The Brag #479

+ MELODIE NELSON + DAY RAVIES

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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly

he said she said JASON FROM THE DARCYS (CAN) Think, Portishead, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, DJ Shadow, Beck and The Constantines.

The band consists of four core members.

Wes Marskell (drums) and I have been collaborating on and recording music for over a decade. We have been best friends since we were about ten, and over that time have developed a frighteningly similar aesthetic and a mutual support for supercritical creative processes. We met and began playing with Dave Hurlow (bass) while studying for our undergrad degrees at King’s College in Halifax, and later asked our good friend Mike le Riche (guitar) to join. Our years of touring and playing together have definitely made us like family to each other.

A

encouraging me to play, practise, improvise, and were always sharing their influences.

The music I find really inspiring changes every couple of months, so I think it’s pretty special when something sticks with me for a long time. Some of the most notable artists for me would have to be Steely Dan (obviously), Neil Young, Do Make Say

Norah Jones

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DEAD CAN DANCE @ THE OPERA HOUSE

MUMFORD’S POP-UP STORE SOUNDS REALLY GREAT

ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Nohmon Anwaryar, Anna Brown, Katrina Clarke, Ashley Mar, Daniel Munns, Thomas Peachy, Rocket Weijers, Pedro Xavier COVER PHOTO: James Medina

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Benjamin Cooper, Alasdair Duncan, Christie Eliezer, Murray Engleheart, Andrew Geeves, Chris Honnery, Nathan Jolly, Anna Kennedy, Sheridan Morley, Jenny Noyes, Hugh Robertson, Rebecca Saffir, Romi Scodellaro, Jonno Seidler, Rach Seneviratne, Roland K Smith, Laurence Rosier Staines, Luke Telford, Rick Warner, Alex Sol Watts, Krissi Weiss, Caitlin Welsh

With: The Medics Where: Spectrum When: Wednesday September 12

Dead Can Dance are playing their first Australian show in 20 years, and although they have a cult following already, this is the tour that will really break the ambient duo’s music into a wider realm: if the radio’s anything to go by, that lush, trip-hoppy, world-music-y, duel Nancy/Lee vocal-sound they perfected decades ago is so hot right now. They won’t be at Sydney Opera House until February 3, but tickets will be on sale by the time you read this.

Hopefully they haven’t sold out yet.

PUBLISHERS: Adam Zammit & Rob Furst EDITOR IN CHIEF: Adam Zammit 9552 6333 adam@peergroupmedia.com

GIG & CLUB GUIDE CO-ORDINATOR: Conrad Richters - gigguide@thebrag.com (rock) clubguide@thebrag.com (dance, hip hop & parties) INTERNS: Natalie Amat, Verity Cox, Siobhan Graham, Charis Lynn, Tanydd Jaquet

Music in general is really exciting right now. There are no limits, really, to what people can do, since so many resources are accessible with a computer. I don’t think more music necessarily means that there is better product coming out, but I do think it provides opportunities to people who wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to create something, and in turn for listeners to hear something that is genuinely new. With that in mind, the challenge to stay afloat amongst so many artists is welcoming, if not encouraging. It is always making us question what we can do next, how we can push an idea or sound even further, to see where can we go from here.

Xxxx

s a child I was always surrounded by music. My parents put me into piano lessons at the age of three, and years later when I refused to continue they forced me to choose another instrument. My dad is a guitar player, my grandfather a jazz pianist and drummer, and almost all of my uncles have played various instruments in and out of bands. All of these people were constantly

From inside the project it is difficult to pinpoint our musical style, but I think the individual elements can give it away to a certain extent: ambient textures, interlocked guitars, steady and groove-oriented drums, patient bass. We worked on our first record in Montreal with The Dears’ Murray Lightburn, which was kind of an exploration for us into post-post-rock cinematic form. We experimented with different structures and sounds and tried to make the record that we all wanted to listen to at the time. Following that we self-produced and home recorded

a cover-to-cover reinterpretation of Steely Dan’s 1977 album, Aja. This was definitely one of the most musically and aesthetically challenging moments for us, both individually and as a group, and remains something we are collectively very proud of. Our new material, which is currently being recorded, definitely leans towards a post-neo-soul/ ambient/electro/apocalypse vibe (whatever that means).

NORAH JONES TOUR

Man, someone should have broken Norah Jones’ heart earlier. Her latest record Little Broken Hearts is seriously odd, dark, twisted, experimental, sad, angry, fuzzed out and not at all like the soothing, soft, jazz-inflicted syrup she’s sold 50 million copies of. It’s produced

by Danger Mouse, too, which at least explains the sonic sidestep, if not the lyrical one.

In 2013 she’ll be visiting Australia for the first time since 2005, scuffing up The State Theatre on February 15. Tickets go on sale September 18, but the presale is from 3pm this Thursday September 13.

REGULAR JOHN ALBUM + TOUR

Heard ‘Slume’ by Regular John yet? You should have by now; community radio has been hammering it. The song manages to be their noisiest and prettiest outing to date, very MBV and Slowdive, with less reverb and more feedback. It has made us very excited for their second record Strange Flowers, which comes out this Friday September 14. They launch it at The Annandale on October 13, by which time you’ll know all the lyrics. Tickets are $12 (+ bf) via your good friends at Oztix.

JONATHAN WILSON

Laurel Canyon is still the place we shop for our psychedelic folk music, which is where we picked up a little gem called Jonathan Wilson, who is often credited with reviving that entire scene (sans Manson this time). He has two excellent breezy solo records, the latest of which is Gentle Spirit, out now through Popfrenzy – plus he produced that Father John Misty album and those two excellent Dawes records too. Dude knows what he’s doing. On Saturday September 15 he plays The Standard, with loop-pedal whizz Charles Buddy Daaboul in support. If you aren’t going to Hanson, go to this.

When we heard Mumford And Sons were launching a pop-up store in Sydney, we got all golfwang and scoffed about how they would sell beard clippers only, and laughed at how witty we were. Then we actually read the press release, and wow: by day, their pop-up M&S General Store is mostly Grinders coffee and repeated spins of their forthcoming second album Babel (out September 21, and really quite brilliant), but by night it transforms into the M&S Saloon, with whiskey flights from ARDBEG, live music from a number of yet-tobe-announced Sydney acts, and screenings of the band’s road doco, Big Easy Express. It’s open from September 14-28 at a yet-to-bedisclosed location. Sounds exciting: we’ve never been in a proper saloon fight!

ALT-J

When Prince was acting out in the mid-‘90s and changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, Warner Music had to issue media with floppy discs containing a special font so they could still write about his alarmingly oblique behaviour. Due to the horrific new trend of building computers these days without floppy disc drives, British altpop/bleepy-bloopy/trip-hop band Δ have asked you pronounce their name “Alt-J” after the Mac keystroke that produces that symbol. Catch dem triangles on Thursday October 18 at Oxford Art Factory (tickets on sale this Friday September 15), and give their aptly named debut record An Awesome Wave a listen as well.

BLUES CONTROL TOUR

After spending the past 12 months releasing a handful of the best Australian records of this decade, RIP Society have turned their hand to touring international bands, and are bringing disjointed, post-everything instrumental US duo Blues Control to Sydney after their set at Sound Summit in Newcastle on Saturday September 29. On Friday October 12 they play The Square in Haymarket, with Ruined Fortune and Mob. Get along; RIP Society can do no wrong at the moment.

Twerps

BONDI BEACH IS FULL OF TWERPS

Ring your Aunty Jean and tell her you can’t come over for the weekly Wednesday Blue Heelers watching session, as you’ll be at Bondi Beach Hotel on September 12 watching three of the very best Australian acts play live: Twerps (who recently cracked the CMJ Top 20 in America, which is a way bigger deal than this laconic band will ever let on. Buy their debut record, it’s perfect in a dappled, drowsy, Go-Betweensy way), the psychedelic Melodie Nelson, who is all those ‘60s babes we wish still existed rolled into one, and Day Ravies, who jangle, and sound like Treetops and The Smallgoods did back in Melbourne all those years ago.

Norah Jones photo by Frank W. Ockenfels

WITH

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rock music news

free stuff

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

he said she said WITH

ANDREW FROM SOLA ROSA Growing Up My brothers were my 1. inspiration in the formative years;

Cherie is new to the group. All a solid bunch of cats!

they introduced me to punk, postpunk, reggae, soul and funk. (My parents were into yacht rock.) I bought my first keyboard at age 11, and that was that.

The Music You Make Genre-wise, it’s a real 4. gumbo with Sola Rosa; mostly

Inspirations I like all sorts of music, past 2. and present, but a few that I find really inspiring are Q-Tip, The Roots, Omar, Marvin Gaye and Andre 3000. There are also a lot of producers that inspire me for various reasons; people like fLako, J Dilla, Suff Daddy and Dizz1. Also, I’m a big reader of music literature – bios, history etc – and I love films and am a total foodie.

Your Band The band consists of 3. myself (Andrew Spraggon) on production, keys and percussion, Matt Short on bass and keys, Ben White on guitar and keys, Spikey Tee on vocals and decks, and Cherie Mathieson on vocals.

We’ve recently toured with three vocalists, which sounded dope! We all met under different circumstances over different periods. Matt has been with us for about ten years, Ben about seven years and Spikey since 2005.

SASKWATCH

Nine people is a lot to fit on a stage, and is basically an OH&S nightmare at the best of times – cables snaking around everything; doubleadaptors on double-adaptors like some kind of robot porn; precariously placed amps – but Melbourne soul/funk band Saskwatch will be

HENRY WAGONS

It’s always funny when a performer who has helmed his own much-loved band (let’s say, for argument’s sake, Melbourne’s Wagons) through countless tours and numerous albums releases his first solo album, and it’s called a debut album as if it is an opening gambit and not a continuation of an already long-debuted career. Well, Henry Wagons most recent record, Expecting Company?, which happens to be the first recorded under his own solo name, is out on September 28, with guest vocals from Robert Forster, Alison Mosshart, Patience Hodgson and Gossling, to name a few. Oh, and it’s brilliant. He’ll be touring throughout November with backing band The Unwelcome Company in tow and BRAG is presenting the Sydney leg of it, which hits The Annandale Hotel on November 10. We’ll see you there.

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

The best thing for us is being able to do what we do and make a living out of it. Also, being independent is liberating. We’re signed to MPM for Europe/ UK, but they understand the importance of the music first and foremost! In terms of the local scene, the best thing is just the sheer talent and diversity in the great music being made.

We’re being inspired right now by bands like Ladi6, Kora, Julien Dyne, Electric Wire Hustle and Hermitude, to name a few.

What: Get It Together is out now Where: The Standard When: Thursday September 13

One of the most ironic things to happen since it once rained on someone’s wedding day is the fact that esteemed composer and musical genius John Cage is mostly known for his avant-garde piece 4’33”, which is basically (read: exactly) four minutes, 33 seconds of silence – without even one shredding solo. Not one. Obviously he is also responsible for a number of more traditionalbut-still-avant-garde compositions, which will be performed by the Bang On A Can All-Stars from America, and Ensemble Offspring from Australia as part of The Composers: John Cage Centenary Celebration at Sydney Opera House on November 2 and 3. There will also be a lecture on Cage by Lyle Chan, and there are various tickets available, ranging from $20 to $59. Get some kulcha up ya, yeah?

MACY GRAY

What do Arcade Fire, Metallica and Frank Zappa’s wife all have in common, you ask?

Macy Grey’s new album, of course. Gray is the raspy-voiced icon behind 1999’s ubiquitous ‘I Try’ track, and the Platinum album it came from, On How Life Is, and she now has a brand new offering. Covered was recorded at Zappa’s studio, The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (yep, that’s a thing), and it’s packed with some very interesting – you guessed it – covers.

Macy Gray is bringing the beautifully crafted new album to the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Sunday September 16. For the chance to win a double pass, tell us your favourite cover song.

Christa Hughes

NEWTOWN FESTIVAL LINEUP ANNOUNCED

Newtown Festival doesn’t happen until November 11 at the dog park, or Camperdown Memorial Rest Park (the dog park), but they’ve already announced most of the lineup, which reads an awful lot like this: Regular John (new album out September 14), Collarbones (new album out September 28), Caitlin Park (who just won the SOYA, ‘cos she rules so very much), Bearhug, The Fabergettes, Battleships, King Tide, The Crooked Fiddle Band, Kira Puru and The Bruise, Tokyo Denmark Sweden, The Rescue Ships, Kill City Creeps and Little Bastard. Also, they won’t be selling bottled water, because paying for the liquid which makes up most of our bodies is ridiculous.

There’ll be free refill areas, so bring the kettle.

LISA MITCHELL

Lisa Mitchell being cute

How many animals are in a collective, you ask? Well with the release of Animal Collective’s latest album Centipede Hz, the answer would be four. The first record since the band broke through from the underground with 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, Centipede Hz also marks the first time since 2007’s Strawberry Jam that all four band members recorded together: Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Deakin and Geologist.

It’s equal parts infectious and psychedelic – not as radio-ready as their last, but more rewarding as a result – as the genre-hopping quartet take you on a journey through forgotten radio transmissions and signals from the after life, in a record bursting with more textures than a 12-course degustation.

We have three copies of the melodic psychpop Centipede Hz to give away to the lucky readers who can tell us the title of another of the ‘Collective’s previous records.

The Drunken Moon Festival slops into the Manning Bar on Saturday October 13, with a rollicking lineup that will turn even the inherently uni-esque Manning Bar into a sleazy speakeasy full of bastard gin and dames and upright bass players and plastic cups (uni bars love plastic cups). Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders will be your entertainment for the night, along with Gay Paris, Jackson Firebird, Mother and Son, Papa Pilko & the Binrats and Howlin’ Steam Train, and that guy self-consciously jitterbugging by the ATM. You should pick up your ticket real soon.

Bec and Ben make swaggering boy/girl twopiece rock, which leaps from sultry Kills-sounding sex to Grates-sounding bouncy pop then back again. Their track ‘Collide’ even has a “baby bird, do you read me?” section towards the end. They are launching their perfectly-named debut EP Butterknives To Razorblades at Brighton Up Bar on Friday September 28, with The Ruminaters and Samoan Punks.

JOHN CAGE TRIBUTE

funk, soul, hip hop, Latin and dub.

People we would fit comfortably next to on a gig lineup would be acts like The Roots, Hermitude, Quantic and Freddy Cruger, that kind of thing. The live show is what we’ve built our rep on.

Heavy beats, heavy soul and funk.

DRUNKEN MOON FESTIVAL @ MANNING BAR

attempting this feat on Thursday September 20 at Goodgod Small Club, where they will be playing in support of their debut album Leave It All Behind. Royal Headache DJs are playing, too. We really hope they just play their own record… and maybe some Kinks or Sonics or something.

BEC AND BEN

Henry Wagons

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

Oh, Hark! Lisa Mitchell, whose debut album Wonder is way better than your debut album, has announced her adorably-titled follow-up record, Bless This Mess, will be out October 12. To celebrate this fact/fulfil her contractual obligations to promote the release of her album in a timely fashion, she has just announced a national album tour, which hits The Metro Theatre on October 19, and will probably sell out rather quickly.

Double-quickly considering the support acts are Alpine and Danco (who should swap band names, judging by the moves busted out by the duel-frontwomen of Alpine during live sets). The new single (also titled ‘Bless This Mess’) should be owning radio by the time you read this. Also, sorry for not squeezing in the following: ‘Indie darling’, ‘songstress’, ‘sophomore effort’ etc

SPEAKEASY SUNDAYS

Divas; brass bands; cabaret; vaudeville dress. Those are all the ingredients for either the worst, most intolerable Baz Luhrmann film yet, or the most awesome Sunday evening at the Standard ever. It’s Speakeasy Sundays’ Fringe Festival Special, and it happens on Sunday September 23, with blues mistress Christa Hughes, dance band The Cope Street Parade, DJ Gramophone Man – whose name pretty much explains the prohibition-era tunes he’ll be spinning – and The Jellyrolls, who’ll have you swinging with their spiritsoaked joviality. Of all the gin joints in the city…

SOUNDWAVE SIDESHOW: LINKIN PARK + STONE SOUR

Those evil geniuses over at Soundwave HQ have announced a huge sidewave show, with Linkin Park and Stone Sour set to destroy the Sydney Entertainment Centre on February 26 – despite the fact that either band could comfortably fill the venue by themselves (although with thousands of sweaty bodies thrashing around in there, perhaps ‘comfortably’ isn’t the correct term). It’s good old-fashioned value for money, and considering Linkin Park have sold over a million records in Australia, you should seriously consider (virtually) lining up when the tickets go on sale at 9am this Friday September 14.

“I met some pretty little hipsters in the corner who told me that their favourite bands were ones that hadn’t formed yet” - SETH SENTRY 10 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

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The Music Network

themusicnetwork.com

Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

Lifelines Expecting: Twins for Stone Roses bassist Mani, and wife Imelda.

Hospitalised: John Mayer has been banned from singing for six months after undergoing throat surgery.

Hospitalised: Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, before a show in Bologna, Italy.

In Court: Byron Bay resident Allan Yarrington, on charges that he ran an unauthorised campground for 200 Splendour In The Grass attendees on a road adjacent to the festival site. The matter is adjourned to September 20. The maximum penalty for development without consent is $110,000.

Arrested: Puddle Of Mudd singer Wes Scantlin, after being expelled from a plane after getting upset when crew refused to serve him alcohol.

Died: Mark Abrahamian, guitarist for US group Starship (‘We Built This City’), 46, of a heart attack, while phoning his fiancée after a show.

Died: David Humphreys, 57, heart failure. He was GM of Sydney Superdome (now Allphones Arena) from 2000 to 2011 when he left to become GM of Perth Arena, which opens in November.

Died: US songwriter Joe South, 72. He wrote ‘Games People Play’, ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoes’ and ‘Hush’, and played guitar on Aretha Franklin’s ‘Chain of Fools’, Bob Dylan’s ‘Blonde On Blonde’, Tommy Roe’s ‘Sheila’ and Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Sounds Of Silence’.

LEAH MENCEL WINS ‘SHE CAN DJ’ Adelaide’s Leah Mencel won this year’s She Can DJ competition. She landed a global record deal with EMI, and joins Southern Cross Austereo’s Party People, playing a weekly set for 12 months to 600,000 listeners. The win also sees her join the Stereosonic tour in November, before heading out to Europe to meet influential members of the dance music industry. The grand final was held last Wednesday at the Ivy, hosted by Channel [V]’s Grant Smillie and last year’s winner Minx, who debuted her single ‘Night To Remember’ joined by singer Reigan Derry. The night kicked off with a set from Alison Wonderland. The nine other finalists were Alley Oop, Cassette, Elly K, Fingertips and Natnoize (all Sydney), Girl Audio and Juliet Fox (Mel), Dusk (Adel) and Hannah Parker (Bris).

ELEFANT TRAKS SIGNS JIMBLAH Elefant Traks has signed Adelaide singer, rapper and producer Jimblah. He was the inaugural winner of the Hilltop Hoods Initiative and was recently triple j Unearthed Artist Of The Week. While he works on his next record, Elefant Traks is releasing his Face The Fire album for free on jimblah.com

DR DRE: RICHEST HIP HOPPER IN THE WORLD

Dr. Dre is the richest hip hopper in the world, says Forbes’ Cash Kings 2012: Hip Hop List.

His albums, productions and headphones and speaker line (Beats By Dre) grossed US$110 million. Runner-up Diddy had to struggle on $45m. The rest of the list were Jay-Z ($38m), Kanye West ($35m), Lil Wayne ($27m), Drake ($20.5m), Bryan “Birdman” Williams ($20m), Nicki Minaj ($15.5m), Eminem ($15m), Ludacris ($12m), Pitbull ($9.5m), Rick Ross & Wiz Khalifa (tied at $9m), Snoop Lion ($8.5m), 50 Cent ($7.5m), Swizz Beatz, Pharrell Williams and Young Jeezy (all ties at $7m) and Mac Miller ($6.5million), with Akon, Timbaland and Tech N9ne a tie with $6m.

BIG DAY OUT OFFERS P.O.T.T.

After requests from patrons, Big Day Out has introduced P.O.T.T. (Pay Over Time Ticketing).

It’s begun already, and ends on September 23.

The $170 GA and $270 Like A Boss tickets can 12 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

be paid off in four instalments. The scheme works with a deposit ($50 for GA, $75 for Boss) and then three payments ($40 for GA, $65 for Boss). Go to www.bigdayout.com for full details.

500 ATTEND KINGS CROSS RALLY 500 Kings Cross restaurants, clubs and bar workers met at Hugos last Tuesday at noon, sporting We Love Kings Cross T-shirts and holding placards. The rally was against trading restrictions proposed by the NSW Government which will affect 58 local establishments. Hugos owner Dave Evans made an impassioned speech pointing out that these were unworkable and anti-competitive regulations, which would mean cocktail bars would be unable to serve cocktails and wine bars would be unable to sell bottles, and would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs, as the venues in the area were just coming out of effects of the global financial crisis. The rally’s message was that alcohol is not the reason for the violence in the area. Rather, it called for the Government to provide better transport (there are currently no trains between 1.45am and 6am, and no taxis during the changeover time between 2.30am and 3.30am), more local policing, smarter solutions to improve street security, and fairer regulation for licensed premises.

The liquor and hospitality division of the United Voice Union has announced its support for the campaign, and Evans has a meeting this week with authorities.

AIR’S O’BYRNE TO PROGRAM BIG SOUND 2014

In addition to his General Manager duties at the Australian Independent Records Association (AIR), Nick O’Byrne will also be Executive Programmer of Brisbane’s Big Sound in 2014. He’s already working at the conference and showcase as Associate Programmer for the 2013 event alongside Graham Ashton, whose role as Executive Programmer has been extended for a fourth year.

WANNA WORK AT MUM?

MUM, the long-running live music Friday night at World Bar, is advertising a part-time gig as both event manager and club promoter. You’ll handle logistics, create advertising and promo campaigns (including thinking up new promo items), track down after-parties and functions to expand attendance, and organise promo staff and door teams. You’ll use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to engage your target market, keep the MUM brand out there and find influential indie kids. It’ll mean part-time hours in The World Bar office, and work at the club on Friday nights. Email Grant Barnes at grant@theworldbar.com with your resume and a little bit about yourself and why you’d love the role with MUM.

THINGS WE HEAR

* A few acts have revealed to triple j that they’re touring soon: Amanda Palmer (Feb), Cat Power (Jan/Feb) and The xx (“early next year,” said bassist Oliver Sim). * The It’s A Long Way To The Top tour, starring Brian Cadd, Dragon, Marcia Hines and John Paul Young amongst others, will also have a Billy Thorpe hologram, while Ian Moss performs Thorpie classics. It hits Sydney Entertainment Centre on October 6. * Jessica Mauboy flew to London to sing at her Sapphires co-star Chris O’Dowd’s wedding. * The tabloids were claiming that the Brian McFadden/Vogue Williams nuptials in an Italian castle were minus a best man, when Kyle Sandilands partied the night before and called in sick. According to the Telegraph, Sandilands also did a no-show as best man for radio man Lab Rat’s April wedding, and claimed they haven’t spoken since. But McFadden had something else to be pissed about.

A bogus tweeter using the name @ BrianMcFaddenn tweeted false accounts of his stag night. Mr Bogus claimed McFadden had oral sex with a stripper at the buck’s turn before his previous wedding to Kerry Katona. Macca was Gold from advance orders, and debuted at #1 on the ARIA Music DVD chart.

