whatever light Conroy can find – a lighter, a torch, a glow stick. His only real hope is the mobile phone also inside the coffin, and the battery life on that is gradually ebbing away.

Unfortunately this journey in vitality lacks any particular life itself. The pacing is by turns jumpy, then laboured, as we are told what Liz feels much more often than we see or feel it. As such, her motivation isn’t conveyed to us as well as it could be and we don’t really share in her mindset. It plays very much like a novel turned live-action rather than a properly structured film.

This said, there are many strong points to Eat Pray Love. Roberts is very wellsuited to the role and fulfils duties admirably. The settings are beautiful and the whole experience amply whets the appetite for travel and food.

Overall, it’s entertaining enough but was a little too slow to give me any real life-affirmation.

Chuck another half star on if the material speaks to you. mark russell

38

The story, based on the first of Kathryn Lasky’s trilogy of original children’s books, concerns a brood of owls cruelly plucked from their home and forced to work in labour camps overseen by the myth-like Iron Beak and the sinisterly named The Pure Ones. Our heroes Soren and Gylfie must find a way to escape and contact the equally mystical Champion of the Guardians and stop the evil regime before it’s too late, collecting weird and wonderful characters along the way.

This is a kids flick, so it’s a tad moralising in places and sets up a very clear good versus bad scenario that doesn’t leave many grey areas. But it has a lot to offer. The voice acting from a stellar cast is uniformly excellent, bringing the owls to life. The ‘good’ characters, whilst slightly two-dimensional in places, are given just enough screen time to develop their quirks, flaws and motivations (the ‘bad’ characters less so).

And it’s refreshingly dark.

In a world where 90% of films need at least 10 minutes cut, Owls could have benefitted from a longer running time to fully flesh out the characters.

But the CGI breathes so much awe into this piece that adults will be as goggle eyed as their offspring. allan sko

Needless to say, Buried is not your run-of-the-mill psychological thriller, and it could have easily been a total disaster. However, director Rodrigo Cortes does a great job of drawing the audience in, especially considering the limitations and difficulties of the film’s premise. Even though parts here and there do feel as though they’re being played for extra drama and excitement, Conroy’s ordeal seems all too real and pretty damn terrifying.

As for Reynolds, he shows that he’s more than just Van Wilder – he plays Conroy’s panic and desperation with real emotion, and when the film really finds its pace, it is truly tense and unnerving. Buried is much more serious and political than what many will expect - but overall it is an effective film by a director who clearly appreciates that you don’t always need CGI effects and sweeping locations to make a film. Buried is a true statement to what cinema can do, and while it’s far from flawless, it will get you thinking.

MEGAN MCKEOUGH

the word on dvds

Nightmare on Elm Street [Warner Home Video] The original Nightmare on Elm Street remains the gold standard of teen slasher flicks.

Released in 1984, it was a true crossover hit and pop culture juggernaut – that razor-claw glove, tipped fedora and ratty green and red jumper belong in some sort of Horror Hall of Fame. Freddy Krueger is the archetypal villain; a disfigured, child killer hell-bent on revenge who terrorised a generation of slasher fans. The bar was set exceptionally high. The sequels were pretty dire, save for 1994’s New Nightmare that was meta before meta became a way of life. This Nightmare On Elm Street, as current fashion dictates, is a re-boot not a remake. Helmed by the guy who directed the Smell Likes Teen Spirit clip, this version is confused, nuance-free and paced like a series of gritty video clips strung together with nary a thought of plot development. The first two thirds of the film breezes by with a roll call of gruesome deaths bereft of context. The total absence of character development means we have no reason to care when tired teen #2 meets his or her fate.

Another teen falls asleep and gets sliced – ho hum. It’s only when the film slows down in the final act that we get a better sense of Krueger’s motivation. Indeed, the film’s saving grace is Jackie Earle Haley as Krueger. He’s reversed Krueger’s unfortunate descent into vaudeville comic farce and delivers a believably chilling performance. The decision to re-invent him as a paedophile rather than a garden variety child killer seems iffy, but apparently that was Wes Craven’s original intent. Elm Street 2010 was a financial success and Earle Haley has signed on for more, so a new series could have legs. Let’s hope it doesn’t follow the Saw route of pandering to every sadistic torture porn set piece imaginable.

JUSTIN HOOK

The Back-Up Plan [Sony Pictures]

five minutes of heaven [Madman]

From the opening cartoon credits, which resemble the cover of a chick-lit novel – you know, a pointy-faced woman with ridiculously skinny limbs – and feature an offensively whitewashed cartoon version of Jennifer Lopez, you know that The Back-Up Plan is going to be painful. A bit like giving birth.

There’s a reason Liam Neeson turns up in dreck like The A-Team, and this film is it. You have to hand it to him. As one of the few actors that can actually carry a film on charisma and chops, Neeson doesn’t seem that concerned about public perception. He certainly doesn’t struggle over a role as Hannibal in the aforementioned ‘80s TV remake – he just does it, has fun, takes the money, builds another aviary and moves on. There are no complicated justifications or slippery red carpet explanations.

