VICTORIA'S HIGHEST CIRCUL ATING STREET PRESS
KAREN ELSON
TUMBLEWEED
AGAINST ME!
RICHARD DURAND
B L I T ZE N T R AP P E R K AT I E N O O N AN & T H E C A PTAI N S T HE G A S L I G H T AN T H E M MO U N TA I N M A N
W E D N E S D AY 16 J U N E 2 0 10 ~ I S S U E 112 7 ~ F R E E
ZEBRA
MELBOURNE - MORNINGTON PENINSULA - BALLARAT / BENDIGO - GEELONG / SURF COAST
33,408
3
4
Wednesday 16 June
JOHN FLANAGAN & THE BEGIN AGAINS + GABRIEL LYNCH + BLUVEIN 8.30pm, Entry by donation (band room) Thursday 17 June
MISTER BLACK AND BLUES
5.30pm, Free in the Front Bar
THE BOY WHO SPOKE CLOUDS + HEIDI ELVA 8.30pm $7 Entry (band room) Friday 18 June
SON OF A GUN JESS CHALKER + DAN PARSONS
6pm Free in the Front Bar
8.30pm $10 Entry (band room)
Saturday 19 June
BEN CARR TRIO
5.30pm Free in the Front Bar
Sunday 20 June
JAMES KENYON & THE LLOYD WEIR 4.30pm , Free in the Front Bar EARL GREY POLICY + JULIANNE JESSOP 8.30pm, $5 Entry (band room) tuesday 22 June
DAN MUSIL + CARLY FERN + NIC TAMMENS 8.30pm $3 Entry (band room) Coming Up...
Open...MON - THU...from 4pm ‘til late FRI...from 2pm ‘til late SAT - SUN...from 12pm ‘til late
Live Music Bookings wesleyannebookings@gmail.com www.wesleyanne.com.au
23/6: JOHN FLANAGAN & THE BEGIN AGAINS + BEN ABRAHAM + TOM TUENA, 24/6: THE BOY WHO SPOKE TO CLOUDS + DANE CERTIFICATE AND JOSH ARMISTEAD, 26/6: CILLA JANE + ALEX HALLAHAN, 27/6: EARL GREY POLICY + THE GALLANT TREES, 29/6: NMIT RECITAL - KIRSTY MORPHETT + AUOUR ALESSANDRA ZOEGA
Autumn Special Two for one meals on Mondays (excludes steak, fish and specials)
bookings: 9482 1333 5
6
7
No.109
WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE OPEN MIC NIGHT 8PM FREEREE
THURSDAY 17 JUNE SERI VIDA + JAMES DANIEL 9PM FREE
FRIDAY 18 JUNE EMILY SMART TRIO + JACKSON FISH 10PM FREE
SATURDAY 19 JUNE
RED SEASON + CAROLINE CRIVERA 10PM FREE
BRUNSWICK
Thursday 17 june
native plants a hybrid mix of musos playing original pop. 7.30pm
Saturdays in June
Spoonful Get ready: Spoonful are coming to town. Every Saturday in June this highly charged rhythm and blues rock band - featuring Paul Winstanley, Kit Warhurst (Rocket Science), Andre Warhurst (Silver Night Drive) and David Lord (The Rectifiers) deliver a killer show. You’ve got to see to believe it. 5pm
SUNDAY 20 JUNE OPEN DECKS NIGHT 6PM FREE
Sun 20 june
TUESDAY 22 JUNE KARAOKE NIGHT 9PM FREE
635 HIGH ST THORNBURY VIC 3071 OPEN 5PM TILL LATE, CLOSED MONDAYS PH (03)9495-0341 WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEBENDERBAR
8
collard, greens & gravy swampy blues trio playing original tunes and delta blues. 5pm
THE UNION HOTEL
BRUNSWICK 109 UNION ST, BRUNSWICK UHBBOOKINGS@YAHOO.COM.AU
9388 2235
SECRET SOUNDS PRESENTS
SIDESHOWS ON SALE NOW
The Album ‘Go’ CD/DVD - Experience Edition - out now
ASH the album A-Z Vol.1 OUT NOW WE ARE SCIENTISTS the album Barbara out June 18
TICKETS: BILLBOARDTHEVENUE.COM.AU OR WWW.MOSHTIX.COM.AU
special guests BOY & BEAR and JOHNNY FLYNN
OUT WED 4 AUG SOLD - THE HI-FI th
EXTRA SHOW ! ADDED
THUR 5th AUG THE HI-FI
Tickets from Ph 1300THEHIFI, www.thehifi.com.au, Polyester, Greville Records
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
CLOUD CONTROL
WEDNESDAY JULY 28 CORNER HOTEL Tickets : www.cornerhotel.com
New album THE RUNAWAY Out July on Heavenly/Cooperative I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN OUT NOW ON EMI
www.lauramarling.com
=I<< JXdgc\i :_\Zb flk jfd\ f] fli ]Xmfli`k\j >f kf j\Zi\k$jfle[j%Zfd%Xl kf [fnecfX[ pfli GcXpc`jk
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3/86 63(&,$/ *8(676 ',$)5,; 0,1' 29(5 0$77(5 BRAND NEW ALBUM “RUNNING ON AIR” AVAILABLE JULY 30
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ISSUE 1127
WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE 2010 CREDITS EDITORIAL
Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast Editor Shane O’Donohue music@inpress.com.au Interval Editor Daniel Crichton-Rouse interval@inpress.com.au National Dance Editor Kris Swales zebra@inpress.com.au Contributing Editor Adam Curley Staff Writers Bryget Chrisfield, Michael Smith
ADVERTISING sales@inpress.com.au National Sales & Marketing Director Leigh Treweek Victorian Sales Manager Katie Owen Arts & local advertising Sarah Blaby Bands & local advertising Adrian Stoyles
DESIGN & LAYOUT artroom@inpress.com.au Group Art Director Stuart Teague Inpress Cover Design / Art Direction Matt Greenwood Layout Matt Davis, Matt Greenwood, Stuart Teague
ACCOUNTS & ADMINISTRATION accounts@streetpress.com.au Accounts Qing Shu
CONTRIBUTORS
KATIE NOONAN INPRESS 14
18 20 21 22 24 25 28 30 30 32 32 32 32 34 34 34 34
Foreword Line – news, opinions, tours, Backlash and Frontlash, and a look at the Visible music mentorship program We check the form of this year’s Community Cup participants Dan Sultan’s cat misses him when he’s away Blitzen Trapper don’t put a huge amount of effort into writing songs Morcheeba have drafted singer Skye Edwards back into the fold Against Me! once decapitated Alf Mountain Man didn’t set out to sound like their album was recorded in 1905 On The Record reviews new releases by Cabins, Karen Elson and The School Tumbleweed had a ball in the ‘90s Karen Elson leads a lucky life but still gets sad Train have won Grammys but people still don’t know who they are Katie Noonan loves being in a band again Adelaide’s Grenadiers will miss playing at the Arthouse The Gaslight Anthem are sick of being compared to Bruce Springsteen Emilie Simon composed the score to March Of The Penguins Paul Di’Anno is a punk fan through and through The Devil Rides Out are on their first multi-state tour Brilliant Fanzine don’t just listen to British music
FRONT ROW 56
57 57 58
We profile the Heide Museum Of Modern Art and Melbourne gears up for the International Animation Festival Inpress speaks to Jenny He about the immense Tim Burton exhibition that opens at ACMI next week Film Carew tackles Get Him To The Greek, Exit Through The Gift Shop and Lou Miyuki Jokiranta talks about suitability and arts ahead of the Seven Thousand Oaks Festival
32 58 58 59 60 60
Fragmented Films looks at some seriously oddball DVDs A Kind Of Alaska takes over The Theatre Husk Oscar winner Bob Murawski brings his B-grade lovefest Gone With The Pope to Australia Cultural Cringe goes into World Cup mode in the wake of Australia’s match against Germany American street artist Shepard Fairey opens up on what art means to him
BACK TO INPRESS 61 61 61 61 63 63 69 74 74 74 75 75 78 79 80 86 90 90
Kirsten Verwoord loves making gift packages for her support acts Brothers Grim sing about fighting and fucking Brian Nankervis pumps up the Heart Of St Kilda concert Jess Chalker had a song go viral on YouTube Our LIVE section has everything you need to know about the world of Melbourne live music! Gig Of The Week salutes the Queen Of Rockabilly, Wanda Jackson LIVE:Reviews gets caught in Dappled Cities’ lasers Stu Harvey gives you a ShortFastReport on the world of punk and hardcore Andrew Haug takes us to the dark side in The Racket Kendal Coombs leads the under-18s boardroom in the Department Of Youth Adam Curley dissects The Runaways in The Breakdown Dan Condon blues and roots in Roots Down If you haven’t appeared in Fred Negro’s Pub, your mother probably still speaks to you Jeff Jenkins walks the talk with Jason Walker in Howzat! Our Gig Guide fills your diary for the weekend Find your new band and just about anything else in our classy Classifieds Finish Line hits hard with industry fact (and conjecture) Why would you be anywhere else when you could be in London Fields?
GIVEAWAYS
PHOTOGRAPHERS Chrissie Francis, Kate Griffin, Kane Hibberd, Lara Luz, Lou Lou Nutt, Gina Maher, James Morgan, Heidi Takla, Nathan Uren.
INTERNS Andrea Biagini, Dale Brett, Mitchell Brown, Julian Hocking, Stefanie Markidis.
EDITORIAL POLICY The opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publishers. No part may be reproduced without the consent of the copyright holder. By submitting letters to us for publication, you agree that we may edit the letter for legal, space or other reasons. ©
DEADLINES Editorial Friday 5pm Advertising Bookings Friday 5pm Advertising Artwork Monday 5pm General Inquiries info@inpress.com.au (no attachments) Accounts/Administration accounts@streetpress.com.au Gig Guide gigguide@inpress.com.au Distribution distro@inpress.com.au Office Hours 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday
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Email giveaways@inpress.com.au from 5pm Wednesday
Following up on their critically acclaimed double LP Junk, Brisbane-based folk rockers The Gin Club have returned with Deathwish, an album that once again demonstrates the colourful mix of influences, voices and styles that have become the hallmark of the group. The Gin Club launch the album at the East Brunswick Club on Saturday, and to celebrate we have two packs to give away, featuring a copy of Deathwish and a double pass to the show.
on Thursday at Next at the Colonial Hotel, and we have one double pass and t-shirt to give away.
Former George singer Katie Noonan has returned with new band The Captains to release the dynamic Emperor’s Box. The album has already won rave reviews, being hailed as “deliciously over-the-top alternative pop”. Noonan & The Captains will be playing the Hi-Fi this Friday in support of the new album, and we have three double passes to give away.
Grinspoon
With their driving exotic rhythms, soaring guitar solos and voices that deteriorate into synthetic screams, UK prog rockers Noxshi are a fierce live force. Touring with Yusuf in support of their debut album, the band will be headlining their own show
Senior Contributors Clem Bastow, Jeff Jenkins Overseas Contributors Tom Hawking (US), James McGalliard (UK), Sasha Perera (UK). Writers Nick Argyriou, The Boomeister, Paul Andrew, Atticus Bastow, Steve Bell, Tim Burke, Dan Condon, Anthony Carew, EJ Cartledge, Peter Chambers, Matthew Cheetham, Chris Chinchilla, Rebecca Cook, Kendal Coombs, Adam Curley, Cyclone, Michael Daniels, Wayne Davidson, Guy Davis, Carolyn Dempsey, Liza Dezfouli, John Eagle, Guido Farnell, Sam Fell, Bob Baker Fish, Johnny Gash, Cameron Grace, Stu Harvey, Andrew Haug, Andy Hazel, Anthony Horan, Rod Hunt, Layne Kim, Cookie Lee, Joey Lightbulb, Michael Magnusson, Baz McAlister, Keith McDougall, Sam McDougall, Tony McMahon, Adam D Mills, Count Monbulge, Luke Monks, Fred Negro, Mark Neilsen, Roger Nelson, Danielle O’Donohue, Matt O’Neill, Jordan Oliver, Adrian Potts, Paul Ransom, Symon JJ Rock, Adam Sharp, Nic Toupee, Rob Townsend, Dominique Wall, Doug Wallen, Rod Yates.
One of the most successful Australian acts of the last decade and a half, Grinspoon have already made a strong showing in the first half of 2010, following up on the success of their Big Day Out appearance with a national tour in support of their most recent
album, Six To Midnight. Thursday they hit up the Corner Hotel, alongside Gun Street Girls and The Moons, and we have two packs containing a double pass and two copies of the album to give away. Regarded as one of the most influential Australian punk bands of all time, The Meanies have overcome tragedy and adversity to remain a constant force on the local music scene for more than 20 years. Renowned for their energetic live performances, the band will be appearing this Saturday at the Hi-Fi, and we have two double passes to give away. RRR’s Winter Warmers series of live-to-air broadcasts is underway, and an incredible line-up of both established and emerging local talent has been assembled for this season. TTT will take to the stage of RRR’s Performance Space this Sunday to play tracks from their highly anticipated debut release, Lands. The performance will be broadcast live from 6.30pm on 102.7FM, but for those hoping to get up close and witness the show in person, we have five double passes to give away.
WORD UP TO PRIZE WINNERS: Prizes must be collected from Inpress offices during business hours (9am-5.30pm, Mon-Fri). ID is required when collecting prizes. Prizes must be collected within four weeks of the giveaway being published. Please note, Inpress giveaway policy is that winners are permitted one prize per four-week period only.
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ONE OF THE GREATEST HIP-HOP GROUPS OF ALL TIME!
NICHE PRODUCTIONS, PEACE MUSIC & TRENTSLINGSHOT PRESENTS
THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF PEOPLE’S INSTINCTIVE TRAVELS AND THE PATHS OF RHYTHM TOUR
FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN AUSTRALIA
& VERY SPECIAL GUEST
MASEO of DE LA SOUL
THU.12.AUGUST FESTIVAL HALL LICENSED/ALL AGES (UNLICENSED) TIX WWW.TICKETMASTER.COM.AU / 136 100 PRESALE TICKETS ON SALE THU. 17TH JUNE GA TICKETS ON SALE MON. 21ST JUNE LIMITED PREMIUM TICKET PACKAGE AVAILABLE NICHEPRODUCTIONS.COM.AU • ATRIBECALLEDQUEST.COM • MYSPACE.COM/ATRIBECALLEDQUEST Presented By
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FOREWORD LINE
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
AMAYA MAKES HER MARK
Darwin Deez
Folk singer and songwriter Amaya Laucirica has been announced as the support act for Mark Lanegan’s tour next month. Originally from South Australia, Laucirica moved to Melbourne where she recorded her debut EP, Sugar Lights. Since supporting Magic Dirt on their last tour, Laucirica has completed her second record, Early Summer, which is to be released later this year. Lanegan’s Wednesday 7 July show at the Corner Hotel has sold out but tickets are still available for his Friday 9 July GIG at the Espy through Ticketek and at oztix.com.au.
GO ON, GOANNA
Australian singer/songwriter Shane Howard is touring the country to promote his new album Goanna Dreaming. Due for release next month, the album draws upon Howard’s extensive three-decade experience on the Aussie music scene. Produced in partnership with Kerryn Tolhurst (Dingoes) this trans-Pacific recording project began in Arizona in Tolhurst’s studio and was completed on home soil. Howard will be joined on tour with many of the players who grace the album, including his daughter Myra and long-standing band members Ruben Shannon, Rory McDougall, (Black Arm Band) and John Hudson. Howard will be performing on Friday 2 July at St Brigid’s Hall in Koroit (tickets from the venue), Friday 16 at the Oakleigh RSL (tickets from caravanmusic.com.au) and Saturday 17 July at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine (tickets from theatreroyal.info).
WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE
SONGWRITERS’ COLLECTIVE PRESENTS:
BEN SMITH BAND JESS HIESER JOPPY (HAPPY ENDINGS) DAMIEN VAN DE GEER ENTRY $7, 8PM
THURSDAY 17 JUNE
RED INK
PARKLIFE LINE-UP ANNOUNCED
ENTRY $12, 9PM
Parklife will be celebrating its tenth birthday in style with a stellar line-up including electronic, urban and indie royalty. Bloc Party lead singer Kele Okereke will bring his dazzling side project to the Parklife stage, playing tracks from his smash solo album plus the best Bloc Party classics live. Legendary US indie heroes The Dandy Warhols will join the party alongside hip hop queen Missy Elliott, who will showcase club classics and new material from an upcoming album with a 27-strong dancing posse. The Wombats will have us dancing and Holy Ghost! will play their first ever Australian show while Cut Copy will celebrate the completion of their third album with their first local appearance in almost two years. Rounding out the bill are Groove Armada, Soulwax, Busy P, Memory Tapes, Midnight Juggernauts, Uffie, Classixx, Dan Black, Jack Beats, Delorean, Darwin Deez, Chiddy Bang, The Glitch Mob, New Young Pony Club, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Mix Master Mike, Brodinski, The Swiss, Wolf Gang, Sinden, DJ Mehdi, Jesse Rose, Washington, Bag Raiders, AC Slater, Grum, Gypsy & The Cat, Ajax and Yolanda Be Cool vs Dcup. Parklife will take place at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and the King’s Domain on Saturday 2 October. Tickets go on sale Sunday 1 July.
THE ROCKETSMITHS ROYAL CHANT
FRIDAY 18 JUNE
SINGLE LAUNCH
SLEEP PARADE ENGINE THREE SEVEN SADHANA THE FURNITURE INCIDENT
ENTRY $12 DOOR, $10 PRESALE THRU MOSHTIX, 8.30PM
SATURDAY 19 JUNE
RAVE REVIEW’S 1ST BIRTHDAY
WILFRED JACKAL DETECTIVE SOCIAL RUSH IN ATTACK SWING SET GREEN
ENTRY $13 DOOR, $10 PRESALE THRU MOSHTIX, 8.30PM
OH, FOR THE LOVE OF
Melbourne experimental pop band Love Of Diagrams will play their first show back on home soil this weekend after returning from a successful US tour. Showcasing catchy pop tunes new and old, they will play the Northcote Social Club this Saturday night. Supporting will be quartet Dick Diver and Miniature Submarines, the project of The Stabs bassist Mark Nelson. Tickets are available at northcotesocialclub.com.
SUNDAY 20 JUNE
MATINEE SHOW
MELBOURNE MASS GOSPEL CHOIR
E ES
NT
S
JAZZ SPIRIT
EVENING SHOW
ROCK AND ROLL ON
ENTRY $5, 8PM
MONDAY 21 JUNE
RESIDENCY
EL MOTH & THE TURBO RADS GUEST DJS
ENTRY BY DONATION, 9PM
HERE WE GO GRIZZLY Indie sensations Grizzly Bear have announced quirky Brooklyn pop five-piece Here We Go Magic as the support act for their Australian tour next month. Fans of the latter will be pleased to hear of the band’s support following the cancellation of their June tour. Tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster for their Tuesday 27 July show at the Palais Theatre.
COMING UP:
SONGWRITERS COLLECTIVE PRESENTS: (WEDNESDAYS IN JUNE) MUMBLETOWN (24 JUNE) VAUDEVILLE SMASH (25 JUNE) ROOT! (26 JUNE) IDA BRAIM (EP LAUNCH) (1 JULY) JACK’S CASTLE (2 JULY) OWN KIND (EP LAUNCH) (3 JULY) CLOUD CITY (EP LAUNCH) (9 JULY) SMALL TOWN FIASCO (EP LAUNCH) (10 JULY) THE PROCESS (15 JULY) SPIT SYNDICATE (ALBUM LAUNCH) (16 JULY) STRIKE ANYWHERE (17 JULY) JUNGAL (ALBUM LAUNCH) (23 JULY) AUTUMN GRAY (24 JULY) ALPINE (29 JULY) MATT SONIC & THE HIGH TIMES (30 JULY) MERCURY RISING (31 JULY)
NORTH EAST PARTY HOUSE (13 AUGUST) INDIGO CHILDREN (14 AUGUST)
LITTLE RED RIDING IN THE ‘HOOD
After offering the first taste of their second album last week with the release of new single Rock It, Melbourne favourites Little Red have announced a national tour next month in anticipation of their Splendour In The Grass appearance. The indie rock lads will play the Prince Bandroom on Thursday 15 July. Tickets are on sale now from the Prince public bar, princebandroom. com.au, Polyester Records and Greville Records.
WISH WELLINGTONS
ENTRY $15, $10 PRESALE THRU MOSTIX, 2PM
KATE BEAMES THE SOULAR SKY
Auckland-based indie rock quartet Artisan Guns will cross the Tasman Sea to play a Melbourne show this weekend. Celebrating the release this week of their sophomore EP, Hearts, the band will play at Shake Some Action at Onesixone nightclub this Thursday.
American jazz master Chris Botti will tour Australia for the first time in August. The trumpeter boasts four number one jazz albums and an extensive list of collaborations including Frank Sinatra, Sting, Michael Bublé, Joni Mitchell and Andrea Bocelli. With his eight-piece band in tow, the jazz superstar will play the National Theatre on Sunday 22 August. Tickets go on sale through Ticketek and nationaltheatre.org.au this Monday 21 June, with a Frontier members presale starting at noon today. Indie darlings The Wellingtons will launch new single Song For Kim with a show at the Northcote Social Club on Saturday 26 June. Song For Kim is the second tune to be lifted from their critically acclaimed album Heading North For The Winter. Playing support will be Danna & The Changes and D Rogers & They Who Ride The Tiger.
PR
LUCY GALLANT
The Rock & Roll Revolution online band competition launches next month with a hand-picked selection of Australian bands touring nationally in support of the new industry initiative. The launch tour is a precursor to the web-based competition, which will see the winners of a public internet vote embark on a national tour in October. The launch tour will stop off at the Hi-Fi on Saturday 24 July, with live performances by multi-platinum rockers The Screaming Jets and an acclaimed line-up of six young local and independent rock talents including Canada’s Domenica and up-and-coming Australian bands The Driving Conditions, Highway Blonde, Ruby Tigers, Skarlet Blue and The Next.
ONE TRIBE Hip hop pioneers A Tribe Called Quest will play their first ever Australian shows this August in a reunion celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm. The legendary hip hop group experienced the height of their fame in the ‘90s with a decade-long run that saw them release five albums and leave a lasting effect on the genre. With all original members and support by special guest Maceo (De La Soul), the tribe will take over Festival Hall on Thursday 12 August. Tickets go on sale this Monday 21 June, with presale starting tomorrow.
$2 CARLTON POTS EVERY MONDAY CHRIS O’NEIL ALBUM LAUNCH (FOR PRESALES TICKET CONTACT ANDREW AT BYRNESIDE MUSIC 95106322)
THURS 17 JUNE
FRI 18 JUNE
W/ INSTITUT POLAIRE + THE BON SCOTTS
W/ KIEREN CHRISTOPHERSON +THOM CRAWFORD +RONALD BLACKMAN
THE GOOD CHINA (FAREWELL SHOW)
CHRIS O NEIL ALBUM LAUNCH
SAT 19 JUNE
2ECONDS SINGLE LAUNCH W/ MEET ME AT MONTAUK + OPTION + KILLS COLLAPSE
SUN 13 JUNE - JUNE RESIDENTS
THE FROWNING CLOUDS
+ DELTA RIGGS
W/ THE KREMILIN SUCCESSION
SUN 20 JUNE - JUNE RESIDENTS
THE FROWNING CLOUDS + DELTA RIGGS
FRI 25 JUNE
SAT 26 JUNE
LAUNCH W/ THE TWERPS + SCHOOL OF RADIANT LIVING
LAUNCH W/ JIMMY HAWK & THE ENDLESS PARTY + SKYE HARBOUR
BEACHES 7” LAUNCH
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ALL GUNS BLAZING
THE BOX ROCKETS DOUBLE A-SIDE
SUN 27 JUNE ANTI-GENTRIFICATION FESTIVAL TOTE CARPET FASHION JAM W. CUBA IS JAPAN, JIMMY HAWK, GRIZZLY JIM LAWRIE + MOUNT DISAPPOINTMENT
FOREWORD LINE
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
LOVESTONED
After quickly selling out two Melbourne shows this September, Angus & Julia Stone have announced a third date on Wednesday 8 September. The siblings’ second album, Down The Way, holds the title as this year’s highest-selling Australian album and has been hovering at the top of the charts since its release in March. The folk duo will play the Palais Theatre on Wednesday 8, Thursday 9 and Friday 10 September. Tickets for the Wednesday show are on sale through Ticketmaster.
CROW FLIES AGAIN
FATHER AND SON UK band Noxshi are in Australia for their national support tour with Yusuf Islam. For Noxshi’s lead singer Yoriyos Adamos, this means going on tour with Dad. But Nozshi deserve their support slot – they more than hold their own with debut album The Way They Lush making waves in the UK and set for Australian release later this year. Noxshi play Rod Laver Arena tonight and Friday with Islam, Thursday at Next at the Colonial Hotel and Saturday at the Ding Dong Lounge.
FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS
This week we’re giving you two free tunes from opposite ends of the musical spectrum – first up is the opening track of Jack Johnson’s brand new studio album, here remixed by Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij in Boys Like Us mode. Secondly, we present you the killer Grum remix of LA/Aussie electro-rockers Jump Jump Dance Dance’s Show Me The Night. Simply head to universalmusic.net.au/ freedownloads/streetpressaustralia to get downloading.
More than a decade since disbanding, Sydney rock band Crow have re-formed and are back with a new album. The group returns with their original line-up including dual vocalists Peter Fenton and Peter Archer backed by drummer John Fenton and bassist Jim Woff. Throughout the ‘90s the band released three critically acclaimed albums, My Kind Of Pain, Li-Lo-ing and Play With Love and toured with Jeff Buckley, Nirvana, Sebadoh, Pavement and Sonic Youth. Their new album Arcane is out this week.
MORE METALLICA TIX
Metallica’s three Melbourne shows at the Rod Laver Arena – Thursday 18, Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 November – have been sold out for a month, but a limited number of general admission tickets have just been released across all dates. Get ‘em now through Ticketek.
CATCH THE WORM
Early bird tickets for the 14th annual Queenscliff Music Festival have now gone on sale. If you head to qmf.net. au you can pick up a three-day pass to the event, which runs from Friday 26 to Sunday 28 November, for just $150. Early bird tickets have sold out the past two years, so don’t miss that worm.
You And Your Heart (Boys Like Us remix) JACK JOHNSON After selling an astonishing 18 million-plus records worldwide, this man on a journey is set to release his fifth studio album, aptly titled To The Sea. The first single and first song on the album You And Your Heart is a beautiful, melodic slice of acoustic bliss. The new album was recorded at the Mango Tree Studio in Hawaii and the Solar Powered Plastic Plant in LA using 100% solar power. Building upon his philanthropic efforts, Johnson will continue to collaborate with local non-profit groups around the world on his 2010 tour and once again will donate all of his tour profits to support environmental, art, and music education via 1% For The Planet. Catch Jack performing in Australia in December.
P
S RE
EN
KATIE NOONAN & THE CAPTAINS
EXHIBIT EXODUS Thrash metal legends Exodus are heading downunder on their first headlining Australian tour. Despite numerous line-up changes, extended hiatuses and the deaths of two former members, the band this year released a new album, Exhibit B: The Human Condition. Exodus play the Corner Hotel on Sunday 3 October. Tickets go on sale this Thursday from the venue and Missing Link.
HAVING A BALL
Charles Jenkins and his band The Zhivagos will celebrate the release of their new record with a performance at the second annual Mid Winter Ball at the Corner Hotel on Saturday 17 July. Joining The Zhivagos will be a red-hot roster of musical guests including Nick Barker, Rebecca Barnard, Rob Craw, Stephen Cummings, Suzannah Espie, Georgia Fields, Angie Hart, Davey Lane, Jeff Lang and Ash Naylor. Tickets are available from the Corner box office and at cornerhotel.com.