SUNN O))) BLAME PROMOTER

Sunn O))) are blaming their Australian promoter Robert Macmanus of Heathenskulls for their cancellation of Australian dates. They cited “complete inconsideration towards the basic requirements of our agreement together.” They also blew out NZ, but praised the NZ promoter Gareth Craze/RW, through whom they will try and reschedule the Australian dates. For the Australian cancellation, McManus blamed

understandably livid. Among the 80 guests at the castle were Danni Minogue and promoter Andrew McManus. * Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton admitted that when singer Steve Tyler became a judge on American Idol two years ago, the band spoke to Sammy Hagar about taking over. Hagar was keen, but it didn’t happen. * Madonna’s fourth luxury health club Hard Candy has opened in Sydney. * Brooklyn’s Beach Fossils postponed their October tour, but singer Dustin Payseur says, “We promise to be out there soon, we’ll make it up to you!” * Van Halen’s David Lee Roth is in Japan doing sword training with a Shungendo monk, Sueyoshi Akeshi.

The singer’s obsession with martial arts training began at the age of 12.

Meantime, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson competed in the Grasmere Sport’s Guides Race in England. He completed in 26 minutes and 21 seconds, coming 161st out of 181. * The staff of the Goldfish bar in Kings Cross appear in this week’s ABC-TV Do Or Die, taking to the bush to learn some survival tips. * ACP Magazines, home of Rolling Stone Australia among other titles, is now owned by Germany’s Bauer Media Group. * The Griswolds are Sydney winners in triple j’s Unearthed Parklife comp. “an oversaturation of the market place and lower-than-expected tickets sales”, as well as the “monolithic” production costs of a Sunn O))) show, which he blamed for holding out on paying their fees on time.

ARIAS NOMINATIONS DAY

Nominations for the ARIAs are being announced on Wednesday October 3 at the Art Gallery of NSW. This year, the ARIAs move to Sydney Entertainment Centre, expand to a week of showcases and seminars, and merge Breakthrough Artist Single and Breakthrough Artist Album to Breakthrough Artist Release.

YES PLEASE GOES FISHING

Yes Please have signed Sydney electro duo Fishing for their 7-inch vinyl single. The pair have toured the UK and remixed for Cloud Control, Guerre, Alpine, Jonathan Boulet, Jinja Safari and Book Of Ships.

ONE DIRECTION WIN BATTLE FOR NAME

British scream-magnets One Direction have won the legal battle to keep their name. In April, a US band with that name sued for $1 million and a share of their royalties, saying they had had the name since 2009. The Brits countersued, at which point the Yanks changed their moniker to Unchartered Shores.

KERLEY, BROWN, LAUNCH TWIVIA AT THE STANDARD

Music trivia tragics James Kerley (Channel [V], Nova, Eclipse Music TV) and Michael Brown (The Comedy Store, Sydney Comedy Festival) have come up with ‘Twivia’, a combination of Trivia and Twitter. Punters go to a club to catch music and comedy acts, and tweet answers to questions about the night’s show. No longer will it be anti-social for mates to sit around on their mobiles, Kerley says. Twivia launches on Wednesday September 19 at The Standard in Darlinghurst. Kerley will host; Brown is the event producer.

ANGUS STONE HITS GOLD…

Angus Stone’s album Broken Brights has gone Gold, for sales of 35,000 in less than two months. This comes on the eve of a 15-date North American tour (with venues including the Troubadour in LA and New York’s Bowery Ballroom), and then a run of European shows which sold out in a morning.

…AND PARKWAY DRIVE DVD GOES PLATINUM

Parkway Drive’s DVD Home Is For The Heartless, filmed in 42 countries, has been certified Platinum with 15,000 sales. It went

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Coming Up

Musiq Soulchild (USA) Hanson (USA)

Wheatus (USA)

Thu 13 Sep

Thu 14 Sep

Sat 15 Sep

Fri 21 Sep

Ferry Corsten (NED)

Fear Factory (USA)

Novalima (PER) & DJs

Regurgitator

Sat 22 Sep

Thu 27 Sep

Sistema Criolina (BRA) Fri 28 Sep CANCELLED

Sat 29 Sep SOLD OUT Mon 1 Oct

Apollo the Party Sun 30 Sep

Nekromantix Fri 5 Oct

Everclear (USA)

Gomez (UK)

Fri 12 Oct

Fri 19 Oct

Russian Circles (USA) Tortoise (USA) Sat 6 Oct

Thu 11 Oct

Alt Rugby Commentary

Sunn O))) & Pelican (USA)

Sat 20 Oct

Thu 25 Oct

Feat.

Jed Thian

District 7 Fest

The Living End

Sat 27 Oct

Wed 21 – Tue 27 Nov

Fri 26 Oct

Leb I Sol (MKD)

Turbonegro (NOR)

Sat 3 Nov

Thu 6 Dec

65daysofstatic (UK)

Kerser

Wed 2 Jan

Sat 2 Feb

CANCELLED

O PE NE R AL NI B G UM HT

Thurston Moore (USA)

(DEN/USA)

2 ND SH O W

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FA ST

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Earth (USA)

An Evening with The Hoff (USA)

Fri 15 Feb ENTERTAINMENT QUARTER, BUILDING 220, 122 LANG RD, MOORE PARK, SYDNEY

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 13

“I

t always comes back to love, I don’t know why.

Even though I am actually a happy person, writing a melancholic song has always come more naturally.”

As one third of UK minimalists The xx, Romy Madley Croft is as retiring as the music she writes.

Blending into a dim corner of The World Bar, the 23-year-old singersongwriter/guitarist is camouflaged under layers of black and grey fabric, and the wind outside bites appropriately – her band seem to have chosen a bracing winter day to complete their Sydney press cycle.

If she’s quiet, it’s probably because the group is staring down the end of an exhaustive two-month press junket. Madley Croft seems a little frazzled, but she’s in decent spirits.

“It’s been a little like doing a backto-back therapy session,” she says, with a rueful laugh. “Sometimes it’s interesting having your songs psychoanalysed... and sometimes it is offensive.”

Her band has barely spent a moment out of the spotlight since the release of their Mercury Prize-winning self-titled debut in 2009 – a record remarkable for its glassy, vapourous approach to the love song. Whereas another band might exaggerate emotional content with volume, Madley Croft and her lifelong friend Oliver Sim trade hushed vocals to each other, boiling the bones of the genre down into a pure, potent stock. Producer/drummer Jamie Smith dresses things simply too, reflecting the intensity of the subject matter and performances in the space surrounding the

THE XX

vocal. With their debut, songs like ‘Islands’, ‘Crystalised’, ‘Intro’ and ‘VCR’ utilised the MPC in new and raw ways, drawing a Balearic quality out of an instrument more generally associated with hip hop and dance production.

Fans were drawn in by the unrefined intimacy of Madley Croft and Sim’s vocal interplay, and their agonising way with a lyric. “It can be a challenge to write a convincingly happy song without being cheesy,” Madley Croft explains. “With ‘Angels’, I was quite happy to have written a song that was purely about being in love and it going well.” As optimistic as that sounds, the first single from their sophomore album Coexist still retains the insulating darkness and devotional melancholy of their earlier work. For some, this works to their advantage; for others, it is the album’s undoing: the band remain so fixated on their preferred subject matter, arrangement and tempo that they’ve forgone light, groove and a sense of fun.

There’s no doubt that The xx are masters of the love song, and Coexist is an appropriate comedown to their debut. It’s the break-up that had to happen, and throughout the record, The xx distil the grandeur and loss of a serious relationship into moments of incisive, emotionally articulate

lyricism. “I’ve always been into lyrics that are very simple, and that work to summarise a complex issue,” she says, going some distance in explaining why their lyrics are potent enough to string Smith’s skeletal grooves around. “That’s where the minimal thing came from. We had to be able to play everything that we wrote live on one guitar, bass and MPC. I used to have an 8-track recorder, and we’d stop when that was full.”

Despite looking like a councilflat drug dealer, Sims exercises genuine emotional gravity. He is believably wounded, but rarely dips into the potentially suffocating drama of the lyrical content.

Madley Croft works in an ethereal way around the loss at the core of the record, and it all ends up sounding honest and real, if maudlin. To wit, there’s believable heartbreak throughout, but who is it all about? Is it their relationship, or a construct? Madley Croft is predictably cautious answering direct questions. “Some of the songs… well, I am hesitant to go too close to what it is about, but it is all very personal,” she demurs.

“Which is not to say we’ve had an awful time. Something I started to do on this album was to talk to people about what they are going through in their love lives… All the details are so specific and different,

but a lot of people go through very similar things. I found that interesting to write about.”

So if the album is an amalgamation of many different experiences of love, how do the singers set up each song as a focused duet? “It normally starts from Oliver or me, usually lyrics like a poem with a little melody.

I send it to Oliver as an email, and if he thinks he can write to it he will, mimicking my melodies. And then we can all get together in a room and write with Jamie.”

There are tracks here that, unlike ‘Angels’, veer toward deep house and dance in a way that would suit their UK pedigree, and Jamie Smith’s growing remix vocabulary. “I think it was something that we were taking a step into, but without a big plan,” says Madley Croft. “We have so many influences, and certainly the house thing comes into the live band from the last album. We would extend our song ‘Night Time’ into a long jam. Just seeing the audience move and stuff was really interesting, and I think it’s something we’d like to take a little further.”

Despite their exposure to dance music and the growing production skills within the group, in making Coexist the band stuck to the initial simplicity of their debut. “Jamie has really grown as a producer and we can layer everything a lot, but

“It always comes back to love, I don’t know why.

Even though I am actually a happy person, writing a melancholic song has always come more naturally.”

The XX photo by Alexandra Waespi

Straight To The Heart

By Jake Stone we decided to keep to that 8-track aesthetic and discipline.” Madley Croft doesn’t feel like this strict adherence to the form has limited the record. “We have a way of working where we fall into and out of our comfort zone, but we didn’t have any limits [or] thoughts like ‘We can’t go there’,” she says. “On a song like ‘Swept Away’, Jamie brought in a 909 drum machine, and though we tried to compress it down into a three-minute pop song, house music progresses as it goes ‘round – that’s sort of the fun of it – and in the end we had to let it be five minutes long.”

Though it might not be the most adventurous sophomore record, Coexist represents The xx’s continuing research into The Love Song – an almost academic pursuit that prompts contradictory outcomes. On one hand we get their brilliance in dissecting couples and their fallout – a subject they discuss with satisfying reach and depth. On the other, the monastic stricture with subject and the duet format seems a little safe and, well, no fun. More thrilling is Madley Croft’s deep and studied understanding of relationships.

Given that I’ve been going through a break-up for a long time, it seems a perfect opportunity to get some advice from Love Yoda. So, after all that research, what is the nature of love? And what’s left in its wake?

“I’ve always taken a lesson from each relationship. You feel more wary about things, but I think I am optimistic about love,” she says. “You’ll always have a special relationship with that person, even if there is anger or sadness there.”

What: Coexist is out now via Young Turks/Remote Control

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Oh Mercy Get Into The Groove By Alasdair Duncan The sound of Deep Heat is certainly a departure from the crystalline indie pop of Oh Mercy’s breakthrough record Great Barrier Grief, although the quality of the songwriting remains the same. “I wrote the songs the way I usually do, albeit on a piano rather than a guitar because I had a sore elbow,” he explains.

“I knew when I was writing the songs, though, that I wanted to strip a lot of the instrumental parts back and let the bass imply the chord changes. The rhythms were very important.

When I was at the piano, I had a fairly good idea of how the songs would translate, and they mostly worked out how I imagined. When you’re at a piano writing a song, you have to be able to tap your foot along with it and have it feel right, because if it doesn’t feel good then, it won’t feel good at any other part of the process.”

M

Oh Mercy’s new album Deep Heat is out this week, and when Gow thinks about the record and where people might be listening to it, he likes to imagine them dancing in the same lounge rooms and kitchens where he honed his iPod DJ skills over the past few years. It’s a hefty, sexy beast of a record with a big lowend, featuring bass, brass and percussion just made for grinding and shaking. “The groove was something I placed above all else when I was making this record,” he says. “I’m interested in the ways that music can affect people’s bodies. Dancing is a very beautiful and funny thing, so I really wanted to write an album that would make people dance, but also one where they could listen to the words – danceable music, as opposed to just, you know, dance music.”

It’s no surprise to learn that Gow is an avid reader; these characters were inspired by some of the great writers he loves. “I like Dashiell Hammett,” he says. “He’s a hardboiled detective crime writer; he’s written a few classics like The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man. I also really like Ralph Bolderwood and Albert Facey, the Australian writers. I get great satisfaction out of the ancient poets. I love reading poems that use ancient Greek and Roman mythology – I think they’re wonderfully perverse and sexy and interesting

in so many ways.” Gow’s favourite volume is a beaten-up Penguin Classics edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which he carries everywhere.

“It’s kind of my go-to,” he explains. “It’s an incredibly ambitious and well-executed book, which goes from the beginning of time until the era of Julius Ceaser, using elements of all kinds of myths. He attempted to cover it all and did so in a very funny way.”

The cover art of the album, a work by famed Australian photographer Rennie Ellis, adds yet another layer of meaning to Deep Heat. “I’ve always really admired him,” Gow says. “I went to art school for a year and didn’t like it much, but I liked Rennie Ellis. He died around ten years ago but his estate was kind enough to let us use one of his images. He did a lot of iconic images of St Kilda and King’s Cross that you’d probably be familiar with, social documentary stuff from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I was tempted to go for one of those, but after the wonderful Ken Done artwork on the last album, I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into some kind of Australiana thing. So yeah, we chose the Rio Carnival 1985 shot – it’s vibrant and colourful and fun and provocative, and I think in that sense it’s just like the record we made.”

What: Deep Heat is out now through EMI Where: The Standard When: Saturday September 29

Silversun Pickups Itchy Feet By Joshua Kloke

“Our last shows in Australia were by far the maddest shows of our lives. We were so overwhelmed.

We’ll take a boat to get there. We’ll play in garages, we don’t care. We’re in.” that spoke to the band’s ability to learn from experience. “We learned from Swoon,” Aubert says. “Whether you’re playing live or you’re recording, you have to get yourself into that one particular mindset. It’s tough for us to do both, because both require so much focus.

The reality of being a band is that when you write and record, you’re activating certain parts of your brain that were otherwise quiet most of the time; you’re listening for the most minute of details. And when you’re playing live, it’s this totally bombastic, extroverted experience.

A

lthough Neck Of The Woods, Silversun Pickups’ third full-length, was released back in May, the Los Angeles four-piece garnered another round of publicity a few weeks back. Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons. “It was very simple. We started getting emails from people asking if we were fans of Mitt Romney,” says the Pickups’ ebullient lead singer Brian Aubert, down the line from his Los Angeles home.

What Aubert didn’t know was that ‘Panic Switch’, one of the band’s tracks from their 2009 full-length Swoon, had been played as a lead-in to one of the Republican Presidential candidate’s speeches. “We just said, ‘We don’t like that.’ So we had to do a cease and desist, make some comments, put out a press release to clear the air.” Although Romney’s policies have drawn the ire of many American artists, the dust settled relatively quickly. But 16 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

not before the LA-based four-piece understood the full scope of this immediate exposure. “Mitt Romney’s camp was cool with it. And then, afterwards, things got crazy. All the news and media outlets, however they felt politically, used it in whatever angle they wanted. It became less about us, and more about Mitt using our song.” Aubert says. “All we wanted was for him not to use our song. A lot of our friends came up to us all surprised, saying, ‘I didn’t know you guys were this big!’ And all we could say is, ‘Neither did we!’”

Aubert’s humility has a charm, but the fact is that the Pickups have been worthy of mainstream coverage for a while now – just not necessarily coverage like this. Neck Of The Woods was the product of a year and a half of relative quiet from the Pickups’ camp.

The band gigged no more than a handful of times, and shifted their focus to maintaining their day-to-day lives. It was a healthy break

“When we took a month off for Swoon, we couldn’t really take a month off because we still had to tour,” he continues. “There were still things to do. By the end of that, we hadn’t really had the break we needed. We were so weary in a way we didn’t understand. It wasn’t Swoon that did it to us, it was everything else.

And we realise that now.”

In order to craft the cinematic modern rock that would end up on Neck Of The Woods, the Pickups took the only logical step: “Late in 2010 we realised there was nothing, absolutely nothing we could really write about. So we decided we had to take some time off, and actually live our lives.” Neck Of The Woods was thus given a weighty, introspective edge – a complement to the band’s trademark, landscape-sized sound. “To be honest, we just wrote and recorded this album quicker. It was

nice to have more time to just be human beings, to think and feel things without the pressure that we had early on.”

Considering how quickly Neck Of The Woods was recorded, Aubert admits that waiting until September for the band’s tour has been especially trying. “We’re a band that was birthed playing live. We played live for so long before we ever went into a studio. When you make a record, the whole live thing can’t necessarily happen in the studio or in the rehearsal space.

We try to get excited, but… it’s not happening yet! We’ve become really antsy and we know that now. Before, we thought we’d be able to deal with this pretty well. And now we’ve realised we’re just so uncomfortable waiting.”

Through the band’s downtime, they’ve prepared for their upcoming shows by learning how not to hide behind sonics. “We love these sounds, but we wanted to sound more dynamic. Anything that we felt shy about before, we wanted to expose. We’d have discussions where we’d voice concerns, and after a few minutes we’d all look at each other and just say, ‘Get used to it,” he laughs.

“Simple, for us, is the hardest thing to deal with.”

Thankfully for Aubert and Silversun Pickups, the opportunity for them to dive into the many layers of Neck Of The Woods in a live setting is right around the corner. And as Aubert believes, it may go over best in Australia. “We have the most amazing times [in Australia]; last time around we did this Chinatown party thing in Brisbane, The Annandale Hotel in Sydney and Ding Dong Lounge in Melbourne. And those were by far the maddest shows of our lives, in terms of the crowd going apeshit. We were so overwhelmed. We really don’t know what we did to deserve this. We’ll take a boat to get there,” he says with conviction. “We’ll play in garages, we don’t care. We’re in.”

With: Sigur Rós, Beck, Ben Folds Five, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Santigold and more Where: Harvest Festival @ Parramatta Park When: Saturday November 17

Oh Mercy photo by Aaron Farley

ost of us have been there – it’s getting on in the evening, you’ve maybe had a little bit too much to drink, and you decide it’s time to commandeer the sound system and impress everyone at the party with your iPod DJ skills. Oh Mercy’s Alexander Gow is no stranger to this experience; in fact, those can often be the times when he gets the most joy out of playing music for people. “When you do that, you make everyone come along on your emotional roller coaster with you,” he laughs. “I’ll often start with The Velvet Underground, then when things are feeling really good, I’ll get into Talking Heads and stuff like that. Towards the end of the night, I’ll be getting into ’60s girl group territory, probably ending with a couple of downbeat Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood kind of numbers, when everyone’s under the table.”

It’s more than just the arrangements that make Deep Heat an intriguing album for Oh Mercy.

Each one of its tracks is written from the lyrical perspective of a different narrator, a host of shady characters that Gow dreamed up to bring the record’s themes to life. “Each of the characters is very different,” he says. “The first song, ‘Deep Heat’, has a very sexy sound, but lyrically it’s actually about a Biblical martyr who yearns to be taken seriously. On ‘Rebel Beat’, the second track, I had this idea of Dionysus as a ‘60s rock star, or a sort of James Dean figure, and I was thinking about what kind of guy he’d be, walking into a party and stirring up a scene. ‘My Man’ is from the perspective of a psychotic woman who’s infatuated with a man who doesn’t acknowledge her existence, while ‘Suffocated’ is from the perspective of a lady of the night, and it gets pretty hardcore…”

“The groove was something I placed above all else when I was making this record. I’m interested in the ways that music can affect people’s bodies.”

Jonathan Wilson The Gentlest Spirit By Erin Bromhead

T

alking to Jonathan Wilson over the phone with some 12 000 kilometres between us doesn’t feel half as disconnecting as it sounds. Wilson has a way of making you feel like you’re hanging out in his lounge room in Los Angeles, hugging a handmade pottery mug steaming with herbal tea. No man is egoless, but he comes about as close to it as it gets. Soon, Wilson and his humility will cross the sweeping Pacific Ocean that stretches our phone line for his first Australian tour, and he is “really, really stoked” about it. Riding on the heels of the success of his 2011 release Gentle Spirit, Wilson says “it’s been a big year – one that has far surpassed anything anyone could have imagined.” After a long, at times frustrating gestation period, he finally sensed that the planets were aligned for the album’s release, and since then it’s been a rocket ship of a ride.

“It’s a true blessing, to be honest. I’m really, really happy because it was difficult to get the album heard in the right way, and I knew the whole time that I could not put it out with the wrong people. It had to be the right vibe.”

Gentle Spirit is overflowing with the right vibes. Like slow-burning incense, it sparks and simmers, as smoky guitar rhythms swirl and loop through the air, swayed by a voice that ignites all your senses, leaving the room subtly fragranced with sandalwood. It’s almost relieving to know that someone like Wilson exists: a true earth

“The Laurel Canyon Revival became this journalistic sort of fantasyland. I kind of let it fly when people imagined it like that, and the fact that now it has turned into such a big deal is a trip...”

child connected to both nature and man through his undeniable gift for and affinity with music.

On the majestic track ‘Desert Raven’, Wilson dispenses wisdom like an ancient medicine man, as he sings “The raven who flies through the desert sky is wiser than you or me”, and soars above the cavernous sands of time.

His role, then, in what has been dubbed ‘The Laurel Canyon Revival Scene’ seems fitting.

Hosting jam sessions at his house in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon – historic hippie base and old stomping grounds of such rock royalty as Joni Mitchell and Jim Morrison – musicians flocked to partake in these collaborative celebrations of improvisation and grade-A shredding; guests included members of The Black Crowes, Steve Miller Band, Wilco, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Jenny Lewis and Conor Oberst. The now infamous jam sessions seem inescapable in any write-up about Wilson, but asked if he’s tired of this marriage he resolves, “I’m not sick of it. I try to shed the truth about it, though. There was a scene there – but that scene was at my house.

“The Canyon became this journalistic sort of fantasyland,” he continues. “I kind of let it fly when people imagined it like that, and the fact that now it has turned into such a big deal is a trip.” The truth does little to dilute Wilson’s contribution to the magic fairy juice reportedly trickling down LA’s hills, though; it just means that the scene he was reviving didn’t spread past his dreamcatcher-donned front door. Media hype aside, Wilson reminisces fondly: “It was a time and place and it was great that it happened. It happened very innocently, and mainly to have a good time. And that’s what we had.”

The good times have extended far beyond Laurel Canyon in the last 18 months, seeing Wilson collaborate with the likes of Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead, and Jackson Browne. Wilson and his band have also toured extensively – a year on the road that climaxed with a European jaunt with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. “How was that tour?”

Wilson repeats, “Fucking amazing!” he bursts, before steadying himself a little. “It was like Christmas every day. Playing massive sports arenas and stadiums, and Tom is such a cool

guy. It was just a lot of fun.” As of touring itself, Wilson is a fan. “Not in some weird ego way, but I do love the sensation of singing the songs.”

When Wilson isn’t touring, he’s producing. From his East Los Angeles-based Fivestar Studios, he has produced for the likes of Father John Misty, Dawes, and presently, folk legend Roy Harper (or “Mr Harper,” as he reverently corrects me).

Recording with analogue equipment, Wilson manages to capture all the nostalgia of the sunsoaked ‘60s without needing any of the LSD. When I dub him a jack of all trades, he deflects the compliment by redirecting the praise: “I’m also doing an album with a tremendous band called White Denim, one of the hottest bands there is,” he says. “I’ve got a new album coming too, around May – just in time for all the festivals and stuff.”