Then the next thing you know he turns up in a slow burning character piece like Five Minutes of Heaven as Alistair Little, one time member of the Ulster Volunteer Forces. In 1975, Little balaclava-ed up to take out IRA member, Jimmy Griffin, in retaliation for some dispute. The reasons didn’t matter – Little just wanted to kill a Republican to prove his mettle. To walk tall into a pub, as he says. Unbeknownst to Little as he completed the hit, the younger brother of the target was watching the whole thing and despite taking aim, he decided not to knock off eight year old Joe Griffin (James Nesbitt). But he may as well have, because Griffin’s life was pretty much over – because he was the kid who let his brother die.

The film follows Zoe (Jennifer Lopez), a woman who desperately wants a family, but just can’t seem to find Mr Right. Driven by her ticking biological clock, Zoe decides to conceive using artificial insemination. However, the very day she is inseminated (and yes, the more that word is written, the more this feels like a sci-fi horror about alien offspring) she meets the man who could just be The One. Zoe and Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) decide to give their relationship a shot, and what follows is a series of predictable plot points revolving around the hilarity of pregnancy and a sickeningly sweet script. Add toothache to the list of bodily pain you will experience while watching this formulaic flick.

Although this film was written by a woman and stars a high profile female actress, The Back-Up Plan is patronising towards women. The female characters in the film are all vaguely ridiculous, over the top caricatures of babyhungry she-monsters. Aside from the fact that Zoe has no ambition beyond getting married and giving birth (and not necessarily in that order), the most offensive thing about this film is that it’s boring and unbelievable. These characters are more artificial than artificial insemination. Jennifer Lopez is actually quite charming, but her natural screen presence is smothered beneath banality and baby talk.

Even if there’s nothing else to do on a Friday night, you could find a more suitable back-up plan. Like washing your hair. Or balling your socks. melissa wellham

Fast forward three decades and the two are due to meet again – this time live on TV for some voyeuristic atonement.

This is where the film veers off into fiction (the TV show never happened, the murder did) and this is where tension begins to slowly dissipate. We know Griffin wants to kill Little, but can he?

Will it solve anything? Nesbitt is part of the problem; all twitches and uncontrolled, erratic anger.

There is fury, fire and focus in Nesbitt’s performance but after a while I began to feel a bit dirty watching him convulse like an untrained hamster. Neeson, on the other hand is guilty, empty and cool. A simplistic morality play, but riveting nonetheless.

JUSTIN HOOK

39

BLACKBOX Now that the school carnival of the good old British Empire is over, it’s time for a new free-to-air scheduling bonanza… you can just feel the anticipation building in the air as the networks fill their listings with three little letters that cause conniption fits in TV columnists everywhere – TBA. Sure, the scheduling folks don’t want to be gazumped by other networks but if they don’t let the punters know something is on, how do they expect it to rate? With 14 channels to flick through, the odds of random discovery are getting longer.

Confirmed returns include Top Gear Australia (WIN, Tue Oct 19, 7.30pm) and Glee (SCTEN, Wed, 7.30pm) and new NCIS (SCTEN, Tue Oct 19, 8.30pm).

Blackbox has a new bipartisan project idea for WIN and Prime – setup a new digi channel – call it Retro and raid the Go! and 7mate archives for our fave ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s TV shows and no, not Hey, Hey It’s Saturday (WIN, Sat Oct 16, 7.30pm) which has thankfully returned to its proper timeslot. Shows such as Starsky and Hutch (Go!, Mon-Fri, 2pm), Miami Vice (7Mate, Tues, 12pm) and Thunderbirds (Go!, Sat Oct 16, 6am). Of course for an authentic viewing experience, you’ll need an old school cathode ray telly and a bean bag.

There are even some retro movies popping up outside of auntie’s Classic Cinema Seasons (ABC2, Sat, 8.30pm) including Goodfellas (Gem, Fri Oct 15, 8.30pm), Police Academy (Go!, Fri Oct 15, 9.30pm) and Jaws (SCTEN, Sat Oct 23, 8.45pm).

40

One thing is certain in the new digital paradigm, food is the new lifestyle/reality topic du jour – SCTEN has been banging on for weeks with ads for Junior Masterchef (SCTEN, Sun, Mon, 7.30pm) and WIN will topple the BMA server if they don’t stop putting out media releases about the impending arrival of Iron Chef Australia (WIN, TBA). Of course there is some non-foodie fare, including Keeping up with the Joneses (SCTEN, Thu Oct 14, 9pm) – a kind of claytons Aussie equivalent of Keeping up with the Kardashians (Prime, Tue, 10.30pm) when you can’t get the Irwins.

Sure The Bill (ABC1, Sat, 8.30pm) lost all relevance once it became a soap opera for the blue rinse set but once upon a time it was a witty and engaging low budget drama about the conmen and garden variety criminals of London. Fans from those days may want to give Farewell The Bill (ABC1, Sat Oct 23, 8.30pm) a look.