TS
PLAYING CATCH-UP
Mike Noga of The Drones and Davey Lane of You Am I fame will be teaming up for a special one-off show. Deciding the best way to catch up was to play a show together, the good friends will play the Empress Hotel this Friday, presenting songs from their respective solo careers and forthcoming albums. Tickets are available at the door.
w/ The Jezabels & Brackets
THE MEANIES SAT 19 JUNE
w/ Jam, Kit and Wanet, Wicked City & Money For Rope
TUMBLEWEED FRI 25 JUNE
w/ Mustang & Baby Machine
DEEZ NUTS
SAT 26 JUNE 18+ SUN 27 JUNE U18 w/ Louie Knuxx, Sun Tzu, (18+) The Red Shore, (u18) Dream on Dreamer
AMITY AFFLICTION
SAT 3 JUNE 2PM u18, 8PM 18+ w/ Misery Signals(USA), Confession, Food of Red(UK)
MISTA SAVONA FRI 9 JULY
w/ Dexter, Polo Club, Lotek, Jesse I, Manchild, Bass Bin Laden, Wasabi & Mantra
Show Me The Night (Grum Remix) JUMP JUMP DANCE DANCE Trans-pacific electro-rockers Jump Jump Dance Dance present their Hype Machine top 10/Bigstereo #1 Grum remix of their hit single Show Me The Night. The single is taken from their self-titled debut album due this August. It’s unusual for an up-and-coming band to have a pedigree as impressive as that of these boys. But as it stands, the duo of Chris Carter and Simon Lewicki have amassed a wealth of experience – Carter as an in-demand DJ and vocalist who has played alongside such luminaries of the LA scene as DJ AM and Tommie Sunshine, and Lewicki as the mastermind behind the celebrated club acts Groove Terminator, Tonite Only and Chili Hifly – before uniting to create Jump Jump Dance Dance.
FRI 18 JUNE
STAR ASSASSIN SAT 10 JULY
w/ Crash & Burn, Into The Night, The Arachnids, Japan For
PURE BLISS Aussie hip hop kings Bliss N Eso will tour nationally in August. Since the release of their ARIA Award-winning album, Flying Colours, the hip hop trio have graced some of Australia’s biggest festivals and are back with their fourth studio album, Running On Air, which is to be released next month. They will play the Palace Theatre on Friday 13 August. Special guests for the night will be Melbourne’s Diafrix and Sydney’s Mind Over Matter. Tickets go on sale at 9am on Monday from Ticketek and oztix.com.au.
COMING O IN SOON OON KARNIVOOL – 6/7, 7/7, 8/7SOLD OUT BOYS LIKE GIRLS(USA) – 14/7 u18, 15/7 18+ OM(USA) – 16/7 THE SCREAMING JETS – 24/7 FOALS(UK) – 26/7, 27/7SOLD OUT FRIGHTENED RABBIT(UK) – 2/8 MIIKE SNOW – 3/8 LAURA MARLING(UK) – 4/8SOLD OUT, 5/8 DJ MARKY(BRA) & Calibre- 14/8 SENSES FAIL(USA) – 21/8 1PM u18, 7:30PM 18+ NAPLING DEATH(UK) & DYING FETUS(USA) – 5/9 COFFINS(JAP) – 18/9 MAYHEM(NOR) – 23/9 OVERKILL(USA) – 24/9 AIRBOURNE – 1/11SOLD OUT, 31/10
JUST T ANNOUNCED NNO N
CKY(USA) - 12/8 AIRBOURNE - 31/10 2ND SHOW
TIX T I + INFO INFO O
THEHIFI.COM.AU 1300 THE HIFI
125 SWANSTON ST, MELBOURNE 15
FOREWORD LINE
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
DARK STARS
Coopers Dark Ale, PBS FM and Inpress invite you to attend an exclusive gig at a secret location on Saturday 17 July. Featuring The Drones, The Dacios and Batrider, Sounds After Dark, broadcast live to air on PBS, will be the most intimate gig The Drones have played in Melbourne in years. You can’t buy your way into this exclusive invite-only event; for further information on how you can score yourself a ticket go to coopers.com. au/events/soundsafterdark.
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GETTING WARMER
After their hugely successful Autumn Almanac series of live-to-air broadcasts, RRR is providing some more seasonal cheer with Winter Warmers, another batch of unique live performances. This Sunday TTT take their deconstructive pop to the RRR Performance Space studios during Under The Sun from 6.30pm (check out page 12 for your chance to win a double pass). Tune into 102.7 FM or stream the performance at rrr.org.au. Other acts scheduled to appear over the coming weeks include Fabulous Diamonds, Super Wild Horses and Lisa Miller.
RUCK’N’ROLL
The Espy Rockdogs Ruck’n’Roll Pie Night is the perfect way to start the Community Cup weekend. The night will feature plenty of bands who, over the years, have given blood, sweat and beers for the Cup, including Cosmic Psychos, The Spazzys, Money For Rope, The Fuck Fucks, The Nubiles (coming out of retirement), The Level Spirits, Buried Horses and Tim Rogers’s new band, The Gung Hoes, with Rockdogs skipper Dan Sultan on MC duties. Other festivities planned include a handball comp, chook raffles and a live karaoke band called Oz Rockdogs Karaoke, hosted by Dave Larkin.
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ACTION STATIONS Hopeless Records, through its nonprofit organisation Sub City, will again stage the Take Action Tour Australia in 2010. The annual tour, now in its ninth year, will once again spotlight ReachOut.com, an Australian youth service aimed to improve the mental health and wellbeing of Australian young people. The bill will feature Ohio, USA post-hardcore group Attack Attack!, San Diego four-piece Pierce The Veil and Melbourne newcomers Dream On, Dreamer. Last year’s Take Action Tour Australia, spearheaded by the chart-topping All Time Low and pop punk sensations Set Your Goals, raised more than $17,000 for the youth suicide prevention team at ReachOut.com. The tour hits the Corner Hotel on Saturday 11 September for an over-18s show and the same venue the following day for an afternoon under-18 show. Tickets go on sale Friday from the venue and Fist2Face.
All presale tickets available through MOSHTIX: Phone: 1300 GET TIX (438 849) on-line: www.moshtix.com.au, or at all Moshtix outlets, including Polyester (Fitzroy & City)
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CAMP OUT IN MELBOURNE American alternative metal band CKY have announced an Australian tour in August. Camp Kill Yourself last toured the country in 2006 after the release of their record An Answer Can Be Found. Since then, the band have re-entered the studio to produce their fourth album, Carver City, an effort that almost broke them. Despite the internal tensions that nearly tore the band apart, they’re back and ready to rock with a show at the Hi-Fi on Thursday 12 August. Tickets are on sale now from thehifi.com.au, Polyester Records and Greville Records.
TOTES EXCITED
Inpress had a great night at the Tote reopening on Thursday, and we’re looking forward to propping up the bar again from tomorrow night. Upcoming highlights in the band room include a show by legendary cow-punks The Johnnys (Spencer P Jones, Billy, Hoody and Slim) on Saturday 3 July; The Bakelite Age this Thursday (the pub’s official opening night); Turbonegro tribute Apocalypse Dudes on Friday; killer Japanese band Jackie & The Cedrics with The Spazzys on Saturday; Warped, Matt Sonic & The High Times and Baby Machine on Thursday 24 June; Black Cab and RSVP & The Return To Senders on Friday 25; Mike Noga & The Gentlemen Of Fortune and Joel Silbersher & The Baggage Handlers on Saturday 26; Midnight Woolf on Sunday 27; a Love Connection Thursday residency in July; The Casanovas on Friday 2 July; a Tote footy team fundraiser with Buried Horses on Sunday 4; and Crow on Saturday 10 July.
FRESH AIR
Airbourne have added another date to their No Guts. No Glory Tour. Tickets for the band’s first show at the Hi-Fi on Melbourne Cup eve (Monday 1 November) sold out within days of going on sale, so the hard workin’ hard rockers will now also play the Hi-Fi on Sunday October 31. Tickets are on sale from today.
GET A BOOST
Boost Juice bars and the Dream Inc Music Workshops have teamed up to help give a young artist a leg-up with the The Boost Up Scholarship. The scholarship will be awarded at the 2010 Dream Inc Music Workshop, held at Melbourne’s Parkview Hotel on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 August this year. The winner will be chosen by a panel of music industry judges and given the opportunity to record their debut single in a studio with Australian producer Jan Skubiszewski, whose credits as a performer, engineer, producer and songwriter include Jackson Jackson and Daniel Merriweather. The single will be premiered via Boost Juice bars. Guest mentors at the workshop include Michael Gudinski, Marcia Hines, Connie Mitchell and Angus McDonald of Sneaky Sound System and Inpress cover star Dan Sultan. Tickets are strictly limited to 200 places to ensure each participant has the opportunity to work closely with mentors and A&R scouts – pick ‘em up from dreaminc.com.au.
WEST MEETS EAST Two of Western Australia’s finest punk/hardcore exports, Miles Away and Break Even, are hitting the East Coast this weekend as part of the national I’d Rather Be Giggin’ tour. Miles Away just got back from recording their new album in the US while Break Even are coming off the back of a lengthy European tour. Also appearing on the tour are Melbourne’s Hopeless and The Broderick. Catch the I’d Rather Be Giggin’ tour at the Arthouse this Saturday night and Phoenix Youth Centre in Footscray this Sunday.
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
CULTURE CLUB
FOREWORD LINE
The Visible mentorship program provides guidance for artists from refugee backgrounds. ANGELIQUE NZABANITA and her mentor IVAN KHATCHOYAN tell EJ CARTLEDGE why it’s so important.
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Angelique Nzabanita
he Emerge Festival is a gathering together of Melbourne’s tribes; a chance for people from all cultures to participate in each other’s ceremonies, hear each other’s stories, make music together, sing, dance, and celebrate cross-cultural creativity of all kinds. The festival is an initiative of Multicultural Arts Victoria and aims to promote diversity and social inclusion while fostering connections between established and emerging artists. There are events all over Melbourne and it kicks off with a massive one-day cultural celebration at the Fitzroy Town Hall on Sunday. Performances and unique cultural experiences will encompass music, dance, visual arts, exotic foods, ancient crafts and ceremonies. The festival will also commemorate World Refugee Day and celebrates Refugee Week in Australia. One of the performers will be 19-year-old Angelique Nzabanita, a hip hop artist from Rwanda. She has been in Australia for just 18 months and was recently invited by Multicultural Arts Victoria to participate in its muchlauded Visible program, an innovative arts mentorship program that has given a kick-start to many newly arrived African musicians.
around I was invited to come along and work with a few other producers interested in helping out. Lots of friends and colleagues have been involved in these initiatives and it’s just terrific to see peoples’ talents being used in such a positive way.
opportunity to show off her talents at the festival. As a recent migrant, her story is one of hope. “I have been in Australia for a short time and I have two big brothers,” she says. “Since I was a little girl I have always followed American hip hop. In Africa, many of the youth love hip hop and I started to try it myself when I was aged nine. I don’t get nervous and I want to perform… I love people looking at me and listening to my rap. To make music and keep my studies is the future for me. At the moment I am writing more songs and I want to write about Australia being the best place.”
“Anita [Larkin] from Multicultural Arts invited me to an artists’ meeting,” says Nzabanita. “She asked me if I could sing and if I could write songs. I said I could do both! So I went to the meeting to meet other musicians and producers. I had to do some freestyle and it went really well. That’s when I met my mentor, Choi. Because my freestyle was good he asked me if I wanted to record a song and of course I said yes. Choi gave me different beats and I had to choose which was best for my lyrics. He was very helpful in making the lyrics fit the beat and then recording me. It took two sessions to finish the song. He is very friendly and patient. I am very happy to have Choi’s help.”
Born in Canada of Armenian descent and educated in the US, Nzabanita’s mentor, Ivan Khatchoyan, AKA Choi, has lived in Australia for the last 20 years. Articulate and passionate about music, drumming is his main love (check his work with Cookin’ On 3 Burners) and he also runs his own production studio in Fitzroy. “I’ve worked with the Multicultural Arts people previously on different projects,” he says, “and I’ve been really impressed. They are giving kids and older musicians an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have to get their stuff out. This time
Nzabanita cannot hide her joy at being given the
BACKLASH
“So my involvement has been to mentor Angelique and help her get a track ready for the festival as well as introducing her to the recording process. She came across really well, very positive, and seems somehow older than she is. You know, she’s obviously grown up in a difficult place and you can get a sense of that in her rap. She’s a switched on young lady and it was a pleasure working with her. She has a really natural flow and rhythm and hopefully I brought that out in the track. I first heard it when we all got together, all of the musicians and producers, and she just got up and did a freestyle. She stuck out to me so I approached her. She liked the beats I presented so I think it was meant to be. At this stage of my life I’m happy to act as a mentor and give back… It’s been really satisfying.” For Visible coordinator Anita Larkin, the Emerge Festival is a terrific opportunity for Visible artists to shine. “These artists come from incredibly rich cultural backgrounds with a lot to offer,” she says, “but the system is different here and they face barriers like language and negative stereotyping. If they can get a helping hand to get started and get their music out there… once they do, presenters and audiences are pretty quick to pick up on their unique talents.” For a full rundown of the Festival’s events, check out multiculturalarts.com.au.
WHAT: Emerge Festival WHEN & WHERE: Sunday until Tuesday 3 August, all over Melbourne
ANIMAL KINGDOM
There are no excuses for not yet having seen this cracking Aussie crime yarn.
THE POMS
EDWYN COLLINS
They haven’t even lost a World Cup game yet but the Brits have already found cause to whinge, claiming the Germans had longer to practice with the controversial Jabulani balls.
The former Orange Juice singer’s post-stroke comeback continues, with members of Franz Ferdinand, The Drums and The Magic Numbers set to appear on his new album.
ED KOWALCZYK
THE TOTE
The former Live singer is preparing to drop his debut solo album. It’s called Alive. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Welcome back.
BERRY NOUVELLE VAGUE FRA
SPECIAL DOUBLE BILL
FRA
|Tickets $50+BF from Polyester, Greville, POW, princebandroom.com.au, 9536 1168 |Doors 8pm |
THU 15 JUL
LITTLE RED WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
|Tickets $20+BF from Polyester, Greville, POW, princebandroom.com.au, 9536 1168 |Doors 8pm |
MARC COLLIS ALBUM LAUNCH WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
SAM CLARK NEIGHBOURS
FRI 16 JUL
SUNDAY THE KURTS
20 TH JUNE 5 TIL 7
21 JUNE MONDAY 9 TIL 11 ADAM AFIF & FERGUS MCALPIN ST
DINNER 7 NIGHTS LUNCH: SAT 12PM/SUN 1PM
MON - FRI 3PM TIL L ATE S AT MIDDAY TIL 1AM SUN 1 TIL 11
THE MARQUIS OF LORNE HO TEL CNR GEORGE + KERR S TREET S FITZROY
SAT 26 JUN
CODE RED END OF EXAMS PARTY!!
YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE
WITH CHARDY,
BOOGS, CHRIS PAPAS, PTFFP, KRONIC, ASSISTED RIOT & MANY MANY MORE...
FRI 9 JUL
C.W. STONEKING WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
AL DUVALL USA
|Tickets $20+BF www.princebandroom.com.au | Doors 10pm|
YEASAYER USA
BAG RAIDERS,
& MANY MORE!
| Tickets $26+BF www.princebandroom.com.au, www.strobeparty.com |
SUN 1, MON 2 AUG
MIDLAKE WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
BIG SCARY
SE CO AN ND NO SH UN OW CE JU D! ST
PLAYS RECORDS
THU 29 JUL LATE
AJAX SWEAT IT OUT, BENI KITSUNE/RIOT IN BELGIUM
USA
TH
9415 9904
SUN 20 JUN
“ROCK IT” SINGLE LAUNCH
FEATURING
TIL CLOSE SATURDAY 198.30 JUNE PHIL GIONFRIDDO
PRINCE BOX OFFICE AT PRINCE PUBLIC BAR | | PHONE: 9536 1168, 10am-6pm Monday-Friday | 29 Fitzroy Street St Kilda, 12pm-10pm 7 days | | ONLINE: www.princebandroom.com.au | info line: 9536 1166 |
FRI 18 JUN
FEATURING
TH
OPEN FIRE
So can we all get back to watching Collingwood blow another crack at an AFL flag now?
THU 17 JUN
18 JUNE 8.30 TIL CLOSE FRIDAY DJ FANTAPANTS
AND FRIENDS
THE SHOCKEROOS
SO FRENCHY SO CHIC
16 TH JUNE 8ISH
WIN PRIZES
FRONTLASH
Tote pic by Carbie Warbie
princebandroom
WEDNESDAY QUIZ NIGHT!
|Tickets $50+BF from handsometours.com, Polyester, Greville, POW, 9536 1168 |Doors 8pm |
EA RL LA Y S H ANTE S OW NO HO SO UN W LD CE JU O D! ST UT !
| Tickets $15+BF from princebandroom.com.au, 9536 1168 |Doors 8pm |
NO SUPPORT ON STAGE 11.45PM
| Tickets $45+BF from Polyester, Greville, handsometours.com, POW, 9536 1168 | Doors 8pm for early show | Doors 11.15pm for late show|
TUE 3 AUG
SUN 8 AUG
K-OS
THE
CANADA
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
| Tickets $34.90+BF from Ticketek, 9536 1168, princebandroom.com.au| Doors 7pm |
|Tickets $30+BF from Polyester, Greville, POW, 9536 1168 |Doors 8.30pm | U SH NDER OW 18 ON s LY
CAT EMPIRE WITH TRIPLE
J HIGH UNEARTHED WINNERS IOTAH
| Tickets $22+BF from Polyester, Greville, POW, 9536 1168 | Doors 1.30pm, The Cat Empire on stage 3.00pm |
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BALLS-OUT ROCK’N’ROLL With Melbourne’s music community stronger than ever, THE COMMUNITY CUP is a celebration of the city’s spirit. Or is it? SAMUEL J FELL talks tensions and backstabbing with Espy Rockdog DAVE LARKIN, RRR/PBS Megahertz co-captain MADDY MAC and local rock veteran NICK BARKER. PIcs by Kane Hibberd.
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n a Wednesday afternoon in late May, we convene at a pub in Melbourne’s inner-north to talk about football. It’s the quintessential thing to do at this time of year in this town – a slew of cold beer, the fire behind us crackling away, friends old and new trading stories and recollections of a game wrought with honour and tradition, a game that unites even the most staunch of enemies under the same banner, both on and off the field. Or so I thought. “You’d be surprised how everything changes the minute that first siren sounds,” laughs Dallas Crane and Gun Street Girls frontman Dave Larkin. And he’s right, for we’ve not convened to talk about any ordinary game of football here.
Eyes on the ball: Rockdogs captain Dan Sultan and Megahertz co-captain Jacinta Parsons
“I reckon the Megahertz by 14 points,” predicts Larkin somewhat controversially, tongue firmly in cheek. “I reckon a draw and then a time-keeping discrepancy,” laughs Barker. Someone then says something about the Melbourne Storm, I think salary caps are mentioned, I can’t really be sure, the tape is somewhat garbled, perhaps the beer is taking effect. “To answer your question, we’re not thinking about the victory. We just wanna get through quarter by quarter – premiership’s not on our minds at the moment,” smiles Larkin. Indeed, this is a serious game.
“You should give Plugger a show on RRR,” Barker notes, causing the other two much mirth, highlighting the camaraderie prevalent between members of both teams prior to the start of the game. “I’d like to re-enact what Dave did to me last year,” says Mac, getting up to highlight the lack of camaraderie that happens once that siren sounds. “He takes the mark over me and comes straight down, with his elbows, onto my shoulders.”
Community Cup co-founder and perennial Rockdog, Jason Evans has been quoted as saying, “As Joe Strummer once famously said, ‘This is a public service announcement with guitars’. This is a public service announcement with footy.” He’s hit the nail on the head there, and also encapsulated why these three are in such form, why the game itself is so important. In a day and age where live music is becoming somewhat of an endangered species, an age where music and radio are playing second fiddle to the internet and downloads, this is a game that not only raises money for charity (RecLink, in this instance), but a game that brings together a community, one which so urgently needs this sort of co-mingling to survive, indeed, to thrive.
“I’m really sorry, I feel terrible about that,” smiles Larkin. “See, there’s no such thing as a social game of footy; people don’t see anything except for the opposition colours,” notes Barker. “I’ve never played a Community Cup game that hasn’t ended with me sitting somewhere with ice on me. Whether that’s just old bones or whatever. I think it’s half and half, one half from the game, the other from failing hardware.”
Along with Barker & The Reptiles, this year’s musical
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It’s at this point that Larkin heads over to the bar to replenish the jug, and so with no current Rockdogs within earshot, I ask Mac who’ll star for the Megahertz this year, who’s their secret weapon? “Well, I’ve actually only seen the ladies so far,” she confesses, although the fact the Megahertz women have already started training should be worrying for the ‘Dogs. “They’re doing pretty well. It’s looking pretty good, but I think it’s always more popular than the station manager would like, but it’s probably better to have more people. None of us are athletic so it’s probably better to have a large team.” Mac is tight-lipped, not wanting to let anything slip, and fair enough: this year is the year the Megahertz must step up. After all, a year’s worth of bragging rights are on the line. “We’re just looking at it one game at a time,” says a faux-serious Larkin when he returns from the bar, diverting talk back to the ‘Dogs. “We’re not talking about premierships yet, just one quarter at a time. Those Megahertz, they’re showing a bit of form, so we can’t go in taking ‘em lightly.” Once the laughter has subsided (which, to be honest, it barely does throughout the entire hour and a half we’re sitting here), I put the tough question on Mac and Larkin – who’s going to win?
In a couple of weeks, pitting friend against friend, band member against broadcaster, the Espy Rockdogs will take on the RRR/PBS Megahertz in the annual Community Cup, a no-holds-barred game of footy the likes of which the AFL wishes it had to showcase on a weekly basis. Tensions are raw, nerves exposed, nothing is forgotten. “I’m still not happy about last year’s outcome – one point,” mumbles this year’s Megahertz co-captain, Maddy Mac, presenter of PBS’s Homebrew, who is, incidentally, wearing a PBS football scarf. Along with Mac and Rockdog Larkin, Nick Barker, who will be playing at the event with his reunited band The Reptiles, makes up the trio roped in to sit with me at the Grace Darling on Smith Street today. And so before me I see a combined total of five appearances in the Cup, with Larkin about to don his third guernsey, Mac her second. The pride and competition are palpable.
Barker won’t take a place on the field this year, but will play a part in the musical festivities that have become integral to the Community Cup, re-forming the seminal Nick Barker & the Reptiles. “Yeah, that’ll be my contribution, we’re playing after the game, should be good,” he explains. “We haven’t had a rehearsal yet. We’re just gonna do 40 minutes of our heaviest pub rock.” I guess if you’re not going to make an on-field appearance, this is the next best thing. “I can’t play because The Reptiles used to drink for two and a half hours before every show, so that’s what I have to do,” Barker smiles. “So I can’t play, I just have to sit there and drink as much as I can to get myself back to 1988.”
really been acknowledged,” muses Mac on why her and RRR’s Jacinta Parsons are co-captains this year over Jon von Goes and Mohair Slim, before adding, “But I think you’ve thwarted our attempts to be serious by putting Dan Sultan as captain, sending hearts fluttering.”
contingent will include The Living End, The Blackeyed Susans, Little Freddie & The Pops, as well as youngsters Money For Rope, who join the bill as winners of SYN FM’s Free Kick competition. This year’s musical theme is The Clash, each band taking one song from the seminal London band’s repertoire and giving it their own twist. “Well, we have to do one that has harmonica in it, so we’re gonna do Should I Stay Or Should I Go, I think,” says Barker. “With a ten-minute
harmonica solo, it’ll be like Broadford ’89.” But back to the game, for there are a few changes this year. Firstly, making his debut appearance for the Rockdogs, and in the exalted position of captain to boot, is none other than Dan Sultan. “He’ll dazzle you with his teeth,” laughs Barker. Sultan replaces longtime captain Tim Rogers and will no doubt be heavily marked, particularly by the female members of the Megahertz. “I think there have been women on both teams who haven’t
While the Community Cup is a fine excuse to drink beer, heckle, kick the footy with your mates and indulge in some fine tunes, it’s also a time to take stock and realise that what we still do have – this scene of ours – is more than worth it. On and off the field, we’re united under the same banner – the game of footy is merely a bonus.
WHAT: The Community Cup WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 27 June, Elsternwick Park. Bands from 11am, bounce at 2pm. Visit communitycup. org.au for more info.
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KICKING GOALS Attempting to go beer for beer with DAN SULTAN, BRYGET CHRISFIELD holds it together long enough to find out the singer/guitarist is a perfectionist, “can be prone to having a bit too much fun” and dotes on Boof A Dingus (his cat). Pic by Kane Hibberd. onstage banter is evidence of their close bond. Sultan has also known his trombonist Steve Veale (who fronts The Hello Morning) “since [they] were teenagers”. If you chat to punters at Sultan’s shows, it quickly becomes apparent that they’re loyal supporters. Whether you’ve discovered Sultan via his multiple performances on RocKwiz, the Kev Karmody tribute album (Sultan and Wilson performed their own version of This Land Is Mine) or last year’s EG Awards (Sultan performed his own song Old Fitzroy plus Gimme Shelter by The Stones), once you’ve experienced Dan Sultan live, you need another fix. “We’ve got a lot of support now from the people who have enjoyed our shows and have been really loyal, which is really, really good,” Sultan acknowledges. “At the end of the day, mate, I’m fuckin’ pretty lucky. People like yourself and everyone else tell me they’re interested in promoting my shit in their papers or on their radio shows. No one could give a shit, that’s what I mean – it’s a possibility. So it’s good that some people like it. It’s not lost on me.”