As for Wilson’s Australian expectations? “I would like for loads and loads of people to come to our show. That would be really nice, because to be honest we’re coming because we felt like it was really important to show up there for this album, with the goal being to come back again to build a base there. And the whole reason why is because the United States couldn’t give a fuck.” A travesty for America – and a triumph for the rest of us.

What: Gentle Spirit is out now through Popfrenzy With: Charles Buddy Daaboul Where: The Standard When: Saturday September 15

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 17

Divine Fits Britt, Boeckner & Brown By Caitlin Welsh

A

Thing Called Divine Fits is half a breakup record, and half a mystery. The debut release by Divine Fits – a don’tcall-it-a-supergroup constituting Britt Daniel of Spoon, Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, and Sam Brown of punk outfit New Bomb Turks – is watertight. It’s two of the most acclaimed indie rock frontmen of this short century putting on a clinic in crisp, clever songwriting. But after months of living together, writing together and recording together, it became clear that Boeckner – whose break-up with wife and Furs bandmate Alexei Perry was announced in May this year – was working through some things.

“We first got together at the end of October just to see what was what, and see if anything happened,” recalls Daniel, mapping the evolution of the project from his LA home. “And we all liked it, so the next time we got together was January. Dan moved in mid-January, I guess, and stayed here until the record was done at the end of May… He was going through all of that, and we were living together, and then I was driving him to the studio every day, and we were spending all day in the studio. We got to know each other real well... I think a lot of good came from it.”

Daniel agrees that having a new creative outlet was probably “therapeutic” for Boeckner (Wolf Parade are also on “indefinite hiatus”), but there is less of a clear narrative thread running

through the Britt-penned half of the record.

“I’ll wait for someone else to tell me that, but I didn’t feel a theme [while recording],” he muses. “And I don’t think that Dan felt a theme, either; I think in retrospect he figured it out, but with the exception, maybe, of ‘Civilian Stripes’, I remember him saying that he didn’t think there was a particular link. And then a month or two later he said, ‘Hang on, all these things are about this...’”

Daniel is characteristically cagey about his inspirations; he writes alone, usually separate even from his Spoon co-conspirator Jim Eno. “I usually write for ‘I know not what’, and then when the songs are done I say, ‘This will be good for this’, and ‘This will be good for this’,” Daniel explains. “And usually that’s always meant, ‘This will be good for Spoon’. [But] there were a couple of songs that I just held because, for whatever reason, they didn’t need Jim to be involved – they were done on drum machine or whatever.”

Having reassured me Spoon is still a going concern (“Everything’s fine, yeah… we won’t be doing much while Divine Fits are touring on this record, but we’ll get back together eventually.”), Daniel is cautiously effusive about his new bandmates. “I remember the first time we did get together and Dan was writing parts for one of my songs, and I remember for maybe half a second feeling, ‘Uhh, what if it’s no good?’ But it was, and it totally tied the

song together. It was a guitar part for ‘Flaggin’ A Ride’, and I had taken the song as far as I could, and then he sent it over the top with this very rock’n’roll guitar part in the chorus that I never would have thought of on my own.”

Their rapport is evidenced by the inclusion of a deft, scruffy cover of Australian Rowland S Howard’s classic ‘Shivers’ – a favourite of

Daniel’s, and the very first track they played together. “I was real surprised when I played it to them, and Dan started playing that bassline. It was just an example of the best reasons why you get into a band – things happen that you couldn’t do on your own, and that you wouldn’t expect.”

What: A Thing Called Divine Fits is out on EMI

Rival Schools Keeping Busy By Lindsey Cuthbertson

F

rom the outside looking in, Walter Schreifels’ musical life appears incredibly busy. The vocalist/guitarist has made a habit of being involved with quite influential bands, and when he picks up the phone in New York to talk about his upcoming Australian tour with Rival Schools, he’s smack bang in the middle of working with two other groups.

Tim Hart The Bear Necessities By Jennifer Peterson-Ward

W

hen young folk outfit Boy & Bear entered a Sydney recording studio in late 2010 to record a cover of ‘Fall At Your Feet’ for a Neil and Tim Finn tribute album, they weren’t to know they were undertaking something which would change the course of their musical careers – and lives – for years to come. The band had been slowly building some momentum off the back of debut EP With Emperor Antarctica, but they weren’t to know that their cover would land them a spot on the triple j Hottest 100 and set the stage for their debut record, Moonfire, to sweep the charts and amass legions of fans across the globe, earning a swag of ARIA awards along the way.

While anyone with a passing interest in the current Australian music scene may be familiar with this story by now, most wouldn’t know that this defining moment in Boy & Bear’s life also opened the door for percussionist Tim Hart’s burgeoning solo career. “I remember we were in the studio recording the Crowded House cover, and I played the guys one of my songs,” he says. “They basically said to me, ‘You can’t not record this’, and I knew they were probably right.”

Previously, Hart’s solo aspirations had to be put on the back burner, but with a solo record Milling The Wind just released, the talented songwriter is more than ready to step out on his own. As Hart attests, his solo excursion is by no means a departure from Boy & Bear, but rather a way to express his own musical ideas. “When we started Boy & Bear, we sat down and decided that it was really important that it would mainly be a forum for [frontman] Dave [Hosking]’s ideas, so that’s the way we decided to go. I never thought about using my own songs for a Boy & Bear album.”

That being said, the rest of his band did contribute to the creative process, with Hosking recording backing vocals, bassist Jake Tarasenko playing bass, flute and fife on the record, guitarist Killian Gavin recording demos, and keys/mandolin player Jon Hart (who is also Tim’s brother) taking photographs for the album art. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Hart says. “It was more the fact that they’re my mates and they were just hanging around when I was working on it. They’re really passionate about it.”

Touching on emotive themes including childhood, religion, family, love and heartbreak, Hart says he ultimately hopes Milling The Wind is remembered as “an honest” listen. “I’m really confident of the success of this project long-term. This kind of singer-songwriter tradition of music is timeless,” he says, citing musicians like Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Neil Young as major influences on the album. “All these guys are known for telling stories in an honest way.”

Despite having a ready-made fan base waiting in the wings, Hart is adamant he doesn’t want to “ride on the coat tails” of Boy & Bear. “I’m not really pushing it through Boy & Bear. If it means a thousand less people are disconnected but each person who listens to it does really connect with it, then I’ll be just so happy,” he explains. “I want it to be the kind of music project that grows on people.

I don’t expect it to sell tens of thousands of albums. In fact, I almost don’t want it to.”

With: Milling The Wind is out on Island, through Universal With: Stu Larsen, Neda Where: The Vanguard When: Friday September 21

Days before our conversation takes place, Schreifels played a show with hardcore veterans Gorilla Biscuits; now he’s with the recently reunited Quicksand, preparing for a live performance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and two New York shows – and he’s finding time amongst it all to work on his forthcoming second solo album. There is a case to argue that right now may be the most prolific time in his career, but Schreifels disagrees. “It’s actually pretty normal,” he says of his work rate, “although right now maybe people are more aware of it.”

“I don’t know if anyone knows the names of the bands now … but one time I was in Gorilla Biscuits, Youth Of Today, Warzone and Supertouch, all at the same time. These were all active hardcore bands, and that’s the tradition that I came up in,” he explains.

“Having one thing going on … certainly simplifies life, but I also appreciate the variety of the things that I’m doing.” Schreifels’ musical endeavours have always been diverse: after gaining prominence in New York hardcore bands such as Gorilla Biscuits, it was fronting post-hardcore groups Quicksand and then Rival Schools where Schreifels truly forged his reputation. And having them all currently active isn’t enjoyable simply because it allows him to explore the many sides of his music; “This way I never get sick of any of the people I’m working with,” he laughs. “I get along better with everyone, which is nice.”

Starting out playing hardcore while still in high school, Schreifels says that watching people react to his music was initially pretty cool – but as time has gone on, it’s begun to mean something a lot deeper. “As I continued doing this I started to understand how music was part of these people’s stories. There are certain records in your life by certain people that drew you or changed you, or were just playing in the background when something special happened,” he explains. “By nature of what I do, and the fact that I’ve been doing it for a while and to varying degrees of success, I’ve had enough of those special moments to appreciate the shit out of it. And I recognise it, especially doing Quicksand or Gorilla Biscuits, something we haven’t done in a long time. You see that it’s lasting and continues on. It’s kind of humbling, in a way.”

What: Pedals is out now With: Toy Boats Where: The Annandale Hotel When: Wednesday September 19

All three of his current bands have reached seminal status – so what is it about Schreifels’ music that has kept people so interested?

Schreifels puts it down to the fact that each project has a life of its own, and it’s the people who like those bands that discover and draw the connections to others. “Some people would be interested in talking to me about Rival Schools and not really so much Quicksand, or more interested in my solo stuff. Usually people who are into my solo stuff are aware of at least one other band that I’ve done,” he says. “Once you get past that level, you see that there’s a story and there’s something else to pay attention to. It’s not to say that there’s a gigantic interest, but it’s something [that’s created] a conversation and a dialogue between me and a bunch of people out in the world that I don’t know.”

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arts frontline

free stuff email: freestuff@thebrag.com

arts, theatre and film news... what's goin' on around town and more...

five minutes WITH EMBER

FLAME

to expect from 34B’s upcoming evening of delightful debauchery.

How did you start performing?

I did a performance course with a performer and teacher from San Francisco named Vixen Noir, and later joined a workshop she ran with Glitta Supernova, one of Sydney’s own performance artist legends. I was a writer but I had a corporate desk job, and working with such talented artists inspired me to live a bigger, bolder and more creative life. Plus I was a frustrated dancer and a big show-off.

R

What is it that you think you ‘uncover about society’?

Each show I find something new. The ‘iBabe’ was about our addiction to technology and how disconnected we’re getting from ourselves and each other, the ‘Corporate Jungle’ was about the soulless conformity of the 9–5 existence, and my Soviet Spy act is about how hard it is to find a guy in Sydney!

Who is your favourite character to embody?

At the moment it’s the former Soviet spy trying to find a husband in Sydney. She’s the selfproclaimed perfect woman and is such a bad ass, so she’s the opposite of me.

What is your favourite song to dance to?

And what’s the sexiest song ever written?

You can’t beat Madonna’s ‘Get Into The Groove’! I also love almost anything by Roisin Murphy and Robyn. ‘Mystify’ by INXS is pretty sexy, and Chet Faker’s voice makes me want to undress.

What can we expect from ‘Good Girls Gone Bad’?

Glamazon Holly J’aDoll will wow you with her wicked shimmy, Lauren La Rouge combines Marilyn Monroe’s glamour with the mouth of a sailor, and Baby Blue Bergman is so beautiful and haughty you don’t realise what a minx she is. Frankie Faux embodies both wild child and 1950s pinup model perfectly, and Heidi Hoops is one incredibly wicked hip-swivelling talent.

What: 34B Burlesque’s Good Girls Gone Bad Where: QBar When: Friday September 14 More: Tickets from qbar.iwannaticket.com.au

some of Sydney’s busiest public spaces into breathtaking destinations. This year, let your ears experience the hustle and bustle of urban Istanbul, saunter through faux-gold walkways, and run the thug life with bronze-covered street kids.

Featuring Caroline Rothwell’s work curated by Vi Girgis and Adam Porter, artists Diego Bonnetto and Tega Brain, and Turkish artist Refik Anadol among many others, make sure you’re one of the 100,000 visitors liable to attend this year. Art & About will run until October 21, but you can catch the laneway fun until the end of January.

Four everyday suburban dudes form an unofficial neighbourhood watch as an excuse to have a night off from their everyday lives.

But after accidentally discovering an alien invasion, they wind up fighting to save their ‘hood with beers, guns, and a mysterious weapon. Featuring comedy kings Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade – and co-written

by Seth Rogen – The Watch hits cinemas on September 13. To score one of the 15 double passes we have to give away, tell us the name of the movie Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn last starred in together.

LEVINS’ DINER

So you’ve been DJing around the traps for a bunch of years, as Sleater Brockman, Levins, and part of Ro Sham Bo. So you’ve run a bunch of awesome club nights, started a Diplo-endorsed initiative for underprivileged youth (Heaps Decent), and hosted regular radio shows on FBi. So you turned to your babein’ girlfriend and said, ‘Let’s start a restaurant’ – then you both open The Dip at Goodgod Small Club and get totally engaged. So you’re Andrew Levins, and your life basically rules right now. The next logical step? Publish a cookbook called Diner, featuring all your favourite recipes – hot dogs, burgers, nachos, desserts, and a guide to slow cooking – with a foreward from Diplo. Natch. If you go to his book launch on September 19 at The Dip, Levins' might even write his name in your copy; if you don’t, we’ve got three to give away. To go in the running, tell us something else that Levins is known for. others have contributed works. Start saving your pennies and head down to The Standard from 6pm on October 4 to score some sweet art while supporting a super cause. Hit up the Facebook event page for more info.

FINE AND DENDY

DINORAWR

Last week someone in our office said, “Dinosaurs are, like, the new wolves or something”.

Though I’m pretty sure he was referring to names of indie rock bands, the sentiment still stands for the art world – which means it’s the perfect time to take a peek at Dinosaur Petting Zoo Goes Rogue, an experiential theatre show featuring a large-scale cast of dino-puppets brought to life with sophisticated machinery (omg animatronics). The show takes a tour through prehistoric Australia, with up-to-date info provided by experts and fossil specialists. Little kids (or, umm, big kids) can go along and touch the tactile critters in their majestic, lifelike surrounds. There’ll even be a battle between a T-Rex and Australia’s Apex predator, the Australovenator. The Petting Zoo will be performed at Carriageworks for one week only, from September 24–29, before being whisked off to impress city slickers on Broadway. carriageworks.com.au.

GRIFFIN 2013

Silly season starts earlier and earlier in Theatreland, with the 2013 season launches kicking off this week. First off the starting blocks was Griffin Theatre, with Artistic Director Sam Strong’s final season for the company.

It is, as he says, a year of big, meaty ideas.

Quite literally: our hot pick for the main stage season is Melissa Bubnic’s Patrick White Award-winning play Beached, about a morbidly obese 21-year-old who is trying to find salvation and possibly love at the hands of a reality TV crew. If tried and tested is more your flavour, you’ll be thrilled that Sam Strong will return to Sydney at the end of the year to direct the 1972 classic The Floating World by John Romeril, about a WWII vet who gets on a cruise ship to Japan and is steadily overwhelmed by traumatic memories. The indie season is also dishing up tasty numbers, with this year’s Griffin Award-winner Vivienne Walshe and queen-ofkook Lally Katz amongst the offerings. Their subscription packages are pretty sweet and cheap, too, so check out the full deets online: griffintheatre.com.au 20 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

HOMEBAKED COMEDY

Are your favourite festivals lacking in hilarity? Do indie bands just take themselves too damned seriously? Homebake has heard your cries, and is hooking up with the Sydney Comedy Festival to bring back the Homebake Comedy Stage for 2012. They’ve just unveiled the cracker first lineup, featuring triple j’s Tom Ballard, Heath “Chopper” Franklin, podcast superstar Mel Buttle, Benny “The Human Jukebox” Davis, winners of the Melbourne Comedy Festival Newcomer Award Ronny Chieng and Matt Okine, and many more.

It’s shaping up to be a killer day of music, film, comedy and arts, and you can still grab tickets to Homebake: The Global Edition, which will be taking over The Domain on December 8. Check out homebake.com.au for all the details.

ART, OUT & ABOUT

From September 21, sections of George Street will be transformed in to a temporary outdoor art installation as part of Art & About Sydney.

Since 2007, City Spaces curators and architects have been lending their creative vision to reinvent

One of our favourite Sydney cinemas is back – and awesomer than ever. After months of renovations Dendy Newtown will celebrate the completion of three refurbished cinemas and six brand-spanking new ones with a ten-day campaign leading up to their opening party, the Australian premiere of The Intouchables on September 27. Keen patrons will have the chance to kick-start the celebrations by trialing the new screens (as well as having the chance to win tickets to The Intouchables premiere) simply by getting social media savvy or visiting local haunts around Newtown. The Dendy Lounge, opening October 4, will bring something swanky to the cultural icon, with an upscale viewing experience that will include priority ticketing, leather recliners and an exclusive bar. With a new seasonal tapas menu available, we say bring on the cult screenings, popcorn and vanilla bean choc tops. dendy.com.au

OTHER WORLDS

Love to have a bit of a sticky beak at celebrities?

Here’s a chance to see your favourite local music acts up close and personal at Mart Gallery. Other Worlds is a photographic exhibition by portrait snapper Angelo Kehagias, who made his mark on the Sydney scene with his shots of Mercy Arms. For his new show, he’s captured heaps of local music stars, such as Washington, The Temper Trap, The Jezebels, Kate Miller-Heidke and Julia Stone. His dreamy, soft-lit work regularly features in online music mag Groupie, who’s partnered with Mart to present the show. In other words, it’s an exhibition made in Australian art and music heaven. Other Worlds opens October 4 from 6–8pm at Gallery 2010 in Surry Hills. Pop by martgallery.com.au for exhibition opening hours.

SEA IS FOR CHANGE

Lo-Fi Collective and the crew at Shanghai Charlie’s Tattoo Parlour present Sea Is For Change, a group exhibition curated by Sydney tattoo artist Toby Gawler. The show features work by some of Australia’s best tattooists and artists who have each donated a piece to be sold. All proceeds are being donated to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to further their work conserving and protecting ocean wildlife and habitats. Josh Roelink, Clare Hampshire, Mimsy Gleeson, Amanda Cain and many

Teho Ropeyarn

PRIME CUTS

Primavera – the MCA’s annual exhibition for Australian artists aged 35 and under – has announced its lineup for 2012. Curated by Anna Davis, the 21st incarnation of the show brings together the work of seven young artists from around the country: Dion Beasley (NT), Benjamin Foster (WA), Anastasia Klose (VIC), Todd McMillan (NSW), Kate Mitchell (NSW), Teho Ropeyan (QLD) and Justine Varga (NSW). While Mitchell hand counted 11,109 unshelled peanuts – one for every day she’s been alive running up to the exhibition – Foster tried to teach a computer to draw like a person. Other nifty, innovative works include Varga’s minute-detail still lives of her everyday environment, and Ropeyarn’s totemic animals and landscapes inspired by his Injinoo community forefathers. Primavera 2012 launches at Level 1 South Gallery on October 4. Details at mca.com.au.

Xxx

aucous redhead Ember Flame, winner of last year’s Miss Burlesque NSW, is back from a serious stint in the Big Apple and is ready to combine her poetic prose with her scintillating saunter at the next Good Girls Gone Bad at 34B Burlesque. Joining her in the wild, wanton and lascivious evening will be diabolical debutantes Frankie Faux, Maple Rose, Lauren La Rouge, Heidi Hoops, Holly J’aDoll and Baby Blue Bergman. Ms. Flame told us a bit about herself, her act, and what

How does poetry relate to burlesque?

They both require a good sense of rhythm and both are about storytelling. The first time I saw Vixen Noir she did an incredible poem about both coming into herself and coming in the orgasmic sense, before she started stripping.

As a writer, the combination of the two artforms seemed very natural and really appealed to me. I think neo-burlesque is a genre to which everyone can bring their unique talents. Some girls are fantastic singers or acrobats or can make spectacular costumes – I do my poetry or spoken word.

Describe your poetry/performance for us.

At Good Girls Gone Bad I will be a wayward fairytale princess delivering some shocking truths about sleeping beauties and their supposed Prince Charmings.

THE WATCH

THE WATCH

Ordinary Neighbourhood Heroes By Alicia Malone

B

ritish actor Richard Ayoade – best known for The IT Crowd and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – is calmly sipping a cup of tea. He’s reflecting on acting alongside comedy giants Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill in The Watch. “I think they learned a lot,” he says, deadpan. “Initially, they were intimidated. That’s fine. But once that settled down, I think they could treat it as the master class it became. I think it helped all of them grow.”

“He’s not kidding,” adds Ben Stiller, chuckling beside him.

He is kidding, of course. Richard is the newcomer in The Watch, an alien comedy written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who previously worked together on Pineapple Express), and directed by Akiva Schaffer, SNL writer and director of 2007’s Hot Rod. The all-star foursome play members of a local neighbourhood group who get more than they bargained for when they discover extraterrestrial activity in their quiet suburb.

“I’ve been a fan of all of them individually,” says Ayoade. “When you meet people like this you generally go, ‘Well, it’s not accidental that these people are in this situation.’

They’re consistently brilliant and work really hard at it. Obviously they have a natural talent but it was interesting to see how hard everyone worked, and how they wanted to make it matter.”

Stiller was impressed with how Ayoade handled himself in his first big film role. “I remember my first role in a movie and how nervous I was, and he’s being asked to bring a full performance and persona – that’s a tough situation to be in. I was blown away by the confidence that he had coming in. It was pretty incredible, actually.”

Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Richard Ayoade and Vince Vaughn in The Watch “That was blind terror,” admits Ayoade.

For the more seasoned cast members, the idea of an alien comedy appealed. “I liked that I hadn’t seen a genre mash quite like this,” says Vaughn. “The fun to me was treating the aliens as real but also being funny, and having the character stuff work as well.”

“The challenge of a movie like this is to create a tone where you can actually have it believable enough

Director Akiva Schaffer (right) on the set of The Watch

DIRECTOR AKIVA SCHAFFER He’s already responsible for the Justin Timberlake

‘Dick In A Box’ skit and won a Grammy for ‘I’m On A Boat’, but actor, director and Saturday Night Live

that you invest in the character and the story,” adds Stiller. “Any movie, any comedy, you want to invest in the characters. Even though it has aliens and action, I think people are going to be there to laugh, and hopefully that comes out of this real, character-based comedy that’s within this little, hyper-real situation.”

“These guys were very smart about making sure that when it’s supposed to be scary, it’s scary, and when it’s supposed to be

writer Akira Schaffer just got even cooler. After working with Andy Samberg, Danny McBride and Isla Fisher on Hot Rod and becoming an SNL staple, Schaffer has established himself in one of the leading comedy crews in Hollywood. He tells us a little bit about working on The Watch with some of the best comedic talent around.

funny, it’s funny.” says Hill of his fellow actors. “Honestly, I wanted to work with Ben and Vince. I had never worked with Vince before, and I remain a huge fan of his. I also knew I was planning on doing a bunch of dramas in a row, so I wanted to have a great time and really laugh hard with people who are more talented than I am.”

With four comedic actors improvising all at once, you might think it was competitive, but Hill says the mark

cool. Let’s get to work’.

Y’know, normal stuff. But as soon as they would be in front of the camera – I say, ‘Action’, I put on the headphones, and I look over – I’m like, ‘Holy shit. It’s a Vince Vaughn/Ben Stiller movie!’”

ON THE R-RATING

“The goal of the film was to be as naturalistic as possible in terms of them ON THE CAST “Obviously I was a huge fan just being able to talk freely of their movies. I would walk and be regular guys, so when the aliens come it’s into the room and be like, like, this is the real world ‘I’ve hung out with these guys. I know them. I’ll shake and now there are aliens.

The R-rating felt really their hand.’ So I’ll walk on set and say, ‘Hey guys, how important to me in that way, because if real people see was your morning? Okay

ON ALIENS

“Probably the first Alien is my favourite. The ones I watched were Alien, Aliens, Close Encounters, ET, and then I watched the new Star Trek a few times because I felt that in modern times they’ve been the best sci-fi genre movies. Part of why I like the idea of [The Watch] is because most comedies have to be shot kind of the same, but I like that I got to do something more interesting. It was nice to get to do that in a movie where I’m not restricted.”