Docos this fortnight include Cleopatra, Portrait of a Killer (ABC1, Thu Oct 21, 9.30pm), Kevin McCloud Slumming It (ABC1, Tue Oct 26, 8.30pm) which takes Kevin, of Grand Designs fame, to Mumbai’s slums, Tibetan Eldorado (ABC1, Thu Oct 28, 8.30pm) which looks at a rare Tibetan animal-plant, prized by Asian pharmaceutical companies as the Viagra of the Himalayas, A History of Scotland (SBS1, Sun Oct 24, 7.30pm), The Virtual Revolution (SBS1, Tue Oct 26, 8.30pm) which marks 20 years of the webiverse.

Other stuff to catch – Rockwiz on the Road (SBS1, Sat Oct 16, 9.20pm), the season final of Deadwood (ABC2, Tue Oct 19, 9.30pm) and Sherlock (WIN, Sun Oct 17, 8.30pm). If you have a really good road trip story that deserves to be in Wide Open Road, the new doco series from the makers of Long Way to the Top, visit abc.net. au/tv/wideopenroad .

TRACY HEFFERNAN tracyheffernan@bigpond.com

the word

Little Red / Sparkadia / Kimbra ANU Bar Thursday October 7

on gigs

When grateful gig-goers go to great gigs they graciously yap on and on about how amazing the atmosphere was (“You should totally have been there man! Everyone was screaming and singing and jumping and shit! Shit, man!”). This can, of course, either be borne silently with the occasional nod and smile tactic, or they can be throttled with their own incessant ‘atmosphere’ – if atmosphere was a freaking fist. However – atmosphere is indeed a large part of any large gathering, and it can directly affect any experiences had; more than even the band can, sometimes.

Enter Sparkadia, or rather Alex Burnett, hailed by critics for oft eerily pretty and precise vocal harmonies, ghostly pop arrangements and heavily metaphorical mid-tempo hymns.

Clad in black, Burnett’s band seemed not to take the stage as much as assemble, assuming positions silently without any acknowledgement of the screaming crowd and ecstatically waving arms as the house lights dimmed. Then they tore shreds into Too Much To Do, the first single and opening track off debut Postcards, a pitch-perfect performance with impressive harmonies and extra rhythmic drive in the soaring chorus. The following songs were launched kicking and screaming out into the shattered ether with a brooding intensity, always with Burnett’s subtle delivery – a complete joy to witness.

The band played well; the straight rhythms underscoring the often simple songs with an unadorned beauty and push, harmonies snaking and weaving rather than hovering; guitars a bed of strum and melody rather than a busy tapestry. But the feeling was strange.

Sparkadia played perfectly, but the rapture was missing – the defining factor of any great event, let alone a rock show. The sheer thrill of seeing and hearing talented musicians simply do their thing, something that you can feel that they love; the wild energy or quiet nail-biting intimacy that sweeps through or seeps under the skin.

Surely Little Red would be a different case, with their addictive pop swagger and infectious hooks, bouncy rhythms and indie cool. It was, after all, their headline show; their tour. The visual impact of four members up front and singing alone would be enough to channel some sort of excitement.

After a long wait for what seemed like nothing in particular, Little Red took the stage, with much more applause and general ruckus than for Sparkadia, and the rush began to kick in – it almost seemed like the crowd was waiting for something to be delivered by Little Red, to finally be set alight with music’s inexorable energy and feel.

It didn’t happen. The crowd was dancing and yelling and screaming, and the hubbub was superficially conducive to the infamously elusive ‘atmosphere’, but it just didn’t happen. The energy of Little Red was ferocious, their performance valiant and by all reasonable criteria: perfect. Of course, the feel of an event is under no control, but still it is fundamental to a great rather than good event.

PHOTOS: Nick brightman

Even the impressive feat of having four vocalists all sing on pitch with each other with consistent showings of musical skill was eye-opening, but that apex, that soaring high was just not quite achieved. Of course, you can always expect that one naysayer (me) to what was essentially an awesome show, replete with sing-a-longs and claps. You can also never expect a band to raise the bar with every performance and win every single person over, which is why Sparkadia and Little Red performed perfectly admirably. They will probably blow everyone away at most later shows in the future.

But that damn atmosphere is a pesky, fickle mistress. And it should always be considered when that person disagrees with you on how awesome X band was/is.

PALIMAH PANICHIT

41

GIG GUIDE Oct 13 - Oct 17 wednesday october 13 Arts Reel McCoy: Black Narcissus (1947)

Stunningly designed psychological study. 6pm. www.nla.gov.au/friends/ NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

thursday october 14 Arts Arc: World Cinema Foundation

The Eloquent Peasant/Revenge (18+). $5 tickets. 2pm.

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

Hush Now, Louisiana

The Cafe Poet Program

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE GORMAN HOUSE

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

An exhibition by Deb Mansfield. ‘Til Nov 27.

When The Fleeting Collide

An exhibition by Chloe Bussenchutt.

‘Til Nov 27.

Womp Saturdays

Dance

THE CLUBHOUSE

Arc: Raymond Depardon

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

Junglism

Comedy

THE MARAM, ERINDALE CENTRE

On Beauty

An exhibition by Elisabeth Kruger, one of Canberra’s most successful artists.

‘Til Nov 7.

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

The Clever Country

A new play by Bruce Hoogendoorn.

‘Til Oct 16. Head to thestreet.org.au for more.