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nce a wrap is called on the Inpress Community Cup cover shoot, it’s time to hit a bar. The gentleman who delivered the footy kits for our shoot is heading in to the centre of town and graciously agrees to drive us closer to our destination. His vehicle resembles a dogcatcher van and Melbourne singer/songwriter Dan Sultan volunteers to ride in the back. “I can’t have you going in there,” he protests, with a husky, contagious laugh. Wandering down Little Bourke Street, Sultan points out a photo of a fish dish that’s pictured on the menu in a restaurant window and strongly recommends it. When we turn the corner, a group assembled out the front of a dumpling house ask whether we can take their picture. Sultan happily captures their Kodak moment and goes unrecognised. We wander up the lane and take a load off at an outdoor container bar, longnecks in hand. Sultan wears a charcoal, long-sleeved top, jeans and Chuck Taylors and places his new footy kit, wallet, mobile phone with cracked screen and packet of Peter Stuyvesents down beside him. On whether the recent price hike on cigarettes has been an incentive to kick
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the habit, Sultan chuckles, “Almost,” and sparks one up. Having recently caught Sultan’s blistering set at Cherry Rock, two go-go dancers were noted among the already substantial amount of players on stage. “My girlfriend was the one to my right,” he says proudly. “She got up [onstage] with a couple of her girlfriends a few years ago at Meredith for Even and I thought, ‘Yep, I want her to do that’.” Reflecting on his performance that day, Sultan displays trademark humility. “I had a good time,” he acknowledges, “It’s a good little festival. It’s a bit of an honour [to play Cherry Rock] and I just wanted to make sure I didn’t fuck it up, you know. I just wanted to make sure I did the best I could.” When Sultan was four, “a friend of the family” gave him his first guitar. “It was cool,” Sultan remembers. “No amplifier, but it was an electric guitar.” These days, Sultan works closely with longtime collaborator/ guitarist Scott Wilson and the pair initially met in a pub in Williamstown. “For the first two or three years, we just sat in his lounge room and listened to records and got to know each other and had a good laugh.” The pair’s
And then there was the Paul Kelly tribute shows at the Forum (Sultan performed Give Into My Love). “Oh, that was cool,” Sultan extols. “It was such an honour to be part of. It was pretty humbling. You can go one of two ways with something like that. You can either see it as, ‘Oh, that’s it,’ and you can start to relax and get a bit ahead of yourself, or you can work really hard.” Based on Dan Sultan’s career trajectory and the fact that he and his band continue to sell out larger capacity venues with each tour, he must have chosen the latter. With two album releases under his belt – Homemade Biscuits (2006) and Get Out While You Can (2009) – surely there’s been major label interest? “There’s always a few [offers] kicking around,” Sultan asserts, “and we’re not exactly fiercely independent or anti record companies or anything like that. No one’s ever offered us a deal or a proposal that we like, that we wanna take.” But surely if you are able to succeed independently, that’s better, right? “Oh yeah,” he agrees with that laugh, “we’re making all the money and we own everything and we’re allowed to do what we want, so it’s good. That’s the biggest thing for me: I just like to do whatever I want. “For me, I never decided to do this; it’s just what I am and it’s what I’ve always been. It’s not even a personal belief
in some ways like that; it’s just what is. It’s like pointing at the scoreboard: I don’t believe that we won, I’m just pointing at the scoreboard and we won… It comes back to doing whatever I want – and I don’t want that to sound like [employs a belligerent tone], ‘I do what I want,’ you know? I do do what I want and I’ve got a great band and we’re great players and have great people working for us. But if I don’t wanna do it, I won’t do it. And then sometimes if I actually don’t wanna do it, I just have to – you just keep doing it and just be as good as you can be. And, look, I’m not [good] all the time, I drop the ball.” Sultan specifies a recent gig at the Corner that fell at the end of an intense week touring nationally to promote Bran Nue Dae, a feature film he appears in alongside Jessica Mauboy and Geoffrey Rush. “I wasn’t 100%,” he remembers. “I was nearly passing out. I was just unfit. I’d been working so hard and it’d been a week of [getting] up for breakfast shows and then doing the late night shows – so all these interviews and all this travelling – and I was just having a bit too much fun and couldn’t hold it together.” This scribe was present at said gig and while Sultan’s voice did sound extra husky, it’s doubtful that anyone present had cause for complaint. “But I noticed,” Sultan insists. “And it’s good that people had a good time and it was good that we could still put on a good show. And people pay their money and you’re providing a service but, yeah, I thought that maybe I could have done a little bit better. So I was a little bit disappointed in myself. “I’m a lot fitter [now] than I was. I’ve been training. I’m not fit, but I’m a lot fitter than I was and I’m just eating good food. [Pause] Oh, I still give it a bit of a nudge – like I can be prone to having a bit too much fun – but, fuck! I’m 26. I’m not a millionaire but I’m getting paid and I’m totally comfortable. I can buy my cat food if he’s hungry and my cigarettes if I want and I can get cabs if I need to.” Spelling out the letters in the air with his finger, Sultan tells me his cat’s name is “Boof A Dingus – like Homer J Simpson”. “I was away touring and my song was being played on the radio, or I was doing an interview or something like that, and my flatmate told me [Boof A Dingus] went into my room and he was looking for me!” Sultan marvels, clearly proud of the ginger feline stray he adopted. “He’s a beautiful cat, he looks like a fucking show cat!”
WHO: Dan Sultan WHEN & WHERE: Friday, Forum; Friday 30 July, Splendour In The Grass
INTO THE VOID BLITZEN TRAPPER bandleader ERIC EARLEY speaks to ANDY HAZEL about magical realism, flipping the bird to genre and some of the finer fishing spots in Oregon.
A
lready a week into Blitzen Trapper’s mammoth North American tour, singer and songwriter Eric Earley sounds like a man ready to curl up in a hidey-hole for a month and sleep out the winter. “Right now, we’re in Illinois, heading to Atlanta,” he mumbles into his mobile. “We’ve already played four shows or five shows and, yeah, they were great.”
In justifying his chosen modus operandi, Earley is keen to distance himself from other bands currently mining the late ‘60s for its earthy glory. “I don’t know about this late ‘60s thing,” he says with an audible frown. “We aren’t thinking about ‘going back’ to a time when it comes to playing music. Whatever we write will seem like a throwback to someone else because we’re using certain instruments and the human voice. You can choose how much you want to play and how much singing you want to do, and a lot of bands are choosing to do both, and a lot of bands don’t do this as much because they use a lot of technology. I think there is a medium and it depends on the song and the record. For us, we tend to mess around with it depending on the song.” Though he doesn’t need to mention it, the storming prog opening track from the album is a perfect example of this.
With the news that this tour is expected to grow throughout the year, taking in summer festivals in Australia, things got a little more excited on the line. “Yeah, some of those shows in Australia we were really, really happy with.” With the release of Destroyer Of The Void, their fifth album in seven years (“Does five albums sound like a lot? Yeah, sure, I guess so, but it’s spread out over a long period of time so it’s not that weighty to me,” justifies Earley), Blitzen Trapper have received some of the best reviews of their career. “I didn’t actually name the album,” Earley confesses. “Marty [Marquis, keyboard/guitar] did. We were just thinking for a name of the [uncharacteristically progtastic] first track and I thought it sounded good, so I don’t have any particular void in mind,” he says laughing. Branded as part of the Americana stable by some critics and listeners, Earley leaps on the suggestion that they actually have a scant regard for genre. “That’s accurate. I play what like; that’s my genre. I mean, I don’t think any sounds are off limits… not really… I think in general I stick with what I know, what I’m comfortable with, which is American sounds. I don’t use sitars and things, just because, you know, I’m not from there,” he says with a lazy chuckle. “Americana doesn’t influence our music, I think it’s actually the opposite of that. Living in the US and growing up here makes our music what it is, I’m not influenced by it; I am a part of it. I grew up in Salem an hour south of Portland. I lived in Eugene for a while, too. It’s me writing what I know. I didn’t grow up in the city so I can’t write about that.” Destroyer Of The Void is an intriguing mix of the folk singer and psych rock band with a healthy dose of animism informing the lyrics and a bizarre sketch of a bull’s head encircled by dragons on the cover. “I think the cover has mythical elements going on with the animals and the style of the drawing,” Earley explains. “The
record has a dreamlike quality, and a lot of dreamlike imagery, which I think is partly because I’m so interested in magical realism. That kind of thing I picked up as I went along reading things like [Georges] Bataille and [Jorge Luis] Borges, I don’t know why I connected with them especially; a lot of different authors I’ve got into for various reasons and they’re all important to me and my writing. I think it has more to do with growing up with older sisters who forced me to read and listen to things at a young and impressionable age.”
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“When it comes to writing songs, generally I… uh… don’t put a lot of effort into it,” he says with a wry laugh. “I try to be effortless; any effort is in trying to let the song come naturally and not get too much into obsessively creating or analysing, so yeah, I guess I feel more like a conduit for a song than an actual scribe.” Anyone with a passing interest in Blitzen Trapper will know the band’s love for the authentic and the organic so it comes as no surprise that the inspiration Earley speaks of often comes from time spent in the wilderness.
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Choosing again to work with producer Mike Coykendall is another example of Earley and the band sticking with what they know. A veteran of albums by She & Him, Bright Eyes and M Ward, Coykendall saw Blitzen Trapper through the making of their previous album, Furr. “Mike Coykendall has a great studio and is a really cool guy, plus the studio is a few blocks from where I live,” says Earley a little more energetically. “We all have time in January and February, which is when we’ve recorded albums over the last few years. I guess the album is different from Furr though a lot of the songs were written around the same time. Some of the songs from Destroyer Of The Void are five or six years old, but a lot has changed since they were written. I think that there will be changes on the next album, longer songs, perhaps. That’s just how I’m writing at the moment.”
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“I go fishing a lot,” he says with another laugh. “There are a few places outside of Portland I like to spend time. I wouldn’t say all the inspiration comes from nature, though. A lot comes from my relationship with people and what happens between us and I think that I use a lot of natural imagery when I’m talking about that sort of thing. There are so many parallels when it comes to describing them. I think about what I know and because of that a lot of what I write takes place in places I grew up in or places I know and I kind of stand back and let the imagery and lyrics come. So I don’t have a choice as to what I write about.”
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LOOK TO THE SKYE The reunion of SKYE EDWARDS with MORCHEEBA is producing some happy faces, the singer and ROSS GODFREY tell EJ CARTLEDGE.
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hings went somewhat pear-shaped for the brothers Godfrey – DJ Paul and multiinstrumentalist Ross – a few years ago. After recruiting Skye Edwards as vocalist in the mid-1990s, during a chance meeting at a party, the trio known as Morcheeba scored some spectacular successes with their popular brand of trip hop. With a smooth fit of piano, guitar, DJ scratching and Edwards’ soulful vox, Morcheeba blended beautifully into the Café del Mar set. But with communication between the three fragmenting with every album recorded, the Godfrey brothers pushed Edwards to the outer before ultimately dismissing her in 2003. The result was something short of a calamity, but did break the run of commercial hits. They were last heard from in 2008 with Dive Deep, having bussed in a succession of guest vocalists. Fans will rejoice, then, in the welcome return of Edwards to the Morcheeba fold. Her reunion with the Godfreys on new album Blood Like Lemonade restores the laid-back charm that made them the mainstay of many a chill-out session.
“Then, about six months ago, I bumped into her in London and suggested we get together and have a chat about making another record. I’d written a few pieces of music and Paul and I had had a couple of writing sessions together, so we sent her some things we’d been working on and she came up with some melodies for them, and as soon as we heard her singing over our backing tracks it was magic. There’s a definite vibe that happens when the three of us work together, a combination of things that’s unquantifiable. It’s so personal to us, such a big part of our lives, that we got quite emotional about it. After that, it all worked out in a very natural way.” Following the split, Edwards went off to pursue her own solo career. She worked with the likes of producers Daniel Lanois and Pat Leonard on her first album, Mind How You Go, and Ivor Guest for her second, Keeping Secrets. It was, according to Edwards, an uplifting experience. “It has been such a privilege to work with a producer like Daniel Lanois,” she says. “He has produced Bob Dylan and U2, and Pat Leonard, who has worked with Madonna. And they wanted to work with me, so it had a really positive impact on my confidence. I came away from those experiences thinking ‘You know what, I’m not bad actually!’ and made me feel a great deal more confident in my abilities as a songwriter and as a performer. It was kind of like going back to the beginning, playing to small crowds and having a more humbling experience. But you go through that and it makes you feel you can do anything, so now I put all of that energy into Morcheeba now.”
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“As soon as we heard her singing over our backing tracks it was magic. There’s a definite vibe that happens when the three of us work together, a combination of things that’s unquantifiable. It’s so personal to us, such a big part of our lives, that we got quite emotional about it.”
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“One thing Morcheeba’s always tried to do is make the record we don’t already have in our record collection,” says Ross Godfrey. “I can come home from the pub and spend hours going through thousands of old vinyl records trying to find the one perfect record to fi t the moment, and that’s always the one we wanted to make ourselves, with that 3am, spliffed-out sound, like a warm, fuzzy blanket of psychedelia. We always thought we’d work with Skye again… When we made the first four records, we knew it was a magic formula, but after a time we wanted a break and Skye wanted to make a record of her own because working within a band can be quite constricting.
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Edwards was naturally cautious about throwing her weight behind the Morcheeba name again but insists the climate has shifted. She sounds genuinely pleased with the outcome. “The process has changed and we’ve changed,” she says. “I mean, I remember when we started out and recorded Who Can You Trust in the mid-1990s and the whole record was done in a flat in North London. I went over there for a few nights and worked on the melodies with Ross, who had his guitar, and then I did the singing. That’s how it was done, with of all us in there together. It all became a bit distant after that. We got more money and could record in a studio. It meant I was drafted in just to sing and I’d have all of these people looking at me from behind the glass. It then got to me receiving ideas on a mini-disc and then lyrics at the last moment. With this album, it just feels so much better, even though we weren’t physically seeing a lot of each other. If there was something I wasn’t happy about it I could express that, whereas in the past I was shy or intimidated. “We wrote 11 songs and ten of them are on the record. It wasn’t like we felt we needed to write 30 and then choose the best ones. So there was one song that two of us weren’t happy with and only one of us was, and funnily enough it was the most up-tempo song out of them all. I said to the others ‘Look, I’m not so sure about this’ and we came to an agreement to leave it out. It was the same process with the album title as I was kind of unsure at first, then came around to the idea after a discussion, and now think it’s really cool. So we’re clearly in a much better place in that we can throw around ideas and tell each other what we think.”
I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN OUT NOW ON EMI
As for touring the album, Edwards suggests there is a good chance Australia will be slotted in once other commitments are fulfilled. “I was last in Australia in 2003 and that was with Morcheeba,” she says. “The boys were out there last year promoting Dive Deep and I hope we can tour Blood Like Lemonade in your part of the world but we haven’t got any dates in the calendar as yet. If it does happen, it will be at the start of next year, fingers crossed. I would love to tour there because I’m so happy with the new album. I’ve been listening to it in the car and sitting back and thinking, ‘Wow’. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had that feeling… There were a few parts of the more recent Morcheeba albums I had sung on that made me feel a little bit unsure. This time, I’m really comfortable with the whole thing as well as the way it was recorded.” www.lauramarling.com
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WHO: Morcheeba WHAT: Blood Like Lemonade (PIAS/Liberator Music)
23
PRANK CALLS MAR GARVEY watches in horror as AGAINST ME! frontman TOM GABEL tries to get bassist ANDREW SEWARD to eat his Blackberry.
“W
e’re 100% happy with the new album,” Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel enthuses, sitting with bass player Andrew Seward. “What has been weird on a couple of the show we’re doing right now is that the reaction has been stronger for the newer stuff than the older stuff.” Although only just released, the band’s new longplayer, White Crosses, was leaked on the internet earlier in the year. Going against the grain, Gabel sees this as a good thing. “Well, that helps to be honest!” he states. “People know the words and that’s a lot more fun to come on stage and play shows where people are singing along to everything, as opposed to when you play a new song that people don’t know and they just stare at you.” I Was A Teenage Anarchist is the first single to be lifted from White Crosses. For those who haven’t seen the video clip, it was inspired by an incident in Gabel’s youth, as he explains. “When it came time to come up with treatments for the video or whatever,
we’d gotten a couple and none of them had really made any sense,” he offers. “I was arrested when I was like 15 years old and beat up by the cops pretty bad. They bashed my head into a car a couple of times, dropped me face first on the pavement, hog-tied me, that’s the short story of it all. And that was the premise behind the video.” And what about Seward – any teenage run ins with the law? “Cops, me? No, I avoided the police. I was just good at avoiding.” Since we last saw them, AM! have recruited a new member, longtime friend and Hot Water Music drummer George Rebelo. “He’s fitting right in, horribly well,” Gabel admits. “I’d give him like two or three more days. No, kidding.”“George has been great, it’s been awesome playing with him.” Seward agrees. “There was no awkward breaking in of a stranger, it was just George. I don’t think bands should be in a monogamous relationship, it should be a kind of fluid thing. Multiple sexual partners.” And speaking of things of a sexual nature, in a past interview, Gabel likened the dynamics of being in AM! to being in a sexual relationship. When asked, he said guitarist James Bowman would be his partner of choice. Gabel explains to Seward why he wouldn’t have sex with him. “I just don’t think I’d feel comfortable with the way you’d talk to me,” he laughs. “See, I feel like James would be really cold and calculating. Like he’d get done fucking me, then get up out of bed and go do something else. I would just end up lying there, comforting myself. Either that or roll over and start eating a piece of pizza afterwards. Like, ‘I love you,’ stuffing pizza in his mouth.” Seward isn’t hurt by the rejection, “So you’re afraid of my tenderness, I take that as a compliment. I’m a tender man.” Given that they spend most of the year crammed on a bus together, it’s no surprise the band are close. A good thing, too, because time to yourself on the road is not really an option, as Gabel admits. “We were talking the other day, when you’re in a band and you touring as much as we do, time to yourself, like actually being alone, doesn’t really exist. It’s weird. If you’re lucky like you’ll get a shower,” he continues. “If you really want to be alone you’ll just crawl into your bunk and shut the curtains.”
“…he’d get done fucking me, then get up out of bed and go do something else. I would just end up lying there, comforting myself.”
PHOTO BY KEVIN WESTENBERG
Seward notes the real reason he and Gabel don’t shower together. “We don’t shower together because, you know, he’s afraid of my tenderness. My scrubbing abilities.”
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“Probably more in Europe than in America. I like to clean more in Europe! I’m not going to say we tour with slobs, but...” Seward interjects, “We tour with slobs!” Gable nods, “I was going to let Andrew say that.” Against Me! are known for their relentless touring and it’s true the men feel most comfortable when they’re on the road. Even after a short break at home they get itchy feet for the road, despite the smelly bus. “It’s usually after two or three days and it’s like, ‘Okay, what am I doing now?’,” Gabel continues. “We were home for five days before we came over to Europe, on this whole two week run and it goes by so quick. The only thing you’re thinking of is, ‘What do I have to do to get ready for the trip?’. Like, if something is broken, do I have to take it in straight away to get fixed, things like that. Time just flies by.” When they’re not cleaning the bus or talking about the sexual dynamics of the band, Gabel and Seward are taking bets. For a while now, Gabel has been trying to convince Seward to eat his Blackberry for $1,000. Seward, however, isn’t having any of it. “No, fuck no, I’m not doing that, because I’ll probably die!” Gabel has an idea to protect Seward from possible death, “Wrap the battery in a condom.” But Seward is adamant. “I’m not going to drug mule a battery. Besides, there are other parts of it that would kill me! Can I get another phone, can it be any phone? Like a rotary phone? That doesn’t have a battery.” Gabel is open to that idea, “Yeah sure, if you want to eat a rotary phone, I’ll take that bet. That’s a really big phone.” Bets involving the consumption of items not generally recommended for consumption, seem to be something Seward and Gabel particularly enjoy. “You know the TV show Alf?”, Gable asks. “We had an Alf stuffed animal, which I was trying to convince him would be a good idea to eat as well. Then I decapitated it. It was giving me bad vibes. There was bad mojo around that Alf.” Seward explains further, “We needed a new spirit for the tour. So, Tom, outside a stop in Vermont, just decapitated Alf with a bagel knife. The stuff that came out of Alf, you should not eat. I think it was filled with asbestos.”
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That being said, the band is delighted to be back touring. “It feels good to be back on the road,” Gabel admits. “Ideally it’d be in a clean bus! Actually, in all honesty, Andrew and I are the bus mothers in a way. We’re the only people who will clean up and organise things.
So will the new spirit from cutting the head of a stuffed toy bring them down our way any time soon? “We’re hoping in October,” Gabel reveals. “We’re talking about it right now, trying to finalise plans. It’s our favourite place in the world to tour.”
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NATURAL WOMEN MOUNTAIN MAN are, despite their name, a trio of women from Vermont who specialise in harmony-filled, unadorned folk. “We didn’t make [debut album] Made The Harbor thinking, ‘Let’s try and sound like this was recorded in 1905 in a cabin in Appalachia’,” AMELIA RANDALL MEATH tells ANTHONY CAREW.
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he phrase ‘Mountain Man’ may summon some image of a hirsute mountaineer, but Mountain Man, the band, is anything but. They’re, instead, a trio of women from Vermont – the Green Mountain State, no less – who build a shrine to the glories of communal singing; hitting harmonies that summon both rural landscapes and mythical idylls. Their in-triplicate singing is left almost entirely untouched; sometimes paired with a spare acoustic guitar, often left unaccompanied. Their songs are filled with natural imagery; taking place in woods and by rivers, populated with birds and bees, dogs and bears. Their debut album, Made The Harbor, features not a single ironic reference to the ’80s, a productional bite from the ’60s or an attempt at ’00s-styled genre-splattering. It’s, instead, timeless; new music that sounds positively ancient. “We didn’t make Made The Harbor thinking, ‘Let’s try
and sound like this was recorded in 1905 in a cabin in Appalachia’,” says Amelia Randall Meath, “but [folk music] is definitely a strong influence. I think people usually draw that comparison because our music is pretty simple; that it’s three voices and a guitar as opposed to consisting of all these whiz-bang electrical accoutrements.” Mountain Man’s music is, Meath says, nothing so simple as folkie recidivism; it’s the sum of its three members, as human beings. “What we want to talk about is our experience as being women. The things that we’ve learned – and have yet to learn – within our lives,” she offers. “I suppose that everything comes from our own life experiences: how we learnt to sing, how we sing together,” Meath continues. “Mixed in with all that is three whole lifetimes of listening to music, and everything that we’ve heard. We have long relationships with music, and they’re entwined with our relationships with our families, and with each other.” Meath, is speaking on a sweet spring day, sitting in backyard of her house in Bennington, Vermont, at whose university she met her fellow Mountain Men, Molly Sarle and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. The three of them came from ‘musical families’, which, in Sauser-Monnig’s case, meant her dad owned a music store. For Meath, it was a little more casual.
“What we want to talk about is our experience as being women.” “We used to, in the summer times, sit all around a table; there’d be like 25 people,” Meath recounts, of her childhoods in Massachusetts. “And my mom would say, ‘All right, I think that everyone should sing a song!’. This was after a large amount of wine. And then we would go around the table and sing songs, from traditionals to Janis Joplin. And then my dad would sing Bruce Springsteen. I think we all grew up in families like that. So, it seemed natural to start singing together with friends, and from that, Mountain Man blossomed.” Meath, Sarle and Sauser-Monnig were all enrolled at Bennington (perhaps best known for giving the world Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt), studying theatre and gender and literature and dance, variously, when fate delivered them all to the one sharehouse. Sauser-Monnig lived there, but Sarle was just crashing on the couch, and Meath was staying there just before she moved into her new house. When Meath heard Sarle singing one day – a self-penned tune she called The Dog Song – she corralled her into singing with she and Sauser-Monnig. After performing for the first time, a week after they first sung together, at a housewarming for Meath’s new digs, their friend Alex Bleeker – of Real Estate and Alex Bleeker & The Freaks – convinced them to become a band, make some rudimentary recording, and go on tour. Once they’d captured themselves singing onto Sarle’s computer, they had a self-titled EP; essentially just files on their Bandcamp page. With Bleeker acting as a veritable spruiker – and covering the Mountain Man song Animal Tracks himself – they were soon embraced by the ever-mercurial ‘blogosphere’. “I don’t really know when the strange blog fame started happening,” Meath surmises. “I don’t think we thought of it as ephemeral, but we definitely weren’t expecting to be in this position at this time. We would’ve sung together no matter what had happened, but we were hardly anticipating being able to go around the world and sing together.” Now, with their freshly-minted first LP, Made The Harbor, out on bigger labels overseas than at home – Spunk in Australia, Bella Union in Europe, P-Vine in Japan – Mountain Man seem set to be spending as much time going around the world as they do hanging out in their small college town. As well as having just undertaken their debut European tour, they’ve recently played support to humans like The Middle East and José González’s outfit Junip, as well as taking their fragile, largely-vocal music into the den of chaos that is SXSW. Given they perform without amplification, holding hands in a semi-circle – and, in performance videos for various blogs, they’re routinely set in rural settings – how terrifying is it to take that into noisy, boisterous, oft-disinterested rock clubs? “It’s scary, but it’s not that scary,” says Meath. “Because we’re on stage with two other people that we love and trust, and know are there for us. Mainly, we go into those sort of situations hoping to create a safe environment; like a home-space, being able to be comfortable, to live in the moment in which we’re singing to people. Being able to give what we’re feeling.” “It’s a difficult thing,” Meath continues, “but I think it really lends to being able to truly communicate and give. There’s nothing wrong with big shows, but to be able to have an intimate interaction with someone who’s standing on a much taller platform than you is really rare. It’s wonderful if we’re able to give that to people.” Meath hopes the great gift of Made The Harbor will be having the LP insinuate itself in the lives of others. “Ideally,” she admits, “what I’d really like is for people to grab hold of that one special song that they really identify with, and create an experience they can really identify with in their own way. It’s a personal dream of mine that someone will be in a car, listening to one of our songs, and it’ll help define a moment in their life.”
WHO: Mountain Man WHAT: Made The Harbor (Spunk)
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SINGLE OF THE WEEK
JANELLE MONÁE TIGHTROPE (WONDAMIX) FEAT. B.O.B AND LUPE FIASCO Atlantic Ordinarily I wouldn’t take time out from the Singled Out broadcast schedule to shine a light on a remix (with the sole previous exception of Kissy Sell Out’s White Stallion Remix of Operator Please’s Just A Song About Ping Pong), but what’s especially great about the Tightrope (Wondamix) is that it takes an already brilliant track and turns it, effectively, into two brilliant tracks. This is harsher and more aloof than the original’s easy danceability, but – with particular thanks to Lupe Fiasco – it comes up smiling in the end. If Monáe isn’t drowning in Grammys within a year I’ll eat my hat.
JACK JOHNSON AT OR WITH ME Universal Evidently the Daily Mirror referred to Jack Johnson as “the musical equivalent of a warm wave” – is that when someone wees in the shallows and you accidentally swim through it? Either way, it’d normally be an appropriate way to discuss Mr Surfer Dude, but At Or With Me (which has a severe case of the Is This Its) shows Johnson displaying alarming signs of life. Gone is the horizontal beachside jam session, and in its place actual drums and electric guitars. It’s good. WTF?
CORDRAZINE SUNSHINE Rubber When the weather starts to get aggressively grey, as it does around this time of the year (just in time for my birthday, gee, thanks universe), the doctor recommends extensive exposure to heartwarming string arrangements and pretty songs about simple things like love and sunshine – so thank goodness for Cordrazine’s latest, which is about as sweet as you can get without descending into saccharine.
FABULOUS DIAMONDS FABULOUS DIAMONDS II Chapter Melbourne duo Fabulous Diamonds make music designed to bore into your skull through sheer grinding repetition. It’s a musical hypnotism, where once it begins banging around inside your brain, a funny thing happens – you forget you’re even listening to music. It’s all internal, and it’s endlessly fascinating. It’s like they’ve laid the foundation and it’s up to the individual listener to do the rest. They’re working off minimal ingredients – the repetitive keys (whether they be Wurlitzer or synth), the metronomic percussion and the occasional vocal. But even the vocals, which sound like they were recorded in a giant reverberant hall, become a highly repetitive mantra. There are changes and developments in the music, however, it’s quite restrained, the smallest gestures reverberating endlessly. They sound like no one else. It seems somehow bold and uncompromising to be working off such minimal ingredients, yet it’s precisely this stripped-down quality, combined with their repetition, that gives the music such trance-like qualities. In fact, you could almost call it organ ritual music, or transcendental synth music, the repetition increasing the intensity and power of the music until it takes on the form of your favourite deity. Perhaps this could account for them naming their second album II and not using track titles – leaving it up to the listener to cloak the music anyway they wish. Regardless, this is powerful music. There is a deep narcotic groove you can sink into, but it’s also static, so while the textures of the keys are continually engaging, and it’s impossible to not respond to even the slightest variation, there is something a little unnerving going on here. And that’s a good thing. Bob Baker Fish
DEAD LETTER CIRCUS ONE STEP Warner Whenever I see distinctly ‘Year 11 studio art’ style CD artwork – screaming faces, bald heads in a grey postapocalyptic wasteland, drippy black calligraphy typefaces – I can be reasonably certain about the sounds contained within. So it goes with Dead Letter Circus, whose One Step is the sort of deeply earnest post-hardcore/faintlyemo stuff that would make Jared “Seriose Musician” Leto nod his head in silent reverence, and the rest of us dribble into the mental equivalent of the ‘Flying Windows’ screensaver.
CODY SIMPSON IYIYI Atlantic So this is “our” Justin Bieber, eh? Look, I don’t really have a problem with these young dudes - iYiYi (complete with appropriate MySpace cApItAlIsAtIoN) is a sweet R&B bouncer that’s something like Mandy Moore’s Candy doused with Flo-Rida/Rihanna synths, and I think Simpson actually has a better voice than Biebs – but I am fascinated by the scope of their appeal – and, let’s face it, it’s sort of like castrati for the modern age, which is far more interesting than 3Oh!3 or something.