Stiller says part of the secret is that they each have their individual comedic strengths and know how to play to them. “I enjoy all these guys.

They’re all different. Jonah has an incredible confidence in his work that really serves him well. Vince has a unique mind and persona that he expresses in his work, and his improvisation is always surprising because you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth, and what the attitude is going to be. And Richard? Well…” he says, laughing.

“Richard is British.”

What: The Watch When: In cinemas September 13

S AY W EA IV G

WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW H

an alien they’re going to be like, ‘Wow, what the fuck!’

It’s part of what I like.”

of a great improviser is knowing when to let others shine. “You can tell when it’s someone else’s moment, so you sit back and smile and watch them kill it. I feel that’s a skill in itself. If you see that someone has got something special in a moment, you would be crazy to try and kill that. It’s like, ‘Oh man, Vince Vaughn is right in front of me’ or ‘Ben Stiller is right in front of me, and they’re going off on something, and they clearly have an understanding of why it’s interesting and what they’re about to say. I’m going to sit back and watch because it’s going to be great.’ Whatever the impulse to cut them off and go for my own thing, I would just never do that.”

ow many Taiwanese blockbusters have you seen lately? If your answer is none, shame on you!

Don’t stress too much, though – you can change that with Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale, which comes out on September 13. It’s an epic tale set during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan when indigenous Seediq people were forced to abandon their traditional way of life (but managed to organise a mega rebellion). Directed by Wei Te-Sheng and produced by John Woo (Mission: Impossible II, Paycheck), Warriors has all the elements of a historical action flick: ancient warfare, lots of blood, cruel invaders and fallen heroes.

WIN!

We’ve got five double passes up for grabs. To get your hands on one email freestuff@ thebrag.com and tell us what the phrase “Seediq Bale” means in English.

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 21

Dave Hughes [COMEDY] Hughesy Loses It By Dijana Kumurdian

“I

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi [FILM] Love Your Work By Dijana Kumurdian

I

t began as a story about sushi, but David Gelb’s documentary about 85-year-old sushi chef Jiro Ono quickly became a story about a man, his family, and an unyielding desire for perfection. Gelb spent two months with the three Michelin star master, whose determination and commitment to his craft had Japan declare him a national treasure. He was shooting Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, a film centring on the legendary culinarian and his ten-seating sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro.

“I thought that perhaps the film would be about a number of different sushi chefs,” Gelb says.

“But whenever I would ask who was the best sushi chef in the world, everybody told me that I had to go to Jiro’s restaurant to really understand what true sushi is all about. I was blown away by how delicious it was, but was also incredibly impressed with Jiro’s personality, his philosophy, and his work ethic.”

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A meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro costs upwards of $300 and has foodies from all over the world travelling to the tiny, hidden restaurant. Gelb was struck by Jiro’s commitment to his work, which deeply affected the way he and his editor approached the project. “Jiro is a guy who repeats the same thing every day, always striving for improvement. He’s definitely his harshest critic, always very honestly judging his own work. In the process of making the movie, we really took that to heart. This kind of ruthlessness with your own work, and always trying to improve, is the same thing that Jiro does, I think. So we kept rebuilding the movie in various ways until it was truly working, and I continue to try to improve in everything that I do in the same way that he does. I think Jiro’s philosophy translates to everything, not just sushi.”

Gelb’s film has been lauded for its cinematic style and an attention to detail that verges on an almost food-porn aesthetic, a quality not

typically expected of documentaries. “I love the BBC series Planet Earth,” he explains, “and I always kind of hoped that there’d be a way to shoot a documentary about other things in that same kind of beautiful style, with fantastic music, and have a very cinematic feeling to it. I wanted to apply all of that to my films.”

That Gelb’s filmmaking echoes Jiro’s focus is no accident. “We use very shallow depth of field at times, so the sushi looks kind of pornographic. Shooting things in slow motion brings the audience into a feeling and into a place: it creates a beautiful visual mood.

Maybe Jiro kind of sees things in slow motion because he’s such a master at what he does.

It draws you into Jiro’s perspective, this kind of romantic perspective of making sushi.”

knew people were struggling to lead their lives,” Dave Hughes says of his recent year-long absence from stand up comedy.

“They didn’t know what to do without me, so I realised just how important I am to society.”

He’s returning to the stage this month with the cheekily named ‘Comeback Tour’, to recount to us in signature drawl just what’s been grinding his gears. “You don’t know what to be angry about unless someone directs you to a proper outlet,” he jokes. “So I decided that I definitely had to get back on stage and make sure that people knew how wrong society was.”

Hughesy has been kicking around the Australian comedy scene for a long time: he’s a veteran of 15 consecutive Melbourne International Comedy Festivals (last year missing it for the first time since 1996), the host of a popular breakfast show on Melbourne’s Nova 100 and a regular on Channel Ten’s The Project. But stand up comedy, he tells me, has always

been his favourite medium. “I first thought I was funny when I was about 15. I was a quiet sort of kid, I wasn’t an extrovert. I distinctly remember a year 11 Religious Education class, where everyone had to do a speech. I hadn’t written a speech, so I just opened a book and I just started talking – and the class just lost it.

I remember at that moment thinking, ‘You know what? I could be a comedian.’ The teacher failed me, but what he actually did was put me on the path to success.”

Comedy also led Hughesy to meet his wife of six years, and their two young children have provided him with a slew of new material for the tour. “Well, basically since I started doing shows I’ve become a parent, and I’ve realised that children are evil,” he says. “The other morning I was getting up to go to work at four o’clock in the morning and my wife told me to be quiet ‘cause I might wake the kids. The fact that I’d had three hours sleep and they’d already had ten… I think me waking them would mean maybe they’d be a little bit tired for their day of finger painting. So I’ve realised that with this population boom, we’re all doomed. [In my show] I’ll talk a lot about how my own children are the antichrist and that I’m learning to deal with that. I’ve got a three year-old, a one yearold, and we’re having another one in January – so I’ve basically just been invaded by unwanted arrivals. It’s amazing how fertile I am – the strike rate’s extraordinary,” he laughs. “I should win an award for it.”

Years spent on festival lineups have seen Hughesy meet a score of famous comics, from Will Ferrell to Russell Brand, but interviewing the Dalai Lama, he says, was the most sobering experience. “I was chuffed. I was a big fan of the Buddhist way of life – I mean, obviously I’m not a monk, but I like the way they think and the fact that it’s all about living in the moment and accepting everything that happens. And that’s the easiest and the best way to live. So when the Dalai Lama looked into my eyes and said that I had crazy eyes I thought that was a compliment. I thought, ‘He’s seen a lot and he’s seemed to notice my eyes, which is a bit special.’ At least I think that’s what he meant. Maybe he just thought I was insane – I don’t know.”

The film’s soundtrack is just as significant stylistically. Gelb avoided “the obvious choice” of traditional Japanese music, instead complementing Jiro’s masterful skill and elegant dishes with the work of accomplished classical composers. “Jiro is the master of sushi, and I felt we should use some classical masters that everybody in the world is familiar with – like Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Bach – and not go for the most obvious solution.

Phillip Glass especially is amazing, because his music mirrors Jiro’s philosophy.”

Jiro’s sons have long trained in their father’s craft, but retirement seems unlikely. “I think Jiro will keep making sushi until he’s physically unable to; he has no intention of stopping. In the film he says that ‘maybe if the customers complain that he looks to old’ then he’ll quit, but I don’t think that he’ll ever stop. He’s 86 years old and he says that he’s just getting the hang of it.”

What: Dave Hughes’ Comeback Tour Where: The Enmore Theatre When: Saturday September 15, 7pm and 9.30pm More: ticketek.com.au

What: Jiro Dreams Of Sushi is out on DVD September 20

Beasts Of The Southern Wild [FILM] Grassroots By Dee Jefferson

Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy in Beasts Of The Southern Wild

connection to what was going on in New Orleans, and so I went there with the script – and there was a synergy that happened.

People were very moved by the story and wanted to be involved in it, and this community kind of grew up around the making of that film, a whole band of outsiders. [It became] this community art project that was really kind of defiant and was this real adventure.”

Zeitlin’s producers (who work with him under the collective banner ‘Court 13’) had been involved in various capacities with Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, where they picked up organisational strategies that transferred over into film production. “We were interested in making these very grassroots types of films where the cast is all non-professional and it’s all local. They took a lot of the stuff that they learned about how to do grassroots organising: the way that you canvas and get the word out and get people involved.”

T

he biggest buzz at Sundance this year was generated by an ultra low-budget slice of magical realism called Beasts Of The Southern Wild, set on the fringes of a semi-submerged southern-Louisiana bayou and revolving around a six-year-old called Hushpuppy and her alcoholic single father, Wink. Besides taking out the Grand Jury and Cinematography prizes at Sundance, the film went on to win the Camera D’Or at Cannes, and survived the critical hype to take a healthy (for an indie art-house) $10 million

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at the US box office alone – four or five times its budget.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild started as a short narrative about the afterlife, but took on a new resonance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “I was in Europe looking for a place to make the film when the storm happened, and I was calling my friends over there and making sure they were okay,” recalls writer-director Benh Zeitlin. “It was a very different story [originally], but I just sort of realised there was a possible

The result was Glory At Sea, an award-winning 25-minute drama that prefigures Beasts Of The Southern Wild’s narrative, themes, aesthetic and production strategy. “[Glory At Sea] was much more about [Hurricane Katrina]. There was a reaction [in America] that somehow New Orleans brought that on itself by being a sinful place, which I wanted to address.

[Beasts Of The Southern Wild] is not as much about that. This film is much more about the future, and looking into what it’s like to survive in a place that’s in jeopardy, and a place that’s disappearing under your feet.”

In Beasts, which was co-written by Zeitlin’s childhood friend Lucy Alibar and loosely based on her play Juicy And Delicious, Hushpuppy and her father are part of a small band of outsiders who are clinging onto an off-the-grid way of life, literally on the fringes of civilisation, as the sea encroaches on their land, storms threaten to flood their home, and the authorities are trying to evacuate them beyond the levee. “We wanted to put the audience in the position of feeling like they want [Hushpuppy and Wink] to evacuate – they want to get her out of there,” Zeitlin admits, “and then try and go through the trajectory of realising that, you know, this is where she belongs, and she should stay.”

Born and raised in the New York borough of Queens, Zeitlin visited New Orleans for the first time when he was 13 or 14 years old, and fell in love immediately. “[Beasts] is very much for me about the things about that place that really move me and inspire me,” he says.

“There’s a really adventurous spirit down there; there’s a toughness and a fearlessness, a braveness to the culture, that you have to have in order to live in a place that’s so tenuous. The threats are so tangible, and so you have a very vibrant and brave culture that’s very joyous in spite of all the tragedy that’s happened.”

What: Beasts Of The Southern Wild When: In cinemas from September 13

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 23

Arts Snap

Film & Theatre Reviews

At the heart of the arts Where you went last week...

Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.

joining him and his incredibly middleclass parents Jackie and Tom (Wendy Strehlow and Andrew MacFarlane) for dinner. It takes about 15 minutes before a clash of ideology is underway, with Sarah’s dedication to her craft ramming up against Tom’s hardened economic rationalism.

He doesn’t think artists can affect change.

She proves him wrong, in the most devastatingly, hilariously, destructive way.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild ■ Film

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD In cinemas September 13

PICS :: PX

mart presents name that song!

With Hurricane Isaac winding towards New Orleans, it’s a poignant time to take in this post-apocalyptic swamp tale. Sure, Obama wouldn't have abandoned the Big Easy like George W. did, but the questions Katrina raised seven years ago are no less relevant at the screening today. How should a government deal with people displaced by rising sea levels? Should we eventually give up on seemingly doomed land? Are cute kids still cute after Armageddon hits?

30:08:12 :: Gallery 2010 :: 69 Reservoir St Surry Hills

beyond the last sky

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Writer/director Benh Zeitlin sets up a convincing world in which to explore these issues. It’s set in the bayou, after the polar ice caps have melted, on an isolated isle off the Mississippi coast known to locals as “The Bathtub”. Inhabited by a motley crew of moonshine swiggers, banjo players and fried gator eaters, the Bathtub is essentially uninhabitable, but folks don’t want to leave because it’s their home, and because Kevin Costner hasn’t shown up to scare them off with his gills.

31:08:12 :: Australian Centre Of Photography :: 257 Oxford St Paddington

Six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) is learning about the world as it sinks under her muddy gumboots. Her father Wink (Dwight Henry) tries his best to bring her up solo, despite his alcoholism, heart condition and total detachment from reality. He can’t give her the maternal affection she craves, but he can teach her to look after herself – starting with his constant demand, “Show me your guns”. The sight of a little kid flexing her biceps with all her might means this film can’t really lose its audience, ever.

jurassic lounge launch

PICS :: TL

Hushpuppy’s accompanying voiceover has a lyricism that’s pure Terrence Malick, and in combination with the equally familiar “floaty nature photography”, it creates a philosophical atmosphere that says, “Hey, no matter what happens, ants are gonna keep crawling on leaves, bits of dust are gonna fly through the air, and people will keep looking wistfully into the middledistance”. It’s quite a comforting prism through which to deal with the apocalypse.

Cormac McCarthy, take note.

28:08:12 :: The Australian Museum :: 6 College St Sydney

Arts Exposed What's in our diary...

Passout by Jesse Willesee The Backroom, Potts Point Thursday September 13 Local artrepreneur Jesse Willesee and his troupe of troublemakers are launching a new show this week, hot on the heels of the last fashioninfused instalment of Seven Hundred Photos. It’s called Passout: The Art Of Getting Fall-down Drunk, and will feature Willesee’s trademark mix of interactive performance and fashion-laced exhibition.

Passout by Jesse Willesee Expect installations of passedout models, live photo shoots, and photographs of party-napping punters. Bring your camera and lipstick (and/or sweet hair cut) ‘cause the invite says you can snap the models, pose with them, and even doodle on their faces with your makeup. Buzz Kull and New Brutalists provide the soundtrack, and Tiger beer and vodka and cherry Kool Aid provide the refreshment. jessewillesee.tumblr.com 24 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

The story gets a touch swampy in act three, as Hushpuppy leaves the Bathtub to go on a series of discursive adventures, but by that stage the film has already triumphed. It’s ambitious, it pulls it off, and it even gets away with bad-CGI giant pigs.

Nikos Andronicos ■ Theatre

I WANT TO SLEEP WITH TOM STOPPARD Bondi Pavilion Theatre “I just don’t think that plays set in kitchens are real plays,” says Sarah, a character in a play, standing in a kitchen. It’s not accidental contradiction but intentional interrogation, and this Janus-faced device underpins the entire two-hour romp that is I Want To Sleep With Tom Stoppard.

Luke (Tom Stokes) is an actor in his twenties, and try as you might, it’s hard to shake comparisons with the play’s author, Toby Schmitz, who’s been getting around Australian stages pretty regularly for the last ten years. On a recent national tour, Luke’s shacked up with one of the older actresses in the company, Sarah (Caroline Brazier). Now they’re home, and despite his best efforts to the contrary, she’s

The action moves at a cracker pace with one-liners zinging all over the shop, but Leland Kean’s direction never really reaches the fever pitch of mania the script deserves. The set, an instantly recognisable bourgeois cut-out by Vanessa Hughes and Natalie Hughes, is catalogue-perfect. However, in the idiosyncratic Bondi Pavilion space, it hampers the smooth flow required by farce. It hardly registers, though, because the cast members are all so charming and so obviously relishing the chance to argue both for and against their chosen profession. Their enjoyment becomes our enjoyment, as does their final, quiet sadness.

Schmitz’s rendering of these characters – hideous though almost all of them are – is deeply sympathetic. He makes no apologies for caring about theatre, and neither do they. But it’s not just a play for theatre aficionados (though you’ll probably laugh at more of the jokes if you are). This is a play about anyone who ever had a dream that was taken away from them, and especially about those who decided to fight to get it back.

Rebecca Saffir ■ Comedy

BILL BAILEY QUALMPEDDLER Capitol Theatre, Wednesday September 5 Bill Bailey began Qualmpeddler by bounding on stage with the youthful frivolity of a comedian receiving his first big audience. The cheeky comic’s inexhaustible exuberance belies his cynicism, making for a hilarious tour through Bailey’s existential anxieties about contemporary life.

Bailey, known for his starring role in Black Books and regular appearances on QI, these days looks more like a big-time comic than an over-confident roadie. Mostly, he relates personal anecdotes, but he’s also noticeably boned up on Aussie current affairs and pop culture. Bailey quickly gets the audience on side with jabs at “famous-forno-reason” Lara Bingle, and by stirring the crowd into a collective jazz jam. His jaunty stage presence and relatable familiarity make his set feel like a night spent with your favourite, slightly soused dinner party companion. The political commentary was biting without gloom: he pulls references from shameless US campaigning, British government antics and even the Gillard chronicles, his light-hearted touch often as simple as comparing conservatives to porridge.

As expected, a big part of the show featured his trademark musical mashups, deconstruction of language and pop-culture throwbacks. At times it felt like Bailey was playing songs for the sake of it, but the exotic instruments – like a saz, a bouzouki and a foghorn – definitely added a sense of playfulness. Highlights include his trance remix of a church organ song, and his reggae/dubstep interpretation of Downton Abbey’s ‘My Mother Is An Ox’.

Bailey has charm and intellect, with a circumlocutory element that makes any rambling observation a hilarious spoof, the main victims being Australian accents and the internet generation. And although relying largely on the spoken word, Bailey’s physicality is well timed: he jumps, crouches, shakes his fist and points at the crowd like a medieval jester. The show lasted for just under two hours, and was definitely worth the cost, particularly if you’re already a fan.

Antigone Anagnostellis

See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews

Film & Theatre Reviews Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.

■ Film

WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW: SEEDIQ BALE

ASON IN A L D S E 2012 REG NTRE AS PART OF CE ENTS SEYMOUR 012 PRES 2 E G IN R SYDNEY F

Warriors Of The Rainbow

“Callinan is clever, intelligent and terrifically talented” THE AGE

In selected cinemas from September 13 If you’d like to watch ten thousand guys get beheaded, slashed, stabbed, shot, speared, hung, cuddled – wait, sorry – bayonetted, blown up, torn apart and beheaded again, this is the film for you.

I’ve never seen so many beheadings in a single sitting, and I’ve done my fair share of decapitation movie marathons.

This is like Sleepy Hollow meets the French Revolution. These aren’t Kill Billstyle beheadings with theatrical bloodspurts either, because Seediq Bale is just too busy moving on to the next beheading to wait around and watch the last stump get its gush on.

It’s pretty overwhelming, partly because the film has been condensed from its original 4 hours 35 minutes down to 2 hours 35 for its US and Australian releases. That’s two hours that got cut (possibly all the non-beheading bits).

But despite the condensation, there’s still a story in there. It’s the classic tale of a community of beleaguered locals (in this case, the mountain tribespeople of Taiwan), who are ruled with an iron fist by their colonial oppressors (here the Japanese), who then grow some balls and rebel until everyone’s dead.

Or, at least, very dirty. It’s based on a real conflict that took place in 1930 in Wushe, central Taiwan.

Led by their washed-up chief Mona Rudao (the Mickey Rourke-esque Lin Ching-Tai), the Seediq people of the Qilai Mountains finally get jack of the Japanese after 25 years of carrying logs up and down a hill with no suitable footwear. The catalyst for the uprising

isn’t much more than, “Damn, are we sick of carrying these logs!” and then it’s on for several hours of nonstop machete-versus-head partytime. The take-home seems to be, “You’re better off dead than licking someone’s boots, and if you’re going to die, make sure it’s because someone cuts your head off with a large knife”. Solid message, well executed.

This review has been unfairly flippant about what is not only the most expensive Taiwanese movie ever made, but also a John Woo production with talented director Wei Te-Sheng at the helm. The flippancy has been provoked by the total familiarity of the narrative: it’s another of history’s “down with the oppressor” stories, and there are no surprises in the plot department. But hey, it’s the Taiwanese version, they’re entitled to make it, and it’s an amazingly produced, wonderfully violent piece of filmmaking that has given me an urge to chop some people up. I mean, I’m fine.

Nikos Andronicos

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Street Level with The Sydney Fringe Mystery Bus

A

fter selling out at last year’s festival, The Mystery Bus is back at Sydney Fringe.

Over six days, the Bus picks up enigma-chasers from The Enmore Theatre and transports them to a sure-to-be-wild undisclosed location, where they’ll be wooed and wowed by a carefully selected day (or night) of entertainment.

This year the Bus opened with the erotic jaunt XXX, a night of lavish costumes with a taste for the city’s underbelly. Still to come are Cinematic Slap, whose clues allude to more subdued artistic expression (including VHS tapes and a taxidermy fox), derby-inspired voyage Roll Em Girls, Blind Tiger, which takes mystery-seekers through a flashback to the prohibition era, and more.

How did the Mystery Bus start? Who’s involved in it?

We wanted to create a fun and accessible way to showcase Sydney’s underground fringe arts scene. Think of it as blind, cultural speed dating with a twist. There are four key producers – we all met on a bus actually, and we share a wide range of talents, from production to burlesque to puppetry. A varied bunch of producers, venues and artists jump on board to create each unique night.

How do you choose the events?

They need to represent Fringe and the Inner West, and they need to offer something different, exciting and intimate for audiences. It’s about showcasing strong cultures that bubble away in the underbelly.

What was your favourite part of last year’s Mystery Bus? The raid at the speakeasy was something to remember, and Jay Katz and Miss Death’s commentary was gold.

The first night was adults only. Just how saucy did it get?

What goes on tour, stays on tour.

Can you give us some more cryptic clues about what to expect?

Follow us on Facebook and our blog to get any extra hints. Pay attention to the names of the night and use your clues as a guide for what to wear. Be adventurous and expect the unexpected – a good mystery always keeps you guessing.

The Bus tours the cultural quirks of the Inner West. What do you think is special about this part of Sydney?

The Inner West has a thriving and exciting arts scene that is exploding at the seams – it’s the spaces, the artists and the community that keep it strong, and if you’re not from around these parts you may never know it’s there.

What: The Mystery Bus for Sydney Fringe Where: Departing from The Enmore Theatre then heading to a mystery location When: Over six days and nights until September 29 More: For dates, times and tickets head to 2012.sydneyfringe.com BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 25

Album Reviews What's been crossing our ears this week...

ALBUM OF THE WEEK Sun Matador

Sun is a complete departure for Chan Marshall, but the destination at the end of it all is close to perfection.

I’ve always had this romantic vision of Chan Marshall, hunched over an acoustic guitar or a dusty, beaten-up piano, pouring her heart out to the empty night over a glass of red wine. Her body of work up until now has always felt like an anguished and sometimes torturous confessional; a slurred intimation shared at a bar in the early hours of the morning. But during the writing process for her ninth album Sun, an observation from a friend that her new songs were “like depressing old Cat Power” stopped Marshall writing for eight months. And when she came back, she was armed with a new resolve and a synthesiser.

AMANDA PALMER Theatre Is Evil 8 Ft. Records/Inertia It’s been only a year and a half since Amanda “Fucking” Palmer of The Dresden Dolls released her second solo effort, Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under – a record themed around her travels through Australia. On the made-in-Melbourne Theatre Is Evil, she’s teamed with The Grand Theft Orchestra to offer a follow-up that’s all whistles and no whimper.