THE STREET THEATRE

Elka Mar is Lost

Exhibition by Michelle Day. ‘Til October 17.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE - MANUKA

Paths to Portraiture

An exhibition by Jenny Sages. ‘Til Jan 16.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Une Partie De Campagne (18+). 7pm.

The Austen Tayshus Comedy Club

Introducing some of the finest emerging comedy talent in the country. Three comedians every night.

CASINO CANBERRA

Dance

Dubstep. The Clubhouse: Supplying your alternative music needs.

Lot 33 Presents John Glover

With Mechwarrior (Can). $5, 8pm.

Supports B-tham, Team Wing, Lylt. $10, 9pm.

4Sound Sessions

Frankie Madrid

Breaks, dubstep, glitch. Tim Galvin, Rideckulous DJs, B-tham and more. $10, 9pm.

LOT 33

Shunji

Classy selections all night long. All night, you hear that?

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Open Decks

DJ Skywalker

6.30pm. Free.

HIPPO LOUNGE

LOT 33

Cheese

Nathan Frost

Showing you that retro love! Free entry.

Best served chilled. Never shaken.

TRANSIT BAR

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Hybrid

uniVibes Thursdays

With special guests Karton. Presale tix on sale now.

The Clubhouse is now open three nights a week. Providing your alternative music needs.

Dance

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE GORMAN HOUSE

Melissajay Egan Exhibition

Preview solo show of work in progress.

‘Til Oct 20.

The Cafe Poet is local scribbler Hal Judge who can be found ensconced at The Front at 11.

LOT 33

Knows a thing or two about hip shakin’.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Monkey Bar Saturdays

Disco, top40, RnB, house, Latin.

MONKEY BAR

One Love

Mario Gordon.

HIPPO LOUNGE

Vinyl Only

Because you can’t hug an mp3… free entry.

TRANSIT BAR

Live Point of View EP Launch

THE CLUBHOUSE

Live

With Activate Jetpack, Makeshift and Garden Gnome Revenge. 8pm, $10 entry includes EP.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2011

Live

Double Happiness

Jester

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

9pm-midnight.

Every Friday from 5pm ‘til late. Head to the Facebook page Double Happiness @ OPH for all the info.

The Holy Sea

Style Fridays

THE PHOENIX PUB

THE CLUBHOUSE

Crystallography

An exhibition by Al Munro. ‘Til Sat Nov 6.

CRAFT ACT

‘Til November 12.

Chicago Charlie

Weathering

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

An exhibition by ceramics artist Catherine Reid. ‘Til November 6.

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

OLD PARLIAMENT HOUSE

CRAFT ACT

Ghosts of the Horizon national tour.

8pm.

Indie / live. Supplying your alternative music needs.

Live

Vel’vette

Lift Off ‘10 Band Competition Heat One

Global Battle Of The Bands 7.30pm, $10 at door.

P J O’REILLY’S, TUGGERANONG

Hippo Live / Inflections The Ben Marston Quartet.

HIPPO LOUNGE

Justin Walshe

With Joe Oppenheimer.

THE PHOENIX PUB

Amy Meredith 8pm, $17 + bf.

THE MARAM, ERINDALE CENTRE

Rock Nation Unplugged

Sexy swingin’ sounds.

HIPPO LOUNGE

The Bon Scotts

Blending traditional folk, quirky lyrics and toe-tapping rhythms. 7.30pm, $5.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Five Feet Under, The Stutters, The Naddiks, No Assumption, Psychic Asylum and Dramatic Effect.

WODEN YOUTH CENTRE

Dos Locos

Funky Fedoras

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

THE GEORGE HARCOURT INN

With The Stetson Family. 7.30pm, $17/$14/$12.

7-10pm.

Buck and Deanne

The Holidays

THE MERRY MUSE

With Danger Beach and Papa vs Pretty. $15 on the door.

TRANSIT BAR

Domus Adultus

Something Like This 10pm-2am.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

John Lollback, Henry Skerritt, The Feldons. 9pm, free.

The Rob Mac Project

THE PHOENIX PUB

P J O’REILLY’S, TUGGERANONG

Open Mic Night

Something Different

Do you know lots of stuff about nothing? Then why not try your hand at Trivia every Wednesday. 6pm.

POT BELLY BAR

Havana Nights

Fame Trivia Night

THE PHOENIX PUB

8pm, free.

THE HUSH LOUNGE, PHILLIP

Something Different Fame Trivia

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

Get yer trivia freak on.

TRANSIT BAR

Trivia

9pm, free.

Something Different Open Mic Night 9pm, free.

friday october 15

Presented by Overheard Productions.

7.30pm.

Arts

Jumptown Swing

An exhibition of collages and video by Pete Volich. ‘Til Nov 27.

CANBERRA SERVICES CLUB, MANUKA

Lindy hop/swing. No rego or partner required. 6.30pm, $14. jumptown.org .

WHITE EAGLE POLISH CLUB

Latin Dancing

Every Wednesday.

MONKEY BAR

42

Dirty Finger Prints

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE GORMAN HOUSE

9pm, free entry before 10pm.

P J O’REILLY’S, TUGGERANONG

With Tonk, Scaramouche, and London Circuit. $10+bf, 8pm.