SALLY SELTMANN DREAM ABOUT CHANGING Shock/Remote Control It’s getting to the point where taking the time to discuss the brilliance of Sally Seltmann feels somewhat reductive; it’s a bit of a “well, der” situation, particularly when it comes to just about every single track from Heart That’s Pounding. And so we have the glorious Dream About Changing, which – memo Kate Nash – demonstrates how to raid the ‘60s and end up with something fresh, appealing and honest.
MARK SHOLTEZ ALL FOUR SEASONS Warner I wonder what it must be like for people like Mark Sholtez, who are expressly marketed as “adult contemporary”, not because there’s anything wrong with it (after all, the AC category at the ARIAs is regularly the most interesting), but because it must be a bit like being described as having a “great personality” in the face of the more exciting genres’ flashiness. Anyway, All Four Seasons is a rather nice ballad, the sort of stuff I wish Crowded House were doing now instead of the ponderous “indie dad” routine they’ve got going.
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VARIOUS ARTISTS ARTISTS THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE OST Warner Harry Potter remains the greater cultural phenomenon, but the British movie franchise has never had a soundtrack to rival those of The Twilight Saga flicks. The 2008-released Twilight OST was a surprise hit, reinvigorating the format as a marketing (and ‘creative’ A&R) vehicle. If Twilight favoured emo, and last year’s New Moon introspective indie, then Eclipse is the most credible yet, with hipster draws like Florence & The Machine, The Dead Weather and Band Of Horses. Even Vampire Weekend enter the Twilight spirit, abandoning their Afrobeat for nocturnal folk, while Bat For Lashes duets with Beck. Eclipse’s music is more menacing, befitting David Slade’s movie, which centres as much on warfare as perilous (and imperilled) romance. Twilight author Stephenie Meyer cites Muse as her favourite band and literary inspiration, with the UK supergroup contributing to every OST so far. Now, for the first time, the vampire house band pull out an original tune, in the sparkly Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever). It’s a corpulent rock anthem and, inevitably, predictable. Not so ordinary is Florence Welch’s Siouxsie Siouxchannelling drama, Heavy In Your Arms. The Dead Weather’s Rolling In On A Burning Tire is goth Americana, with Jack White’s grungy and slightly unhinged vocals plus some ominous blues-rock guitar. Adelaide escapee Sia eloquently performs the exquisite My Love – spare balladry with rainy-day piano, strings and fragile harmonies. When filming Twilight, Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan) recommended Iron And Wine’s Flightless Bird, American Mouth, surely the strangest prom tune in Hollywood history, and here, her current No 1 group, Seattle’s Band Of Horses, drive into the sunset with Life On Earth. But BOH can’t top the sweetly subverted country of Cee-Lo Green’s What Part Of Forever. Manifesting a bold post-feminist gothic, The Twilight Saga has been unjustifiably dismissed as vapid fare for screaming teenage girls, but few can so readily hate on the music.
KAREN ELSON THE GHOST WHO WALKS XL/Remote Control Recent history is peppered with several high profile supermodels trying their hand at a credible music career, most with substantially unrewarding results (Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss). Based on the evidence then, one would normally approach similar supermodel crossover releases with an air of trepidation. That is unless said former runway girl happens to be married to, and more crucially produced by, Jack White. Born in the English town of Oldham, Karen Elson shot to prominence as a high profile model and was conspicuous to music fans when she appeared in The White Stripes’ clip for their Blue Orchid single. Now, fives years on, Elson is married to her former employer and has utilised his production and arrangement skills for her own debut album entitled The Ghost Who Walks. Drawing upon her experience as a founding member of the New York City cabaret troupe The Citizens Band, Elson’s debut album is a remarkably polished affair. Utilising theatrical themes and poetic verses, intertwined with dark country and smoky blues musical accompaniment, the flame-haired chanteuse establishes herself as a formidable vocalist. From the ethereal title track, across the country-tinged The Truth Is In The Dirt through the ballad Stolen Roses to the haunting The Birds They Circle, Elson shows an adept skill at tailoring her voice to numerous genres and styles. While Jack White’s distinctive production, including his own contributions as chief drummer for the sessions, is noticeable across The Ghost Who Walks, it only amplifies Elson’s blossoming talents. To be married to one of the last decade’s most lauded and prolific songwriters and performers, coupled with her prior modelling credentials, a lesser talent would no doubt be psychically crippled from embarking on a new career as an artist. Thankfully Karen Elson has overcome these challenges to deliver what will hopefully be the first of many enchanting releases. Symon JJ Rock
Cyclone
MOUNTAIN MAN MADE THE HARBOR Spunk What do they say? A little slice of heaven for the ears and soul? Well, maybe not atheists, but some believers attest to the validity of the statement. Mountain Man are three young women. Appalachian goddesses, really. Bennington, Vermont trio, Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath weave an angelic narrative throughout their debut record, Made The Harbor, that is truly mesmerising. Hypnotic in fact. Much in the same vein that Justin Vernon created his Bon Iver beauty For Emma, Forever Ago or Fleet Foxes lit up their self-titled debut, Mountain Man are another out-of-thebox artist of similar calibre. Yet the gals have got their own thing going on. A three-headed harmony beast. A cappella mostly. A few scattered studio atmospherics, a touch of twang guitar and that’s about all she wrote. The highlight is the gorgeous, melt-your-heart vocals. Comparisons would do Mountain Man an injustice of epic proportions, so let’s not even go there. You buy Made The Harbor, and you decide. Or, just love the damn thing on its own merit. And you will love it. WIth 13 tracks in 31 minutes, most songs don’t even make the two-and-a-half-minute mark, yet these short tunes are the most affecting. From the ethereal (overused word, but highly apt description) Animal Tracks, to the slightly more sprightly Soft Skin and the playful freeform vocal of How’m I Doin’, recalling the sirens of Greek mythology, there’s wonderment at every turn. Babylon, the second-last tune on the record is a case in point. Shut your eyes and sway back and forward awhile. Lose yourself in the dulcet, seductive birdsong of Mountain Man today, and keep losing yourself to its sounds for years to come. And, you will. Nick Argyriou
CABINS BRIGHT VICTORY Ivy League Records THE SCHOOL LOVELESS UNBELIEVER Popfrenzy/Elefant Wearing their influences unashamedly on their collective sleeve, the members of Welsh six-piece The School have created a debut album that actually lives up to the hype. Sounding like a beautiful car crash between super-cool indie pop and the best of 1950s and 1960s girl groups, Loveless Unbeliever dives right into the deep end, with opener and previously released single Let It Slip dragging you in before you can take a breath. The chorus is sweet enough to cause a heart attack, and is proof that lead singer and songwriter Liz Hunt really knows how to make a modern take on bands such as The Ronettes and The Crystals actually work. Sure, the sound is nothing new, but that’s not really the point. After all, you know what you’re getting into with this band, and, really, it’s song quality that is of more importance.
Cabins’ debut mini-album, Bright Victory, produced by Woody Annison (Red Riders, Children Collide) is a record free from indie cliché and formula. Instead, it’s the sound of four Sydney upstarts having a crack. The result is a free-flowing and punchy rhythm-heavy pounding of tunes and eastern-flavoured, swirling guitars that feel up the hazy reverb vocals of its frontman, Leroy F Bressington. Adjectives aside, Cabins’ Bright Victory is the sound of what all Aussie musos should be striving for – a balance of the melodic and the brutal. Every song as good as the next. Fillers nowhere in sight. Well, final track Calling You Home could be considered as such as it features a minute-and-a-half’s worth of strange vocal interplay, silence, then trailing Mariachi-inspired trombone, trumpet and French horn to close the show. But it works, damn it.
While Loveless Unbeliever is a truly enjoyable piece of work, it does run a little foul of the old ‘too much of a good thing’ cliché when you listen to the whole album in one sitting. Coming in at around 40 minutes and with 13 tracks, with very little variation in sound, it is easy to stop paying much attention by the time the last three or four songs come by. It’s sad, because Shoulder, debut single All I Wanna Do and I Don’t Believe In Love (the only track on the album with male vocals) are gorgeous tunes that don’t deserve to be ignored.
Opener Hounds is one smoky wig out and an inspired choice to kickstart the record. It’s bold and brash and penetrates the ear. Follow-up Oceanic Blues slows the pace as it lends a sitar-esque guitar bend to proceedings, with Bressington’s vocal changing pace and tone. It retains a sittin’ and rockin’ on the porch type of aesthetic as old boy Bressington watches over his Mississippi plantation with an eagle eye. Mary is perhaps Cabins’ most linear tune as it taps that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club drone, but it still works a treat and can be forgiven in light of the quality and diversity of the seven other songs. Cabins are the sound of unencumbered youth, and yet another fine example of the quality Oz music emanating from the first half of 2010 thus far.
I’m in love.
Nick Argyriou
Dominique Wall
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THE PARADISE MOTEL AUSTRALIAN GHOST STORY Left Over Life To Kill Records After ten years, The Paradise Motel have returned and in Australian Ghost Story have marked their re-arrival in the best possible way. It seems time has done nothing to dull the creative spirit that lay within the band during their ‘90s heyday, as this record is as masterful and poignant as anything they’ve ever done, if not more so. Beginning with The Witnesses, a track which almost struggles to get going before exploding (slowly) into a miniature soundscape that threatens to implode your head with its intricacy, Australian Ghost Story wends its way down a path of its own making. From intensive guitar moments to haunting string arrangements to bare vocal parts, TPM cover it all in a fashion which lulls you to sleep on velvet strings one moment before thrashing your very consciousness the next. Their live shows back in the ‘90s were renowned for veering “between violence and silence”, and Australian Ghost Story is no different. Recorded last year, this is an album which reflects upon the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain in 1980, a concept record of sorts. From the ominous My Sister In ’94, to the eerie yet uplifting The Cops, all the way through to skittering closer Prelude To A Saga – this record tells a story, not just of Azaria Chamberlain, but of a band back to their very best. Like saplings in the wind, this record is graceful and alert, it sways every which way at once but never loses its focus, which is indeed what makes this such a fantastic album.
Press play on this album and, at first, nothing happens. The opening track takes a while to gradually fade in. This simple trick is incredibly effective, and neatly encapsulates the creeping and understated charm of Gemini. The debut album from solo bedroom boffin Jack Tatum’s Wild Nothing opens with a muted piano, reminiscent of The Cure, which twinkles over a gently jangled guitar, reminiscent of Happy Mondays. Tatum’s soft, mid-range voice intones some nice lyrics, reminiscent of Lloyd Cole: “It was the first time that I really loved you/’Cause our lips won’t last forever and that’s exactly why/ I’d rather live in dreams and I’d rather die.” Yes, there’s a lot of reminiscing going on but somehow it works. The adoring homage to the Factory Records sound is tempered by a sensitive use of more recent textures, shoe-gazing fuzz and reverbed-out vocals and softly clicking drum machines. There’s as much Radio Dept in here as there is Robert Smith. And there’s an eerie amount of you, too, as Tatum’s surreal lyrics weave their way into your unconscious mind with their unadorned simplicity. Standout track Bored Games pulses with ‘80s computer game sounds, laid over the omnipresent jangling guitar and wheeling organ, as Tatum murmurs the lyrics: “Where are you going, can I come with you?/I don’t feel right, when you’re not here.” It’s pretty standard indie pop fare – hazy sounds of melancholic longing and lazy obsession. Wild Nothing don’t do anything new. But what they do, they do so well. Tatum’s sense of melody is superb, and his ability to emotionally manipulate is almost scary. And best of all, for all the nostalgic melancholia, Gemini leaves you feeling uplifted, almost joyous – warmed by a gentleness and a sweetness that is very rare, even if it’s not particularly groundbreaking. Roger Nelson
SUZANNE VEGA CLOSE UP VOL 1: LOVE SONGS Amanuensis/Cooking Vinyl
DARWIN DEEZ DARWIN DEEZ Lucky Number
Picture it: you saunter down from your brilliantly raffish New York apartment to take your organic coffee at your fave boho cafe in the village only to find that your spot by the window has been taken by the erudite queen of progressively minded, literate, touchingly tender inner city folk. OMG, hi Suze.
It would be easy to dismiss Darwin Deez as a boring New York scenester knobhead. He certainly looks like a prime candidate for lookatthisfuckinghipster.com with his daft moustache and vegan hippy manifesto. The surprise is a complete lack of pretention and an abundance of likability on his debut. You get the feeling that he’s more naturally bohemian than try-hard ironically hip.
Suzanne Vega emerged somewhere in the midst of a late ‘80s she-wave that brought us such luminaries as Tracy Chapman and Melissa Etheridge; but she immediately marked herself out as something quite different. Maybe she was just more poetic. Perhaps it was that gorgeous, breathy coolness; a voice perfect for narrating documentaries about Picasso and crooning slightly aloof songs of love in the modern milieu.
The songs are dreamy, jangly and melodic ditties that wouldn’t be out of place over a montage in a stylish indie flick where the kooky, beautifully dressed leads tango in IKEA. Stand out tracks such as Constellations gorgeously filter a timeline of genres and styles, weeding out the best bits of Fleetwood Mac with lo-fi indie shoegaze, like Pavement on a merry-go-round with a subdued Flaming Lips.
With this first volume of the Close Up series, Vega has returned to the studio to record stripped-back, textured versions of what she calls her love songs. The result is an album full of lovely vinyl crackles, luscious acoustics and lyrics, lyrics, lyrics. The supple, unabashed wordiness of Vega is up front here. It allows her clever trick of combining abstracted waifishness with solid emotion and keen intellect to work its chilled charm.
The tone is sweet and giddy without venturing into twee saccharine territory with lovely lines such as “It’s only been a week/But already you are mine to keep” (Radar Detector), and even when he wishes ill on someone it’s in a very mild and cheerful kind of way (“If you drop your keys I hope there’s a sewer somewhere very nearby” – Bad Day.) However, as it gently ebbs and flows, it conjures a warm glow but not enough punch and sparkle to inspire the kind of life-changing devotion of a band like Phoenix. It contains some very pleasant moments, but is too monotonal to be outstanding. The 32-minute, ten-track album would have been better envisaged as an EP. He promises his next offering will be more “introspective” and “Radiohead-like” and there’s enough promise here for that to be worth looking out for.
The tracklist is classic. Starting with the lithe, playful jazz hued Small Blue Thing, it moves to the girly whimsy of (If You Were) In My Movie and the brilliantly textured hit Marlene On The Wall. Further evidence of Vega’s almost painterly world comes with Headshots, a beautifully constructed vignette about posters and people walking by. Close Up is an apt moniker. This record is wonderfully bare. The production is light but not careless. It has a smokiness to it, like the aroma of good black coffee. And in that it is somewhat comforting.
Deez has been compared to The Strokes, but lacks their grit and guitars, favouring a more organic, simplistic approach which is equally enjoyable and forgettable.
Paul Ransom
Kat Roberts
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WILD NOTHING GEMINI Captured Tracks/Spunk
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WEED ALL ABOUT IT After a successful run of reunion shows last year, Wollongong stoner rockers TUMBLEWEED have decided to get the band back together permanently. With new material in the works, singer RICHIE LEWIS talks about the glory days of the early ’90s to EJ CARTLEDGE. the time of supporting Nirvana. But I remember playing pretty small venues with those acts… like the Barwon Club in Geelong with Mudhoney, which probably holds about 250 people. Before then we played with Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Henry Rollins, those sorts of people. There were punk rock bands coming to Australia and they’d been doing it for years, so it all seemed pretty natural to be supporting them. Nirvana, then, blew it all out of the water. I remember being on a train and looking at some daggy yobbos listening to Nevermind, thinking to myself, ‘What on earth is going on here?’ and then finding the whole thing pretty strange.”
“W
hy did I want to be the singer? It was a combination of a few things really,” says Tumbleweed’s Richie Lewis. “While I was a drummer, I was an incredible showpony. Secondly there was my laziness… I didn’t want to lug a drum kit around.” After 15 years away from the stage, Lewis and his Wollongong stoner rock brothers are having a blast. Their reunion shows late last year included a sold out Hi-Fi, storming performances at Meredith and Homebake, as well as a triumphant New Year’s Eve show at the Espy. The impetus has sparked a whole new focus for the band, with new material currently being written for a
Fast-forward to 2010 and Cobain and countless others are long gone. For Lewis and his compadres, it had to feel right before committing to playing again. That moment came when they reconvened for a jam. “It just seemed natural, I guess,” Lewis says. “We were getting a little bit of pressure, or at least some repeated requests, to get back together for the 15th anniversary of the Homebake festival. I said I’d get in touch with the guys and then very soon after I bumped into Paul [Hausmeister – guitar] at a restaurant so it was a combination of events really. He had been getting hassled by the Homebake organisers too so we agreed to just get into a practice room and see how it sounded. I guess our thinking was that if we sounded good, we’d consider the request. So talked to the rest of the band members and they were prepared to give it a go. As soon as played, that was the clincher; as soon as we plugged in it just sounded so right. It convinced us to go out there and do it again.” forthcoming album, plus a double CD in the works, which will include all of the band’s Waterfront Records’ releases. Way back when, Tumbleweed emerged from two bands, The Proton Energy Pills and The Unheard. With long hair and huge riffs, they supported the likes of Mudhoney and Sonic Youth well before the grunge phenomenon broke worldwide. Then along came a support slot in 1992 with Nirvana and the whole scene was turned upside down. “It didn’t seem surreal at first,” says Lewis. “It seemed completely natural to be honest. We first supported Mudhoney when we were still in The Proton Energy Pills and then obviously we were called Tumbleweed at
Lewis was quoted a couple of years ago as suggesting that “for me the camaraderie of the earlier days was something we’ve never had since”. While he still stands by that statement, he adds a qualification or two. “In terms of thinking about the scene we were a part of, yes I still stand by it,” he says. “There was something special about the late 1980s and very early 1990s scene in Sydney and Melbourne. I mean, you had Waterfront Records in Sydney and Au Go Go in Melbourne, bands that didn’t have any aspirations of commercial success and relying on each other’s friendships, as well as common interests in rock and punk rock music. You
ROCK’N’ROLL MODEL Manchester-raised KAREN ELSON has the musical smarts to transcend those model-turned-muso stereotypes, as proven on her debut album. She tells CYCLONE about her new life in the States and working with hubby Jack White. of Americana, the Northern lass morphing into a “gothic Southern belle” – but she’s more PJ Harvey than Patsy Cline. And she does understand the culture – Mouths To Feed was inspired by reading John Steinbeck’s eerily relevant Dust Bowl saga The Grapes Of Wrath. “I think just living in America has been a very interesting time for me. I’m from Manchester in England – and that’s quite a musically rich town in itself – but, when I lived there, I didn’t really feel it. I felt the casualties of that time – all the burnt-out ravers. So, when I moved to America, I had such a romance for music from California, even – psychedelic music from the ‘70s, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Beach Boys, those people. They just moved me. Maybe it’s because I’m English as well – there’s just something more powerful about being a foreigner and listening to foreign music... But then I also like British folk music – Jackson C Frank, Fairport Convention and Sandy Denny. There’s much similarity between the psychedelic movement in California and British folk music – I feel like the two complement each other very well.”
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usic aficionados are suspicious of models who embark on pop careers, yet Karen Elson has turned in one of 2010’s most beguiling – and beautiful – debuts, The Ghost Who Walks. It’s ironic, too. The title track, a murder ballad, flips Elson’s school-day nickname, a sarcastic reference to her pale, willowy frame. Elson’s music recontextualises folk, blues, country, psychedelia and goth – it’s theatrical and stylised. The singer/songwriter has been compared to her hero, Hope Sandoval. But, while the Mazzy Star chanteuse is all ethereal vocals, Elson can belt it out. That Elson is so heavily into Sandoval’s earlier band, Opal, and the Paisley Underground, underscores her musical knowledge, but there’s another facet to her admiration. “I think she’s beautiful,” Elson gushes of Sandoval, nervously excited as she prepares for a show in Los Angeles. “Her voice is just absolutely mesmerising – and her lyrics. She’s a real mysterious character. I admire how she’s kept herself
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elusive. Particularly in this day and age, it’s so difficult to keep it about the music and not about the personality.” Elson grew up in the grey environs of post-industrial Oldham on the outskirts of Manchester. Her workingclass parents split when she and her fraternal twin sister were seven. She was discovered by a modelling scout in 1995. Elson’s moment arrived after, at Steven Meisel’s behest, she shaved her eyebrows. She graced the cover of Italian Vogue as “Le Freak”. The Brit settled in New York’s East Village. Here, she shopped for obscure records and went clubbing, not with “famous people”, but with countercultural types – including wannabe vampires – at a goth night. Significantly, Elson also co-founded the performing arts clique, The Citizens Band. Five years ago, Elson cameo-ed in The White Stripes’ spooky Blue Orchid video – and fell in love with Jack White. Today they reside in Nashville, the spiritual home of country, with their two children. Elson is enamoured
Elson sang on Adam Schlesinger’s remix of Robert Plant’s Last Time I Saw Her as early as 2003, but was reluctant to record music. She attempted an album nearly a decade ago with Smashing Pumpkin James Iha but, feeling excluded from the creative decisions, abandoned it. Elson began writing material for The Ghost... on guitar in her closet. White lured her out – and subsequently produced it (and played drums). Nevertheless, The Ghost… is not simply another sideproject from the man who recently brought us The Dead Weather. He and Elson established a dialogue, White’s primary role instilling her with confidence. “I gotta say recording with him was really easy. I hate to say that ‘cause it’s just gonna make people roll their eyes even more, to be honest! But we recorded in our back garden – Jack built a studio in our back garden – and it was such a natural and safe place for me to record. I know all the musicians who played on the record – obviously, I know Jack and I trust him – so I was spoilt rotten, in a sense. I was in a situation where it was really safe and a relatively natural way of recording. A lot of people have asked if there were ever creative differences between Jack and I. Yes, of course, we both have opinions and sometimes they’re different, but the beauty
have to rely on each other to get gigs, whether it was in Glebe or at the Lansdowne Hotel or other parts of the city, or in a community hall where you had to take out a bond and hope for the best. I just remember there was an amazing summer prior to the world knowing about bands like Mudhoney or Nirvana. I remember Evan Dando coming out and playing in a mate’s backyard, or us going down to Melbourne to play with The Meanies. “I guess it had something to do with our respective ages as well. We were all young, growing up and discovering life and open to making new friends, so I have to say that no, I’ve never experienced camaraderie like that ever since. It’s great that friends we made back then are still friends today… we’re still playing shows with The Meanies, for example. People that we were dealing with back then to get our records out are still the same people we deal with today, like Steve Stavrakis from Waterfront Records. Maybe young bands today are making the same connections and – who knows? – they might say the same thing about this era.” When asked how it feels to be playing the old anthems like Stoned again, Lewis is adamant that the group would not have partaken in any reformation if the spirit was lacking. “It goes without saying that we still enjoy playing our songs from those early days,” he says. “Those songs are just so close to the heart. After so many years off it’s just great to play them again and get back to the place where they were created. For us, it was all about being influenced by the right stuff at the right time and I think there were a lot of bands like ours that were drawing from the same well. I mean, our influences went right back to the 1960s really; there was plenty of garage punk to choose from, like The Stooges and The MC5 and The New York Dolls. Then onto The Damned and Sex Pistols, then Radio Birdman out here, or the Celibate Rifles, Died Pretty, early Hoodoo Gurus and the Stems. The list goes on and that spirit remains.” And the real reason Richie Lewis came out from behind the skins to front the band? “Well,” he says, “most importantly was that Steve O’Brien was available to play drums. He was a better drummer than I was and we couldn’t find a singer we wanted. I didn’t know back then if I could sing and the first few gigs were a bit weird but ultimately that’s all I ever wanted to do.” WHO: Tumbleweed WHEN & WHERE: Friday 25 June, the Hi-Fi
of working with Jack is that he’s really open-minded. He doesn’t procrastinate, he’s very dynamic, so you’re forced to make a decision, but it’s good ‘cause you have to go with your gut, which is important. It was really enjoyable." Ask Elson what she might have taught her husband and she is stumped – and embarrassed. “Maybe I taught him more about me,” she says eventually. “I guess he learnt more about me through the recording process than we’d ever learnt about each other.” At any rate, Elson has transcended her status as muse. (Vogue UK once sagely dubbed the eccentric couple as “the Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter of the music and fashion worlds.”) However, White warned Elson about detractors. It’s a little poignant that, for a genuinely gifted artist, she should be so defensive. The flame-haired Elson was always an unconventional supermodel, like the DIY Agyness Deyn. In fact, the lines have blurred so much in 2010 that now Florence Welch is modelling. (“Obviously, being a redhead, I’m a fan of hers,” Elson says sweetly.) Meanwhile, other models have issued credible albums. Vanessa Paradis teamed with Lenny Kravitz for a smoky album in the ‘90s and, prior to marrying the French president, Carla Bruni presented the cool No Promises. Elson continues to model, lately appearing in a campaign for Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium. From the outside, Elson seems to have it all – beauty, love, family, security, music – yet the most disconcerting aspect of The Ghost… is its pervasive darkness: an ugly beauty. It’s as if Elson still sees herself as “Le Freak”. She has had her sorrows. She lost a boyfriend to heroin. In 2002 Elson revealed that she’d suffered from eating disorders since childhood. “You can never judge a book by its cover. Yes, of course, I live much more of a charmed life than most people. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be plucked from obscurity in Oldham and become a model and to live the life I’ve lived. I’ve been incredibly lucky! But just because I have all these wonderful elements in my life doesn’t mean I’m immune to feeling sad or feeling dark or lonesome or whatever it is. It’s easy to gloss over everything. People expect me to walk around with a permanent smile on my face, but I’m human, so I feel. It’s as simple as that. How can you not feel? It’s part of everyday life. Writing this record was a way of getting those things out.”
WHO: Karen Elson WHAT: The Ghost Who Walks (Remote Control)
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SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
OUT ON A RAIL Landing a smash hit five albums into their run, TRAIN guitarist JIMMY STAFFORD tells EJ CARTLEDGE they’re “finally cool to the kids”.
JESSE COULTER, frontman of Adelaide punks GRENADIERS, tells SAMUEL J FELL the songs on his band’s debut album “aren’t too shit”. found our sound a bit more. And I think this new album is more of a representation of the sound we have now. I like it.” Once Grenadiers had solidified somewhat, they recorded a four-track demo to give away at shows, and almost immediately recorded Songs The Devil Taught Us, which makes it more than a year old for the band. “We had to sit on that for quite a while, which was a source of great consternation for me,” Coulter says.
the dizzy heights of fame and fortune. “The cycle of endless touring, recording and promoting can get to you,” he says. “Plus, we never quite reached the level of success we thought we deserved. Despite having won Grammy awards, we were never quite a known band. I’d talk to people and they’d ask, ‘What do you do?’ and I’d say, ‘I play guitar for Train,’ and they’d have no idea. Then I’d sing Drops Of Jupiter or Calling All Angels and they’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I love that band’. Nobody knew who we were! And we had set such high goals for ourselves that we weren’t reaching that it led to unhappiness. Finally, with this new album and the new single we’re finally cool to the kids.”