Less angular than her Ben Foldsproduced debut, Theatre Is Evil boasts the production prowess of John Congleton (Modest Mouse, St Vincent). The record has taken cues from Depeche Mode and Talk Talk, as Palmer has exchanged honky-tonk for horns, and employs heavyweight synths as well as lush, intricate string arrangements. It opens with a rant of clipped German on a megaphone, performed by cult “Kamikaze-Cabaret” Melbourne-based artist, Meow Meow.

“These last few years of songwriting are definitely about coming to terms with losing things... losing people, places, ideas, lovers,” Palmer has said of the record. Songs that ballast this theme are ‘Grown Man Cry’ (which could be deciphered as Palmer’s response to Depeche’s ‘Enjoy The Silence’) and ‘Lost’, which is a gutsy, slap-back paean, and delivers even more of a riot than ‘Leeds United’ did on her first LP. She has also revealed a certain flair for combining the mystical with the unidealised; there is an otherworldly tension coursing throughout the 15-track release (see ‘Trout Heart Replica’ and ‘The Bed Song’), as the listener is enticed into the unrefined stomping grounds of Palmer’s sonic amble.

Theatre Is Evil is an emblem of how Palmer can mock as well as move; it is a synth-laden, sentient release that amounts to one hell of a ride.

Elle Kennard

Sun is a predominantly electronic record, and it’s Cat Power’s most confident album to date. Gone are the pervasive themes of loneliness and the alcohol-soaked melancholia that drifted around The Greatest (2006) and You Are Free (2003); this album is a richer, brighter effort, bubbling with a quiet inner-confidence.

Musically, Marshall’s adeptness for production, along with the skill of engineer Philippe Zdar, can be heard throughout. There are touches of big beat sequencing (‘Cherokee’), gritty hip hop drums (‘Sun’, ‘Peace And Love’), Krautrock (‘Manhattan’), and even instances of Auto-tune (‘3,6,9’). But it’s Marshall’s distinctly pained, sand-paper voice that is the most prominent studio weapon at use here. Around the swirling synthesised pulses and melodies, a multitude of vocal overdubs and layered melodies weave throughout every song, creating a resonant, contemporary feel. Lead

DINOSAUR JR.

THE RUBENS

I Bet On Sky Jagjaguwar

The Rubens Ivy League

If there were ever cause for complaint about Dinosaur Jr., it would be the absence of Lou Barlow. But that’s no longer an issue: I Bet On Sky is the band’s third record since they reintroduced bassist/singer Barlow and drummer Murph to the J Mascisled lineup in 2005. Their first output since 2009’s Farm – which for the most part had a bigger sound – I Bet On Sky returns to a time before Mascis was allowed to fully unleash his balls-out, guitar-solo fury.

I Bet On Sky isn’t a Bug-like grunge album, and it’s significantly more pared-back than Farm. It has a slacker sensibility that, I think, is perfectly timed for the beginning of our warmer seasons (an opinion undoubtedly informed by the fact that I first listened to it while driving to the beach). It has that kind of nostalgic, sun-soaked mid-‘90s atmosphere that you want from late-era Dinosaur Jr., with several points (like Barlow-written ‘Rude’ and ‘Pierce The Morning Rain’) taking it to a to climax with chugging guitars and upbeat drumming.

The most accomplished points of the album are the most spare, where Mascis’ skill with pop melody is bolstered by unfussy chord progressions and complementary simplified rhythms – ‘Stick A Toe In’, for instance, showcases Barlow’s bass playing and has Mascis crooning romantic hooks to almost balladic effect. The album closer, six-and-a-half-minute-long ‘See It On Your Side’, pushes I Bet On Sky a little too far toward Mascisstyle epicry. Had it ended with ‘Recognition’, which features the vocals of Barlow and some serioussounding fills by Murph, Dinosaur Jr. would sound more like a band than they have in years.

Before such comparisons could do more harm than good – about three albums ago, let's say – the links between country New South Wales quartet The Rubens and Tennessee-bred Kings Of Leon would have come thick and fast.

Three brothers and a schoolboy chum turning out blues- and soultinged rock’n’roll with strong hooks and easily accessible choruses; it’s the type of thing that amateur press releases are made of. But where the Followill brothers’ early albums were a mess of influences caught between New York cool and down home hee haws, the debut from brothers Margin (Zaac, Elliott and Sam) and their pal Scott Baldwin is a tight and refined effort – there’s a clear mission statement, and their earworms burrow into your brain far quicker.

‘Lay It Down’, last year’s surprise infiltration into the triple j Hottest 100, sets the template for what to expect, and is just one of many songs suitable for high rotation.

Not to say that the album is ten more rehashes of one song, but the ingredients – dirty blues licks, thunderous drum beats, weeping organs – appear throughout in various guises.

Surprisingly sweet, I Bet On Sky is nostalgic, summertime fun.

Vocalist Sam Margin has a lot of inner turmoil to let out (at girls, guys, and society in general on opener ‘The Best We Got’, with the chorus lyrics, “They say these days are the best we’ve got / What a tragic thought”), and his deep, laconic croon is olde-worlde enough to make sense of the band’s sound.

If they can avoid the overexposure that befalls many young bands who’ve gotten a leg up from triple j, there are bright things in their future.

A solid debut of gritty, heartbreak soul, with more grooves than a 45-inch record.

Dijana Kumurdian

Mitch Alexander

For Woods Or Trail Independent Back in the day, a minibike was no more credible as a form of transport than a ball-bearing gun was as a weapon of force. Restricted in size, power and sonic volume, a minibike could never provide the cloak of integrity that a real motorbike offered. Still, a minibike was about having fun; the idea that riding a motorbike could assert one’s rugged character was as specious as smoking cigarettes for a fashion statement.

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On their debut album, For Woods Or Trail, Melbourne’s Minibikes aren’t making a bold and brash artistic statement; they are, however, creating pop music of a very reputable quality.

‘Kill To Feel’ is part slick West Coast pop formula, part Aleks And The Ramps oddball melody; ‘Tennis Clothes’ is the glittering summer pop song from The Someloves’ central casting; and ‘Oh Japan’ is so sweet and delicious it should come with a health warning. ‘I Should Have Known’ bounces into vision like a candy-coloured incarnation of Iggy Pop’s ‘Passenger’, ‘Top Brass’ stretches and strains with classic Californian attitude, and ‘Ooo Woo Hoo Hoo’ is stamped with the beauty of The Stems.

JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD Hypnotic Nights Warner

Beacon Kitsuné/Co-Op You know you’ve had a successful debut album when the entirety of your sophomore revolves around disenchantment with what you’ve made for yourself, and a yearning to return to some level of normalcy. There are countless cases of this littered throughout the music industry; bands crack the big time and then spend the next 24 months relentlessly touring the hell out of their album until they drop. Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club, it seems, are not immune.

After their 2010 LP Tourist History made the lads darlings of the indie music scene, they went on tour for close to three years. The toll that this took on the band is the inescapable theme of Beacon. Their bright-eyed naivety has been replaced with an acceptance of a new reality: that of the hotel room existence. This loneliness isn't just heard in Alex Trimble’s lyrics, but in the band’s music as well. Of course, there are still instances of the radio-friendly indie rock that enamoured so many, but it’s the moments when they move away from this that are Beacon’s most appealing.

Jeff The Brotherhood – brothers Jake (vox/Guitar) and Jamin (drums) Orrall – have long perfected the art of bottling the party vibe, and with Hypnotic Nights they've belted out yet another rocking album packed with melodic vocals, killer licks and dirty riffs – the perfect background to an ultimate summer.

The Bro’hood stand at the forefront of the ‘hey-we’ve-got-other-stuff-besidescountry’ Nashville DIY punk scene, and most of their six other LPs have been produced through their own label, Infinity Cat. This marks their first effort with a major label, and the first time The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach has joined them at the producer’s helm.

In Hypnotic Nights, they effortlessly lay out a bunch of solid house party jams. The first single off the album, ‘Sixpack’ ignites a craving for summer, with lyrics like “I’ve got a sixpack / And I don’t want to go back,” and “I wanna cool out / And get wasted.” The fun continues with the fast-paced ‘Staring At The Wall’ channelling The Ramones with gritty guitars, and the intense build of the sludgy ‘Wood Ox’.

There are more than a few nods to Talking Heads on the album (a fact bassist Kevin Baird freely admitted to in a recent interview). Tracks like ‘Wake Up’, ‘The World Is Watching’ and ‘Spring’ make use of Afrobeatinspired bass lines and guitar to great effect. But the most exciting songs on the album come when TDCC cast aside their favoured disco beat; ‘Pyramid’ is playful and cinematic, while ‘Sun’, the slowest song on the LP, with its funky bass and big brass melodies, is irresistible.

The stoner rock jam-out that features so heavily in their live shows is present in the heavy haze of ‘Dark Energy’, in the distorted guitars of anti-love song ‘Leave Me Out’, and notably on ‘Mystic Portal II’, which graces us with the trippy sound of the sitar and some of the hypnotic Krautrock drumming that pervades the album. A couple of unexpected highlights come from the ripper sax and guitar solos in the Eastern-tinged psychedelic ballad ‘Region Of Fire’, and the impressive eeriness of the droning, synth-laden Sabbath cover, ‘Changes’.

Beacon captures a band learning on the job, but there’s still enough good moments on this recording to keep things interesting.

Every beach party this summer will be resounding with the catchy hooks, fuzzy guitar and pounding drums of Hypnotic Nights.

Rick Warner

Anna Kennedy

On ‘Jude’, the mood turns from gladness to reflection, with a healthy dose of The Cars (and a dash of Young Charlatans if you’re lucky), while ‘Wires’ is replete with the type of hope for the future you get when you’ve immersed yourself in Orange Humble Band. After the title track opens up a yawning chasm of psychedelic space, ‘Emo Kids’ ends the album on an unexpectedly cravat-and-cocktaillounge note.

It’s a pleasure to imbibe quality pop music – and with For Woods Or Trail, Melbourne's Minibikes are dishing it out in spades.

Patrick Emery

Rick Warner

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK MINIBIKES

single ‘Ruin’ (the only song recorded with full band) and the joyous ten-minute arm-raiser ‘Nothin’ But Time’ (with help from Iggy Pop) are particularly special.

OFFICE MIXTAPE And here are the albums that have helped BRAG HQ get through the week...

MENOMENA - Moms PSY - Psy's Best 6th Part 1 ACTIVE CHILD - You Are All I See

FRENZAL RHOMB - Dick Sandwich THE STROKES - Angles

Cat Power photo by Jenni Li

CAT POWER

live reviews What we've been to see...

FREE PUSSY RIOT: DIE! DIE! DIE!, FAIT ACCOMPLI, BLOODS, THE RUMINATERS, SWEET TEETH, BEC AND BEN The Flinders Hotel Wednesday August 29

You’ve probably heard about Pussy Riot by now: the Russian feminist punk collective that saw three of its members cop a two-year prison sentence for staging a one-minute peaceful protest in a Moscow cathedral. For most it’s been an outrage, and for much of the arts and music community it’s gone even further, becoming a galvanising force and reminding artists worldwide that the ability to protest is a powerful one.

That force hit Sydney too, with a number of acts coming together to show their solidarity at The Flinders last week.

Early on, Bec And Ben impressed with stripped back, bluesy pop – think The Kills with less detached cool and more homespun charm. Sweet Teeth, on the other hand, somehow seemed even brattier than usual without a stage. And it was great, inspiring the beginnings of what would become a burgeoning dancefloor.

The Ruminaters, coming off the back of an Oxford Art Factory residency, impressed with psychedelic rhythm ‘n’ blues that somehow felt both fresh and nostalgic. The same could be said for Bloods, whose girl-group-meetsRamones pop punk found a brasher edge in the rough setup of Flinders Bar to great effect. Following them, Fait Accompli’s post-grunge took a little while to warm up, but seemed to win most of the room over by the end.

Wearing the brightly-coloured balaclavas that have come to symbolise Pussy Riot,

New Zealand’s Die! Die! Die! (pictured) headlined with a heaving, sweaty punk set that turned the small Flinders floor into celebratory chaos. Perhaps they were particularly inspired by Pussy Riot, or maybe the seemingly spontaneous, do-it-yourself organisation of the show brought out a different side of the band. In any case, it was a particularly memorable set by a band who already have a formidable live reputation.

Eastern vocal sounds are prominent, but modern soul features heavily as well, as do Latin fusion-style sounds. A complicated samba weaves its way into the concert. Nicki Wells’ voice soars far and beautifully clear, and she becomes a star in her own right. The Londoner’s vocal range is astonishing, moving between Eastern and European styles immaculately; her voice is truly deserved of the finest stages in the world.

Adam Lewis

Ashwin Srinivasan brings his subcontinental chanting-style vocal to the mix, and his skills on his range of flutes are quite amazing, switching from vocal to woodwind with barely a breath in between. Rahel, who some may know for her work with Gilles Peterson’s BBC Radio 1 show and recordings with Eric Lau, lends her soul/funk stylings to the evening, and takes the lead for a track or two. A surprise cameo appearance from the Melbourne based Lior brought a surprise cheer to the audience. Lior and Sawhney are both fans of each other, it seems.

NITIN SAWHNEY

Sydney Opera House Tuesday September 4 Unlike his lengthy and detailed compositions, Nitin Sawhney’s stage manner is brief and to the point. Barely has his band taken the stage that the music begins, cutting short the applause resonating through the Concert Hall. The British-Indian composer, producer, DJ and multi-instrumentalist takes a seat stage right with his acoustic guitar, and the band stretches out to his left: cello, four vocalists (one armed with a Bansuri flute) and drums, with a tabla and dholak player filling out the rhythm section.

So begin the layers of composition that originate from a simple repetitive string chord. The snare crackles in, the plucked cello strings enter a bassline, and the vocal harmonies start softly but quickly soar. We hear familiar songs from early in Nitin’s recording career, like ‘Sunset’ off his Prophesy album, but the show doesn’t linger on that old chill-out style for too long.

The tabla and guitar combination as encore was exactly what the crowd had hungered for, Nitin and his tabla player generating an incredible amount of sound, not to mention speed, between the two of them. The tabla sounds took everyone back into that trip hop, Eastern chill-out zone that Sawhney built his career on throughout the ‘90s, and his technical skill on the guitar was blazed into our minds.

Not too much seems to have changed in Sawhney’s approach to music in that time – the basic sounds and instruments he composes with are quite similar to his early work – but the arrangements and interest in diversity have matured as the artist has passed through the various stages of his career.

Tony Two Tone

triple j PRESENTS

LEAVE YOUR SOUL TO SCIENCE TOUR 2012

THE METRO FRIDAY 12TH OCTOBER

WITH SPECIAL GUEST

(THE GIN CLUB)

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

NEW ALBUM ‘LEAVE YOUR SOUL TO SCIENCE’ OUT SEPTEMBER 28 FOR ALL TICKET DETAILS GO TO SOMETHINGFORKATE.COM BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 27

Remedy More Than The Cure Since 1989 with Murray Engleheart

PURE NOISE

Reformed industrial noiseniks, Godflesh are set to headline next year’s Roadburn Festival in Holland, where they’ll be tearing a new one for everyone miles around by performing the album Pure in its entirety.

The band lineup for the event hasn’t played together in two decades, and as an added muscular bonus will feature Robert Hampson of Loop infamy. Godflesh also have a UK date coming up with Neurosis.

Swoon and swoon again.

GROUNDHOG DAY

Here at Remedy, we love The Groundhogs. Led by the legendary Tony “T.S.” McPhee (who’s the other, and we reckon more senior, godfather of British blues than the more-readily acknowledged John Mayall), our heroes began in the early ‘60s as blues nuts who landed dream gigs backing such greats as John Lee Hooker. By 1971’s masterpiece Split, they had morphed into an amped-up power trio to rival the very best in that genre. They kept on keeping on for many years until they finally called it quits, only to regroup a few years back. On September 18 they’re releasing Live At The Astoria, a live DVD shot in London during their 1988 tour for Hogs In Wolf’s Clothing. It’s also worth tracking down their Live At Leeds set, which had them an opening slot for The Stones, as well as much praise from Mr. Jagger himself for their efforts.

MORE BARK FOR THEIR BITE

Following up on the release late last year of The Mark Of Cain’s ‘Barkhammer’ is ‘Heart Of Stone’, the second offering from the forthcoming record, Songs Of The Third And Fifth, which is due out on November 2. Take it from us: Songs Of The Third And Fifth will floor you. It really is the outfit’s finest and most potent moment, which really is saying something. The brooding threesome will be touring nationally in 2013, prsented by Feel Presents.

www.feelpresents.com will have all the details in the coming months.

ANOTHER HARD ON

It’s so nice to have Peter ‘Blackie’ Black from The Hard Ons and Nunchukka Superfly back in action. Even better that he’s finally been able to finish his second solo effort, No Dangerous Gods In Tunnel.

SUNN NO)))

Gig guides are usually nothing out of the ordinary, but there was something special about Sunn O)))’s gig at the Warsaw in Brooklyn being plugged in the esteemed pages of The Wall Street Journal. Sadly, their October tour of these parts has been cancelled. Not happy.

NICK CAVE’S LAWLESS

The soundtrack to John Hillcoat’s movie Lawless is an interesting affair, with contributions from Willie “That’s The Shit That Killed Elvis” Nelson and an outfit called Mark Lanegan And The Bootleggers (which, apart from Lanegan, is obviously our St. Nick Cave – the man everyone wants as their dad – Warren Ellis, and fellow Bad Seed Martyn Casey).

The album is out this week.

50-YEAR HURRICANE

Another nod to The Rolling Stones’ half century in the game is a coming movie titled Crossfire Hurricane – which, you should know, is a line from ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. While their story may have been told too many times already, this one is apparently the gun version, and plots their course from being blues nuts to their massive free show in Hyde Park just days after Brian Jones’ death, to the infamous meltdown at Altamont, and beyond. The project is packed with previous unseen historical footage and was done with the approval and cooperation of the band.

No small feat that. It should be out in November.

The Mark Of Cain

ON THE TURNTABLE On the Remedy turntable is The Amboy Dukes’ Marriage On The Rocks and Tooth Fang And Claw, which show not only how great the formerly-wild, now archconservative man once was, but just how wigged-out to boot. While major volume and superhero levels of testosterone marked his commercial peak in the mid ‘70s – although we always thought that ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ was dumb plodding crap on par with ‘Smoke On The Water’ – you’d swear that Marriage was produced by Captain Beefheart, with its weird time signatures, acid eating, almost Zappaesque titles and blazing almost-free-jazz improv. However, Tooth Fang And Claw remains a personal fave and is perhaps his finest hour, period. Gloriously demented, it’s rock-warrior-fromthe-forest stuff that doubles as both an environmental lesson and a life motivation class (and it features the epic note sustainer, ‘Hibernation’, to boot).

TOUR AND INDUSTRY NEWS

Da Eel hit Canberra’s Basement on September 27, with Moth (VIC), Law Of The Tongue, Wretch and Throat Of Dirt, all for $10.

Citadel, the label that brought us such excellent acts as Died Pretty, The New Christs and Porcelain Bus, celebrates its 30th anniversary with a one-off run of showcase gigs over the weekend of October 26–28. Three of Citadel’s current roster will be featured: Perth’s DomNicks, Sydney’s Deniz Tek and Melbourne-based Penny Ikinger. They’ll be at the Sando on October 27 and Wollongong’s Patch on October 28.

In addition to their appearance at the now sold out Meredith Festival, Primal Scream will be at the Enmore on December 5.

Send stuff to remedy@ozemail.com.au by 6pm Wednesdays.

Pics to art@thebrag.com www.facebook.com/remedy4rock 28 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

Xxxx

Mother Eel hit the Valve Bar in Tempe from 12.30 in the arvo on September 22 in a huge day of metal, featuring The Mung (VIC), Tortured (ACT), Red Bee, Hell Itself, Whoretopsy (VIC), Infested Entrails, Festering Drippage, Lower Back Problems, Exekute, Dead-Life and To Engineer An Exorcist. It’ll only set you back $20.

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 29

snap sn ap up all night out all week . . .

sunset people party profile

maria minerva

PICS :: KC

It’s called: Sunset People It sounds like: Heaps of great local bands coming together for a Sunday afternoon of complete and utter musical debauchery.

Who’s playing? This week’s lineup includes Beef Jerk, Disgusting People and East River.

Sell it to us: $5 Bloody Marys, a plethora of great local bands, free entry.

Sundays are boring and depressing anywhere else. Join our Facebook group to keep up to date with Sunset’s killer weekly lineups.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Between your delicious Bloody Marys and schooners of Carlton Draught, I reckon you’ll remember most of it.

Crowd specs: Heaps of cool cats who like to live life in the fast lane.

Wallet damage: Free!

Where: The Hollywood Hotel / 2 Forster Street, Surry Hills When: Every Sunday, from 4pm

sunset people

PICS :: AM

30:08:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

spring-a-ling-a ding-dong-fling

PICS :: AM

02:09:12 :: Hollywood Hotel :: 2 Foster St Surry Hills 9281 2765

split seconds

PICS :: KC

01:09:12 :: Upstairs Beresford :: L1 354 Bourke St Surry Hills 83135000

cameras

PICS :: AM

31:08:12 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100

31:08:12 :: The Burdekin :: 2-4 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9331 3066 30 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

:: NOHMON ANWARYAR :: ANNA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER LEY MAR :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS PEACHY :: ROCKET ASH BROWN :: KATRINA CLARKE :: WEIJERS :: PEDRO XAVIER ::

snap sn ap

31:08:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700

brendan maclean

PICS :: PX

mum

PICS :: TP

up all night out all week . . .

blackchords

PICS :: AM

30:08:12 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9660 3100

collection of eclection party profile

It’s called: Collection Of Eclection

sures

PICS :: RW

01:09:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William Street Kings Cross 9331 9900

29:08:12 :: Beach Road Hotel :: 71 Beach Road Bondi Beach 9130 7247

It sounds like: A bit of gypsy/Balkan, a bit of swing, a bit of metal, and plenty of weird: it’s the sound of Forrest Gump’s box o’ chocolates.

Acts: Greška (Bris), The Fantastic Terrific Munkle Sell it to us: It will be a night of neo-gypsy ruckus, breakneck um-pahs and slightly-elongated grooves, all tied in a neat bundle of hospital-grade eclection. Brisbane-based Greška will lick the cockles of your ears, and The Fantastic Terrific Munkle will personally, yet indirectly, warm every seat in the house (their name is no lie). The two join forces to destroy genres with explosive horns.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Exclaiming "WTF?!"

Crowd specs: Small room, small crowd.