THE MARAM, ERINDALE CENTRE

Electric Lake II

Jonny Telafone, Hoodlum Shouts, Kasha, Waterford and more. Free.

COMMONWEALTH PLACE AMPITHEATRE

Oscar

10.30pm-2.30am.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

Radiostar

With Rubycon.

THE PHOENIX PUB

Jungal

Australian-flavoured indie roots blended with folk, soul and rock. 8pm.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Laura & Matt 1-3pm.

THE GEORGE HARCOURT INN

The Red Vest

Don’t Make A Sound CD Launch. With special guests Alice, Looking Glass and Crash the Curb. 8pm, $10.

THE MARAM, ERINDALE CENTRE

Something Different Carry On Karaoke

Latin dancing every Friday night.

Warm up your vocal cords and get ready to sing from 9pm.

Mindscapes Festival

Acoustic Soup

MONKEY BAR

Music, poetry readings and speeches aimed at strengthening social relationships within the community THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

saturday october 16 Arts Arc: Metropolis

See the newly restored version for the first time at Arc. 7pm.

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

6pm-10.30pm, $8.50/$7 (members/ students)/$5 (entry only).

THE FOOD CO-OP

sunday october 17 Arts Arc: World Cinema Foundation A River Called Titus (18+). 4.30pm.

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

43

GIG GUIDE Oct 17 - Oct 22 Arc: Raymond Depardon

TNT Karaoke

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

TRANSIT BAR

Delits Flagrants (18). 2pm.

Dance Sunday Beats on the Boardwalk Hosted by Mingle. Offtapia, Cheese, Mingle Crew and Special Guests. Free, from 3pm.

HA HA BAR, BELCONNEN

Live

Stonefest prizes and off key renditions of your favourites.

wednesday october 20 Arts Short and Sweet Dance 8pm, $25/$20.

COURTYARD STUDIO, CTC

Dance Open Decks 6.30pm. Free.

LOT 33

D’Opus

Party hustlin’.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Karaoke

9pm ‘til 11pm followed by DJ Pete ‘til 5am.

CUBE NIGHTCLUB

uniVibes Thursdays

5pm.

Klick’s Picks

The Clubhouse is now open three nights a week. Providing your alternative music needs.

Sunday Sessions On The Deck

P J O’REILLY’S, TUGGERANONG

Mingle Intimates

DJ Pauly D ALL BAR NUN

With The Blue Ruins. 2pm, free.

CANBERRA IRISH CLUB

Lino Lounge

Live 8pm, free entry.

THE CLUBHOUSE

ROUND 2

Cheese, Offtapia and friends.

Erebis versus Reuben Lewis and Miroslav Bukovsky. 8pm, donation.

With Annie and the Armadillos. 4.30pm6.30pm.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Save Lake Cowal Fundraiser

BEYOND Q BOOKS

A BITE TO EAT CAFE

Wax Lyrical 7pm, free.

Featuring George Bishop Feral Highway, Peter Swain, Didgeridoo, Capoeristas and an Organic BBQ.

Kira Puru and the Bruise

Ariel

8pm, free.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Jazz and blues from 1-3pm.

THE GEORGE HARCOURT INN

Something Different

HIPPO LOUNGE

Live Special K Duo 9pm-midnight.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

With Fun Machine.

Evidence (LA)

Rock Nation Unplugged

TRANSIT BAR

THE PHOENIX PUB

THE HUSH LOUNGE, PHILLIP

Hippo Live

Luke Sweeting Trio.

HIPPO LOUNGE

Of Dilated Peoples / Rhymesayers fame.

Tix through Moshtix.

mcArtney

One-night stands, old flames, family deaths and falling hard for someone new. $10.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Irish Jam Session

Something Different

Annie and the Armadillos

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

Fame Trivia

THE GEORGE HARCOURT INN

Come and have a fiddle from 5pm.

Jumptown Swing: Blues Basement

Blues class and social dancing.

6.15pm.

K’MOTION DANCE STUDIO, LONDON CCT

monday october 18 live

Do you know lots of stuff about nothing? 6pm.

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

Trivia

Presented by Overheard Productions.

7.30pm.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

Hospitality Night

Let us pat your head and feed you beers. Free pool!

TRANSIT BAR

tuesday october 19

Latin Dancing MONKEY BAR

Arts Everything

Exhibition by Richard Blackwell, Tim Dwyer, Rowan McNaught. ‘Til October 31.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE - MANUKA

Short and Sweet Dance 8pm, $25/$20.

Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit!

Arc: Metropolis

THE PHOENIX PUB

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

Something Different

Comedy

Fame Trivia

The Austen Tayshus Comedy Club

Do you know lots of stuff about nothing? 6pm.

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

Irish Jam Session

Come and have a fiddle from 7pm.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

6.30pm, free.

Alsace

Proudly sponsored by the German Embassy. Presentation and dinner. 8pm, $50. Bookings essential.

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE

friday october 22

thursday october 21

Arts 2010 ACT Australian Poetry Slam Heat.

Signup from 7pm, slamming at 8pm. australianpoetryslam.com/ .

Something Different

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE BOOKSHOP

Answer me these riddles three, you get prizes.