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est known for their Grammy-winning single Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me), Train formed in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. The recent release of album number five, Save Me San Francisco, has catapulted the trio back into the spotlight with the success of first single Hey Soul Sister. It’s quite a contrast to the lean years earlier this decade. They broke for a long hiatus after the album For Me, It’s You stalled in the charts in 2005 and it seemed unlikely the band would play again. For guitarist Jimmy Stafford (who namechecks The Edge and Jimmy Page as his guitar heroes), getting back together again was only possible due to him and his bandmates being in a much better place. “We didn’t really have any expectations when we got back together to write and record this album,” says Stafford. “We pretty much set ourselves up to fail. If we fail, at least we’re going to be happy doing it. So our approach was, if we’re happy during the making of this record then hopefully that will rub off onto others and make them happy. That was exactly what happened with our very first album – and it worked. It was important to get that feeling back into our lives because we hadn’t been happy. The thought had definitely crossed my mind that perhaps we wouldn’t record again and this is where the journey ends.” Stafford had gone on record previously stating that Train had “lost its spark”. The grind of the business wore them down, he suggests, but also a failure to hit
Now back in the public relations circus, Stafford believes he and his bandmates have a vastly different attitude to a side of the music business they had grown tired of. “Well, you know, doing the promotional side of the band is something we’ve really learned to appreciate,” he says. “There was a time where we had definitely lost the enthusiasm for that aspect of the business. We really took it for granted. It was like, ‘Oh we have to do another interview,’ or, ‘Oh, here comes another radio station’. Now, we’re just happy that someone still wants to talk to us. I mean, we could have been one of those bands that just faded away.” Stafford makes no secret of his surprise that Train have found themselves back on radio and back touring the globe. “The success of the single has been a bonus and a surprise,” he says, “because our other albums kinda had the obvious hit single. On this record, we like it as a whole and there were a number of songs being considered as the first single; this had never happened before. So when the label chose Hey Soul Sister to kick off the record we all thought it’s a good choice: it’s a happy song, it’s different for us. But none of us thought it was going to turn into the massive hit that it has. It’s been kind of a delayed effect; I think the rest of the world, including Australia, was waiting to see how we did in the US before they committed to this band again.”
WHO: Train WHAT: Save Me San Francisco (Sony) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 25 June, Forum
AMERICAN DREAM Once the darlings of the punk underground, THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM have been embraced far and wide. MARK HEBBLEWHITE corners guitarist ALEX ROSAMILIA to talk dirt and glory.
“But at the same time, I’m happy about it because we’ve got a good release, we didn’t rush it, and also the fact I still like the songs on it after that long is a good testament to the fact they aren’t too shit.” Not shit at all – good enough, in fact, to be picked up by Triple J Unearthed last year (despite the fact the record hadn’t even been released at that point) and good enough to garner a solid following at home in Adelaide and, indeed, here in Melbourne, too.
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ust because they’re from Adelaide doesn’t mean punk rockers Grenadiers don’t know what they’re in for when they head over our way this week to launch their debut record. “For a while I was a little bit paranoid that we weren’t going to get to play the Arthouse again before it closed,” smiles frontman Jesse Coulter. “That’s a huge bummer that it’s closing, but it looks like we’ll be able to get over again at least a couple more times before that happens.” We spend the next few minutes reminiscing about time spent at the Arthouse, Melbourne’s home of underground punk and metal, both glad though that there’s still at least a little time left. That done, we move on to the reason Grenadiers are playing this iconic little venue – to launch their debut LP, Songs The Devil Taught Us. To put this into perspective though, perhaps a little background: “It started with me and Christian, the drummer, we were working on some more stoner rock kinda stuff, and that was working pretty good but we decided to ditch it for something a bit different,” Coulter explains on the origins of the group, some two years ago. “Another band I was playing in, we broke up, so we took the bass player and added another guitarist, so we were a four-piece, but then the bassist and guitarist left, and then we found Drew. “When we started, we didn’t really have a particular sound in mind, we just wanted to do rock in general,” he goes on. “But I think it’s a bit more focused now, we’ve
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lot has happened in a short time for The Gaslight Anthem. A few years ago they were content to gig in basements around their native New Jersey. Now they’re playing live on The David Letterman Show and being joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen for huge festival performances. So what do the band make of what can only be called a meteoric rise to fame? “Well I am truly grateful for all the opportunities that this band has given me and I know the rest of the guys are as well,” says guitarist Alex Rosamilia. “We try hard not to let it overwhelm us. I’m very conscious of the fact that not many people get to do this, so I’m determined to enjoy every second of the experience. Who knows, this could all end tomorrow, so I’m just lying back and enjoying the ride.”
Any defining moments of the ride so far? “Well you’re going to think that I’m buttering you guys up, but the first time I got to go to Australia was really special for me. It was something I’d always wanted to do and I realised because of the band, here we were. I should also say we’ll be back one day – things are in the works. Stay tuned.” American Slang, the band’s third full-length release, sees the boys follow the raw rock’n’roll path they laid down on previous album The ‘59 Sound rather than reverting back to the energetic punk sound they unleashed on their debut LP Sink Or Swim. So is it a case of Springsteen over Bouncing Souls for The Gaslight Anthem? “Look, I do agree that the new album is a natural successor to The ‘59 Sound. I wouldn’t agree with the Springsteen
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So does the band still consider themselves to be ‘punk rock’, or are such labels more of a hindrance than a help? “I don’t want to get all high and mighty on my punk rock horse,” says Rosamilia, “but I don’t think you can really categorise punk rock, at least as far as saying a certain song is a ‘punk rock’ song while another isn’t. “To me it’s more about the spirit than the sound. And I can say absolutely that as far as morals and ethics are concerned, if you want to put it that way, then the four of us remain punk rock. And I don’t want to sound pretentious but that’s the way it is for us. Whatever success we get we’ll never forget where we came from or the struggles we’ve been through to get where we are. “We came out of the Jersey scene,” he adds. “Although I for one had many other different influences – I loved anything with a Jazzmaster and a chorus pedal. But anyway, coming from this scene meant we were playing dingy basements in New Brunswick. It wasn’t glamorous. “And it’s from that experience that we took the ethos that people should play music because they want to and want to have a good time doing it. There’s nothing more pure than that desire and that’s what The Gaslight Anthem is all about.”
WHO: The Gaslight Anthem WHAT: American Slang (out Friday through SideOneDummy/Shock)
And so where to from here for Adelaide’s Next Big Punk/Rock Things? “Well, in theory, we could probably record another record in about a month,” says Coulter, the band having been writing steadily since they finished recording their debut a year ago. “That’s not on the agenda though; we’re gonna put together a few interstate jaunts, and just get out there.”
WHO: Grenadiers WHAT: Songs The Devil Taught Us (Casadeldisco/Shock) WHEN & WHERE: Friday, the Arthouse
BAND AID Working with new band THE CAPTAINS, KATIE NOONAN has gone back to her first love, she tells STEPH WALLIS. them, I knew really quickly that they would help me to realise my dream. Everything fell into place when I finally found the right collaborators, when I found my band.”
thing,” argues Rosamilia, who also admits to being sick and tired with the endless comparisons to The Boss. “Brian [Fallon, vocals/guitar] actually tried really hard to get away from all the Springsteen stuff on this LP and I think we have,” he adds, at pains to note that this time around the band have also toned down on their trademark ‘characterisations’ and ‘Maria’ references. “And as for the differences between Sink And Swim and the newer albums, well all we do is write the best record we can at the time. We don’t sit down and conceive a ‘sound’ as it were. We put out music we believe in and are proud of; it’s that simple.”
So the record, Songs The Devil Taught Us – what’s the story here? “We didn’t think too much about what we wanted to come out with once we’d started recording the album,” muses Coulter. “We had a couple of references, albums that we really wanted it to sound like – the big one for me was The Bronx II. We had this idea that we didn’t want to spend too much time on it, making sure we had everything good, but at the same time, not dwelling on adding too much fl owery shit to it. We just wanted to make it sound as good as possible, and I think it really does sound good.” The band are happy, which when translated to the live setting, usually makes the punters happy too – time will tell, come this weekend at the Arthouse.
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atie Noonan possesses the kind of range that most singers could only dream of. Her captivating, angelic voice and technical mastery make her one of Australia’s most versatile and beloved vocalists. The singer, producer, songwriter, pianist, businesswoman and mother first received recognition as the songstress of indie pop band George. Since then, Noonan has taken audiences on excursions through soul on her solo debut, Skin; dance with Second Skin, the collaboration with DJ John Course; jazz with Blackbird, a reworking of The Beatles’ catalogue; and classical music via projects such as Two Of A Kind, which she recorded and performed with her mother Maggie. Noonan’s new album, Emperor’s Box, recorded with her band The Captains, marks some significant changes in the singer’s life. She and her husband recently swapped city living for the serene life in a “shack” on a hectare of rainforest north of Brisbane, in consideration of the development of both her children and her creativity. It was this move that allowed Noonan to change her direction musically, a move that led to the production of Emperor’s Box, an album that revisits the band approach that helped launch her career. “My main motivation behind this record was to try and return to that organic band sound,” she says. “In my various meanderings musically, I realised that I’d missed the more collaborative approach to the creative process. It was something that I did for ten years with George. I think that’s what I do best and it is my first love.” Emperor’s Box is a project Noonan had been dreaming of for some time; one that was not realised until she met the members of The Captains more than two years ago. “I waited until I found the right collaborators to invite into my little music-making cave,” she explains. “When I met
Meeting and working with The Captains – guitarist Cameron Deyell (who has worked with the likes of The Catholics and Mike Nock), drummer Declan Kelly (Declan Kelly & The Rising Sun) and Stu Hunter (one of Australia’s finest experimental jazz pianists) – allowed Noonan to picture a “music world” she could dream about and write for. “Because I got to know the personalities of the band and how we worked as a unit, it meant that I could immediately visualise songs in my head, and write for this specific band and this sound world that we were slowly building up together.” Although Noonan collaborated closely with the band, as well as lyrical magicians Tim Finn and Don Walker, her work still remains personal. All 13 tracks on Emperor’s Box are reflections on her life – on life and loss, friendship, love and motherhood. “Quite a few of the songs on the album are gifts for friends, particularly for some of my friends who have been going through some pretty awful moments in life,” she explains. One of the most moving tracks on the album, Time, was written after Noonan’s friend Steve Newcomb (who also plays strings and horns on the track) and his wife lost their baby girl. “Often if someone is going through some intense grief, which is what a couple of songs on the album are about, talking can be hard. So for me, songwriting is easier in those situations.” It is this emotive and sincere nature of Noonan’s voice and songwriting that makes her music so touching and relevant. “I try to write lyrics that have hopefulness. I don’t want to sound like a horrible cliché, but it’s nice to be able to communicate that no matter how shitty life feels at times, it will get better. And hopefully I can continue to do that with my music.”
WHO: Katie Noonan & The Captains WHAT: Emperor’s Box (Sony) WHEN & WHERE: Friday, the Hi-Fi
MARCHING ORDER With the help of her skewed pop and some penguins, EMILIE SIMON has broken out of her native France, ANTHONY CAREW discovers.
NUMBER OF THE BEAST Out here for the second time in two years, singer PAUL DI’ANNO talks to MARK HEBBLEWHITE about punk rock and life after Iron Maiden.
Simon clearly didn’t take this American rejection to heart: these days she’s based in New York. The 31-year-old was born in Montpellier on the South Coast of France, and immediately found herself drawn to music. “Music has been a part of my life since I was very young,” she says. “Singing on stage is something that I’ve always loved, since I was a child, and music itself has been something that has always fascinated me since as long as I could remember.”
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milie Simon has released three albums, toured all over the world (including Australia), and made a name as French chanteuse outside of the French-speaking world. And yet, the most notable moment in her career – for now and, perhaps, forevermore – is her soundtrack work on world-conquering anthropomorphising-ofanimals documentary March Of The Penguins. “It was my first movie, and it was also the first movie for the directors and the producers,” she recounts. “They came to me and asked me if I was interested in working on this project. I thought it was great, because there was so much space for the music. When I wrote the music, there was no voice-over at all. The voiceover came at the end, so for a few months when I worked on it, I was just alone with the Antarctic and the penguins. It was beautiful, actually. It was a great feeling, to compose against nature. Especially because they wanted me to be me, to just do what I do, so I could just be completely ‘free’ with the beautiful pictures.” The success of the movie came, though, with an asterisk: Simon’s soundtrack took pride of place on the version that played in most of the world, but not the American (and, in turn, Australian) version. “It’s not like my music is only in France, and all over the world there is different music, it just happened for the States,” Simon explains. “But, of course it hurts. It was so much of my hard work, and it was something that was successful, so you don’t understand why they would change something that is having success. For a long time it really bothered me. But, that’s just the way the film industry works; that stuff just happens.”
Maiden guy, but my solo stuff, I think, is as good if not better,” says Di’Anno, balancing out the pros and cons of the situation. “It is far more heavy and in your face, but underneath the Maiden shadow it gets missed out on. But I think that if I didn’t play the Maiden stuff live I’d be strung up from the balls by the fans. Ironically though, sometimes when I do play the Maiden stuff, I get shit for living in the past. So who fucking knows?” On his upcoming Australian tour, Di’Anno will be most definitely be living in the past. In honour of the 30 year anniversary of the debut Iron Maiden LP, Di’Anno will (for the first time ever) be playing the entire LP live, including the likes of Charlotte The Harlot and Strange World, tracks that the man admits to not performing for decades. Nostalgia trip or not, Di’Anno remains proud of his early work.
Simon started studying music at seven, by when she was already writing her own songs on the piano. As a child, she was inspired by The Beatles – “I loved their songs because they are, in many ways, very childlike: very colourful and creative, very different one from the other”– Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. As a teenager she attended the French experimental music institute IRCAM and studied avant-garde music and modern composition. When Simon released her first, eponymous LP in 2003, she was routinely compared to Björk, and, on 2006’s Végétal, she delivered a Björk-esque concept: an album of songs written from the perspective of plants, its sonic palette including sampled plant sounds. By her third LP, The Big Machine, Simon had relocated to New York, and delivered a set of songs – steeped in ersatz evocations of depression-era swing – entirely in English. Yet, it wasn’t, Simon attests, some sort of premeditated ‘internationalist’ album. “I feel like the language I use isn’t important; that it doesn’t define my music,” Simon says. “It’s not only about the lyrics and the poetry, it’s more about the melodies and the type of sound and the type of atmosphere – the colours – that I create. “I think of it like this: it’s like an arrangement. Why sometimes do you use strings instead of brass? It’s the same; it’s just colour. Sometimes it’s French, sometimes it’s English. I know that if I could speak Japanese, I’d be singing in Japanese, too. I just use the words and the language instinctively depending on the melody, and what it means to me.”
WHO: Emilie Simon WHAT: The Big Machine (Cartell Music)
HORN SALUTE
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espite the street-level grit he bought to the band, Paul Di’Anno never really looked comfortable in Iron Maiden. Maybe it was the short hair, or maybe it was the Johnny Rotten-esque sneer, but most probably it was the fact that he was cut from an entirely different cloth to Harris and co. You see, Paul Di’Anno was, is and forever will be a punk rocker, something he confirms when asked about his musical preference. “Punk rock all the way,” he says, citing the likes of The Ramones and The UK Subs as huge influences. “I was always a punk and always will be, but I do love my metal, too. Especially my boys in Sepultura and Killrazer.” Recently, Di’Anno received praise for his punk spirit from a most unlikely quarter. NOFX penned a ditty entitled Bruce, Eddie And Paul, which detailed Di’Anno’s ignominious exit from Iron Maiden and proclaimed, “Kudos to Paul, fuck you Bruce/How you supposed to rock and roll without substance abuse?/Number of the beast is in bed with Rob and Judas Priest.” So how does the man himself feel about the support? “I’m fucking flattered,” laughs Di’Anno. “Mate, if Weird Al Yankovic takes the piss out of you, it means you have finally made it. Love it!” Despite his punk rock ethos there’s no doubt that Di’Anno will always live in the shadow of his achievements with Iron Maiden. It’s a legacy that is both a blessing and a curse. “I’ve learnt to deal with always being the
“Jesus, it has been that long, hasn’t it?” says Di’Anno when asked about the 30-year anniversary. “Yeah I’m still proud of it all. I rarely listen to those songs though as I’m bloody playing them every night, aren’t I? But seriously, if it wasn’t for those albums I’d probably be shovelling shit, in jail, or dead. They made my life a pretty good one, with all its highs and lows.” Aside from songs from the Iron Maiden LP, Di’Anno plans on injecting a healthy dose of Maiden’s second album Killers and solo material into his Australian set. And on that topic, it is interesting to note that Di’Anno will now have been to Australia twice in two years. Does this suggest the frontman quite likes the place? As it turns out, it does. “It was mad. You’re all complete loons,” laughs Di’Anno about the events of last year’s tour. “It was amazing as I’d never actually performed here. I’d been here on holiday, but never played. I fucking loved it, was taken care of well and crowds were great. “This time around I have more time here and will be going to places I missed out on last time, like Perth. Hopefully I get to visit my old mate Bon Scott – he bought me my first ever beer in a pub. Can’t wait to get there and pay my respects.”
WHO: Paul Di’Anno WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 24 June, the Espy
HUMP DAY TREAT
THE DEVIL RIDES OUT are Perth’s latest gift of heavy groove rock to the nation. TRISTAN BROOMHALL bails up singer JOEY K and guitarist ANDREW EWING.
BRILLIANT FANZINE are back, but as guitarist ED REED tells DOUG WALLEN, it’s a soft return on the road to a new musical approach. “Definitely,” Reed agrees. “The two [new songs] are influenced by that. This Old Star has sort of an Oasis or Stones Roses-y trippy/dreamy feel. Lazy Eye is probably influenced by that stuff as well. We don’t just listen to British music – we have a varied amount of influences – but I suppose you can’t help what you listened to as a teenager.”
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he Devil Rides Out have been blasting their hard rock, stoner and blues grooves from Perth stages for four years now, and 2010 is the year they’re finally unleashing their debut longplayer, The Heart And The Crown, and riding out of the west for their first national tour. After three EP releases, the band caught the ear of Wollongong-based label and touring company Impedance Records, and it seems to have come at the perfect time in the evolution of the band. “I never really expected them to get interested,” says the ever-cool Joey K, vocalist and lyricist for the band. “But it was after [third EP] Volume III that we actually got a reply from them and they said, ‘This is pretty cool; when it comes time to doing your next thing we’ll have a listen and see if we can do something.’ Even then I thought nothing’s going to come of it,” says a somewhat bemused K. “We booked in to do the album in December and I got crook so we just actually sent them an instrumental version of the album, unmixed, which wasn’t really ideal, but thankfully they saw enough actual potential in that to be interested.” Each member of The Devil Rides Out has nearly two decades of experience playing in and around the Perth scene. That led to Bergerk! Studios and choosing Al Smith to record The Heart And The Crown. The time between writing, recording, label interest and finishing the recording moved quickly, leaving the band only a couple of months to put half the record together. “I think it was quite intense,” explains Ewing, “which hopefully gave it a bit of unification. The intensity of the time for Joe to write the lyrics, for me, I think it’s [resulted in] Joe’s best stuff lyrically. You can’t really look at this and see the same band, lyrically, as Volume I and II.”
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“It actually is a lot easier for me, that’s my natural style, I guess,” says K. “It’s the style I was used to in my previous bands. I think Volume I and II were an attempt by me to do something different to what I usually did, have some fun and see if I could pull off that style. I think it had mixed results but it was never really me, I don’t think I was ever really comfortable with that persona, particularly for this album, and it started with Volume III as well, to just get back to a more honest reflection of me as a person, rather than trying to do this crazy rock’n’roll, uh, turkey.” Around Perth the group are known for gigging hard, pulling crowds and scoring supports, and K puts it into perspective rather succinctly. “We do play a lot just because we love playing,” he says. Ewing continues, “We all know Perth, you can be playing gigs to ten or 15 people, but if you can get across something to those ten, 15 people then I think it does make you a better band, plus we enjoy doing it. “You’ve just got do what you do and love it; everything else is almost out of your control. It’s like this thing with Impedance – if you had told me a year ago that we would have had the album put out by Impedance and doing a national tour, I would have been, ‘That’d be awesome but I don’t see that happening’. But suddenly it’s happening.” WHO: The Devil Rides Out WHAT: The Heart And The Crown (Impedance) WHEN & WHERE: Friday, Birmingham Hotel; Saturday, Lyrebird Lounge; Sunday, National Hotel (Geelong)
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veryone who loved Brilliant Fanzine’s 2007 debut album Then Comes Monday has probably spent the past few years wondering where the band’s been hiding. Well, there’s no new album to unveil, but the Melbourne six-piece does have a limited-edition new EP to hawk. Existing in just 100 physical copies before becoming digital-only thereafter, the This Old Star EP pairs a song off Then Comes Monday with another from those sessions and two new songs. So are the new tunes a taste of a second album? “Probably not, actually,” admits rhythm guitarist Ed Reed. “We didn’t know what to do next, so we just ended up recording a couple of tunes. I think the point of this release is to close a chapter of the band and start a new chapter. We recorded those songs maybe a year and a half ago, so it’s been a long process to come to this point. And since the release of the album, we’ve had new band members come in and other people leave.” The line-up besides Reed is currently as follows: lead singer Matt O’Neill, lead guitarist Paul Moses, bassist Greg O’Shea, keyboardist Moira Reed and drummer Glenn Chuck. Both Reed and O’Neill are English expats, and the band previously had other English members, which explains the Britpop influence ringing out from its songs. Reed says it can be tough to get six members together for rehearsal, but as he points out, there were actually seven members when the first album was recorded. And there’s nothing crowded about Brilliant Fanzine’s jangle- and harmony-rich sound, which does indeed owe a debt to such Britpop greats as the Stone Roses and Echo & The Bunnymen.
The two older songs on the EP point to what Reed said earlier about closing a chapter of the band. Half Of What You Are is an understated song from Then Comes Monday that has remained a favourite amongst the band’s members despite never being released as a single in its own right. And the revived instrumental Track 19 was something recorded for that first album that didn’t make the final cut. It was rescued from the dustbin, though, and fans should enjoy its breezy, daydream-y sweetness. But what does all of this mean in terms of a second proper album from Brilliant Fanzine? “I think we’re almost gonna start from scratch,” explains Reed, “and sort of challenge ourselves: write a bunch of new songs, do a bunch of gigs, and just record an album. We’re gonna take a different approach to how we recorded the first album, which was more in the studio, writing and recording the songs as we went. [For the next album] we want to record the whole band together and then do overdubs that way. It’s a bit more natural, I suppose, than doing it track by track.” As for the limited nature of the very worthy This Old Star EP, he says it’s more special that way. “Being sort of an end-of-chapter thing,” he reasons, “we wanted to make it something special. Sometimes with indie bands, you can get caught up printing 1,000 CDs, and realistically you don’t always get rid of them. We didn’t want to do something like that. It’s a very limited edition; it’s quite a lo-fi, DIY set-up.” In the end, then, it’s both a no-frills turning point for Brilliant Fanzine and, as cliché as it may sound, something for the fans. Reed concurs: “It’s just a nice one to collect.” WHO: Brilliant Fanzine WHAT: This Old Star EP (Popboomerang) WHEN & WHERE: Saturday, Birmingham Hotel
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INSIDE:
WEDNESDAY 16TH JUNE 2010
RENAISSANCE RICHARD MAN DURAND A LA FU ANTIX
O G F L AVA S
REFLECTION ETERNAL
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JUNE RENAISSANCE MAN - Jun 18, The Espy JOHN PHANTASM, ULTRAVOICE, FAREBI JALEBI - Jun 18, Brown Alley SHWAYZE & CISCO ADLER - Jun 19, The Espy INTERVIEW: ANTIX - Jun 19, Miss Libertine RENAISSANCE MAN - Jun 19, LaDiDa MIXED MESSAGES: ERPHUN - Jun 25, Brown Alley GIGI BAROCCO, ACT YO AGE - Jun 25, Roxanne Parlour JULY THE LIKES OF YOU: STEPHAN BODZIN, ROBERT HOOD, HUGO - Jul 2, Brown Alley AIRPORT: SIMON PATTERSON, SIED VAN RIEL - Jul 2, Billboard ELEKTRIK TATTOO: DYNO - Jul 9, Billboard MISTA SAVONA - Jul 9, Hi-Fi Bar LIL KIM - Jul 10, The Espy SUPER DISCO: DROP THE LIME - Jul 10, Prince Bandroom KEVIN RUDOLF, SHONTELLE - Jul 16, Palace Theatre SPIT SYNDICATE - Jul 16, The Evelyn LOWRIDER - Jul 17, Sandbar BOB - Jul 21, Billboard AGAINST THE GRAIN 2ND BIRTHDAY: AQUASKY, NAPT, POE DE PITTIE, SKOOL OF THOUGHT - Jul 23, Brown Alley LADY CHANN, KILLAQUEENZ - Jul 23, The Espy LAB: PABLO CAHN - Jul 23, Secret Warehouse Location LOWRIDER - Jul 23, Westernport Hotel LOWRIDER - Jul 24, Corner Hotel THE LIKES OF YOU: JAMES HOLDEN - Jul 25, Royal Melbourne Hotel LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, HOT CHIP - Jul 29, Festival Hall WINTERBEATZ 2010: BIG BOI, FATMAN SCOOP, NE-YO, T-PAIN - Jul 29, Rod Laver Arena AUGUST DELPHIC - Aug 1, Corner Hotel GOLDFRAPP - Aug 3, Palace Theatre K-OS - Aug 3, Prince Bandroom A TRIBE CALLED QUEST - Aug 12, Prince Bandroom LIBERATE: JOHN 00 FLEMING, MIKE, TRITONAL - Aug 13, Brown Alley BLISS N ESO - Aug 13, Palace Theatre SCATTERFEST II: SHARKSLAYER, MIGHTY FOOLS, NEOTERIC, BEATACUE, KIDDA AND MORE - Aug 14, The Espy SEPTEMBER PETER HORREVORTS - Sep 4, Miss Libertine SUNNY: LEE BURRIDGE - Sep 17, Billboard CYPRESS HILL - Sep 23, Palace Theatre OCTOBER PARKLIFE: MISSY ELLIOTT, GROOVE ARMADA, SOULWAX, MIX MASTER MIKE, GRUM, DELOREAN, CUT COPY AND MORE
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TOURING DATES
TTHE NOTORIOUS KIMa league
T Queen Bee, Lil’ Kim is in The ale of her own as one of the few fem ing stars in hardcore rap. Kim is mak s show her way to our shores for two bourne only and will play her only Mel 10 July. show at the Espy on Saturday Oztix. Tickets through espy.com.au and ing com in ced oun ann be to s Support weeks.
SPONGE B.O.B
Of BoB is bringing his Adventures shows Bobby Ray here in July for two hip only. Dubbed “the new face of by Ray) hop” by MTV UK, BoB (AKA Bob In nts. ume instr s play and s sing also 3D ion, licat pub sista our of ds the wor and a World, BoB is “a little bit Outkast ay nesd whole lot of Kanye West”. Wed ets Tick 21 July at Billboard The Venue. 9am on $53+BF through Ticketek from Monday 21 June.
BEAT QUEST
hing A Tribe Called Quest will be touc tralian down in August for their first Aus tour. Featuring all the original and DJ members – Q-Tip, Phife Dawg play Ali Shaheed Muhammad – they (all Hall ival Fest at ust Aug 12 rday Satu Thursday ages). Pre-sale tickets on sale before 17 June through Ticketmaster Monday they become available to all on 21 June.
JUMP THE SHARK
GET UR FREAK ON Missy Elliott, Groove Armada, – run for cover, muthafucker! their tenth anniversary line-up Darwin Deez, Ou Est Le , for s rean gun Delo big e, the Uffi , out d auts rolle gern Parklife have Tapes, Cut Copy, Midnight Jug a brand new album. ory and Mem e P, y urag Bus , ento ng Kele st!, anci Soulwax, Holy Gho tt is bringing a 27-strong, all-d Ellio sy and more space. Mark Mis s e. tree mor e y mor man s, plus gras e Swimming Pool, Sinden l and Kings Domain, with mor Bow r Mye go mega fast. ey to Sidn nd to bou es ’re mov they This year Parklife Melbourne 1 July at parklife.com.au and y. Tickets go on sale Thursday diar the in ber Octo 2 rday Satu
THIS WEEK NOCTURNAL DELUSIONS LAUNCH FEAT JOHN PHANTASM @ BROWN ALLEY Soundkraft Records second CD (Nocturnal Delusions) launch party with John Phantasm (UK), Ultravoice (ISR), Farebi Jalebi (Ind) and Rubal (Au) will be held this Friday at Brown Alley from 10pm. Tickets through greentix.com.au.