Wallet damage: $15 Where: Camelot Lounge / 19 Marrickville Road, Marrickville

alpine

PICS :: AM

When: Thursday September 13, from 8pm

tim rogers

PICS :: AB

31:08:12 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711

31:08:12 :: Factory Theatre ::105 Victoria Rd Enmore 9550 3666

:: NOHMON ANWARYAR :: ANNA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER LEY MAR :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS PEACHY :: ROCKET ASH BROWN :: KATRINA CLARKE :: WEIJERS :: PEDRO XAVIER ::

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 31

g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com

ROCK & POP

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15

America (USA), Rick Price Enmore Theatre $99-$129 8pm Julia Henning The Studio, Sydney Opera House $55 (conc)–$60 8.15pm

JAZZ

Latin Jazz The World Bar, Kings Cross free 7pm Monday Jam Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale free 8pm Phil Stack Trio 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 8.30pm Rob Eastwood Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Russell Neal, Senani, Josh Singer, Disco Bill, Jon Needham, Massimo Presti Kellys On King, Newtown free 7pm

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11 ROCK & POP

The Preatures and Sures pouring milk into cake

Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst

Oxford Art Factory’s 5th Birthday Party: The Preatures, Kill City Creeps, Group, The Shooters Party, Spirit Valley, Sures, Bloods, Sweet Teeth, Reckless Vagina, Whipped Cream Chargers, Friday I’m In Love DJs, BRAG DJs free 8pm

Adam Pringle and Friends Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Buzz Kull, Black Zeros, Driffs, New Brutalists, B Deep Flinders Bar, Darlinghurst free 8pm Dan Lawrence The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 8.30pm Goodnight Dynamite O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 9.30pm Jamie Lindsay Northies, Cronulla free 7.30pm Jane Walker Kinselas Hotel, Darlinghurst free 8pm Josh McIvor Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 6pm Julia Henning The Studio, Sydney Opera House $55 (conc)–$60 8.15pm Jurassic Lounge: Ocra – Straight Ahead!, Lancelot, Punk Monk DJs The Australian Museum, Sydney $14 5.30pm Mandi Jarry Summer Hill Hotel free 7.30pm Mandi Jarry Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 8.30pm Natalie Conway Opera Bar, Sydney free 8.30pm Sarah Paton The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 9.30pm Songwriters Association Open Mic Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt free 7pm

JAZZ

Ian Blakeney Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Jazzgroove: Gerard Masters’ Random Acts of Jazz, Kim Lawson, Danny Junor Quartet 505 Club, Surry Hills $8 (conc)–$15 8.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Andrew Denniston, Stelbell, Peter Williams Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 7pm Darren Bennett, Rani’s Fire George IV Inn, Picton free 7.30pm Russell Neal Merton Hotel, Rozelle free

The Songwriter Sessions Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 7.30pm

$20 (+ bf)–$74.80 (dinner & show) 8pm

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13

ROCK & POP

ROCK & POP

Aimee Francis and Friends Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Barry Adamson (UK) The Factory Theatre, Enmore $45 (+ bf) 8pm Black Lakes, Sunrise Hotel Hotel Hollywood, Surry Hills free 9pm Boogaloo Allstars Opera Bar, Sydney free 8.30pm The Cadres, Lenox, Train Robbers Goodgod Small Club, Sydney $10 7.30pm Cavan Te Opera Bar, Sydney free 2.30pm Dan Lawrence Harbord Beach Hotel free 7.30pm Flyte The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9.30pm Lanie Lane, Jordie Lane Brass Monkey, Cronulla $23.50 7pm Live & Local: Georgia Mooney & Hannah Crofts, Bowtie, Trent Williams, Jacobide Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $15 7.30pm The Medics, The Darcys, I A Man Spectrum, Darlinghurst $15 (+ bf) 8pm Musos Jam Night Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt free 8pm Oscar & The Grouches, Shady Drive Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Paper Wolves, Kaato, Thrush The Vanguard, Newtown $15.80 The Slowdowns East Sydney Hotel, Woolloomooloo free 8pm Terry Halliday Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm TrickFinger Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Twerps, Melodie Nelson, Day Ravies Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm

JAZZ

Abstract Brotherhood 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Vince Jones Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $24 (+ bf) 8pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Daniel Hopkins Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 6.30pm The Folk Informal: Ollie Brown, Traveller & Fortune, Bity Booker, Molly Contogeorge FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 6pm Greg Sita Cat and Fiddle Hotel, Balmain free 7pm Helmut Uhlmann, Alex Johnson, Maaike Ouboter, Luke Robinson, Billy Shears, Jake Bennett The Loft, UTS, Ultimo free 6pm Ladywood, Mal & Gary Royal Hotel, Bondi free 8pm Russell Neal, Gavin Fitzgerald, Paul McGowan, Ken Mclean Coach & horses Hotel, Randwick free 7pm Sherry Rich, Jeremy Edwards & The Dust Radio Band The Basement, Circular Quay

Andy Sorenson, Dear Light The Vanguard, Newtown $23.80 8pm Anthems The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm Archaic Revival, Vayer, Palaces The Lansdowne, Chippendale free 8pm Bridie O’Brien, Cletus Kasady, Mis-Made Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $10 8pm Candy Royalle, Sloppy Joe, Betty Grumble & Ember Flame The Red Rattler Theatre, Marrickville $23 7.30pm allages Dan Giovannoni The Old Fitzroy Theatre, Woolloomooloo $33 8pm allages The Dead Heads, Hollow Bones, BXF, Blind Valley Annandale Hotel $10 (+ bf) 8pm Earth (USA), Heathen Skulls The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $35 (+ bf) 8pm Elliot The Bull The Loft, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo free 5pm Femme Locale: Rainbow Chan, Miss Little, Lucy B, Lily So The Basement, Circular Quay $15 (+ bf) 8pm Front End Loader Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $15-$20 8pm Greska, The Fantastic Terrific Munkle Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $15 7pm Hot Damn!: Wish For Wings, The Ocean The Sky, Saving Grace, Crowned Kings, Lakeside, Hot Damn DJs Spectrum, Darlinghurst $15 (guestlist)–$20 8pm Howard Jones Castle Hill RSL Club 8pm Marcelo D’Avila Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Mayfall, SteelSwarm, Everything Handed Down The Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt $10 7pm Nicky Kurta Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Ranger Spacey, Tales In Space, Briscoe, December Scene FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Restless Leg, Night-time and Child, Death Mattel The Union Hotel, Newtown free 7.30pm Rick Price, Glenn Cunningham Blue Beat, Double Bay $28 (+ bf) 7.30pm Riff, Night Attack Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm The Rockwells Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Ross Wilson, James Walsh Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7pm Sherry Rich The Basement, Circular Quay Sola Rosa (NZ) The Standard, Darlinghurst $30 (+ bf) 8pm Zeropoint3 Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm

JAZZ

Lionel Robinson Dee Why RSL Club free 7pm

“There’s a place I go for breakfast every afternoon the coffees rubbish and the bacons always hard to chew” - SETH SENTRY 32 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

Xxx

pick of the week

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 10

g g guide gig g

send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com Peter Head Thr Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm Takadimi 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Joanne Hill Corrimal Hotel free 7.30pm Pete Scully, 2 Picks No Sticks, Aidan Abbey, The Trobes Mars Hill Café, Parramatta $10 8pm Russell Neal, Kafunkafun, Spencer McCullum, Nick Domenicos Kogarah Hotel free 7pm

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 ROCK & POP

Aaron Lyon Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Blatherskite, Vayer, Hawkmoth Hermann’s Bar, University of Sydney, Darlington $10 (+ bf) 8pm Cash – The Concert: Stuart French, Daniel Thompson Brass Monkey, Cronulla $34.70 7pm The City Lights, The Slow Push The Green Room Lounge Bar, Enmore $10 8pm Dan Lawrence Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Daryl Braithwaite, Sam Buckingham Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $54–$112 (dinner & show) 8pm Dirty Deeds Club Singleton $20 8pm Emperors, Bloods, The Dreamboats, The Water Board Goodgod Small Club, Sydney $10 (+ bf) 8pm Four Litre Friday, Tiger & Rogues, Class1c The Lansdowne, Chippendale free 8pm He She Wonderland, The Streaks, Fire Til Dawn, 62nd Silence Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 8pm Howard Jones (UK) Factory Theatre, Enmore $49 (+ bf) 8.30pm Ingrid Michaelson (USA), Greg Laswell Metro Theatre, Sydney $49 (+ bf) 8pm all-ages Isaiah B Brunt, Nightless Lovers The Eastern Lounge, Roseville $15 (presale)–$18 8pm Lab 64, Heaven’s Down (India), Spears Britney, Skuldogory, Remo Street Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm MUM: Leohas, East River, Noliva Fig, The Darkened Seas, Euphoriacs, Lenox, Cries Wolf DJs, Post Paint DJs, Swim Team DJs, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm Musiq Soulchild (USA) The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $55$85 (+ bf) 7.30pm National Campus Band Comp State Final Manning Bar, University of Sydney, Camperdown free 7pm Piano Pounding Poppas: Pugsley Buzzard & Don Hopking The Vanguard, Newtown $28.80–$63.80 (dinner & show) 8pm The Red Paintings The Standard, Surry Hills $15 (+ bf) 8pm Rip it Up Eastern Suburbs Legion Club, Waverley free 8pm Roots

Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Sabotage: Dead Ears, Twin Lakes, Sabotage DJs The Forbes Hotel, Sydney $10 9pm Safe Ands, Red Bee, Snakes Get Bad Press, Valiant Falcon The Square, Haymarket $10 8pm Shane Peters Duo Bambu, Western Suburbs Leagues Club Campbelltown, Leumeah free 9pm Six60 (NZ), Scribe (NZ), Damn Moroda Enmore Theatre $34.80 (+ bf) 8pm Slimefest: Jessica Mauboy, Reece Mastin, Justice Crew, Stan Walker, Johnny Ruffo, Christina Parie Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park $43.80-$63.80 9.30am allages Stella Fella Finals 2012: Amy Meredith Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills $45 (+ bf) 6pm Subhumans (UK), Inebrious Brastard, Unknown To God, Dark Horse Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $45-$50 8pm Tears Dry On Their Own - Remembering Amy Winehouse: Alphamama, Billy McCarthy, Ines The Basement, Circular Quay $30 (+ bf)–$84.80 (dinner & show) 7pm The Vaudeville Smash, Kristy Lee Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 9.30pm Young Romantics, Rain Party, Bang! Bang! Rock N Roll, Yardvark FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel, Darlinghurst $10 8pm

JAZZ

El Orqueston Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $18-$22 7.30pm Kristin Berardi Band 505 Club, Surry Hills $20 (conc)–$25 8pm Vanessa Raspa & The Zombie Cats, Lo Five, The Hemara Trio Blue Beat, Double Bay $15 (+ bf) 7pm

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15 ROCK & POP

Al Swearengen’s Cocksuckers Ball: Bellyache Ben & The Steamgrass Boy The Vanguard, Newtown $33.80 8pm The Beatnix Penshurst RSL Club $20 8pm Cash – The Concert: Stuart French, Daniel Thompson Brass Monkey, Cronulla $34.70 7pm Dave Tice and Mark Evans Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 4pm The Dead Heads The Lansdowne, Chippendale free 8pm Dirty Deeds Commercial Hotel $15 8pm Eat Noise Festival: Mercury Sky, Surrender The Sun, Bellusira, Swing From A Streetlight, Warchief, The Wire, Snip Snap Dragon, The Hungry Mile, Ivona Budys, Gypsys Of Pangea, Eevee Nicole, Neotokyo, Braden Evans, Eve Schroder Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $20-$25 4pm Good Will Hunting, From Death Till Rebirth, Dead Life Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 8pm Hansel, Sylvain, The Dysfunctions The Town Hall Hotel, Newtown free 9pm Hanson (USA), Matt Wertz

The Hi-Fi, Moore Park sold out 8pm Howard Jones Bankstown Sports Club 8pm Jonathan Wilson (USA), Charles Buddy Daaboul The Standard, Darlinghurst $32 (+ bf) 8pm Julia Stone, The Trouble With Templeton Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 8pm Kick Start Oatley Hotel free 8.30pm Killer Queen North Sydney Leagues Club, Cammeray $25 (+ bf) 8pm Kingswell, DJ Urby Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7.30pm Kittens: Voltaire Twins, Tom Ugly, The Sculptures, Kitten DJs Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Lime Cordiale, The Griswolds, The Money Go Round The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $10 (+ bf) 4.30pm allages Mal Eastick Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $28 8pm The Metropolitan Orchestra Independent Theatre, North Sydney $35 8pm all-ages Mia Dyson, Simon Meli Notes Live, Enmore $28.60 7pm Monsieur Camembert Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $30 7.30pm A Night of Wonder - Stevie Wonder Tribute: Brown Sugar The Basement, Circular Quay $30 (+ bf) 7.30pm Oxford Art Factory’s 5th Birthday Party: The Preatures, Kill City Creeps, Group, The Shooters Party, Spirit Valley, Sures, Bloods, Sweet Teeth, Reckless Vagina, Whipped Cream Chargers, Friday I’m In Love DJs Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Phil Spiller Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Pleasure & Pain Divinyls Show Blacktown RSL Club free The Radiators Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm Scalper (UK), Deadbeat & Hazy, Old Men Of Moss Mountain Subsketch FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Spring Loaded: Lord, Darker Half, As Silence Breaks, Katabasis, Electrik Dynamite, Widow The Sea, Not Another Sequel Just Another Prequel, Born Of Chaos, Abacination, The The Grave The Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt 4pm The Stoops, Taylor and the Makers, Gnome, Bert & Bernie Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm They Call Me Bruce Bambu, Western Suburbs Leagues Club Campbelltown, Leumeah free 9pm Tim Freedman’s Fireside Chat Blue Beat, Double Bay $35 (+ bf) 7pm Toucan Duo Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Winslow’s Cancer, Monster Gale, No Headroom, Thrush, Release The Hounds, Velopus Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Yiannis Ploutarhos The Factory Theatre, Enmore 8pm

Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Co. Café / Wine Bar, Leichhardt free 7.30pm

Jonathan Wilson

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Dane and Aaron Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 8pm Nathan Cole Newport Atrisan Market free 11am Phoenix and the Twins Oatley Hotel free 2pm Russell Neal, Collin Gosper Crown on McCredie Hotel Motel, Guildford free 8.30pm

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 16 ROCK & POP

Andy Mammers Harbord Beach Hotel free 6pm Dom Turner and Supro Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 4pm Handsome Young Strangers Botany View Hotel, Newtown free 7pm Hanson (USA), Matt Wertz Enmore Theatre $59 (+ bf) 8pm Howard Jones Fairfield RSL 8pm Hunter & Suzy Owens Band Marrickville Bowling Club free 4.30pm Impending Doom, Prepared Like A Bride The Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt 5pm Karmic Dirt The Lansdowne, Chippendale free 8pm Lanrae, Anikiko, Elisha Keen The Vanguard, Newtown $15.80 8pm

Little Big Wolf, Susie Hurley, Dead Of Winter The Lansdowne, Chippendale free 7pm Liza Ohlback, Kevin Bennett Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 2pm Macy Gray (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $59–$80 8pm The Metropolitan Orchestra Balmain Town Hall $35 3pm all-ages Musica Linda Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $20 6.30pm Save The Clocktower, Belle Haven, Past Is Practice, Hearts Like Wolves, Justice For The Damned, When Giants Sleep, Rose From Ruins, Memorial Avenue Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $15 3pm allages School of Rock Valve Bar, Tempe 12pm Suite Az, DJ Kitsch78 Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 8.30pm

Sunday Blues Jam: Mark Hopper Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 8pm Vibrations at Valve Band Competition Valve Bar, Tempe 5pm

JAZZ

Peter Head Trio & Friends Thr Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm Sunday Arvo Jazz Harold Park Hotel, Glebe free 3pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Darren Bennett, Eva-Maria Hess Hotel William, Darlinghurst free 6pm Jonah & The Wailers The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf)–$79.80 (dinner & show) 7pm Russell Neal Salisbury Hotel, Stanmore free 2pm

wed

12 Sept

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

thu

13 Sept

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

fri

14 Sept

(5:00PM - 8:00PM)

(9:30PM - 1:30AM)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

sat

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

Sept

SATURDAY NIGHT

15

(9:00PM - 1:30AM)

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

sun

16

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

SUNDAY NIGHT

Sept

(8:30PM - 12:00AM)

JAZZ

Peter Head Thr Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 5pm BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 33

gig picks

up all night out all week...

Greska, The Fantastic Terrific Munkle Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $15 7pm

Ingrid Michaelson

Macy Gray

Sola Rosa (NZ) The Standard, Darlinghurst $30 (+ bf) 8pm

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 The Medics Lanie Lane

The City Lights, The Slow Push The Green Room Lounge Bar, Enmore $10 8pm

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 10

Ingrid Michaelson (USA), Greg Laswell Metro Theatre, Sydney $49 (+ bf) 8pm all-ages

Julia Henning The Studio, Sydney Opera House $55 (conc)–$60 8.15pm

Sola Rosa

MUM: Leohas, East River, Noliva Fig, The Darkened Seas, Euphoriacs, Lenox, Cries Wolf DJs, Post Paint DJs, Swim Team DJs, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm

The Red Paintings The Standard, Surry Hills $15 (+ bf) 8pm

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15

Lanie Lane, Jordie Lane Brass Monkey, Cronulla $23.50 7pm The Medics, The Darcys, I A Man Spectrum, Darlinghurst $15 (+ bf) 7pm

Jonathan Wilson (USA), Charles Buddy Daaboul The Standard, Darlinghurst $32 (+ bf) 8pm Mia Dyson, Simon Meli Notes Live, Enmore $28.60 7pm

Twerps, Melodie Nelson, Day Ravies Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 16

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13

Hanson (USA), Matt Wertz Enmore Theatre $59 (+ bf) 8pm Macy Gray (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $59–$80 8pm Xxxx

Earth (USA), Heathen Skulls The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $35 (+ bf) 7.30pm

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6PM // $10 at the door

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8PM // $10 at the door

8PM // $10 at the door

8PM // $10 at the door

-'4'- ,+/)2 &1022 *03'34 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

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11:30PM // FREE

555 (%+20&+$- &0.

BRAG’s guide to dance, hip hop and club culture

brag beats

inside

the presets + jeru the damaja + kenny larkin

seth sentry like there ain’t no tomorrow

+ hernan cattaneo

also: + club guide + club snaps + weekly column

We has internets!

www.thebrag.com Extra bits and moving bits without the papercuts BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 35

dance music news

free stuff

club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

five things WITH

COOKIE MONSTA (CIRCUS/UK) We’ve got Roksonix, Funtcase, Doctor P, Flux Pavilion, Brown & Gammon and Slum Dogz (Krafty Mc, Swan E and Dr P).

The Music You Make My first remix was with 4.

Ministry Of Sound back in 2009 or something. Then there was a remix for Taio Cruz, before Flux got me to remix a track of his called ‘Frozen’, that he did with Freestylers. ‘Ginger Pubes’ and ‘Blurgh’ got released after, and then ‘Fat Girl Rodeo’, ‘Bubble Trouble’, Me Want Cookie EP and RIOT! EP. Live, my sets are real energetic, and slightly on the ‘Let’s start an actual riot’ side.

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

I think the music scene is

Growing Up My dad was into his music 1. a lot, and listened to all sorts of stuff when I was younger. He had these huge Russian speakers that stood as tall as me, and would play anything from Jimmy Hendrix to blasting out Queen:

“MOMMA OOO EEE OOOOO!” My brother was into drum and bass/jungle/rave music, so I had lots to choose from!

2.

Inspirations I’m inspired by people like Prodigy, and many old-school

EGLO RECORDS SHOWCASE FT FLOATING POINTS, ALEXANDER NUT & FATIMA Niche Productions presents the Sydney leg of the debut Australian tour of Eglo Records stalwarts Floating Points, Alexander Nut and Fatima, at Oxford Art Factory on Friday November 23. The highly respected London-based label doesn’t have a clearly

DnB producers. I remember hearing ‘Fire Starter’ as a kid, and pumped it out loud whenever my parents were out (Russian speakers FTW).

Crew My crew is Circus Records!

3. Your

identifiable sound, traversing hip hop, house, soul and assorted other experimental frequencies. One of the label’s bosses, Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points, has been behind some of the most endearing club tracks of recent times, starting with the sexy slo-mo house of ‘Love Me Like This’ – which was likened to a cross between Flying Lotus, The Field and Daft Punk – and culminating in last year’s celebrated double EP, Shadows.

Africa Hitech

bursting with talent, but it also has a bad side: it seems in 2012 that everyone is a producer. Fair enough if they love it, but a lot of people make music to be that ultimate DJ superstar. That’s not what it’s about! In terms of my local scene in Nottingham, that’s what got me into dubstep raves – every week or two there’s at least three nights going off, with a shitload of big DJs. With: Doctor P, Funtcase, Slum Dogz Where: Circus Records showcase @ The Metro Theatre When: Saturday September 22

The other label boss, Alexander Nut is known as one of the UK’s most reputable freestyle DJs and radio personalities thanks to his Saturday afternoon slot on Rinse FM. Meanwhile, Fatima possesses one of the most distinct voices in the biz, which she has showcased on two EPs on Eglo. First release tickets are available for $35.

The first lineup for the much-anticipated annual Subsonic Music Festival has been announced. Catz n Dogz, Acid Pauli, Christian Martin, DJ Kentaro, Africa Hitech, Nico Stojan, Adultnapper, Afronomad, Ryan Davis, Worthy and Dov will all be performing in the idyllic Riverwood Downs Mountain Valley Resort at Barrington Tops over the weekend of December 7-10. Subsonic is a custom-built lifestyle festival that is held in a world heritage site on the banks of a river 2.5 hours north of Sydney, and is more akin to Berlin’s Fusion festival than anything in the overpopulated Sydney festival milieu. Subsonic’s music policy is slanted towards techno, house, dub, beats and bass, and the music runs all weekend – there is no stopping at 11pm a la the inner-city festivals.

In addition to highlighting “the amazing location, the beautiful people, the peaceful vibe, the BYO drinks, having your car next to your tent and the no-fuss approach to everything” in their review of last year’s event, inthemix lauded the fact that “Subsonic broadens your musical horizon so much more, as you listen to music that you may never have otherwise stumbled across.” Tickets are currently on sale through subsonicmusic.com.au

36 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

With 20 years of techno behind him, Detroit techno king Kenny Larkin combines a swinging rhythmic vibe with hip-shakin’ funk and soul, all the while keeping his eyes to the dancefloor. Lucky for us, Larkin gave up his days as a stand-up comedian and returned to the dance scene to show how his ambitious music could stand the test of time – and in doing so, he become one of the most heavily influential artists working in the genre. Joined by guests Murat Killic, Steven Sullivan and Rob Lowe, he’ll be playing at underground den The Spice Cellar on Saturday September 15. We’re giving away one double pass to the shuffler who can tell us the other moniker that Larkin releases under.

Four Tet

CIRCO LOCO HALLOWEEN LINEUP CHANGES

Finely Tuned Entertainment have announced a lineup change to their eagerly anticipated Halloween event. Due to unforseen circumstances, American-born, Spainbased Eric Estornel, who produces under the dual monikers of Maceo Plex and Maetrik, has cancelled his tour; Matthias Tanzmann’s tour has also been pushed back to later in the summer. Now for the silver lining, as the promoters have secured two formidable replacements: Mr Hot Creations, Jamie Jones, and DJ W!ld, a French DJ and producer who is the co-founder of Catwash Records.

Since 2010, W!ld has been a resident at one of Ibiza’s best-loved parties, Circo Loco at DC-10, and he released his second artist LP, Dirty, a few months back on Cabin Fever, an associate label of Rekids that’s usually devoted to club-tailored house edits. Esteemed Berlinbased DJ Margaret Dygas, who has cemeted herself as a pillar of the underground house and techno scene through regular slots at Panorama Bar and Club der Visionäere (along with an album on Perlon), is also scheduled to appear. Circo Loco Halloween is slotted for Saturday November 3 at Greenwood, with presale tickets available online.

CRYSTAL ARK DEBUT LP SUBSONIC FESTIVAL 2012 LINEUP

KENNY LARKIN

NYC synthesiser extraordinaire – let’s call him a ‘synthophile’ – Gavin Russom has re-teamed with Viva Ruiz for the release of the debut self-titled Crystal Ark album. Russom has built instruments for the likes of DFA’s James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy, and has toured playing synths and percussion with LCD Soundsystem. The Crystal Ark began when Russom asked Ruiz to write and sing Spanish lyrics over a pair of hypnotic Afro-Latin instrumentals. The duo’s first singles, ‘The City Never Sleeps’ and ‘The Tangible Presence Of The Miraculous,’ synthesised South American and European club styles (primarily Belgian rave), while they also contributed a cover of ‘Tusk’ to the Fleetwood Mac tribute album, Just Tell Me That You Want Me. The Crystal Ark will be released on October 30 on DFA Records.