Every Wednesday.

6pm.

POT BELLY BAR

Eve’s Harvest Launch Party

THE PHOENIX PUB

Salsa Dancing

9pm, free.

Transit Trivia TRANSIT BAR

Something Different

Open Mic Night

CANBERRA SERVICES CLUB, MANUKA

The Bootleg Sessions

8pm, free.

7-10pm.

COURTYARD STUDIO, CTC

See the newly restored version for the first time at Arc. 2pm.

Introducing some of the finest emerging comedy talent in the country. Three comedians every night.

CASINO CANBERRA

Arts Short and Sweet Dance

8pm, $25/$20.

COURTYARD STUDIO, CTC

Dance Foreplay Friday

9pm ‘til 5am with DJ’s Matt & Pete.

CUBE NIGHTCLUB

Lot Fridays

B-tham, Team Wing, HartAttack and more. $10, 9pm.

LOT 33

Faux Real

Tattooed and fearless, nice on the turntables.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Dusty Grooves Jemist.

HIPPO LOUNGE

Strangeways

Those crazy cats. You know how they do things.

TRANSIT BAR

Bag Raiders

New live show! National album tour. Pre sale tickets on sale now.

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

44

GIG GUIDE Oct 22 - Oct 27 Recon

Breakbeats. Feat. Buick, Dial One, Dubdeckerbuss, Ravs and Stunami.

TRINITY BAR

Live Double Happiness

Every Friday from 5pm ‘til late. Head to the Facebook page Double Happiness @ OPH for all the info.

OLD PARLIAMENT HOUSE

Style Fridays

Indie / live. Supplying your alternative music needs.

THE CLUBHOUSE

Lift Off ‘10 Band Competition Heat Two

SweeTTooth, MushMellow, Black Squire, Makeshift and West of the Sun. WODEN YOUTH CENTRE

Warren Fahey and the Larrikins 7.30pm, $17/$14/$12.

THE MERRY MUSE

Charles Chatain

Dance Womp Saturdays

Profils Paysans: L’Approche (18+).

4.30pm.

THE CLUBHOUSE

Short and Sweet Dance

Dubstep. The Clubhouse: Supplying your alternative music needs.

Nathan Frost

Best served chilled. Never shaken.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Pull Up

Reggae dancehall sessions. Latin, Cumbia, ska. monkey bar

Monkey Bar Saturdays

Disco, top40, RnB, house, Latin.

MONKEY BAR

4Sound Presents Robert Dietz Supports B-tham, Mikey G, Samdup. $10, 9pm.

LOT 33

Low Freqz

Feat. resident Ced Nada alongside dub veteran MGO and more. $5, 8pm.

HIPPO LOUNGE

8.30pm, free.

Live

Leanne Melmoth

Lift Off ‘10 Band Competition Heat Three

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

10pm-2am.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

I Dream In Transit

The Sydney band have just recorded their self-titled debut album. Supported

by Karoshi. 8pm.

Arc: Raymond Depardon

Something Different

Hospitality Night

We love you, watch out for Absinth party coming up!

TRANSIT BAR

Comedy

tuesday october 26

Rhys Darby

It’s Rhys Darby Night! He’s Murray from Flight of the Conchords! Just don’t tell him that.

comedy

Dance

On his Let Me Do The Talking tour. Ph 6275 2700.

Cube Sunday

Comedy Night

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

10pm ‘til late with DJ TJ.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

CUBE NIGHTCLUB

Something Different

Live

La Vida, The Unnamed, Pleased to Jive You, Steady the Fall, Little Saturn and Atlantis Awaits.

WODEN YOUTH CENTRE

CANBERRA IRISH CLUB

TRANSIT BAR

Lino Lounge

Fame Trivia

With Tony Haley. 4.30pm-6.30pm.

P J O’REILLY’S, CIVIC

A BITE TO EAT CAFE

MONKEY BAR

Havana Nights

Latin dancing every Friday night.

MONKEY BAR

saturday october 23 Arts Short and Sweet Dance 8pm, $25/$20.

COURTYARD STUDIO, CTC

The Cafe Poet Program

The Cafe Poet is local scribbler Hal Judge who can be found ensconced at The Front at 11.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

THE PHOENIX PUB

Reggae sessions.

Heuristic

10.30pm-2.30am.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

Mike Chaplain

Classic hits from 1-3pm.

THE GEORGE HARCOURT INN

The Lyneham Lads Club

A band made up of members of locals Voss, Cat Cat and Waterford. Supported

by DJ Disaster Pants.

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Irish Jam Session

Organ Concert by Christopher Wrench

SUB URBAN

Something Different

Stonefest prizes to win, yodelling counts.

With Fire on the Hill. 2pm, free.

An Evening of Chamber Music

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE

TNT Karaoke Sing Song

Sunday Sessions On The Deck

Pull Up!

To celebrate 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth. 8pm, $25. Bookings 6247 5027.

Arj Barker

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Synergy Concert With Anthony Smith

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

COURTYARD STUDIO, CTC

A leading Australian organist from Brisbane. 3pm.

9pm.

6pm.

8pm, $25/$20.