WAX MUSEUM RECORDS JAM @ THE CROFT INSTITUTE
office in Helsinki. Taking their inspiration from 3,000 years of art and science, Renaissance Man prove that you can think out of the box, but that it’s even better to think outside the walls. Or make that borders. Catch Renaissance Man this Friday joined by Mu-Gen, Scattermish, Lewis CanCut and Mat Cant. Tickets available now through espy.com.au and Oztix. A second show has been announced for this following night (Saturday) at La Di Da.
SHWAYZE & CISCO ADLER @ THE ESPY
This month finds the Wax Museum crew locating to a new home at The Croft Institute. Special guests include A La Fu from Ninja Tunes (UK), Ology and Doc Felix. Residents Aux Won, Inkswel, Mixa and Geezey bring you the finest underground hip hop you have come to expect. This Friday. 9pm3am. Free entry before 10pm/ $5 after.
LA trendsetters and rulers of indie hip-hop, Shwayze (AKA Aaron Smith) and Cisco Adler, are returning to Australia after their brief, sold out east coast tour in February. And this time New Orleans hip hop duo The Knux and DJ Jason Smith will be coming along. Support from Red Ink, Mafia, Dublin Aunts, 360, Deadly Booty and Streetparty Vs Swick. This Saturday at the Espy. Tickets through espy.com.au and all Oztix outlets.
RENAISSANCE MAN @ THE ESPY & LA DI DA
INTERVIEW FEAT ANTIX @ MISS LIBERTINE
Renaissance Man hail from Finland and both halves of the outfit met while working in an architecture
The Interview crew are back with New Zealand’s Antix launching their brand new fourth studio
album Cavalier. Antix, two freshfaced brothers with a love of electronic music, formed in the late ‘90s and were quickly snapped up by Iboga Records in Denmark. Support from Ben Evans, Blinky, Tony Loucas Vs Andy Simpson (B:R:B), Punkz On Junk, Motek (live), Deutronium, Loki, Simon Murphy and Nathan Canis. This Saturday at Miss Libertine.
COMING UP SOUND JUNKIES PRES GIGI BAROCCO & ACT YO AGE @ ROXANNE PARLOUR If you ain’t acting your age then you ain’t made for this gig. Act Yo Age are ready as anything to send decibels through our heads. AYA will headline alongside Gigi Barocco (Italy) to bring you their very own house/electro music. As resident to the Sweat It Out crew, be prepared for an impressive show. Eli B, Distrakt, Kris Baha, Mu-Gen, Kraymer, Trumpdisco, Swick, Airwolf, MYM, Pop A Cap, Zayler, daftwho?, J Heasy, Death By Disco, Swerve, Marco Polo, Luke Wellsteed, Dom Dolla and Paul Coverdale are also on the agenda.
first Having kicked off 2010 with the terblog Scatterfest, the Espy and Scat are proud to present the second yer rksla installment of this festival! Sha ands), (Finland), Mighty Fools (Netherl Neoteric (Canada), Beataucue l (France) and Kidda (UK) join loca Yo Act if, Mot Wax es tativ esen repr h, Age, Congo Tardis #1, Slap & Das and Mat Cant, Lewis CanCut, Mu Gen at s Scattermish across multiple room ets Tick the Espy on Saturday 14 August. ets. outl through espy.com.au and Oztix
Friday 25 June, 10pm-5am. Tickets are $25+BF (early bird) through Moshtix or more on door.
ERPHUN @ BROWN ALLEY In Farsi, “Erphun” means the state and ability of being on a higher spiritual level. Erphun’s music is brooding, pounding, moody and transformative, as if from another realm entirely. The only way to really experience this immense talent is to see him in action so be sure to head to Brown Alley on Friday 25 June. Local support from Miyagi, Muska, Ben Evans, Freya, Misch’ Chief plus more. Doors 10pm. Tickets $20.
GIGI BAROCCO @ ROXANNE Self-described “Italian mofo” Luigi Barone is the gent responsible for the electro/house project, Gigi Barocco. Barocco has officially remixed Steve Aoki & Will.I.Am, Spencer & Hill, Gooseflesh, Acid Jacks and The Wu-Tang Clan’s Redman. Team these with his original tracks and an arse-shaking time will be had by all at Roxanne on Friday 25 June.
DIAFRIX & THE PUBLIC OPINION AFRO ORCHESTRA @ THE CORNER
Diafrix team up with The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra for a huge double bill. Diafrix debut album Concrete Jungle has taken their iconic concoction of hip hop, funk and African roots and developed it into a truly world-class sound. Special guests are Motley (UK), DJ Surrender and Manchild. Saturday 26 June. Doors 8.30pm. Pre-sale tickets $15+BF through the Corner Box Office (12-8pm, MondaySaturday) or online (cornerhotel. com).
BLAK ROOTS ALBUM LAUNCH @ THE TOFF African act Blak Roots have taken the reggae genre in Melbourne to new heights with an exciting musical brew of driving reggae rhythms, refreshingly sweet vocals and African-inspired harmonies. Led by African vocal extraordinaire William Kadima, Blak Roots formed in early 2008 bringing together an eclectic mix of talented jazz, world and reggae artists from some of the planet’s most exotic locations. The band releases its debut album with the support of amazing local act Vox Congo performing a unique mix of Congolese gospel, rumba, soukous, zouk, reggae, aguaya and pende folk rhythms. Doors 7.30pm. Entry $12. Sunday 27 June.
AIRPORT FEAT SIMON PATTERSON & SIED VAN RIEL @ BILLBOARD THE VENUE Back for another wild air race, the Airport artisans invite you to join their mile high club. Strap yourselves in for the ride of your life with trance heavyweights Simon Patterson and the flying Dutchman – Sied van Riel. Also featuring an impressive support line-up from around Australia including Nathan Cryptic (NSW), DJ Frost (SA) and local star Trent McDermott. First release costs $29+BF (strictly limited to 50), earlybirds are $39+BF (limited to 50), pre-sales will set you back $49+BF or first class flights cost $69 (available only through promoters). Friday 2 July from 9pm-5am.
THE LIKES OF YOU FEAT STEPHAN BODZIN, ROBIN HOOD & HUGO @ BROWN ALLEY The Likes Of You brings you a dose of techno with Stephan Bodzin (live), Robert Hood and Hugo. Bodzin is the son of an experimental musician who cut his teeth composing music for European theatres before his talent was discovered and he went on to worldwide domination as a DJ and live artist. Hood is a founding member of Underground Resistance and makes minimal Detroit techno with an emphasis on soul. Rounding out the international delicacies is Hugo from Turin, Italy. A classically trained jazz musician, Hugo fell in love with electronic music in the ‘90s. Friday 2 July at Brown Alley.
GANGA GIRI @ EAST BRUNSWICK CLUB Australian artist Ganga Giri is world renowned for his Indigenous-inspired music and dynamically exuberant live shows. As a didgeridoo virtuoso and percussionist, his music encapsulates creative inspiration with an authentic Australian flavour. Ganga Giri is preparing to launch the first single (Bayami) from his forthcoming album, Good Voodoo. Joining Ganga on the road will be Wakka Wakka and Gumiloaroi Nations Indigenous singer/dancer Gumaroy, Jornick, Dan Pearson and Yeshe Reiners. Saturday 3 July. Doors 8.30pm. Pre-sale tickets $15+BF/$18 at the door.
ELEKTRIK TATTOO @ BILLBOARD THE VENUE Elektrik Tattoo debuts with Italy’s techno wizard Dyno plus support performances from other artists featured on Bush Music’s latest EP (also called Elektrik Tattoo): Heath Renata, Steve Ward, Joel Fletcher, Mike Metro, Momo & Trav, Yoshi, Lucca Tan, Viking, Eric Powell, Chardy and many more on the night. Some of Australia’s best tattooists – Devils Ink’s Justin Acca, Steve Aidone and Dan Powe – will rotate their artistry across three canvasses while tattooed
models roam the venue featuring their designs. Friday 9 July at Billboard The Venue from 10pm-late. Early bird tickets are $25 through Billboard online, Moshtix and Ticketek.
DROP THE LIME @ THE PRINCE After setting the stage ablaze at the Stereosonic Festival 2009, Drop The Lime (DTL) is heading back to tour Australia in July. Drop the Lime (Luca Venezia) is an electro DJ/producer hailing from New York who has remixed Moby, Blaqstarr, Rex The Dog, Armand Van Helden and Midnight Juggernauts as well as co-writing songs with Diplo and Herve. Catch DTL at the Prince on Saturday 10 July.
LADY CHANN & MOTLEY @ THE ESPY The UK’s number one dancehall queen Chanelle Williams (AKA Lady Chann), has been part of North West London’s vibrant Suncycle crew since it’s conception and now she’s branching out alone and bringing her unique talent our way. Lady Chann hits the Espy on Friday 23 July with support from Sydney duo Killa Queenz, Motley (UK) and locals Fraksha, Mat Cant, Affiks and Mamasita Bonnita. Tickets available now from espy.com.au and all Oztix outlets.
MINISTRY OF SOUND TRANCE NATION 2010 TOUR @ BILLBOARD THE VENUE After a long hiatus in the genre, Ministry Of Sound returned to the fore of trance with Trance Nation, a two-CD collection and tour. Now 2010 sees this hugely popular release return to shelves and clubs around the country once again with Trance Nation Vol 2. TyDi and Dutch-born MaRLo are assuming touring duties. Friday 23 July from 10pm-3am.
AGAINST THE GRAIN’S SECOND BIRTHDAY FEAT NAPT, AQUASKY, POE DE PITTIE & SKOOL OF THOUGHT @ BROWN ALLEY If you haven’t heard a NAPT beat then you don’t know what you’ve been missing out on. The architects of N-Funk, NAPT is a DJ duo comprising Ashley Pope and Tomek Naden. Together they create sounds with
roots in electro, breakbeat and house that are guaranteed to get you bouncing. Hailing from UK’s underground, NAPT’s dance music productions are enviable. Catch NAPT when they hit Brown Alley on Friday 23 July for Against The Grain’s Second Birthday featuring the Brit quadrella of NAPT, Aquasky, Poe De Pittie and Skool Of Thought. Earlybird tickets are $25+BF from brownalley.com and Inthemix.
JAMES HOLDEN @ ROYAL MELBOURNE HOTEL James Holden may not be a household name, but to fans of adventurous, progressive electronic sounds, the British techno sorcerer is a renowned genius. Head of the Border Community imprint, Holden can count himself among that very modern breed of DJ with a special knack for layering the most surprising of records with an unparalleled musical ear. Check Holden out on Sunday 25 July at Royal Melbourne Hotel when he launches his contribution to the DJ-Kicks mix CD series.
WINTERBEATZ FEAT NE-YO, T-PAIN, BIG BOI & FATMAN SCOOP @ ROD LAVER ARENA
Winterbeatz 2010 featuring urban superstar Ne-Yo, Grammy Awardwinning artist T-Pain, local duo Phinesse and Australia’s DJ Nino Brown is heading our way. Not only has Ne-Yo had huge success in his own right, he has also written smash hits for a plethora of artists including Rihanna, Mario, Janet Jackson and one of the highest selling singles of 2006/2007, Irreplaceable by Beyoncé. Let T-Pain Buy You A Drank at the afterparty. Just added: Big Boi from OutKast, and the inimitable party-king Fatman Scoop. Thursday 29 July at Rod Laver Arena. Tickets from Ticketek.
YEASAYER @ THE PRINCE Yeasayer with special guests. Thursday 29 July. Doors 8pm (sold out). Second show with no supports tickets still available.
Doors 11.15pm. Tickets $45+BF through handsometours.com, Polyester Records, Greville Records, the Prince Public Bar or princebandroom.com.au.
at the Prince on Tuesday 3 August. Tickets through Ticketek or through princebandroom.com.au.
PURPLE SNEAKERS @ MISS LIBERTINE
Passion Pit with The Joy Formidable (UK) and Rat Vs Possum. Wednesday 4 August. Doors 8pm. Tickets $66+BF from Ticketmaster, the Prince Public Bar (12-10pm, seven days) or through princebandroom.com.au.
Sydney’s Purple Sneakers DJs have unveiled the all-star tracklist for their forthcoming debut compilation, We Mix You Dance, and have also announced national tour dates to promote the 29-track, two-disc release. Born from the womb of Sydney’s most popular indie club night, Purple Sneakers, this compilation is expertly mixed by PhDJ (founder Martin Novosel), MIT and Ben Lucid. Friday 30 July.
PACHA CD LAUNCH FEAT ALEX TAYLOR & MATT NUGENT @ BAROQ HOUSE The Pacha CD series is back in 2010 mixed by Ibiza’s own Space resident and homegrown talent, Alex Taylor and Onelove’s Matt Nugent. Expect tracks from Yolanda Be Cool & DCup, Cassius, Danny Tenaglia, Afrojack, Roger Sanchez, X-press 2 plus more. Many of these tracks will undoubtedly be dropped on Saturday 31 July.
DELPHIC @ THE CORNER Delphic return to our shores for the sold out Splendour In The Grass Festival but don’t panic if you didn’t score tickets to that one ‘cause a sideshow is being factored into their itinerary. These torchbearers of the new Madchester called over here for a quick East Coast visit March just gone and loved us so much they will return to Melbz on Sunday 1 August. Doors 8pm. Tickets $35+BF through Corner Box Office (11am-8pm, MondaySaturday) cornerhotel.com.
K-OS @ THE PRINCE Trinidad-born, Toronto-raised musician/MC/producer k-os (also known as Kheaven Brereton) has enjoyed much acclaim from his fourth studio album Yes!, featuring guest appearances from Emily Haines of Metric and Murray Lightburn of The Dears. If you missed out on Splendour tickets, you can catch the k-os sideshow
PASSION PIT @ THE PRINCE
BLISS N ESO @ THE PALACE Bliss N Eso’s highly anticipated fourth studio album, Running On Air, will be released on 30 July. In its wake, their Down By The River tour will tear through capital cities during August with special guests Diafrix and Mind Over Matter. It’s Melbourne’s turn to catch the hip hop trio on Friday 13 August. Tickets on sale Monday 21 June at 9am through Ticketek and Oztix.
LIBERATE FEAT JON ‘00’ FLEMING @ BROWN ALLEY Liberate was launched in April 2010 and featured a star-studded line-up that included Eddie Halliwell, Sean Tyas, Matt Hardwick, Solarstone and Signum. So how could they top that? With Jon ‘00’ Fleming, that’s how! Proudly presented by Street Press Australia, the event will take in Melbourne on Friday 13 August at Brown Alley with a massive, extended four-hour set from Fleming as well as MIKE launching his upcoming album New York City Lights and the first ever Australian tour of trance newcomers, Tritonal. Wow! Tickets through Inthemix and onsideentertainment.com.
SUNNY FEAT LEE BURRIDGE @ BILLBOARD THE VENUE It’s been two long years since dance music renegade Lee Burridge last gave Australia a work over, but this September we’ll get our fix again. The DJ has been locked in by Melbourne institution Sunny for a five-plus hour set alongside Phil K, Gavin Keitel, Rollin Connection, Ozzie La plus more on Friday 17 September at Billboard The Venue. 10pm-7am. Tickets: $25 through Inthemix.
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A QUANTUM LEAP
ANDERS TRENTEMØLLER MAY HAVE DEPARTED FROM HIS CLUB-SMASHING HYBRID OF MINIMAL AND ELECTRO ON HIS SECOND ALBUM, BUT THE GREAT DANE CONFIDES THAT HIS HEART HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN MAKING PERSONAL MUSIC. INTO THE GREAT WIDE YONDER IS OUT THROUGH IN MY ROOM/STOMP.
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nyone’s who’s succumbed to the dark pleasures of Anders Trentemøller’s powerful debut The Last Resort, or indeed the material collated on his triumphant The Trentemøller Chronicles compilation, will know he’s capable of delivering deliciously thoughtful downtempo music which is still somehow in sync with the spectacular club bangers he was releasing when the electro house movement was at its creative peak. No Trentemøller fan would ever expect a collection of dancefloor destroyers, after all; but still, from the second the first apocalyptic strains of The Mash And The Fury ring out, you’ll realise he’s taken it down a much darker path with his sophomore artist album Into The Great Wide Yonder. Dark, and unsettling to the point where you’re nearly forced to switch the stereo off. “I’m very curious to see how people will take it in,” he greets Zebra with a Scandinavian accent so thick you could carve it with a knife, coupled with a temperament that’s surprisingly warm and inviting. It’s surprising, because instead of being the Nordic ghoul taunting with a simpering voice like you may expect, he’s instead one of the most pleasant and down to earth guys working in dance music – and he’s quite measured and reasonable about the whole affair. “It is lot more demanding of the listener,” he confesses. “I think some of the more hardcore electronic ravers will not like it. It is maybe an album that isn’t too easy to just put on in the background and then have a cup of coffee and sit down. It’s a lot more dramatic and epic, in a way. And sometimes, quite heavy for someone. You know, this was not anything that I had planned. It was just how it suddenly ended up. It was not something that I foresaw when I began the whole working process... it just ended up sounding quite dramatic.” While first impressions might be quite abrasive, Into The Great Wide Yonder is a cruel but compelling mistress that reveals its majestic beauty the more time
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you spend in its presence. From the opening apocalyptic deluge of The Mash And The Fury, through to the raw emotional pain of … Even Though You’re With Another Girl (on which the female vocalist nearly rips your soul to shreds with how much she’s laying it bare), until the pace finally picks up with the rollicking surf guitar romp of Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, before closing off with the beautiful melody of Tide, each piece of music contributes to the greater whole – and it hangs together perfectly. Whether or not you’re won over by the album’s menacing charm, there’s a deep confidence in everything that it’s trying to be. You wonder though, will all music listeners be patient enough to stick it out for the hidden treasures revealed after a few listens? Is it keeping him awake at night? “To be honest, not really,” he says. “Ultimately, I’m making music for my own pleasure first, that’s the main reason. Of course, I’m very happy and grateful if people want to hear and buy the music. But for me, the most important thing is to be satisfied myself, and in turn I’ll take as long as I need until I’m satisfied with the album.” There’s no defensiveness or cockiness, in contrast to an act like MGMT who recently put out a similarly ‘difficult’ record, but dealt with it by jumping on the warpath with their record label, the media, and their fans. There’s more dignity here, and Trentemøller doesn’t seem attached to any type of
reaction from the public. “I really hope other people will also see the things in it. But you can never tell!” The album might be a departure from expectations, but there’s still a sense of the familiar here. It’ll most likely strike a spark of recognition from anyone who witnessed his live tour of Australia back in 2007, where with the help of a live band, he injected a rough and ready rawness into tunes like Moan (almost a radio-ready anthem at that point in time). It was the same vibe captured in his Live At Roskilde Festival EP; though here, he’s thrown off the shackles of working with a densely programmed framework. “The whole sound was inspired by working with a lot of vintage gear,” he says. “A lot of the tracks were recorded straight to analogue tape, and that also gave a very special sound to the album.” Ultimately, distancing himself from the technology proved liberating. “Often while recording I was turning off my computer monitor, so I couldn’t graphically see what I was playing. Normally when you are working with a computer, you are very locked to this visual image of making music, so it was really great for me to just play. In a way, forcing your ears to be more trustful.” As such, there’s a ‘raw’ sound that comes through strongly on Into The Great Wide Yonder, with bluesy guitar twangs, hollow live
If Into The Great Wide Yonder is destined to leave many people feeling a touch uneasy, the artwork adorning the album doesn’t help matters a lot. At first glance, it looks like the smoke bubbling upwards from a nuclear explosion. An indication of the album’s apocalyptic tendencies? “You know, I wanted something that could communicate in a way what people could expect from this album,” Trentemøller says. “I wanted something that was dramatic, and had this epic side to it, as well as to pose questions like, ‘What is behind all of this?’ And I wanted it to also be open a little bit to what people wanted to interpret. This is also what I like to do, especially in the instrumental tracks. To have some layers where people can put in their own pictures in a way, their own thoughts, so there’s no voices
dictating what you should feel.” The story behind the creepy cover imagery turns out to be eerier than a nuclear winter. “It’s funny with this cover, because we did it several months ago, and it’s basically a photo of an ash cloud,” he says. “Then in April, suddenly the Icelandic ash cloud was everywhere in the media. My friend who designed it was calling me, saying, ‘Have you seen the news? It’s crazy, there’s this ash cloud everywhere!’ So that was quite weird.” Still though, the cover doesn’t really look like the end of aviation for a couple of weeks – it looks more like the end of the world, when everything is swept away and turned to dust. Oh the melodrama...
drums and the sort of screeching feedback you might hear on a Sonic Youth album – but it hides the fact that this is still a heavily electronic affair. You simply can’t craft textures that thick, rich and full of menacing depth, without the aid of computers. “The raw elements were much more in the recording process, I guess,” he says. “But then the computers came in the post production phase, because then I was using it to do a lot of editing and stuff. In the recording process though, I was recording a lot of it direct to tape machines.” It’s something Trentemøller will be recreating on the live stage eventually, though he says he’s declined to hit the road for a tour straight away – recognising the album might take a little while to spark for a lot of people. “We’re beginning in October actually. This album maybe needs a little more time to grow, and I couldn’t really see it being played out at festivals in the daylight. So I pretty much decided to wait a little bit, and maybe give the album a little more life before we go on tour with it.” And he’s right - it’s not exactly the type of record you can picture him bringing to the main stage of an Australian dance music festival, though he says he’ll have an impressive seven-member strong band ready to help recreate the album when he does return to the road. Something Trentemøller will never escape is his history as a club producer. There was really nothing to rival the dancefloor power of Trentemøller in full flight – who could forget his unforgettable reworkings of The Knife and Röyksopp? It’s hardly surprising there was a lot of demand for the kind of club weapons he was delivering, but he’s far from stubborn in his new direction either. “It has just been a natural thing from the first album that I did. And even when I was making the more clubby techno kind of stuff, I was also still making this kind of music; it was just not being released. For me, it is not about me only doing this now, and saying I will never do club music again. But at the same time, my heart lies much more in making music that is more personal. Club music is made for people to party and dance to, and that is totally great, I really love that. But this time I wanted to make an album that has more of a listening kind of focus.” Does this mean he’s closing doors to his clubbing past? “Sometimes I think so, but then again often it is fun to change houses, even if things are actually going quite well, because I always want to surprise myself in a way, and go to new places I haven’t tried before. So of course I will keep on doing my own music, but it can surely be that the next album is totally electronic again. It’s very open, as long as I feel I’m making good quality music, it can be whatever I think.”
Zebra Magazine 9
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UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT VILLE HAIMALA FILLS ZEBRA IN ON THE INTERROGATION PROCESS THAT ALL RENAISSANCE MAN TRACKS GO THROUGH BEFORE BEING CONSIDERED FOR RELEASE. RENAISSANCE MAN PLAY THE ESPY THIS FRIDAY AND LA DI DA THIS SATURDAY.
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t was architecture in Helsinki that first got Renaissance Man duo Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala together in 2008. As a result of the collaboration came one of last year’s biggest underground hits, Spraycan, which saw the two DJs make their debut at Australia’s Stereosonic Festival in 2009. Two years after forming, Haimala and Kalliala – stage names Downtown and Jaxxon – are making a quick return down under for the release of new EP Babbadabba. “Martti and I used to work in an architect office,” Haimala. recalls “We got together to design a new club. I have been DJing for about seven years but Martti has been doing it for much longer. We both came from musical backgrounds, I guess, but with Spraycan it was the first time that we actually tried to combine our ideas about music into a real song.”
Much to the duo’s surprise, the track had the likes of Switch, Brodinski, Riva Starr and Duke Dumont raving on about Renaissance Man’s knack for the playful, horn-laced but heavyhitting bass sound, earning the duo a signing on Switch’s influential Dubsided label. And while the EP What Is Guru was soon to follow, Haimala admits that nothing has compared yet to the success of Spraycan – until now. “When I listen to that track now, it’s still a nice song but at the same time it feels very simple and thin,” Haimala says. “I think our production style has gone up in quality a lot more now. It just feels richer. I think our new EP Babbadabba is a lot more exciting. It came out last week on Jesse Rose’s label and it sounds a lot groovier and housier than anything we’ve done. With our original productions, we always
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NOTHING TOO CASUAL THOUGH BEST KNOWN FOR PROGRESSIVE SOUNDS UNDER THEIR ANTIX MONIKER, HAYDEN STROM SAYS HE AND BROTHER BARTON AIMED TO SMASH DOWN THE GENRE WALLS WITH HEIR LATEST LONGPLAYER. ANTIX PLAY INTERVIEW AT MISS LIBERTINE THIS SATURDAY.
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avalier may be the name of the new release by New Zealand’s finest prog export Antix, but in making the album the band were anything but casual. Brothers Hayden and Barton Strom worked for over a year to craft the album, resisting the initial urge to push out a rush job full of the expected progressive anthems. “It’s been a really long process,” Hayden acknowledges. “We started 16 months ago, but we decided we didn’t want to rush it. We were already busy doing our other project Fjord, so we did three singles and put them out over a year to build the hype up. Meanwhile, we spent a good part of last year working on tracks every day. We work fulltime as musicians anyway so that’s what we did from nine to five – chip away ‘til home time.” The brothers made a significant decision in writing Cavalier; they decided to allow themselves – at last – to write something more
10 Zebra Magazine
true to their ideas Hayden explains. “We were quite conscious of writing what we wanted to write as opposed to what people want to hear. We were influenced by other people’s demands on past albums, but this time we didn’t care what people wanted – we just let go and enjoyed it. As a result, we enjoyed the process much more.” Fans will be relieved to hear that, with their newfound sense of freedom, Antix did not make a folk-polka crossover concept album – they just upped the eclecticism a few notches. “The music on this album is quite cross-genre,” Hayden asserts, attempting to define the differences. “You could define it as a dance album, but not as just one kind of dance album. We had to write a list of genres [on the album] for Beatport the other week, and we included techno, house, prog house, indie dance,
have to have a lot of different tracks to choose from before we decide to release something. For every 40 tracks, you’ll get only one good track. We sit down and we look at what we’ve got and we’ll ask, ‘Does the world really need another track like this?’. Or we ask, ‘Is this track strong and unique enough to deserve to be released?‘. You have to ask this because there are literally thousands of new tracks come out each day which all sound the same… So we interrogate our songs!” Which is why putting together a Renaissance Man full-length debut is going to take a while, warns Haimala, even though the duo has already started the process. “It’s already under construction now,” he says. “Maybe we focus on the songs too much but I think that’s probably a good thing, even if the process takes forever. We realise the fact that dance is not usually the traditional context for an album, it really can be difficult to make a dance album without focusing on tracks individually. First, we want to find out what kind of an album we want to do and what side of us we want people to hear. That’s what’s being planned at the moment, all the foundations.” Studio-wise, it’s obvious big things are happening for Renaissance Man with both the album announcement and new EP, according to Haimala. But on the touring front, things are taking off just as much with the Finnish duo making their first Japanese trip before coming to Australia. “Japan is going to be exciting because we’ve never been there,” Hamala enthuses. “But I’m really happy to even just play in Berlin because it’s really one of the capitals of electronic music. Helsinki had a strong house scene in the ‘90s then it died down. I thought it would get stronger again, but I just don’t think house is one of its strongest points anymore unfortunately.” electronica: there is something of all those in there.” The name of the album and cover art inspiration came from a sonic affection for the sound of horses, amongst other creatures. In fact, you could say they’ve done a techno David Attenborough and gone nature-sampledelic. “On the title track, we used a lot of samples from horses, and that’s how we came up with the album title. We’ve also put a track on there called Box Of Birds where we sampled seagulls on our roof at the studio. Previously we always found samples and this time we created samples ourselves. We went to town and did more than we’ve ever done before and played with all of our toys!” These days, demand for the Antix live show is so great that they’ve had to split up the act, Haydon taking one side of the world and Barton the other, coming together rarely for studio work and particularly special combined gigs. The Cavalier launch in Melbourne is one of those special occasions and they’ll both be flying over to pull out all the stops (on their MIDI controllers) for the show. “This gig is a two man show. Being the album release it’s quite important to us, and the guys in Melbourne wanted both of us. When there’s two of us we have two computers and an extra MIDI keyboard and we have the same set-up on both computers. We play a track each, and mix and blend from one track into the other. I put my loops into Hayden’s tracks and manipulate his loops whilst he’s bringing in the next track. It is interactive and we really vibe off each other. We build the tracks as we go and quite often we just leave big sections out of tracks or ride a track out for ten minutes or take the track out and ride the melody. We don’t really know how each track is going to go until we get up there.”