FOUR TET TOUR

Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, will perform at The Metro Theatre on Saturday December 8. Hebden’s tour follows on closely from the release of his recent album Pink, which collated the vinyl singles Hebden has released on his own Text imprint over the past year. Pink demonstrated Hebden’s increased gravitation towards ‘interesting’ dance/club music, something that was apparent on his previous album, There Is Love In You, and his acclaimed FabricLive compilation. His live show has also continued to evolve towards the club floor in recent times, as evinced by his more dancefloor-heavy show at Playground Weekender 2011 on his most recent Australia jaunt, and a live performance at Berlin clubbing pantheon Berghain last month.

Support will come from Stones Throw’s Jonti, who returns for his first show home on Aussie soil after touring the US with Gotye and collaborating with members of Odd Future, Homeboy Sandman and Jonwayne. Presale tickets are currently on sale via The Metro’s website.

ELEFANT TRAKS, NEW WORLD ARTISTS & UMBRELLA PRESENTS

FEATURING JANE TYRRELL & ELGUSTO NAÏVE BRAVADO TOUR 2012 The new album Smokey’s Haunt out October 12th.

Signed preorders and bundles available now at www.elefanttraks.com

Tix urthboy.oztix.com.au | Details at www.urthboy.com

FRIDAY 21 SEPTEMBER

OXFORD ART FACTORY

WITH THE LAST KINECTION | YUNG WARRIORS

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 37

dance music news

free stuff

club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

on the record WITH

LUKE FAIR Inspirations Primal Scream’s 2.

Screamadelica is my all-time

The Music You Make My music has always 4. been house-based with melody,

favourite album, easily. My favourite band growing up was probably Sublime; their music, among a few others, was the soundtrack to my youth. As for current inspiration, I would have to say it mostly comes from going out and listening to other DJs. When they are good and able to deliver a consistent message or story in their music, I’ll enjoy it no matter what the genre is.

whether it’s techy, disco-tinged or whatever. The same goes for both production and live sets.

I’ve got a bunch of new originals coming out – my first in a few years – that range from deep and jazzy and techy to some stuff with a bit of an ‘80s newwave influence.

Your Crew I don’t really work with anyone 3. right now. I’m a solo producer and

1.

Growing Up Unfortunately for me I didn’t come from a very musical family, and I’m not that musically inclined. I know what I love to hear in a club or at home, so I

try and create that. I was given a 50% passing mark in my high school guitar class (they actually have that in Canada), under the stipulation that I would never take music in that school again.

always have been. Even though I take ages to make a tune, I’ve found working with others is too difficult for me as I’m always selfconscious when I try to push things into a certain direction. My other “job” is a poker player. I come from a poker family; my brothers and I were taught by our dad basically before we could walk. One of my brothers lived in Vegas for a few years and travels around to play.

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

I think the scene is pretty great right now, at least from a music perspective. While it’s hard to dig through the thousands of junk records that come out every week, the music is better than ever. If you put in the time, you’ll find the good stuff easily.

With: Jaytech (Anjunabeats), Sharkslayer (FIN), Blaze Tripp, A-Tonez and more Where: Chinese Laundry When: Saturday September 15

No Zu

SLUGABED + IKONIKA + DRO CAREY

UK producers Slugabed and Ikonika will join Sydney’s Dro Carey for an all-night take on futurist club sounds at One22 on Saturday October 13. Greg Feldwick aka Slugabed is a relative newcomer who broke through with a remix of Roots Manuva’s ‘Witness The Fitness’, which led to an album deal with Ninja Tune and introduced the world to his vitriolic blend of all things electronic. Ikonika’s sound traverses early dubstep and Detroit techno, underscored with the beautifully melodic production of modern RnB and video game soundtracks.

Releasing almost exclusively on the acclaimed Hyperdub and Planet Mu imprints, 2011 saw Ikonika’s own label, Hum + Buzz, founded with the help of Japanese artist Optimum. A platform for the pair to self-release their own brand of electronic sounds, the label recently veered off to unleash Sydney’s very own Dro Carey on a global register, who of course will also represent on the night. $25 presales are available online.

NO ZU ALBUM + TOUR Slugabed

Genre-hopping Melbourne-based dance band No Zu – not to be confused with Romanian minimal proponent Nu Zau – will perform at Goodgod Small Club on Saturday September 29 to celebrate the release of their debut album Life (as well as Goodgod’s second birthday). Purveyors of heat-beat dance and slinky, funked-up grooves, No Zu began as a lo-fi recording project for Nicolaas Oogjes (also a member of TTT, formally Tic Toc Tokyo, and until recently Tantrums) in 2007, and has evolved naturally into an intense live performance act of experimental sounds. Life follows two No Zu EPs, and is said to be “an album that melds ideas of glamour, universal suburbia and sensuality with a myriad of percussive-heavy, nu-funk-driven, globally reaching sounds”. They’ll be supported on tour by My Disco and No Fixed Address.

the headline act is Melbourne duo Thankyou City. Finding a key place on the roster of hometown imprint Chameleon Recordings alongside names like Jamie Stevens and Steve Ward, Thankyou City’s music has been remixed by international luminaries such as Tom Clark and Fiord, as well as featuring on labels such as Iboga, Scrambled Recordings, Pinksilver Digital, Open Records and Subsonic Music.

They’ve played the main stage at many of Australia’s major festivals including Rainbow Serpent, Shine On, Subsonic Music Festival and Strawberry Fields, but this Saturday will be Thankyou City’s debut live set in a Sydney club. Support will come courtesy of Marcotix, Gemma Van D and Eoin Brosnan, with presale tickets available on Resident Advisor for a cheap ten crabs.

THANKYOU CITY

After a strong response to the Jamie Steven and Steve Ward gig a few months ago, AU Underground and Future Theories return to One22 this Saturday September 15 as they continue on their “quest to showcase worldclass Australian techno talent”. This time around 38 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

BIG VILLAGE’S BIG THINGS TOUR

Sydney-based hip hop collective/label Big Village has undertaken the audacious task of taking their entire label on the road for the aptly named Big Things Tour. The tour will feature the

full roster of current label acts including Tuka (Thundamentals) and Ellesquire performing a dual headline set, Daily Meds, fresh from their Happy Daze album release and tour, and True Vibenation, who also recently completed their own national tour. Also representing will be Loose Change, Reverse Polarities and Sketch The Rhyme, featuring Big Village members Rapaport, P.Smurf and Jeswon. The Sydney leg of the Big Things tour is slotted for Oxford Art Factory this Friday September 14.

SONUNDA ON SATURDAY

Fancy an afternoon/evening of wonky techno and a touch of bass pressure? If you’re so inclined, your destination should be this Saturday’s Sonunda event, a free party held in the beer garden of the New Hampshire Hotel in Camperdown. The promoters are flying down DJs Stomp and Bix Bacon specifically for the party, while a strong local lineup comprising Kimba, Blacker, Azza Huasca, Trena and Jordan Zed will also represent.

The revelry commences from 1pm, Saturday September 15.

KERSER

How do you know that a man means business? He goes and gets his name carved on his own FACE. Kerser is a Campbelltown rapper who’s just as well-known for his music as for his guttural lyrics and raucous behaviour – oh, and the fact that his debut LP is the only release JB Hi-Fi has had to stock behind the counter because it gets swiped so often. After that album, The Nebulizer, rose to #3 on the iTunes charts, his fans are expecting big things. With his newest release No Rest For The Sickest due out on November 2 – and a new single, ‘Stand Up’, currently out on iTunes – Kerser is offering up an album preview at The Annandale Hotel on Friday September 14, with supports from Nino Brown, Fortay, Rates, JayDee, Crochet Crooks, Filthy Creatures, and DJ Skae, hosted by Doel. To get your hands on one of two double passes, send us a picture of the best tattoo ever.

ELIZABETH ROSE SINGLE + TOUR

Rising Sydney artist Elizabeth Rose, who was praised by triple j for “turning heads with her gorgeous, dreamy electropop tunes,” has dropped the follow-up to her debut track ‘Ready’: a single entitled ‘Again (ft. Sinden)’. This is but one of several musical projects Rose has been working on of late; she’s also collaborated with Flight Facilities and Frames and toured with the likes of Rufus and Chairlift over the past few months. Unlike certain high profile partnerships in the world (for instance, the Andrew Strauss/Kevin Pietersen association, which imploded recently due to the inevitable clash between the stultifying conservatism of Strauss and the immensely talented but gratuitously egotistical ‘KP’...), Rose is adept at collaborating, with a remix for Chairlift apparently due out shortly too. Rose will be embarking on a solo East Coast tour over the next few months, and has Sydney dates locked in for Wednesday September 26 at UNSW and Friday November 2 at Goodgod Small Club. ‘Again (ft. Sinden)’ has just been released locally through Inertia, and is out in the US and UK through Sinden’s own label Grizzly.

Elizabeth Rose

Seth Sentry After Breakfast By Joshua Kloke

S

eth Sentry sits tucked away in a corner of the Union Hotel in Brunswick, in his native town of Melbourne, casually working his way through an afternoon pot of beer. If you substitute the pot for “rubbish coffee” and a piece of “soggy toast”, you’ll have the scene from the film clip of Sentry’s ubiquitous breakout hit, ‘The Waitress Song’. While the track gained widespread airplay in 2009, Sentry is out to prove that he’s no one-hit wonder. “That song was bigger than me,” he says. “That song wasn’t necessarily good for Seth Sentry so much as it was for ‘The Waitress Song’. It became its own beast.”

Three years after the release of The Waiter EP, Sentry will release This Was Tomorrow, his debut full-length record. In doing so, he aims to establish himself as one of the most inventive voices in Australia’s hip hop scene. This Was Tomorrow showcases not only the deft manner in which he fuses genres within his tracks, but also his uncanny ability to pen lyrics that roll off the tongue with a light-hearted ease, while maintaining an emotional weight that sticks around long after the songs are finished.

After four years of writing, Sentry concedes that This Was Tomorrow has been a long time coming. “The plan was originally to do a full album, but we did an EP instead. So this is the album I wanted to release.” The four years of work eventually weighed on Sentry’s conscience, and he admits there were times when he had to step away from the process.

“I guess what made it hard was the fact that I had a song [‘The Waitress Song’] which I

“‘The Waitress Song’ was bigger than me.

It wasn’t necessarily good for Seth Sentry so much as it was for ‘The Waitress Song’. It became its own beast.”

wrote in just an afternoon, and which a few mates of mine didn’t really like – and that song did so well. That fucked my head up a little bit. I started questioning every song I wrote afterwards. I wondered, ‘Is this song any good?’ or, ‘Is this song going to do the same thing?’ It’s no good to question things too much though, as I’ve learnt.”

Sentry’s decision to release This Was Tomorrow on his own High Score Records allowed him the freedom to focus on writing the record, instead of worrying how to market it. “I like being my own boss. It suits my vibe. I did the EP on my own too, to the point of mailing every single copy out myself,” he says. “We got a few offers [from labels] a while back, but they just weren’t for me. There’s that quote that goes something like, ‘Labels are good for fanning the flame, but they’re not good for starting the fire’.

I’m not after world domination; I just want to be able to do what I want to do and make enough of a living off of it so that I don’t have to work hospitality anymore.”

Pausing to give thought to every question asked, Sentry carries himself with a thoughtful and eloquent sincerity. His refreshing lack of pretence can be heard in spades throughout This Was Tomorrow; while Sentry admits that over-questioning matters may not always be a healthy endeavour, he can’t help but be openly critical of the ills of various social groupings on tracks like ‘My Scene’.

But if there’s one grouping of people that Sentry is seeking to foster, it’s that of his fanbase. His eyes light up when he talks about taking his debut LP on the road. His live show, which he describes as “very free and loose”, has been honed for close to ten years, including a memorable opening slot for Public Enemy on their last swing through Australia. But rather than borrow from Public Enemy’s intense and fairly professional live set, Sentry has crafted a more intimate approach.

Once again, his affable DIY mentality shines through. “A lot of my show is about getting intimate with the crowd,” he says. “These people have bought tickets, they’ve bought T-shirts, they’re talking about the show on Facebook, you know?

I want to hang out with these dudes. I don’t come out super professional. I give the crowd a little shit,

they give me some shit, we have a laugh. You can’t do that at every show, but most of the time it works. A bit of banter goes a long way.”

As Sentry continues, it becomes clear how vast the gulf is between the first impression we got of him through ‘The Waitress Song’ and the reality of the man behind This Was Tomorrow.

Having now conquered the mixed curse of the massive radio hit, Sentry is ready to tackle any other challenges with a level head and a thoughtful demeanour. “People are always trying to pigeonhole me, and other artists. But life isn’t like that.” Instead, Sentry went into the followup hoping to show off another side of himself

and his craft. “I was overthinking what people wanted to hear,” he says. “I took a step back and just started writing songs that I was happy with. I didn’t think too much about the narrative, I just focused on the beat. I didn’t try to do anything special. I just went from song to song thinking about what was best for the album.”

What: This Was Tomorrow is out September 14 through High Score Records Where: The Factory Theatre When: Friday October 19 More: Also playing Fat As Butter Festival, held on Saturday September 22 in Newcastle

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 39

Jeru The Damaja Still Rising By Andrew ‘Hazard’ Hickey “The reception and the people were excellent, everything. Australia’s a great place for hip hop,” he says from his home in Brooklyn. He tells his Aussie fans to expect an authentic hip hop experience from the show. “It’s going to be just live energy, it’s gonna be incredible – we’re gonna have such a great time.”

It’s been five years since his last solo project Still Rising, but Jeru’s been keeping busy.

“I’ve just been doing a lot of touring, and I’ve been working on my photography.” Indeed, a quick Google will bring up an online portfolio from the rap star: ‘Hip Hop Legend, Photographer, DJ. Just all around creative!’

“I’m trying to do it in a more professional way, and I actually have some exhibition stuff coming up,” he tells me.

J

eru The Damaja is a living embodiment of a time and place: the mid-‘90s in New York City. While many long-time hip hop fans get a warm fuzzy feeling when they pop on some anthems from back in the day, the man born Kendrick Jeru Davis has managed to both represent and transcend his origins.

Discovered by hip hop deities Gang Starr, he quickly developed a rep thanks to his intelligent, no-nonsense lyricism and his unwavering commitment to the culture; he’s perhaps best known for his public disses of commercial forces in music, including, famously, P. Diddy and his Bad Boy Records crew. Since undisputed classic albums like 1994’s The Sun Rises In The East and 1996’s Wrath Of The Math, he has consistently dropped solid (if overlooked) independent projects, and continues to tour prolifically.

His hip hop journey now brings him back to Australia for only the second time in his 20-year career, including a stop at Oxford Art Factory this Thursday. Describing his last experience Down Under as “crazy” and “beautiful”, it’s clear that Australia made an impression on him.

While relatively soft-spoken in conversation, Jeru’s passion comes through loud and clear, and he talks excitedly about his latest work.

“I’m working on a project with a bunch of Polish MCs and producers, and I’m working on my own solo project as well,” he says. The process of working with his Polish brethren has been an organic one; it was the music that brought them together. “It’s not over the internet – I actually know them and I’ve been to Poland in the studio, and we did the tracks.” Interestingly, Jeru achieved some of his most recent success on the Polish charts, appearing alongside veteran group Slums Attack on the track ‘Oddalbym’. Jeru is proud to serve as global ambassador for hip hop. “I’m showing that hip hop is everywhere in the world, it’s not just in America or English-speaking countries. It’s also in some countries you’d never even think of.”

Hernan Cattaneo Locked In The Groove By Alasdair Duncan

A

rgentina’s Hernan Cattaneo has been in the DJ game for close to two decades, but even after all this time, nothing comes close to the thrill he feels when he gets behind the decks. “The best part, no doubt, is the set,” he tells me. “Arriving at the club or festival, feeling the anticipation, thinking about what you’re going to play and then delivering the music, watching the faces, the reactions...” he trails off. “Sometimes you wait for weeks thinking how some tracks will work at one specific event, and when that happens you’re not thinking about the 14-hour flight; you just think, ‘This is why I do this.’

Travelling the world is great, but it’s all about music, really.”

When Cattaneo first heard house music, it was via a stack of vinyl records a friend brought back from an American trip. In those days, a DJ was limited by a record case, but now it’s possible to carry thousands of tracks digitally on a device that fits in your pocket.

When faced with this level of choice, I ask Cattaneo if he ever feels overwhelmed when planning his sets. “Well, you don’t get all

those thousands overnight, so it’s all about organising properly in your mind – and in your folders!” he says. “In my opinion, the more options, the better the time. You feel a bit overwhelmed when listening to thousands of new tracks every week to only find ten great ones, but that’s what DJs do.”

International travel is a big part of Cattaneo’s job description as a DJ; in the weeks prior to his next Australian visit he’ll be playing in Greece and the UK, then after that it’s off to Bulgaria, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and then – why the hell not? – Japan. Playing to so many different crowds with so many divergent tastes, you might assume that Cattaneo tailors his sets to the country he’s in at the time, but he assures me that he stays true to himself no matter where in the world he ends up. “Some places are better to play than others, but there’s no way I can change my style or my way of playing. Australia is one of the places where my music works the best, so I can really play long sets the way I like, and play as deep and melodic as I want.”

Cattaneo has a new Renaissance Masters compilation coming out at the end of this month, and he tells me that a reasonable chunk of his upcoming sets in Sydney – at the ivy Pool Club with Fritz Kalkbrenner, before both play a Chinese Laundry after party – will be devoted to material from that. “There are a lot of our own productions, remixes from other artists, and of course new producers from around the world like I always include in my sets,” he says. “This compilation follows the path of my previous one, Parallel, where I did one slower CD and another more up-tempo one. Some club tracks work wonderfully when you pitch them down to 100bpm, so I’m very excited to show some of those off.”

One of those countries is Russia, where The Damaja recently toured. “Russia is off the chain. They’re very receptive, they love hip hop music.” Despite the apparent cultural divides, Jeru is pretty confident in his MCing abilities, wherever they take him. “Anywhere that Jeru The Damaja rocks is pretty good.

The people like how I rock, and they come to see real hip hop. So wherever I’m at I get the same reception – it doesn’t matter where you at,” he says. “I think some people [in the USA] totally overlook hip hop because they’re so used to it – they’re so used to having everything, so we don’t appreciate it as much.” His Aussie audience will be more than ready to show that love back.

Where club music is concerned, there’s no doubt that the dubstep sound remains in the ascendancy. As someone who came of age before the dubstep era, Cattaneo tells me that he likes listening to certain tracks and producers of that genre, especially those on the more subtle and hypnotic side of things – but it’s house that remains his true love. “It’s always been about that groove for me,” he says. “When I first heard the Chicago house sound I got locked into that rhythm, and I really never looked into anything else.”

With: Fritz Kalkbrenner Where: Pool party @ ivy Pool Club When: Saturday September 22, from 1pm (sold out) More: Kalkbrenner and Cattaneo are playing an encore set at Chinese Laundry from 7.30pm, with The Hump Day Project, Robbie Lowe, A-Tonez, Devola, Whitecat and more

With: Dialectrix, Jackie Onassis, Frenzie, DJ Mathmatics; hosted by Shantan Wantan Ichiban Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Thursday September 13

Kenny Larkin Don’t Stop Moving By Alasdair Duncan

D

etroit’s Kenny Larkin releases music rarely, but when he does, he makes it count – his early singles like ‘We Shall Overcome’ and ‘Integration’ are regarded as Detroit techno classics, and his remixes are some of the most sought-after in the business. Ahead of his return to Sydney, we caught up with the producer and DJ to quiz him on his life and work.

I see you’ve been in Berlin and Ibiza just recently, and you’re about to come down here – how much time out of the year do you spend on the road? Has touring become your lifestyle?

I travel all year, but I have been on the road non-stop since May. It’s nice, but also has drawbacks. I like to be home so I can work and take care of other things that are impossible on the road.

Over the last two decades, there have been a lot of changes in terms of technology and the way music is made and played.

In your view, what has been the biggest developments?

Obviously the biggest is the demise of turntables, and people using computers and controllers as a substitution. I have actually

40 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:08:12

given up turntables for a number of reasons, so I am no longer a disc jockey. I prefer the term ‘music jockey’, since I’m not using discs anymore.

Todd Terry recently said that youngsters on the club scene aren’t always familiar with his history, and he’s conscious of trying to win them over as new fans – is it that way with you?

No one is exempt from this! We all have to stay relevant by reintroducing and re-inventing ourselves, over and over. Even all of the big artists are constantly staying relevant by releasing music all of the time. Fans forget easily – I go to gigs, and I’m sure that the kids don’t have a clue who I am. The idea is to make an impression on them with what you are doing now, instead of relying on what you did in the past.

In recent times, house has mutated into the mainstream and become almost synonymous with pop. What’s your take on the house music hybrids that are currently in the charts?

No comment – haha! That’s my reply.

Everything is pop music today, even hip hop. I call it pop hop.

I checked out your rider on the Cadenza website, and saw that it contains fruit juice and still water. I take it that you like to take a professional approach, and not drink behind the decks?

I don’t drink at all, besides a glass of red wine every now and then.

Can you tell me about some of the music you’re listening to and really enjoying at the moment, whether it’s artists, labels or individual tracks?

I rarely listen to dance music at home. It’s mainly jazz or world music – anything that’s not on the radio!

I understand you relocated to Los Angeles a few years back. Are you still there? What kind of influence is the city having on your music?

I have been in L.A for ten years. I love it, but it doesn’t really influence me musically. It does add to my quality of life, though, with the constant sunshine.

It’s been a while since your album Keys, Strings, Tambourines was released in 2008. Do you have any new music coming out soon, either tracks of your own or projects you’ve been working on with other artists?

I’m working on many remixes at the moment, in addition to a music project for Cadenza.

You’ll be coming down to Sydney soon – are you excited? What can we expect from those shows?

Amazing music with soul!

With: Murat Kilic, Steven Sullivan, Robbie Where: The Spice Cellar When: Saturday September 15 More: Presales sold out, but limited tickets are still available on the door.

Deep Impressions Underground Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery

Konrad Black

The Presets Older And Wiser By Alasdair Duncan

C

reating a follow-up to a breakthrough album can be a daunting process – in the case of The Presets, it was even more so. Their second full-length, Apocalypso, was a great big festivalbestriding behemoth of a record, which went 3x Platinum and inspired a generation of youngsters to take their shirts off, sling mud at one-another and indulge in all types of risk-taking behaviour to the sound of its various singles. Rather than launch into a follow-up right away, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes instead chose to put the band on hiatus, focusing on their family lives and on various other musical interests. It’s been a long four years, but their third record, Pacifica, is finally here. It comes with the weight of a lot of expectations, but Hamilton tells me that, when recording it, there was no choice but to put all of that out of their minds.

“You have to put all your ARIA awards in boxes and put them in the roof,” he tells me, “take your Gold records off the wall and put them in storage. You certainly need a clean slate to make the most honest music you can.” Looking back on the success of Apocalypso, Hamilton thinks it’s the honesty of the music that struck so many listeners. “All I can really say about that record is that we were making the kind of music we wanted to listen to. People can smell a rat, they can tell from a mile off whether something’s honest or not, so our main rule with this album was just to avoid following any trends, avoid just copying what we’d done in the past, and to make music that felt good to us. Our fans trusted us last time, and hopefully they’ll move along with us this time.”