Mean Feet Brass Band

THE FRONT CAFE AND GALLERY

Salsa Dancing

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

Come and have a fiddle from 7pm.

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

wednesday october 27

WESLEY MUSIC CENTRE

Works by Beethoven, Glinka, Weber and more. 6pm.

WESLEY MUSIC CENTRE

Chicago Charlie

Arts Reel McCoy: Advise and Consent (1962)

A candidate for the USA’s Secretary of State must be vetted first through a Senate investigation. 6pm.

5pm.

ALL BAR NUN

Matt Banham

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

With Sarah Chadwick.

THE PHOENIX PUB

Comedy

Annie and the Armadillos 1-3pm.

Arj Barker

THE GEORGE HARCOURT INN

On his Let Me Do The Talking tour. Ph 6275 2700.

The Go Set

Something Different

TRANSIT BAR

Irish Jam Session

Live

KING O’MALLEY’S, CIVIC

Klick’s Picks

Get your dose of guitars and drums.

sunday october 24 Arts

Come and have a fiddle from 5pm.

monday october 25

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

8pm, free entry.

P J O’REILLY’S, TUGGERANONG

Rock Nation Unplugged

Arc: World Cinema Foundation

live

8pm, free.

ARC CINEMA, NATIONAL FILM & SOUND ARCHIVE

The Bootleg Sessions

Big Score

The Housemaid (18+). 2pm.

8pm, free.

THE HUSH LOUNGE, PHILLIP THE PHOENIX PUB

THE PHOENIX PUB

OUT OCT 27

bone thugs n harmony operator please muscles frenzal rhomb ...and more!

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FIRST CONTACT SIDE A: BMA band profile

BETH N BEN Where did your band name come from? An in depth process of imaginary adventures and academic research.

Group members: Beth Monzo (guitar and vocals), Ben Drysdale (guitar and vocals), Rafe Morris (bass), Dan Kempers (drums), Dan Luton (percussion) and other guests at random times.

Describe your sound: Rootsy reggae-ish jazzy soulness.

Who are your influences, musical or otherwise? Beth’s span from The Beatles and Motown stuff to Regina Spektor.

Ben’s span from Cat Stevens to Counting Crows as a young’un; to Cat Empire, JBT and Xavier Rudd, sprinkled with all the awesome original musos he’s met around Canberra and the east coast.

What’s the weirdest experience you’ve had whilst performing? Weird stuff happens all the time when you’re playing at the Phoenix but it’s all a bit of a blur.

What’s your biggest achievement/proudest moment so far? Definitely the new EP, Boarding Pass. We’re so happy with the way it sounds and all the design. Can’t wait to get it out there after Friday October 15.

What are your plans for the future? Tour Boarding Pass and hopefully get back into the Monstereo studio again early next year.

What makes you laugh? People who dance with absolute abandon. It’s a warm and fuzzy kind of laugh though… a ‘with them’, not an ‘at them’ (most of the time).

What pisses you off? Not a lot… being pissed off wastes a lot of energy.

What’s your opinion of the local scene? So many good bands… not enough places to put them.

What are your upcoming gigs? Friday October 15, 8pm @ The Basement, Belconnen, Sunday October 17, 2pm @ The Irish Club, Weston Creek , Saturday November 13 @ The Belconnen Festival, Canberra Sunday November 14 – album launch with Big Score, Fun Machine and The Cashews 3-7pm @ Corroboree Park, Ainslie ($10 entry or $15 with a CD) Contact info: cardboardcharlie@gmail.com www.myspace.com/bethnben