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SUN RISING UP AFTER COMPLETING HIS DEBUT ARTISTS ALBUM, TRANCER RICHARD DURAND HAD TWO OPTIONS WHEN IT CAME TO HIS FIRST OFFICIAL DJ MIX – START HIS OWN SERIES, OR TAKE A BATON PASSED FROM TIËSTO. HE CHOSE THE LATTER. IN SEARCH OF SUNRISE 8: SOUTH AFRICA IS OUT THROUGH 405 RECORDINGS/STOMP.
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xpectations are high and backlash is likely when you take up the baton from the world’s biggest DJ, but Richard Durand cared little for either when he took on the huge task of continuing Tiësto’s In Search Of Sunrise compilation series this year. After months of tight secrecy and all kinds of strange rumours, volume eight, South Africa, is finally out in the open and just in time to coincide with the World Cup, too, as Durand points out. “With every volume you have to choose a country as the theme of In Search Of Sunrise,” he says. “I could have picked any one of loads of countries out there, but South Africa seemed right because, of course, there is the world championships in soccer and that’s huge news! I thought it would be good to make it coincide with this big event. Also, the trance scene is not very big in South Africa so I thought it could provide a good opportunity to play music there and introduce this genre to the
country. It’s not the kind of music that you play from midnight to 6am at a club, definitely not. It’s very relaxed trance music with loads of melodies and tracks with vocals. It’s not too hard or bangin’, it’s just deep and full of good vibes. It’s the kind of CD you put on to relax and to put you in a good mood.” That may be the case for the listener, but not so much for Durand. Well aware of the pressure that would come from continuing Tiësto’s legacy, Durand claims he took his time to decide whether to continue the compilation series after Black Hole Recordings approached him for the job. “No, I did not jump on it!” Durand laughs. “It all started when Tiësto was leaving Black Hole Recordings and In Search Of Sunrise is a label thing. Since it’s also my label and I’ve worked with Tiësto before, they ask me in January if I wanted to program the eighth compilation. I had to think about it quite a lot because it was a big risk. I was worried what the fans
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THREE TIMES THE FUN WITH HIS TRIPTYCH OF 7” RELEASES IN THE THEMES SERIES, KENNY ATKINS HAS BRAVELY SIGNPOSTED HIS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE AS A LA FU. A LA FU PLAYS WAX MUSEUM JAM AT THE CROFT INSTITUTE THIS FRIDAY.
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berdeen, Scotland is not exactly renowned for its electronic music scene, yet it is home to one of the United Kingdom’s most successful electronic music technicians and a rapidly growing club scene that is providing the impetuous and platform for Scotland’s next generation of noise makers. Anyone who is familiar with UK-based hip hop and electronic imprint Ninja Tune and its affiliate Big Dada would also know the name of DJ A La Fu. Known to his parents as Kenny Atkins, he spent his teen years in California before returning to London around the time that Big Dada was setting up at the turn of the century. Since then he has been closely associated with Big Dada and Ninja Tune and has completed remix work for Coldcut, Saul Williams and Juice Aleem. He produces and hosts the label’s official monthly podcast, recorded for the Well Deep and Extra Yard compilation series and is putting
the finishing touches on Ninja Tune’s 20th anniversary record. He has toured globally as a DJ for Roots Manuva, New Flesh, Mike Ladd and shared the stage with the likes of Gil Scott Heron, De La Soul, Afrika Bambatta and Blackalicious. Atkins has always been a renowned hip hop DJ, working with and producing for some of the genre’s biggest names. Over the past five years, however, his musical journey has taken a distinctively different path, which has seen him creating experimental, divergent, beatsdriven electronic music. It was an intrepid musical decision, but one that Atkins explains was spurred on by sheer musical boredom. “I just got a little bit bored with hip hop after a while,” he says. “I just felt like people were saying the same thing and all of the production and the music as a whole was headed the same way. So, what I called hip hop and started following was kind of more
would think and all the negative things that the Tiësto followers would say. I had also planned to do a compilation CD of my own this year before I knew about In Search Of Sunrise, and I knew if I took this on I probably wouldn’t end up doing my own.” But at the same time Durand saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity being offered to him – sure there may be backlash from Tiësto die-hards, but from an artist’s perspective, taking on this kind of project was a chance the kick down some doors. “I stopped looking at it from the fans’ perspective and started looking at it from my own perspective,” he says. “As an artist it was a chance to grow musically and to reach a lot of new people. And I also realised that if I did my own compilation like I had planned, I would be building it up from zero, whereas if I did In Search Of Sunrise number eight, it was an established series already. So it was the easier option too.” For Durand, the past two years have been the biggest and most successful of his decade-long career so far. While the Dutch native claims that nothing has yet come close to working on his latest project, releasing his debut artist album [Always The Sun] last year came pretty close. “I think the compilation has been a bigger project than my artist album, though. The album was a massive boost for me. I was really surprised how different the process can be when you’re making a compilation and an album. There is a bit more uncertainty when you’re doing an album because you only have a short amount of tracks to work with, whereas a compilation gives you many tracks to choose from. I’m definitely going to do another album. It’s not always about playing what you like, it’s also about showcasing what you can do.” production-based type of music. I just got a bit sick of the beats and rhymes format, so I began getting heavily into the more electronic side of things. “I think it’s been a natural progression more than anything else. I mean hip hop was the first thing that moved me, I’ve always been a big music fan, but hip hop was one of the first things that I really got passionately involved with. I really started off DJing because no one else around me was playing the sort of music that I wanted to hear, so I just began compiling my own songs and making tapes for myself. I guess that’s why I began making electronic music as well.” Atkins’ latest solo release Themes is a bold electronic statement. It’s a musical triptych spread across three separate 7” records, with each record centred on a particular theme: Concrete Theme, Digital Theme and Potential Theme. “It pretty much sums up my musical progression” says Atkins. “The record itself is separated into three different subject matters, which basically show where I’ve come from and where I am headed musically. Concrete Theme is very much grounded in hip hop and urban music, Digital Theme is more electronic based and Potential Theme, which is very much on the soundscape tip, is where I see my recorded music headed over the next few years.” Conceptually, Themes has the potential to read as selfindulgent, too diverse to hit any one mark or audience. Yet one listen to the record and it becomes clear that Atkins is a producer of significant talent. Each ‘theme’ could stand alone, but also feeds into the wider whole, taking the listener on a musical journey. Atkins has created a personal opus, one that daringly says, “This is where I’ve been, this is where I’m at and this is where I am headed.”
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Zebra Magazine 11
SINGLES
WITH TIM FINNEY
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
MIAMI HORROR
Moon Theory (Sam La More Remix)
(EMI) Pretty sure that Sam La More has been ploughing the same furrow for the past eight years, but this piece of squiggly electro-disco is one of his best efforts that I’ve heard. Maybe it’s Miami Horror’s ultra-smooth vocals, or the euphoric trance chords, or the way the two bounce off each other with such ridiculously camp unsubtlety. Whatever, the effect is very Jacques Lu Cont, which is a pretty big compliment.
ALEXANDRA BURKE FEAT PITBULL All Night Long
(Sony) Part of my inevitable softening towards Gaga has been vaguely enjoying anything that blatantly copies her. All Night Long basically triangulates the anorexic space between Just Dance, Chris Brown’s Forever and David Guetta’s When Love Takes Over – ie pleasantly competent, smiley-faced, shouty-chorused electro house/R&B… it’s like dog breeding, innit? Still, I can’t imagine this being actually as anthemic as it dreams of being in any setting other than a drug-fuelled gay club.
GANGA GIRI Bayami
(Termite Tunes) Kind of a shame that Yothu Yindi have forever imprinted their own image on Indigenous dance-pop, such that I can’t help hearing ‘Treaty’ in this didgeridoo-propelled… um, house tune? Like Indian pop, Bayami utilises house for its globalised anonymity, allowing Ganga Giri’s guttural chanted vocal and didgeridoo to dominate. All of which creates a strong impression of 1990, leavened by Indian pop-style pleasant ridiculousness.
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM I Can Change
(DFA/EMI) To date, James Murphy had successfully avoided any overtly eighties-copping manouevres, and I had vaguely respected him for that, but the ornery antiquated synthesisers on I Can Change break the spell. Luckily this is actually a really nice song, with, like, nice vocals. If I was an eighties revivalist I would be proud to have produced this very epic-seeming love song. Also its negotiation of the theatrical and the rinky-dinky is winningly reminiscent of The Associates.
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THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
NAS & DAMIAN MARLEY
(Parlophone/EMI)
(Def Jam/Universal)
Further
Distant Relatives KRIS SWALES
VARIOUS/THE BLOODY BEETROOTS & THE ASTON SHUFFLE Destroy
DARREN COLLINS
(Ministry of Sound/Universal) STUART EVANS
The Salmon Dance on 2007’s uneven We Are The Night shaped as the shark jumping, fridge nuking career apex of Tom Rowlands’ and Ed Simons’ decorated 15-year plus union, but album number seven, Further, proves there’s still some magic bubbling away in the lab of the Brothers Chemical. Gone are the traditional vocal cameos, with Rowlands (who has penned many of the oddly profound vocals this time round) and Simons bunkering down to concoct a collection of eight tracks which is their most cohesive since 1999’s Surrender. Snow opens with snatches of a falsetto singing “Your love keeps lifting me” and ”lifting me higher” on repeat over a feedback loop and downstroked electric guitar as FX washes swim in and out of focus and layers come and go, but the expected explosion doesn’t come until Escape Velocity. Self-indulgent, obnoxious, slightly formless synth porn, it sounds more like an entry in the duo’s Electronic Battle Weapon series than an album track, but makes more sense here than it did as the album teaser. But it’s Horse Power and Swoon in the middle that confirm the brothers have worked it out, the former building and building until it drops into galloping tribal electro territory. And though there’s not necessarily anything new for The Chemical Brothers’ followers, there’s a lot to like about Further – a big reminder that when the chemists stop experimenting, few can produce a natural high quite like them.
While his contemporaries Jay-Z, Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep have matured rather than changed, New York MC Nas’ career has been one of constant twists and turns. From gifted project poet to thug playa to street activist to political commentator, Nas has been in constant state of flux, and his latest manifestation has him looking back to his roots with another displaced African man in dancehall superstar Damian ‘Jr Gong’ Marley, eldest son of Bob. Together the duo have embarked on an incredibly righteous examination of what it means to be black in 2010, in the shadow of the realisation that Obama’s ascent to the White House has not meant the end of ‘the struggle’. Almost entirely produced by Marley, the album is more heavily influenced by the music of Kingston than of New York. Opening track and first single As We Enter immediately crushes doubts that this collaboration could succeed, the duo going line-for-line over a banging ‘60s-soul-inspired backing to glorious effect, the energy continuing into the militant Dispear. While Lil Wayne is surely only used to help get the message to ‘the kids’ on the gospel-tinged My Generation, the circle is completed with the addition of African-born singer/MC K’naan on the honest Africa Must Wake Up. Unfashionable and sounding unlike anything he has done before, Distant Relatives may polarise Nas’s fan base, but it could not be a more timely statement from a man who has become hip hop’s conscience.
Destroy is the reckless side of electro – or so they say. The cover artwork’s certainly a trip to an uncontrolled and dark place, but that’s about as exciting as things get on this disappointing outing from Ministry of Sound. It’s mixed by The Bloody Beetroots and local boys The Aston Shuffle, which should be enough to inject a little originality and briskness into things. Sadly, Destroy is as dull as an episode of Neighbours. Destroy does contain a fair dose of hard-edged electro, with contributions coming from Tiga, Felix Da Housecat, Boys Noize, Proxy, Kid Sister, Sebastien Tellier and Simian Mobile Disco. And there are scraps, albeit tiny scraps, of good, courtesy of The Bloody Beetroots’ Domino and Warp 1977. The beats arrive faster than Pete Doherty to a mountain full of coke, but that’s not enough to save the compilation from dying in the arse. So who will this disc appeal to? Those who wear a fluorescent kind of pant will take interest. Likewise will those who get off on production over melody. And those who move their shoulders and not their feet may also be attentive to Destroy. For the rest of us who prefer to listen to a fax machine over electro, this is best avoided at all costs.
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Zebra Magazine 13
Matik REE AND WHEN WAS YOUR FIRST SET? HER HE WHERE WHE WH MC Battle in Croydon, 2003. It was an eye aze M B aze Blaze “Blaze “B “Bl opening experience!” WHAT’S YOUR ALL TIME FAVOURITE 12”? “That’s a ridiculously hard question to answer but as my hand is being forced... Hypnotize by Notorious BIG.” WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF WHAT YOU DO? “They are both really into it and very supportive which I am really grateful for, especially Mum. She knows every song I have produced and sometimes tells me about gigs that I don’t even know I am playing yet!” WHAT DOES THE MELBOURNE CLUB SCENE NEED MOST? “More nights playing new shit (this mainly refers to hip hop nights)! It’s kinda lame that people are still in love with tracks from R&B Anthems 2002.” FAVOURITE FAV AVOU AV OURITE OUR TEE CL CLUB U TTO UB O PLA PLAY? Y? “Any nights put on by Fat Kids, I recently played at Aww Shit @ Hi-Fi Bar and it was awesome fun, great crowd, great music.” WHAT’S YOUR BEST ALL TIME GIG? “Playing the main stage with Pez at Pyramid Rock Festival 2008. It was in front of about 6,000 people... It was crazy.” PIC BY KANE HIBBERD AT KISS PIZZA: HOME OF KISS FM.
SHAPESHIFTER The Palace: 11.06.10 between jostling A comfortably full Palace crowd alternates floor respect to for position at the bar and showing dance who do their best the Electric Wire Hustle sound system, jungle sounds some with oor fl the all enthr and se to enthu a Shapeshifter is this But set. their of end towards the back that most ing follow loyal a gig and the kiwis have such the first dramatic seem content to reserve their energy until room. PDigsss flourishes of Dutchies echo out through the to “Hold on, tion atten at ing stand now room a encourages Johnny Hooves mer drum new e befor ” inside somewhere deep Day Come New . away we’re and fires up the engine room ing speed, then the and Bring Change come and go at lightn ly nastier than electro-dancehall strut of Fire and a slight two of the finer off show Touch The gh throu run recorded ire. Vamp A Is m Syste moments from The d in equal The new record and Soulstice are represente Electric like tracks much how ing measure and it’s amaz latter have grown Dreams and Heat Of The Moment off the the ambient in stature with the passing years – and how provide the which ystem ing/S Warn of p thum etal dub/m to have the same new album’s centerpiece don’t quite seem the stage for an to return band the when impact tonight. But ls they blow the roof encore after the punk rock shred of Meta ce turning the off – PDigsss’ impassioned vocal performan ies into perhaps Galax Twin of ss ’n’ba drum essive progr epic of a loved one of all the most uplifting track about the passing with a smile on door the out you ng sendi time, and then One going to be okay. your face and a feeling that everything is KRIS SWALES
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WHO’S GONNA BE THE FIRST TO DO A SILLY MINIMAL TRACK WITH VUVUZELAS?” 1. Tonight NITE JEWEL 2. Central TECHNASIA 3. Down Fire MAFIA & FLUXY 4. Kansai TOM BUDDEN 5. Hide N Seek MOULLINEX 6. Structures VARIOUS/JOHN DIGWEED 7. Be My Ladyboy TORNADO WALLACE 8. The Masters Series: Parallel VARIOUS/HERNAN CATTANEO 9. N’Dini (Tal M Klein Remix) NICKODEMUS 10. Juno TRUTH
WORLD FURRY CUP, OR WHAT RHYMES WITH SOCCEROOS? Most people wake up feeling suicidal on Monday mornings for a bunch of reasons, eg the confronting nature of heading to a soul-sucking workplace, too much meth on the weekend, not enough meth on the weekend, missing out on a reasonably priced rechargeable hammer drill at the Bunnings weekend sale. Fortunately most Australian soccer fans haven’t woken up feeling suicidal; rather, they are suicidal after staying up for an inordinate amount of time to watch the Australian team play the female in the World Cup equivalent of a bukkake scene. To which, several questions need to be asked: • Does Pim Verbeek know that he was named after an aperitif, and worse, that his parents misspelt it? • Does Tim Cahill actually understand that he’s playing soccer, not Competitive Shin Grazing? • Does Australia realise that ‘Socceroos’ sounds like a more appropriate name for a piece of sporting underwear, eg “Hang on Kaka, I just need to go and put on my socceroos?” * While some Australian sporting figures and teams have gone for songs like Bound For Glory, Australia’s more appropriate
“I think a lot of egos get in the way of a band’s progress, but when it works it’s a great thing, if you can keep it together. I like being a solo artist because I am my own boss, and I only rely on myself and can only let DYSPHEMIC myself down. Though I do like to collaborate, it’s a Did your background as a drummer fuel good chance to get an outside perspective on my your interest in the rhythmic complexities of own music.” drum’n’bass/dubstep, or was it just simple Has it sometimes been a tough slog getting curiosity? your music out there? “Being a drummer definitely got me into writing “Yeah, it can be tough. Especially when you run beats. When I started programming breakbeats, everything by yourself. It’s worth the effort for it was like drumming with an infinite amount of complete creative control. But I also believe that limbs.” anyone who has become successful in the music What lessons have you taken from operating in industry has worked really hard to get there. It’s a a band to performing as a solo artist? beautiful struggle.”
IN THE STUDIO WITH...
JESPER DAHLBÄCK RAISES A GOOD POINT – WE’RE TIPPING MAJOR LAZER TO BE ON THIS SHIT BY THE END OF JUNE.
theme the emee son song ong aatt tthis his hi i po ppoint intt co could ould bee D: D:Rea D:Ream’s Ream’s Re Rea m’s Thi Things hhings n CCa Cann Onl nyG nl ett Bet e te ter e , not not jus justt ffor orr con ccontent, te but also general Only Get Better, shitness? sh shi tnn sss?? tne * That we’re actually looking like New Zealand is performing better than us at this tournament, which would in fact make New Zealand a much better place for living, particularly given that it is an important hub on the Southern Pacific cocaine trafficking route? (As well as the fact that for some reason New Zealand chicks are generally better looking than Australians, despite putting out less, which I attribute to the lack of convict lineage, ie less descendents of prostitutes). Anyways, the point is, that was bloody awful, though getting beaten by a bunch of people whose systems of philosophical and political thinking were more or less responsible for two global conflicts, some of the world’s finest automobiles, and some of the worst popular music (specifically The Scorpions’ Wind Of Change) is marginally better than getting beaten by a country whose main contribution to global contemporary culture is the popularisation of Italian gangsters and the widespread availability of pizza, and that this bunch of half-arsed turd munchers still has the possibility of redeeming themselves in the days to come. But at least it’s nearly over. The longer it goes on, the worse the pain gets.
Had you not used Sound Tracker 2 on the Amiga back in the day, do you think you’d be able to produce the same music you do now? “I would have found some other way to make music. Back then I used whatever I could, which was usually pretty crap equipment. The Amiga got me into using trackers which led me to make my breaks cut up, which gave me the Dysphemic sound. This led me to PlayerPro (RIP) years later, which I ended up writing some of my most unique tracks on. If it wasn’t for Sound Tracker I’d probably be working in a dodgy box packing job in Wentworth Falls. Thanks Amiga.” How do you approach the composition process and what difficulties are involved with getting mixes to sit right with so much happening?
PHYSICAL BUTT PRESENTS... THE SPER READ
WHERE IS IT? The Workshop, 413 Elizabeth St, CBD. WHEN IS IT? Saturday 19 June, 8:30 pm till 2:30am. WHAT CAN YOU HEAR? A night of improvised hip hop and original beats, with multiple turntables, live horns and MCs. WHO PLAYS? Showtime, SNESme ga, Call & Response and Swerv N Kollide with Special Guest MCs Colt, Ash.One and Slips. WHO’S GOING? Everyone. I am, you are, your baby momma is, your baby momma’s momma is... WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNO W? About Spread? Well, Spread may refer to statistical dispersion, an edible paste put on other foods, the score difference being wagered on in spread betting, or the dopest, illest, most flavoursom e hip hop night in human and/or cyborg history.
“These days my tunes have gone from 220 to 180 bpm in the past two years so there’s a lot more room to spread out the mix. Now the complexities are in the fills and song ideas and trying to get the highest quality from the dirtiest sounds I can produce. My process is generally making the drums first, getting them to sound slamming, then getting the bassline to sit nicely with the drums in the mix.” Your live show is a pretty barebones laptop and MIDI controller affair, how do you break down your tracks for these? “For each show I write at minimum a few new tracks to play and a whole bunch of new loops to mix in with pre-made tracks, to keep it as fresh as possible. Also, for some newer tracks I mix
individual channels of finished tunes to mash and glitch up with each other. What suggestions would you make to other producers looking to step out and adapt their music for a live show? “Even though you’re playing a live set, it’s good to have a lot of material so you can read the crowd like you were a DJ and adapt your set to the particular audience to really hype it up. This way you can change the mood but still keep the crowd with you. I generally make my sets get faster and darker to psyche up the audience. Also, I think it’s good to be as spontaneous as possible, and, above all, to keep it raw.” Dysphemic plays Miss Libertine Saturday 3 July. Hypnosis is out independently.
DYSFUNKTIONAL @ DYSFUNKTIONAL @
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KHOKOLAT KOATED @ KHOKOLAT BAR
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RHYTHMALISM @ FUSION
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UNDER SUSPICION UNDER SUSPICION
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WITH CYCLONE
OG Flavas Reflection Eternal
THE BE THE TH BEAT EAT AT G GOES OES OE ES ON N The hip hop album your fave local MC is most likely to namecheck at the moment has gotta be Reflection Eternal’s Revolutions Per Minute. Brooklyn’s beloved Talib Kweli, who just toured Oz, has reunited with the Cincinnati, Ohio DJ/producer Hi-Tek for their first album in a decade. The true skoolers started Reflection Eternal in the late ‘90s, aligning themselves with Rawkus, the label that did much to break backpack hip hop. In 2000 Reflection Eternal delivered the classic LP Train Of Thought. Amazingly, RPM sounds like they were never apart. (Of course, Kweli and Hi-Tek worked together on their various other projects.) Lyrically, Kweli bravely deconstructs the ‘conscious’ MC. He also ruminates on the obsession with fame in the sinuous Got Work. But Kweli is always interested in the bigger picture – and on RPM he examines the impact of the recession, among other social crises. As for Hi-Tek? Subtlety is not a word typically equated with hip hop, but this is what defines his steez. On RPM he favours jazzy yet minimal beats with artfully deployed samples. The influence of experimenters like Flying Lotus can be heard on the glitchy In The Red. The fact that one guy produced the entirety of RPM – rare these days – ensures that it has cohesion. Still, RPM does have variation. And, while the skits are irritating and the old-fashioned educational ‘intro’ cliched, RPM is excellent. Mos Def returns for the funky (and very A Tribe Called Quest) posse-cut Just Begun with the underexposed (and wayward) Jay Electronica plus Jay-Z’s protege, J Cole. Before Santi White became Santigold, she laboured behind the scenes with the altsoul Res. Res – now involved in Kweli’s latest side venture, Idle Warship – rematerialises on the Afrobeat Back Again. In This World uses an old soul record as a substitute gospel choir. If RPM has a potential crossover moment, it’s the romantically-themed – and retro – Midnight Hour. Guest Estelle rocks it doo-wop style. More incongruously, indie kids Chester French pop up on the wry ‘club’
tunee Get Loose, which Hi-Tek tu tun Ge Lo oose o , oonn whic w hichh H hic ii-TTTek ek tries t ies his tri hand at go-go. Neil Young attacked the oil industry in Vampire Blues and, 36 years on, Kweli offers a not unrelated critique of postcolonialism in Ballad Of The Black Gold. Hi-Tek selects a sublime sample of Heaven & Earth’s Let Me Back In to heighten the pathos. And, yes, Ballad..., assumes a bitter irony following BP’s ugly exploits in New Orleans.
From Fro m time time m to time, time, I’I’llll column, send write wri ite te this tthi th hhiis ccolu ollumn, olu olumn mnn, sse mn nndd WITH STEVE DUCK it off and and then then ann ho hour ur or or two t la llater, ater t , ssomething ter some omethi ome thhing tthi massive massiv mas sivve will willl be an annou announced. nounce nced. d. That’s Tha Th h t’s wh w what hatt happened happen hap pened pen edd las llastt w week. eeekk. So by now, news, noow tthis hi is his i ki kkind ndd of old ld news ne ew but buut ffor orr any aanyone onee wh whoo somehow missed out on it, A Tribe Called Quest will be touring Australia in August. And when I say ‘touring Australia’, I actually mean ‘performing twice’. Count yourselves lucky once again for living in Melbourne, ‘cause only this fine city and Sydney will be granted the opportunity to see Tribe. Melbourne’s opportunity comes Thursday 12 August at Festival Hall. Tickets available 17 June (pre-sale) and 21 June (general) through ticketmaster.com.au or call 136 100.
TOTAL ECLIPSE
WAX MUSEUM
In the 90s many a fresh artist was exposed by way of the urban movie soundtrack. Alas, that’s no longer a viable marketing vehicle. The last buzzworthy OST joint? Jay-Z’s Brooklyn Go Hard, featuring Santigold, off Notorious. However, blockbuster OSTs are still important. The mega-popular Twilight Saga comps have so far tendered no urban, instead privileging indie – or emo – fare (Stephenie Meyer’s heroine, Bella Swan, hates rap). Lupe Fiasco’s alt-rock Solar Midnite didn’t even make the actual New Moon CD. But the new Eclipse presents Cee-Lo Green’s brilliant What Part Of Forever – soul-meets-indie-meetscountry, complete with whistling. The Gnarls Barkley crooner is doing well: he likewise has a song on Sex And The City 2. The status of Gnarls Barkley is unclear as their second album, The Odd Couple, faltered. The pair did limited media, relying on the success of Crazy to carry them over. Nor has Green’s Happy Hour project with Jazze Pha ever come to fruition – singles aside. Nonetheless, this year he’s tipped to release his third solo album – Lady Killer.
Wax Museum’s Monthly Jam is back again, but this time around there’s a change of scenery. Wax Museum have moved on from The Order Of Melbourne, and will this month be reppin’ at The Croft Institute (21 Croft Alley, CBD). Despite the new surrounds, there will still be a great line-up of DJs – this time you’ll catch the UK’s A La Fu (Big Dada/ Ninja Tune), Sydney’s Ology and local lad Doc Felix. Plus the usuals Aux Won, Inkswel, Mixa, Sammy B and Geezey. Wax Museum Records Monthly Jam happens this Friday 18 June, entry is free before 10pm, $5 after.
Business Music
BLISS N ESO RETURN So as I reported about a month back, Bliss N Eso will be back with new album Running On Air, recorded over six months in “an undisclosed location in the Victorian bush” in late July, with the uptempo first single Down By The River
WINTER SOUND SYSTEM
SERIOUS UNDERGROUND BUSINESS WITH PAZ
FREEZINGERS
TRIBE TRIB TR IBE IB E TOUR TO UR
A-Trak
A-Trak – Trizzy Turnt Up. A great Fool’s Gold freezinger. All The Way ayy Turnt Up by Soulja Boy affiliated Roscoe Dash is thrown over Claude udde de VonStroke’s Vocal Chords. Somehow this seems seamless Shamus! us! Coincides with part two of Dirty South Dance, Trizzy’s tribute to mashing southern hip hop with macho dance tracks. All artwork and paraphernalia by Shephard Fairey if you want to purchase copies in real time, find the freezinger at Fool’s Gold. Also found at FG headquarters, Shooting Star by Bag Raiders (Oz) and Starlito (Lil Wayne’s Young Money Click). Somehow this has come together. It’s billed as Starlito – Shooting Star, but it could be him remixing it or Bag Raiders putting it together??? Tight. Top Billin’ (The blog/label/act) have dropped a five track EP of straight up Polish/UK Funky – confusing? The Funky styled project is introduced with a DJ mix titled PL Funky. One name that reaches out is Phantom who received hype via the Curb Crawlers blog (RIP). If you look hard enough the freezinger is the unreleased Teezy & Zeppy – MTP Riddim. For any coulrophobes, relax... Teezy and Zeppy are not world famous clowns.