The Presets photo by Baeu Greely

The Presets are no longer the young upstarts they once were – hard to believe, but they’ve been making music together for nearly a decade. With age has come perspective, and many of the songs on Pacifica examine the idea of youth and recklessness from a detached observer’s viewpoint. Take the lead single, ‘Youth In Trouble’. “I guess essentially, that song’s about the ways that youth are portrayed in the media,” Hamilton tells me.

“We’re encouraged to be scared of youth because they’re going to steal our jackets and scratch our cars. At the same time, we’re also encouraged to be scared for youth because they’re taking all sorts of drugs and they’re sexting, you know what I mean?”

The antics of young fans at Presets shows also played into the song’s lyrics. “When we play at festivals and we see all the kids with their shirts off jumping around and having a great time, you can’t help but feel a little bit responsible,” Hamilton says. “It’s a lot of fun to see people going off and having a great time and letting loose; I don’t think people, in day-to-day life, generally get much of a chance to throw mud at each other and get semi-naked and jump around and scream and dance, you know? So it’s nice to be able to provide an opportunity to do that,” he says with a laugh. “There are certainly moments in the show where it looks a bit scary. You look down and think, ‘Okay, I’m sure they’re having a great time, but I’m really glad I’m

“Put all your ARIA awards in boxes in the roof; take your Gold records off the wall and put them in storage. You need a clean slate to make the most honest music you can.” not down there, that would be a bit much for me…’”

‘Ghosts’ is another intriguing track on Pacifica, with lyrics that centre around the idea of old men sitting around recalling their lost youth. Lines like “shiniest stars won’t shine forever” suggest that The Presets were considering their own mortality when they wrote it – but Hamilton tells me it’s a bit more abstract than that. “To be honest, the thing that came first with that song was the melody,” he says. “It was this rollicking, sea shantystyle thing, and I really tried hard to find lyrics to fit.” It felt like a drinking song, he explains, so lyrics about old men drinking and reflecting together seemed an obvious fit. “I mean, there’s a little bit of a loosely autobiographical element to it, with talk of travelling with bands and wild parties, being a musician and having a band that’s successful… I guess those things are loosely taken from mine and Kim’s life, so yeah – that was the inspiration for it.”

S

ubsonic’s long weekend subbrand, End Of The Line, will go back to black at The Abercrombie on Monday October 1 with a live performance from Canada’s Konrad Black, the co-founder of the hugely respected Wagon Repair label. Black cut his teeth making DnB and hip hop way back in his early burglary days, but it is his distinctive take on club soundscapes, which Black himself likens to “bassline banshees drowning in a moat of synths,” that has led to him releasing on many of the pre-eminent labels in the house and techno spheres, such as Minus and Get Physical. Perhaps best known for his remix of Snax’s ‘Honeymoon’s Over,’ Black has re-entered the production fray this year after a relatively quiet stint, releasing a collaborative EP with Art Department and issuing technophiles a strong reminder of his considerable production prowess with a new cut, ‘Devastator’, on Lee Burridge and Matthew Dekay’s label Get Weird. An “inky black chug-monkey” that does the business on the dance floor, ‘Devastator’ has been a mainstay in the DJ sets of Damian Lazarus and Ivan Smagghe. Black’s return down under will be the centrepiece of a twelve-hour event that will also feature a smorgasbord of local DJs across two rooms, inside and outside of The Abercrombie. There’s also the prospect of an additional secret international appearing to pique your clubbing curiosity.

English producer James Shaw, who goes about his sonic business under the pseudonym Sigha, is gearing up to release his debut LP, Living With Ghosts, on Scuba’s Hotflush Recordings imprint in November. Shaw, who also curates his own label, Our Circula Sound, has honed a style that draws on techno, dubstep and ambient influences on seven previous EPs, and was in fact the first producer to commit exclusively to producing hard-line techno on Hotflush Recordings. His forthcoming

Revered Detroit veteran Delano Smith will headline the next Co-Op bash at Goodgod Small Club on Saturday November 3. Smith has been DJing since well before any of the Brag editorial team was born, getting his start in the late ‘70s spinning disco and funk as a protégé of the late Ken Collier (a cult figure whose impact upon the Motor City is sometimes compared to Ron Hardy’s influence on the Chicago scene), and rolling with the likes of Jeff Mills and Mike Grant. Despite taking a hiatus during the 90s, Delano Smith returned to the club realm in the early ‘00s, where he moved away from being a specialist DJ and started to release productions on labels like Kolour Recordings, Third Ear, Still Music as well as his own Mixmode Recordings.

Incredibly, it was only earlier this year that Smith finally released his first LP, An Odyssey, (albeit after many singles) on the Berlin-based label, Sushitech. Needless to say, anyone with a remote interest in house and techno ought to seek the album out – and indeed procure a presale ticket for Smith’s Sydney show. As Derrick “Strings Of Life” May humbly proclaimed, “Without Delano, there would be no Derrick”.

LOOKING DEEPER

At present, Julian and Kim are hard at work rehearsing their new live show; the songs from Pacifica will get their first official live airing at Parklife later in the year. “A lot of bands play and then record their songs, but we don’t do that – we record and then play them – so it’s always really interesting getting them onto that different plane and trying to get all the elements to fit. It’s really interesting now that we have so many years of music behind us. You put it on a computer and look at it all, and you think, ‘…

Wow. I remember that guy singing ‘Down Down Down’ and ‘Are You The One’ [from 2005 debut Beams].’ It’s like looking at old photos of yourself or something.” It’s a weird feeling, he says, but a good one. “Every album we’ve made has been a picture of us at a certain time of our lives.

Apocalypso sounds exciting, and we were so young and hungry… You can hear that hunger coming through in the songs, and it’s really great to go back and inhabit that again.”

What: Pacifica is out now on Modular, through EMI With: Passion Pit, Nero, Plan B, Tame Impala, Justice (DJ set), Benga and more Where: Parklife @ Centennial Park When: Sunday September 30

album apparently seeks to capture what Shaw elucidates is “that immersive quality that drags you in without any big hook or drop”. (The equivalent to making a thriller blockbuster flick without the antagonist waving a weapon about at every possible opportunity.) “I’ve been making drone and ambient stuff for a long time. It’s probably my favourite kind of thing, I can just kind of lose myself making weird noises, being really self-indulgent, letting it loop on for 20 minutes,” Shaw said in a recent interview, earning applause for this ethos from Deep Impressions HQ. “Paul Rose [aka Scuba] is always telling me to cut things down, which is good, not to be as self-indulgent.”

However, when you’re as talented as Shaw is, self-indulgence certainly has its place, and I for one cannot wait to hear Living With Ghosts.

SATURDAY 15 SEPTEMBER Thankyou City One22

MONDAY OCTOBER 1

End Of The Line ft. Konrad Black The Abercrombie

SATURDAY OCTOBER 6 Mark Henning One22

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 3 Mark Henning

Delano Smith Goodgod Small Club

Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 41

club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

club pick of the week SATURDAY R 15 SEPTEMBE

Octave One

Goldfish, Kings Cross

Octave One (USA), Johnny Gleeson, Tom Kelly, Matt Cahill, James Petrou, Jadede $25 (+ bf) 6pm MONDAY SEPTEMBER 10 Scurffy Murphy’s Haymarket Mother Of A Monday DJ Smoking Joe free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Latin Jazz DJs free 7pm

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11 Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel Salsa DJ Willie Sabor free 8pm Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket We Love Goon Tuesdays DJ Podgee, DJ Smoking Joe free 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Coyote Tuesday – Onesie Party DJ Valentine $10 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jam Cristof, Ali free 8pm

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12 The Argyle, The Rocks Anthony Casa, Danny de Sousa free 6pm Epping Hotel 42 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

DTF Resident DJs free 8pm Ivy, Sydney Salsa at Ivy Grand Opening Somos Familia, DJ Dwight ‘Chocolate’ Escobar free 7pm Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale Frat House DJ Alley Cats free 8pm The Marlborough Hotel Cellar Bar, Newtown Student Night – Mathletes vs Atheletes DJ Pauly free 8pm The Ranch, Epping Hump Wednesdays Resident DJs free 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Cream Resident DJs free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall ShockOne, Pablo Calamari, Clockwwrrk, Blackmale, Taylor Wolf, Chunks, Genie $5 7.30pm

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13 The Argyle, The Rocks DJ C’est CHIC, Starjumps free 6pm The Cool Room, Australian Brewery, Rouse Hill We Love Thursdays Resident DJs 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Girls Gone Mild Hannah & Eliza Reilly free 8pm Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney

Greenwood Thursdays Resident DJs free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs 8pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Jeru The Damaja (USA), Dialectrix, Jackie Onassis, Frenzie, DJ Mathematics, Shantan Wantan Ichiban $35 (+ bf) 8pm Oxford Art Factory Gallery Bar, Darlinghurst Zeropoint3 Unknown Function, The Last Animator, Est Et Non, B.I.N.Y., Bad Jeep, Circlepath, Equinoxoz, Simo Soo, Nintengatari, Zeropoint4 free 7.45pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 9pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rewind Samrai, Moto, Manny, Naike, Trey 8pm Strike, Chatswood The Alley DJs free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Urby, Propaganda DJs, DJ Jack Shit free (student)-$5 9pm

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs

free 9pm Annandale Hotel Kerser, Nino Brown, Fortay, Rates, Jaydee, Crotchet Crooks, Filthy Creature $20 (+ bf) 7.30pm The Argyle, The Rocks Argyle Fridays DJ Cadell, Liam Sampras, John ‘The Owl’ Devecchis free 6pm The Bank Nightclub, Kings Cross Get Funked Fridays Resident DJs 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Pop Up Box DJs free 8pm Bedlam Bar Basement, Glebe Gimme Some Polyphonics, Harry Sounds, Raffi Lovechild, Rik, Madame B free 8pm Burdekin Hotel – Underground Floor, Darlinghurst Significant Others Franchi Brothers, Marcotix, Ezequiel da Silva, LeOch, Tezzel vs Paulo Marques, Caba free 9pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Vamp Music Uberjakd, Kyro & Bomber, Pretty Young Things, Dirty Minds, Hoodlmz, Whatis?, Lebronx, Alaura & Rory, Theobeats, Front To Back 9pm Cherry, The Star, Pyrmont Simon Caldwell free 6pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Hamilton (UK), Glovecats, Reload, Gee Fluxz, Mark Bionic, V & Z, Damsel $15$20 10pm Civic Underground, Sydney Volar Volar DJs 10pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Club Blink - Zombie Prom DJ Snowflake 9pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Gimme Five Shamus, DJ Mike Silver free 8pm Eleven Night Club, Paddington Creole Zouk Night – Tropical French Party Mani, Nick Toth, Mo Zouk, Kizito Marley $15 8.45pm Enmore Theatre Six60 (NZ), Scribe (NZ), Damn Moroda $34.80 (+ bf) 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney The Tour of Love Cassian, Charlie Chux, Morgan, Set Mo, Help $8 (+ bf) 11pm The Hi-Fi, Moore Park Musiq Soulchild (USA) $55$85 (+ bf) 7.30pm Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Digital Therapy Adelaide Carleton (NZ), Scott Richardson, Big J, Rossco, Adam Byrne, DJ Jezza $15 (+ bf) 9pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Ivan Drago, DJ Rain Julz free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Resident DJs 8pm The Marlborough Hotel Cellar Bar, Newtown DJ Simon Laing free 8pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Dirty South 10pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm Oatley Hotel Official Parklife Warm Up Party Nukewood, Oakes & Lennox free-$5 7pm One22, Sydney Dance Café George Kristopher, Nick Vidal, B-Livvin, James Locksmith free-$10 9pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Big Things Tour Tuka, Ellesquire, Daily Meds,

True Vibenation, Reverse Polarities, Loose Change, Sketch The Rhyme $17 (+ bf) 9pm Oxford Art Factory Gallery Bar, Darlinghurst Friday Dysney Gardland, Juota, FM free 8pm Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont Check Your Head Prinnie Stevens, Suite Az, DJ Kitsch78, MC Rodney O free 7.30pm Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket Frisky Friday DJ Podgee free 6pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Zaia Resident DJs 9.45pm Spice Cellar, Sydney Jamie Lloyd, Discopunx, Morgan, Pink Lloyd, Dreamcatcher $10 10pm Tarantula Club, Darlinghurst Warp Speed Tarantula DJs 9pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross LIVE Fridays – Patron VIP Launch Tony Shock, Willi, Nemz, A-Stylez, Stevie J, Sefru, MC Deekay 9pm The Watershed Hotel Bring On The Weekend! DJ Matt Roberts free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM Leohas, East River, Noliva Fig, The Darkened Seas, Euphoriacs, Lenox, Cries Wolf DJs, Post Paint DJs, Swim Team DJs, MUM DJs $10-$15 8pm

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Strange Fruit Strange Fruit DJs free 9pm The Argyle, The Rocks Open House Phil Hudson, DJ Georgia, DJ La Vida free 6pm The Arthouse Hotel, Sydney Flirt Flirt DJs $10 9pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Big Guns Sherlock Bones, 2busy2kiss, Pretty Young Things, Scott Cole, Intheory, Retrojunk, DJ Deluxx, Sgt Scotty P, Dubelectro 9pm Cargo Bar, King St Wharf Kick On Resident DJs free 6pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Jaytech, Luke Fair (CAN), Sharkslayer (FIN), Blaze Tripp, A-Tonez, Emoh Instead, Fingers, Tones, DJ Eko, King Lee $20-$25 9pm Civic Underground, Sydney Sydney Trance – The Imperial Strikes Back Imperial, Rossco, Luke Sykes, Adriano Giorgi $15 9pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Starfuckers Stafuckers DJs 10pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Yellow Sox DJ Brynstar free 8pm The Cool Room, Australian Brewery, Rouse Hill Saturday Nights At The Brewery DJ Koffee 8.30pm

Establishment, Sydney Sienna Resident DJs 8pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Scalper (UK), Deadbeat & Hazy, Old Men of Moss Mountain, Subsketch $10 8pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Hands Up! Staggman, Clockwerk free 11.30pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Octave One (USA), Johnny Gleeson, Tom Kelly, Matt Cahill, James Petrou, Jadede $25 (+ bf) 6pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Astral People 1st Birthday Ryan Hemsworth (CAN), Dro Carey, Polographia, Albatross, Wordlife, Preacha, Astral DJs, Wedding Ring Fingers $17 (+ bf) 9pm The Green Room Lounge, Enmore Vinyl Solution DJ Nic Dalton free 7pm Hollywood Hotel, Surry Hills Motion Dean Dixon, Dave Ferandes, Burn-Hard, Northern Soul Poster Boy, Alex Dimitriades $5 8pm Ivy, Sydney Ivy Saturdays Goodwill $20 8pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Simon Laing, DJ Michael Stewart free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Kitty Kitty Bang Bang!

Isbjorn, Mr Belvedere, David Neale, Playmate, Devola, Pat Ward, Handsome, Kristy Lee 8pm The Marlborough Hotel Cellar Bar, Newtown Resident DJs free 8pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Foniko 9pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm One22, Sydney Thankyou City, Marcotix, Gemma Van D, Eoin Brosnan $10 (+ bf) 10pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Saturdays Resident DJs 8pm The Sly Fox, Enmore Dub In The Pub Bruce, Wally, Pablo, Mark Keith Brown 9pm Soho, Potts Point The Usual Suspects Tai (BNR), Nukewood, Lights Out, Jack Bailey, Jackdup, Here’s Trouble, Taylor Wolf, Kid Crookes, Romelus, Remus & Wolf 9pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Masif Saturdays Resident DJs 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Kenny Larkin (USA), Robbie Lowe, Murat Kilic, Steven Sullivan $25 10pm Tarantula Club, Darlinghurst SFX – Spring Fling Traffic Light Party Tarantula DJs 9pm Valve Bar, Tempe 1Outs 12pm The Watershed Hotel Watershed Presents…

Skybar $20 8pm Ryan Hemsworth

club guide

snap

up all night out all week . . .

send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Go Freek, Daniel Farley, Rubio, Kraymer, Alistair Erskine, Tokolosche, Astrix Little, Smokin Joe Mekhael, Ben Morris, The Mane Thing, Raye Antonelli $15-$20 8pm

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 16 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays – SASH SOUP Fivers vs. SASH, Cassette, Morgan, Shaun

Broughton $10 2pm The Argyle, The Rocks Good Life Sundays Random Soul, Michael Whitney free 4pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Martini Club Tom Kelly, Straight Up Steve 6pm Hugo’s Lounge, Kings Cross Sneaky Sundays DJs 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident DJs 8pm Oatley Hotel

Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Daydreams Daydreams DJs 4.30am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays DJ Def Rok, Resident DJs 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours Murat Kilic $20 4am The Watershed Hotel Afternoon DJs DJ Matt Roberts free 4pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen Coutlette, Manjazz, Ethan Winzer free 7pm

club picks the cool room

Nino Brown

Daily Meds, True Vibenation, Reverse Polarities, Loose Change, Sketch The Rhyme $17 (+ bf) 9pm

The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall ShockOne, Pablo Calamari, Clockwwrrk, Blackmale, Taylor Wolf, Chunks, Genie $5 7.30pm

Spice Cellar, Sydney Jamie Lloyd, Discopunx, Morgan, Pink Lloyd, Dreamcatcher $10 10pm

The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Urby, Propaganda DJs, DJ Jack Shit free (student)-$5 9pm

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 Annandale Hotel Kerser, Nino Brown, Fortay, Rates, Jaydee, Crotchet Crooks, Filthy Creatures $20 (+ bf) 7.30pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Hamilton (UK), Glovecats, Reload, Gee Fluxz, Mark Bionic, V & Z, Damsel $15-$20 10pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney The Tour of Love Cassian, Charlie Chux, Morgan, Set Mo, Help $8 (+ bf) 11pm One22, Sydney Dance Café George Kristopher, Nick Vidal, B-Livvin, James Locksmith free-$10 9pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Big Things Tour Tuka, Ellesquire,

02:09:12 :: The Abercrombie Hotel :: 100 Broadway Ultimo 9211 3486

Chinese Laundry, Sydney Jaytech, Luke Fair (CAN), Sharkslayer (FIN), Blaze Tripp, A-Tonez, Emoh Instead, Fingers, Tones, DJ Eko, King Lee $20-$25 9pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Scalper (UK), Deadbeat & Hazy, Old Men of Moss Mountain, Subsketch $10 8pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Astral People 1st Birthday Ryan Hemsworth (CAN), Dro Carey, Polographia, Albatross, Wordlife, Preacha, Astral DJs, Wedding Ring Fingers $17 (+ bf) 9pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Kenny Larkin (USA), Robbie Lowe, Murat Kilic, Steven Sullivan $25 10pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Go Freek, Daniel Farley, Rubio, Kraymer, Alistair Erskine, Tokolosche, Astrix Little, Smokin Joe Mekhael, Ben Morris, The Mane Thing, Raye Antonelli $15-$20 8pm

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 16 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays – SASH SOUP Fivers vs. SASH, Cassette, Morgan, Shaun Broughton $10 2pm

propaganda

PICS :: DM

Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Jeru The Damaja (USA), Dialectrix, Jackie Onassis, Frenzie, DJ Mathematics, Shantan Wantan Ichiban $35 (+ bf) 8pm

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15

sash sundays

PICS :: AM

30:08:12 :: Australian Brewery :: 350 Annangrove Rd Rouse Hill 9679 4555

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13

PICS :: NA

up all night out all week...

29:08:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700 :: NOHMON ANWARYAR :: ANNA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER LEY MAR :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS PEACHY :: ROCKET ASH BROWN :: KATRINA CLARKE :: WEIJERS :: PEDRO XAVIER ::

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 43

snap

freshly squeezed

PICS :: AB

up all night out all week . . .

31:08:12 :: Annandale Hotel :: 17 Paramatta Rd Annandale 9550 1078

It’s called: Kerser's No Rest For The Sickest album preview It sounds like: Stories of success, elation and achievement pierced with tales of malice, aggression and confrontation.

Who’s playing? Kerser, Nino Brown, Fortay , Rates, Jaydee, Crochet Crooks and Filthy Creatures.

Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Kerse r– 'Deadset'; and previewed tracks from his forthc ‘Kerser Is the Sickest’; Kerser – oming LP, No Rest For The Sickest.

And one you definitely won’t: Sky’High – ‘Let’s Just’ Sell it to us: Although The Annandale is known also been a jumping-off point for many succe as an institution of rock‘n’roll, it’s ssful hip hop acts. If hip hop is your thing, this is one not to miss.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The toilets covered in butchers paper for those in the hip hop scene who feel the need to mark their territory with scribble everywhere they go.

steffi

PICS :: TL

01:09:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

Crowd specs: Who knows? It’s definitely going to be an interesting night.

Wallet damage: $15 on the door.

Where: The Annandale Hotel When: Friday September 14, 7:30pm

red bull's special launch

PICS :: TL

party profile

kerser

itchy beats

PICS :: AM

30:08:12 :: Neild Avenue :: 10 Neild Avenue Rushcutters Bay 8353 4400

subsonic music fest launch

simon caldwell

PICS :: AM

01:09:12 :: The Burdekin :: 2-4 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9331 3066

31:08:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney 9223 5585 44 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

:: NOHMON ANWARYAR :: ANNA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER LEY MAR :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS PEACHY :: ROCKET ASH BROWN :: KATRINA CLARKE :: WEIJERS :: PEDRO XAVIER ::

PICS :: TL

31:08:12 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9361 3379

BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12 :: 45

snap

shockone

PICS :: TL

up all night out all week . . .

club cab sav

PICS :: TL

01:09:12 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711

photek

PICS :: AM

29:08:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William Street Kings Cross 9331 9900

charades

PICS :: AM

31:08:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999

strike

PICS :: AM

01:09:12 :: One22 :: 122 Pitt St Sydney

31:08:12 :: Strike Bowling Bar :: 22 The Promenade Sydney 9276 7100

It’s called: The Tour Of Love It sounds like: Dance music and love.

Acts: Cassian, Charlie Chux, Morgan, Set Mo, Help, plus a few special guests.

Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Cassi an Anna Lunoe – ‘Real Talk (Country Club Remix – ‘I Love It’; Touch Sensitive & )’; Scuba – ‘Feel It’ And one you definitely won’t: David Guett a – ‘I Can Only Imagine ft. Chris Brown (R3hab Remix)' Sell it to us: Hometown release party for Cassi an’s The Love Cuts EP, released through Nurvous (the little bro to NYC’s legen dary Nervous Records). It’s a dance party thrown by a guy whose job it is to go to dance parties: the sound will be right, the smoke will be thick, and the lasers will be piercing.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Charlie Chux’s ornamental neckwear, Morgan’s dance moves, Set Mo’s goatee, Help’s Italian pride and, of course, the love.

Crowd specs: Dance partiers only.

Wallet damage: $8 Where: Goodgod Small Club When: Friday September 14

46 :: BRAG :: 479 :: 10:09:12

dave seaman

PICS :: AM

party profile

the tour of love

01:09:12 :: The Goldfish :: 111 Darlinghurst Rd Potts Point 8354 6630 :: NOHMON ANWARYAR :: ANNA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER LEY MAR :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS PEACHY :: ROCKET ASH BROWN :: KATRINA CLARKE :: WEIJERS :: PEDRO XAVIER ::

IN CINEMAS SEPTEMBER 13