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Aaron Peacey Aaron 0410 381 306 Activate Jetpack activatejetpack@ hotmail.com Adam Hole Adam 0421 023 226 Afternoon Shift Adam 0402 055 314 After Close Scotty 0412 742 682, afterclose@hotmail.com Alcove Mark 0410 112 522 Alice 0423 100 792 Allies ACT (Oxfam Group) alliesact@hotmail.com/ myspace.com/alliesact Amphibian Sound PA Clare 0410 308 288 Amplif5’d Classic rock covers band Joy 0407 200 428, joybarac-heath@hotmail.com Annie & the Armadillos Annie 6161 1078/0422 076 313 The Ashburys Dan Craddock 0419 626 903 Aria Stone, sax & flute, singer/ songwriter (guitar) Aria 0411 803 343 Australian Songwriters Association (Keiran Roberts) 6231 0433 Arythmia: Ben 0423 408 767/ arythmiamusic@gmail.com Backbeat Drivers Steve 0422 733 974, www.backbeatdrivers.com Big Boss Groove Andrew 0404 455 834, www.bigbossgroove.com.au Bill Quinn Overheard Productions bill@overheard.com.au, Ph: 0413 000 086 Birds Love Fighting Gangbusters/DIY shows - bookings@birdslovefighting.com Black Label Photography Kingsley 0438 351 007 Blister Bug Stu 0408 617 791 Bridge Between, The Rachel 0412 598 138, thebridgebetween.com.au Bruce Stage mgr/consultant 6254 9857 Caution Horses Nigel 0417 211 580 Chris Harland Blues Band 0418 490 640 chrisharlandbluesband@yahoo.com.au Clear Vision Films rehearsals/film clips/stunts - 0438 647 281 wcoulton.clearvisionfilms.com Cole Bennetts Photography 0415 982 662 /colebennetts.com Cris Clucas Cris 6262 5652 Crooked Dave 0421 508 467 Danny V Danny 6238 1673/0413 502 428 Dawn Theory Nathan 0402 845 132 D’Opus & Roshambo hifidelitystyles@yahoo.com DJs Madrid and Gordon 0417 433 971 DJ Latino Rogelio 0401 274 208 DJ Moises (RnB/Latin) 0402 497 835 or moises_lopez@hotmail DNA Vic 0408 477 020 Drumassault Kate 0414 236 323 Easy Mode Daz 0404 156 482, easymodeband@gmail.com Entity Chris 0412 027 894 Epic Flagon band@epicflagon.com Fighting Mongooses, The Adam 0402 055 314 Final Warning Brendan 0422 809 552 Fire on the Hill Aaron 0410 381 306/ Lachlan 0400 038 388 4dead Peter 0401 006 551 Freeloaders, The Steve 0412 653 597 Friend or Enemy 6238 0083, www.myspace.com/friendorenemy Funk Shui Dave 0407 974 476 Gareth Hailey DJ & Electronica 0414 215 885 GiLF Kelly 0410 588 747, gilf.mail@gmail.com Groovalicious Corporate/Weddings/ Private functions 0448 995 158 groovalicious@y7mail.com Guy The Sound Guy live & studio sound engineer, 0400 585 369, guy@ guythesoundguy.com HalfPast Chris 0412 115 594 Hancock Basement Tom 6257 5375, hancockbasement@hotmail.com Happy Hour Wendy 0406 375 096 Haunted Attics band@hauntedatticsmusic.com

Hitherto Paul 0408 425 636 In The Flesh Scott 0410 475 703 Inside the Exterior Nathan 0401 072 650 Itchy Triggers Andrew 0401 588 884 Jacqui Seczawa 0428 428 722 JDY Clothing 0405 648 288/ www.jdyclothing.com Jenn Pacor singer/songwriter avail. for originals & covers, 0405 618 630 Jim Boots 0417 211 580 Johnny Roadkill Paulie 0408 287 672, paulie_mcmillan@live.com.au Karismakatz DJ Gosper 0411 065 189/ dj@karismakatz.com Kayo Marbilus myspace.com/kayomarbilus Kurt’s Metalworx (PA) 0417 025 792 Little Smoke Sam 0411 112 075 Los Chavos Andy 0401 572 150 los.chavos@yahoo.com.au Manilla Green Herms 0404 848 462, contactus@manillagreen.com, Mario Brujo Gordon world/latin/ reggae/percussionist and DJ. 0405 820 895 Martin Bailey Audio Engineer 0423 566 093 Words for You: writer/publicity/events Megan ph 6154 0927, megan@wordsforyou.com.au Mercury Switch Lab Studios mercuryswitch@internode.on.net Missing Zero Hadrian Brand 0424 721 907 hadrian.brand@live.com.au Moots aspwinch@grapevine.com.au Huck 0419 630 721 MuShu Jack 0414 292 567, mushu_band@hotmail.com MyOnus myonusmusic@hotmail.com/ www.myspace.com/myonus No Retreat Simon 0411 155 680 Ocean Moses Nigel 0417 211 580 OneWayFare Chris 0418 496 448 Painted Hearts, The Peter 6248 6027 Phathom Chris 0422 888 700 The Pigs The Colonel 0422 412 752 Polka Pigs Ian 6231 5974 Premier Audio Simon 0412 331 876, premier_audio@hotmail.com Rafe Morris 0416 322 763 Redletter Ben 0421 414 472 Redsun Rehearsal Studio Ralph 0404 178 996/6162 1527 Rhythm Party, The Ross 0416 010 680 Roger Bone Band Andy 0413 483 758 Rob Mac Project, The Melinda 0400 405 537 Rug, The Jol 0417 273 041 Samsara Samahdi 0431 083 776 Sansutra J-Ma 0403 476 350 Simone Penkethman (Simone & The Soothsayers, Singing Teacher) 6230 4828 Soundcity Rehearsal Studio Andrew 0401 588 884 Solid Gold Peter 0421 131 887/ solid.gold@live.com.au Super Best Friends Matt 0438 228 748 Surrender Jordan 0439 907 853 Switch 3 Mick 0410 698 479 System Addict Jamie 0418 398 556 The Morning After (covers band) Anthony 0402 500 843/ myspace.com/themorningaftercovers Tiger Bones & The Ferabul-Zers Danny feralbul@aapt.net.au Tim James Lucia 6282 3740, LUCIAMURDOCH@hotmail.com Top Shelf Colin 0408 631 514 Transmission Nowhere Emilie 0421 953 519/myspace.com/ transmissionnowhere Udo 0412 086 158 Undersided, The Baz 0408 468 041 Using Three Words Dan 0416 123 020, usingthreewords@hotmail.com Voodoo Doll Mark 0428 650 549 William Blakely Will 0414 910 014 Zero Degrees and Falling Louis 0423 918 793 Zwish 0411 022 907

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