QUICK FREEZINGERS Lucid EP on Scatterblog (Club Sheezy), Expendable Youth – Cannibalistic (Comes with many great remixes), MIA – XXXO (Get a Job – Diplo Remix) sounds like a dis track to bludgers, Midnight Juggernauts – Vital Signs (Like MGMT... all psychedelic), Lady Chann’s – Dun Dem Season Vol 1 (Mixtape via South Rakkas Crew), MAP – The Music Blogger Mixtape (World of blogger taste), Nguzunguzu EP (Try and find the DL past all the freakish fonts), Mark Ronson – Short Circuit (Fuse Nu School Mark with Old School Mark).
VS Soundcloud vs Bandcamp. Both sound fluffy and rainbow friendly, and Business Music is v much a friend of Soundcloud’s user activity statements, so why are so many artists using Bandcamp? It’s like Blogger vs Tumblr or Michael vs Jermaine or Facebook vs MySpace. Soundcloud kids uploaded a tonne of Newark/Philly/Chicago club remix’ from Dj Addiction, Koolest and the TSE crew. Business Music
was heavy on the download although most only post 1:30 of a track, but thats that Philly frantic style. Ke$ha vs Uffie is one battle that has a new chapter. Although there is no official beef on the table, everyone knows that Ke$ha is a STRAIGHT UP BITER. We also know that Uffie has many cool affiliates (who would no doubt jump ship to get some Ke$ha $) from Ed Banger to Pharrel Williams. The Uff’s new album Sex, Dreams and Denim Jeans is about to drop, and you can check the collab with Pharrel himself on the first single ADD SUV. Great title, great work, will dampen the Ke$ha rein.
TECH DECK Business Music acknowledges the new era of USB/MIDI hardware that is taking over DJing as we know it. The Otus Digital DJ Controller looks like it could get a second look, not that it has been sighted in a club yet. On review it resembles DJ Hero hardware for real DJ work, however the one controller enables two tracks (the end of doubles as we know it), but who says you aren’t rich enough to buy two? Comes with Traktor, but is easily mapped to most MIDI driven software. Makes you look professional without the mouse and keyboard and Sony instruction kit.
Bliss N Eso
aila ilable lable blee no nnow ow thro tthrough hrroough hro ugghh iT ug iTune Tuune nes Itt ha ne has as aalso llso s bee so been een aanno nnnnnoun nno unced unc cedd available iTunes. announced this week that Bliss N Eso will play Festival Hall Friday 13 August as part of their Down By The River national tour. Yep, that’s the night after the Tribe show, which should make for one awesome (albeit cash-strapped) start to the weekend. Bliss N Eso’s shows have a tendency to sell out (seven sold out shows during the Flying Colours tour), so make sure you get your tickets quick. They go on sale 21 June through ticketek.com.au and blissneso.oztix.com.au.
PHRASE BACK IN THE BOOTH Did you know that since dropping his second album Clockwork in April 2009, Phrase has completed around 100 live shows? That’s nuts. One of the foremost figures in Australian hip hop, Phrase will now be taking a break from touring to concentrate on writing his currently untitled third album. Speaking on the upcoming release, Phrase commented: “I will be producing the bulk of the record myself and I plan on picking up where Spaceship left off. I’m taking a different approach to this album with no samples this time, it will just be whatever is in my head. I usually drink too much wine and don’t get enough sleep when I write so hopefully I will see you on the other side later this year! If not please play Right Said Fred I’m Too Sexy at my ffuneral and bury me like a legend.”
Melbourne Park: 13.06.10 If a tourist landed in Melbourne and clapped eyes on the skanks waiting at various tram stops along Flinders Street (en route to Rod Laver and surrounds) this past Sunday night, they could be forgiven for suspecting they’d been teleported directly into Amsterdam’s red-light district. A group of dudes who look like they’ve pried themselves off flea-infested couches to take a ‘shower in a can’ before their big nights out accompany said harlots, who sport matching stripper bras and black stretchy fabric strips that fail to restrict ample butt cheeks. Newsflash: it’s WINTER! At least we can follow their lead and jump off the tram at the appropriate stop. Robbie Nelson on at 11.30pm does him no justice as his brand of trance music seems better suited to a later slot. He restlessly pushes on for an hour but never seems to find a real groove despite the room really beginning to fill up and the sound system flattening the place all the way up to the bleachers. The annex outside Rod Laver Arena is a hit and miss affair, Seth Troxler toiling away in anonymity to 20-odd punters in the 2,000 capacity Planet Turbo with a mish mash of techno and even slightly progressive noises that sound like they’re being mixed by a guy playing his fourth set in 36 hours. Having a much better time of it is Paul Ritch in the (strangely prog-free) Renaissance room. Ritch works the intimate room into a lather with deep and rolling minimal textures of his own creation, drawing out his breakdowns to the perfect point before bringing the drop right when it’s required. Checking out the vibe in the Dim Mak Arena, pitch-black conditions make it difficult to negotiate stairs – no easy task post drop o’clock! Crookers have attracted a fair amount of dancing feet and conversations are abandoned in favour of unbridled dance therapy. The stadium seating provides something to lean against when munted and also prevents one from having to rub up against sweaty undesirables – win-win! Kelis enters the mix with Milkshake and when Crookers drop their remix of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, the punters moving in to secure a good posi for Underworld do so with extra gusto. Pingers plus patriotism equals pumping fists. Shoehorned into a line-up they share little musical common ground with and preceded by 15 minutes of filler music rather than a tasteful warm-up, Underworld have the unenviable task of building a vibe from scratch in a strangely vibeless arena. They do so by launching straight into Downpipe and Always Liked A Film, both collabs with Mark Knight and D.Ramirez though the latter recalls the proto-trance sounds of early Deadmau5 (in a good way). The ominous progressive throb of Dark Train then rolls into a slightly sloppy Two Months Off, some mis-triggered sounds from Rick Smith and Darren Price hampering its impact ever so slightly. Karl Hyde is a slightly more restrained bundle of energy than he was in the days of yore, but still criss-crosses the stage during new drum’n’bass stormer Scribble before a wealth of new material gets an airing – the highlight the wonderful progressive vocal anthem Between Stars (though the techno chug of Bird 1 is also impressive), but Rez/Cowgirl and King Of Snake provide the crescendo before Born Slippy rams the epic home. Slotted in to follow the British dance masters, Steve Aoki had his work cut out for him, but he did his best to rise to the near impossible challenge.
His in your face, aggressive set was welcomed by all those looking for something of the less cerebral variety. The biggest gun playing on the Godskitchen stage is Mr Markus Schulz who has gained a reputation with the locals after playing some seriously mindbending progressive trance sets on his last few visits to our shores. Tonight, however, he is quite disappointing and not at all to previous standard. Opening with Wippenberg’s Chakalaka, for most of his two hour peak time slot he plays big room sounds with all the obvious bells and whistles but lacks his usual musicality and emotion – he pretends to be driving but really doesn’t achieve any momentum. Watching from the top of the grandstand over the countless figures that carpet the dancefloor it almost seems depressing watching them bob slowly from side to side, as if unsure what they had come there to do. Schulz ignores this and slaps on a rinse of Sasha’s Xpander while performing some faux mixing gestures that excite the children in the front row but leave the adults at the back shaking their heads. A seemingly inebriated Felix Da Housecat fumbles his way through his early morning set in a manner which is not typical of such a seasoned veteran. While Silver Screen (Shower Scene) and the usual accompanying bag of tricks are on display, even long time fans walked away clutching a touch of disappointment. Joachim Gerraud uses a stunning array of visuals to accompany his reasonably straightforward set. He’s having a good time in typical style but is pumping so much lowbrow cheese out of the bass bins that it’s hard to share his enthusiasm and join in the fun. All the flash and bang couldn’t pull him out of the pool of mediocrity, but an airing of Hey Boy Hey Girl goes some way to upping the level of excitement. While Winter Sound System has its moments, it never quite gels into the fully immersive festival experience we’ve come to expect from Future’s previous outings at this venue. There’s talk about getting home in time to watch the soccer in various dunny blocks throughout the evening, which pretty much sums up this event’s allure. Then again, Mr Plod’s seize and arrests may have ruined a lot of people’s nights and seen heads hit pillows well before sunrise. LAWRENE DAYLIE, JC ESTELLER, MARY MUNTER, JAKE SUN
EUROTRASH EUROTRASH
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WEDNESDAY SPEAKER CHIC @ FIRST FLOOR A tribute to the sophisticated musical tastes of Melbourne’s north side. Combining indie grooves and electro with the occasional vintage reference or post-disco classic. Featuring Smile On Impact, Youthful Implants, Kai Project and Beetlejuice. Free entry.
COQ ROQ @ LUCKY COQ DJs Lady Noir, Agent 86, Kiti, Mr Thom and Joybot give you nothing but the best new wave, punk, Brit pop, bong rap and hair metal this side of Seattle from 9pm.
WEDNESDAYS @ MOSQ Aside from the stunning Moroccan decor and exotic food, Mosq is now featuring free tarot readings with the very insightful and intriguing Miss Andrea. Readings from 6-8pm.
FIVE ELEMENTS & B WIV DEECE @ MISS LIBERTINE Representing the true old school mindset, weekly selectors MzRizk, DJ Sizzle, Takaco, Ayna, Duchesz and special guests walk you through all eras of hip hop. On top of that, killer local spitters B Wiv Deece are hosting Wednesdays in June. Throughout the month B Wiv Deece will be teaming up with some of Melbourne’s finest hip hop acts. Free entry.
THURSDAY RING THE ALARM @ FIRST FLOOR A night of deadly dancehall and killer reggae. Catch Cat Sweeney from Burn City Queens as she hosts jungle city dance classes beforehand. Then residents Jesse I and Major Krazy are joined by weekly guest selectors. This week’s guests are Rus Tuffa and Sista Raquelina. From 9pm-3am. Free entry.
LOVE STORY @ THE TOFF Featuring 1928 and support from rotating guests Tranter, Rad Pitt, Megawuoti, and Sleeves (Strobe) playing everything you love in electro, techno, indie and disco. From 11.30pm-5am. Free entry. International and interstate guests monthly.
MISK @ MISS LIBERTINE A place where the music floats between deep melodic tech house, groovy jazz-spaced stabs, crunchy minimal techno and smooth cocktail house. Featuring resident DJs U-one and Dave Pham plus this week’s guests Anri (Japan) and Volta (Ukraine). Free entry.
HANGTIME @ EUROTRASH Hangtime continues to rock the shit out of Eurotrash. Featuring a rad line-up of rotating DJs to keep you boozed and buried on the dancefloor.
FREE RANGE FUNK @ LUCKY COQ Free Range Funk DJs Who, Agent 86, Lewis CanCut and special guests tempt you into the night with their eclectic bag of treats. Setting the mood early, expect to be charmed with delightful jazz, deep soul and funk. Stick around after dessert and it’s fruity disco, choice house and hipster dance drops. Free entry.
VARSITY @ BIMBO DELUXE School’s out for the week and we’ve cleared out the lounge room. Teaching you a lesson in hip hop, soul and funk after school are Matt Radovich, Mr Moonshine, Just Lindsay, Tahl and Rowie.
18 Zebra Magazine
The Rhythm-al-ism team bring you the best urban jams and house grooves every week. Featuring Damion De Silva, FMR, A-Style, K Dee and Simon Sez. From 9.30pm4am. $15/$12 guestlist (guestlist@ restless.com.au).
THURSDAYS @ NEW GUERNICA Turns out those dudes in high school who were into music like The Smiths, The Cure and Manson learnt how to mix, typed the name Derrick Carter into Wikipedia and got themselves a residency at New Guernica. Conductors from 9pm include Negativ Magick, Post-Percy, Leslie Salvador and Bromance. Free entry.
3181 THURSDAYS @ REVOLVER Revolver keeps it laidback and local from 6pm. There are tunes from Hans DC, Who and guests. Plus vintage video games, foosball, free wi-fi internet and half price meals every week from Colonel Tan’s allnew kitchen for local residents and traders. The second Thursday of each month features the designer market.
FRIDAY DUBSTEP @ FIRST FLOOR Fresh Audio host a very special night that will cover many dubinfluenced genres. Featuring DJ Damon, Jake Savona, MC Jornick and Oakley Grenell. Support from So Fire, Papa Stylee and Bass Bin Laden. Doors open 10pm. $10 entry.
GELATI @ GERTRUDES BROWN COUCH Melbourne’s only event dedicated to the synthesised sounds of ‘80s Italy returns from the dead at a new venue. George Hysteric and Daniel D’Operator are proud to liberate these rare and fantastic records from dusty attics and overpriced eBay auctions for their intended purpose – to be played loud. Take a trip back to the discotheques of Firenze as Gelati brings Italo-disco sunshine into a bleak Melbourne winter. Free entry. From 9pm-1am.
N-TICE @ ABODE An erotic party for open-minded individuals. Featuring resident DJs Steve Punch and Jon Montes. From 10pm-late.
PURPLE SNEAKERS @ MISS LIBERTINE The second edition of Purple Sneakers features Gaz (YCDJ) and party makers Purple Sneakers DJs, Beat TV DJs and Quick Fix DJs in the back room. In the front room, DJs PhDJ, Toki Doki, Kiti and Bad Horse will be on hand to play the latest indie tunes. $12 entry. From 8pm.
WAX! & NQR @ REVOLVER Amassing releases on some of the world’s most acclaimed labels, you can catch the local boys of Wax! every Friday. Also on is NQR, featuring special guests Chardy, Oliver James, Daniel Tardrew, Hoops and D-Manual joining residents Nick Young, Aaron Trotman and TBIB. Wax! will feature Oohee, Lewie Day, Andee Frost and Otologic from 10pm onwards. $15/$6 before midnight. If you want to get past the bouncers hit up wax@ revolverupstairs.com.au for hassle free entry. From 10pm-7am followed by Sunshine’s morning set.
FRIDAYS @ CIRCUS Now into its third year and still bringing quality tunes ranging from commercial house to underground electro.
LIKE DISCO @ LA DI DA What is Like Disco? Motown and funk led us to disco and now original disco classics have been
re-edited, remixed and reinvented. Disco continues to be a constant source of basslines, riffs and vocals for house and techno. So put your hands up and let your hair down as you dance to everything that’s like disco. From 7pm-dawn. $15/$10 guestlist.
FRIDAYS @ EUROTRASH Mu-gen and NXR playing party through to electro. Free entry. Open until 3am.
FRIDAYS @ NEW GUERNICA You know it’s going to be a good night when you’re at a club and the DJs work the same part-time jobs during the week as you; it means they’re probably up for getting loose just the same. At New Guernica we’ve got more Nudie Jeans folding clerks and fixie part importers than you can poke a stick at. Oh, and the kitchen may burn down as Herbie and Post-Percy are the evening’s master chefs.
SOUNDS OF FUSION @ FUSION Commercial progressive house to get the place jammin’. Special guest Rexy with support from Dean T and Johnny M. From 9.30pm4am. $15/$10 guestlist (fusion@ crownmelbourne.com.au).
POPROCKS @ THE TOFF Join the crew at the Toff with Dr Phil Smith playing no-brainers and guilty pleasures from the ‘60s/’70s/’80s/’90s/today and tomorrow. The sounds of pop, disco, rock, R&B, funk, soul and oddball covers. The party starts at 9pm and entry is always free.
SATURDAY AWW SHIT @ ROXANNE PARLOUR Australia’s biggest street culture party holds its second installment. Hosted by Louie Knuxx, Aww Shit will feature street art along with some fantastic prizes (streetwear threads, skateboards, DVDs and more). Tunes provided by DJ Spleazy, 25th Hoodlum, Ms Butt and the infamous BTwo.
BASS ODYSSEY @ ABODE Fill your ears with deep tech and tech house. Presented by residents Syme Tollens, Darko, Luke Lawrence and Samari. Visuals provided by VJ Jem The Misfit. Dress neat smart.
THE SPREAD @ THE WORKSHOP Physical Butter presents a collective of artists bringing you a night of turntables, samplers and beat machines with live horns, MCs and visuals turing Showtime, SNESmega, Call And Response and Swerv N Collide. Plus special guest MCs Colt, Ash One and Slips.
MAMA SAID @ CIRCUS Nestle in as the Mama Said crew bring the very best in deep tech and house that Melbourne has to offer over two levels. Doors open at 10pm, so come and check out what all the fuss is about.
THE LATE SHOW @ REVOLVER Featuring breaks, dubstep, grime and funky in the front room. Whilst the back room samples disco, boogie, cut-ups, house and the rest. With residents Ransom, Nick Thayer, Raph Boogie and Matt Cant along with guests Julien Love, Ms Butt, Paz, Neil Stafford and Booshank. Plus Boogs and Spacey in the morning and primo rotating guests to boot.
THE HOUSE DE FROST @ THE TOFF The House De Frost is a modern day discotheque with its feet and ears firmly rooted in the nostalgia of days gone by. This is true disco, not nu-disco. Helmed by the infamous Andee Frost.
UNDER SUSPICION @ BROWN ALLEY
SUNDAYS @ NEW GUERNICA
Under Suspicion is Brown Alley’s new resident Saturday night. It’s a party that represents the best of underground culture and music. Under Suspicion aims to create a new underground culture that breaks down the walls of industry trends and ignites a party experience like no other.
A mix of Little Richard slamming a piano with a pair of blue suede shoes to John Lydon pissing off his Sex Pistol fans with his new band that was just as important, along with all the good new wave, death disco, punk funk, post punk and Liverpool pop you can hear in a good night out. Free entry.
THE TECH REPUBLIC @ POISON APPLE
KHOKOLAT KOATED @ K BAR
In the main room Boogs, T-Rek, Jen Tutty, Phil K, Ross Horkings, Tyrone and Bianca White supply the soundtrack to your evening while in the basement Gavin Keitel, Mike Callander, Lister Cooray, Bart Bara, Clint Morgan and Jamie Coyle bring you some of the finest house and techno to get your arse groovin’. $15 guestlist (inpress@ live.com).
Khokolat like you’ve never tasted. Featuring Damion De Silva, K Dee, Jay Sin and weekly guests playing R&B sounds strictly for the urban elite. From 9.30pm-late. $15/ $12 guestlist (guestlist@restless. com.au).
HOUSE PARTY @ EUROTRASH Party on two floors with 1928, Sleeves, Megawuoti, Tranter, Mu-gen and D Ceed. $10/$5 before 10pm. Email adam@eurotrashbar. com.au for birthdays – you’ll get free entry and a cheap guestlist for your friends.
DISCO SOCIAL @ FIRST FLOOR Enter Studio 393 as the disco bandits, Kano and Mr Moonshine, play all that is disco, boogie and funk. This week’s special guest is Inkswell.
PLAYGROUND @ SEVEN Spread over six rooms, Playground has been showcasing R&B and hip hop for five years. Complimented by regular live acts, come and celebrate the best in urban culture that Melbourne has to offer.
SWEAT SATURDAYS @ ONESIXONE The new undisputed jump-off for lovers of sophisticated grooves, Sweat continues bringing the goodness. Featuring DJ Who, Anthony Larr, Ant J Steep and MJ. Doors open at 10pm. $15/$10 (mention Sweat).
SATURDAYS @ LUCKY COQ Spread over two levels with DJs downstairs including Pacman, Jean Paul, Sam McEwin and Greyskull playing tech house and electro. Upstairs you’ll find Kodiak Kid, Moonshine, Ash-Lee and guests playing funk. From 9pm-late. Free entry.
SATURDAYS @ THE LOFT Featuring DJs Scotty Erdos, Phil Ross, Nick James and Ontime dropping top 40 dance and house tunes in the main room and DJs Achos, G-Funk, DJ Ryza, Shaggz, Az, Dylisco and Julez in the R&B room.
SUNDAY JAMES BROWN TRIBUTE @ RED BENNIES James Brown is brought to life in an exciting and dynamic tribute show performed by Michael GT Blair and The Funkadelic Side. The band delivers sets of music with a horn-driven funky rhythm and blues sound that will make this event an experience to remember. From 8-11pm. $10 entry.
INDUSTRY @ CIRCUS When you’ve stopped serving the masses, come to Circus and let loose. Great for people who love to party on a Sunday and for people who work in the industry.
SUNDAYS @ REVOLVER Revolver’s all-day electric disco party is one of the world’s most unique clubbing experiences – tight like family and welcoming like long lost friends. Featuring Boogs, Spacey Space, Radiator and T-Rek. $15 in the morning, free entry apart from Summer Series events.
STUN!DAYS @ BLUE BAR How many DJs does it take to change a lightbulb? Come down to Blue Bar and find out. Featuring Rowie and Kate Niall mixing it up. From 6pm-1am. Free entry.
SOUTH SIDE HUSTLE @ LUCKY COQ Pilgrim Light Circus kick the night off from 5-7pm playing live jazz and funk. Following them is Askew, Booshank, Paz, Ms Butt, Jumbo, Junji and Harry, Pete Baker and guests laying down slick Sunday tunes until 3am.
SUNDAE SHAKE @ BIMBO DELUXE Slide into your favourite comfy couch or across the dancefloor as masters of entertainment PhatoA-Mano, Agent 86 and Tigerfunk hit you between the ears every Sunday.
MONDAY STREET POETICS @ FIRST FLOOR Featuring an open mic with house band Mr Savona, Tom Tom (True Live), Bop Choi (Cookin’ On Three Burners/The Optics) and rotating guests. Hosted by Mantra (Illzilla) and DJ Wasabi. If you like huge beats, scratchin’, beatbox, freestyle, breakin’ and everything hip hop then get your arse down to Street Poetics.
DIAMOND DOGS @ BIMBO DELUXE Inspired by David Bowie, Lady Noir and Kiti span the ages of rock, glam and indie. If you’re after something a little different, then look no further.
DEEP @ NEW GUERNICA An mp3 player on shuffle isn’t as entertaining as listening to someone who actually loves playing good music getting loose with you from behind the decks. Hence New Guernica’s new take on Monday evenings. Every Monday on rotation from 9pm music lovers grace our organ and play sounds from the deep to keep the weekend wrongness flowing.
TUESDAY PERCY’S PLAYHOUSE @ NEW GUERNICA Hosted by the delightful young chap who thinks high tea means margaritas on a Monday morning. Special appearances by Percy’s colourful friends and a rabidly fun, five-hour-odd set of party dance with one of Melbourne’s most eloquently wasted madmen.
NEVER CHEER BEFORE YOU KNOW WHO’S WINNING @ REVOLVER Join hosts Mikey Cahill (Rock City/ Joey Lightbulb) and Kerrie Loveless (K-Lo) and tackle Revolver’s ultimate trivia contest. Win CDs, DVDs, movie passes and meal tickets. Register at nevercheer@ revolverupstairs.com.au to book (eight people per team) and get bonus questions. Kicks off at 7.30pm. Free entry.
CURIOUS TALES OF A VIVID LUSCIOUS @ BIMBO DELUXE DJ Who delivers surreal sass and cunning in the forms of sly, charming music and sumptuous live art. Be entertained and amazed in a world existing between couches and canvas.
UPCOMING... SURREAL 2010 SAMPLER LAUNCH @ FIRST FLOOR Featuring DJ Cargo performing with a live band plus special guests Candice Monique and Lee Sissing on vocals. Support from Nymphlow, Kast and D-Inph, Kay-Z, Crusader and DJ Sim. Doors open 9pm. $10 entry. Friday 25 June.
SOUL SESSIONS @ THE TOFF The second instalment of Soul Sessions at the Toff begins with a fresh new collaboration with the Oz Soul Collective movement. The Oz Soul Collective is a passionate network of Australian soul/urban artists. On Saturday 26 June catch rising stars Jess Harlen, Candice Monique and The Optics and Runforyourlife featuring Syrene, for an Oz Soul Collective line-up with super smooth vocals, undeniable talent and explosive stage presence. Tickets $15+BF from Moshtix. From 7.30-11pm.
DIAFRIX & THE PUBLIC OPINION AFRICAN ORCHESTRA @ THE CORNER Diafrix have pushed past their status as Melbourne’s ‘next big thing’ and are building a massive cult following, with a growing reputation as one of Australia’s most amazing live acts. Named Best Homegrown New Artist in The Age EG Awards last year, their debut album Concrete Jungle features Diafrix’s iconic concoction of hip hop, funk and African. Tickets $15+BF from Corner Box Office. Saturday 26 June.
FAVELA ROCK @ MISS LIBERTINE Featuring a killer local DJ line-up smashing out hip hop, dance and party jams all night. Plus, this month Favela Rock sees the return of our Sydney-based prodigal son Sleater Brockman. Lately, Brockman has been doing some damage on the radio waves and the dancefloor with the DJ crew Ro Sham Bo. Support from MAFIA, Steezy, Micka5k and DTP. $10/$8 guestlist (favela@ opulentmagazine.com.au). Saturday 26 June.
BLAK ROOTS ALBUM LAUNCH @ THE TOFF African act Blak Roots have taken the reggae genre in Melbourne to new heights with an exciting musical brew of driving reggae rhythms, refreshingly sweet vocals and African-inspired harmonies. Led by African vocal extraordinaire William Kadima, Blak Roots formed in early 2008 bringing together an eclectic mix of talented jazz, world and reggae artists from some of the planet’s most exotic locations. The band releases its debut album with the support of amazing local act Vox Congo performing a unique mix of Congolese gospel, rumba, soukous, zouk, reggae, aguaya and pende folk rhythms. Doors 7.30pm. $12 entry. Sunday 27 June.
IDA CD LAUNCH @ THE EVELYN Ida (pronounced EE’da) explores influences from R&B, soul, dancehall, hip hop and world beat. Singing in both English and her native tongue (Bahasa Melayu), she creates a fresh and earthy fusion of east meets west, old meets new. Catch Ida when she launches her debut EP titled Holographic Love on Thursday 1 July with support from Candice Monique, DJ Wasabi, Voodoo Dred (Grrilla Step), Mista Savona, 1/6, Kojo, Matt Witney, Chap One and Tariro. There will also be tribal bellydance, dancehall and temple dance performances on the night.
Zebra Venue Guide
9416 4917 FUSION Level 3, Crown Entertainment Complex, 8 Whiteman St, Southbank 9292 5750 GEORGE LANE BAR 1 George lane (off Grey St,), St Kilda ABODE 9593 8884 374 St Kilda Rd, St Kilda 9525 5552 THE GERTRUDE HOTEL ALIA 148 Gertrude St, Fitzroy Level 1, 83-87 Smith St, (corner of 9419 2823 Smith St, and Gertrude St), Fitzroy GERTRUDES BROWN COUCH 9486 0999 30-32 Gertrude St, Fitzroy ALUMBRA 9417 6420 Shed 9, Central Pier, Docklands GOLDEN MONKEY 9690 0883 389 Lonsdale St, (enter via THE APARTMENT Hardware Lane), Melbourne 401-405 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 9602 2055 9670 4020 THE GOOSE & VINYL ATTICUS FINCH 91-93 Flinders Lane (entrance via 129 Lygon St, East, Brunswick Duckboard Pl), Melbourne 9387 0188 1300 843 466 THE BALCONY GRACE DARLING HOTEL 422 Little Collins St, Melbourne 114 Smith St, Collingwood 9642 8917 9416 0055 BAR 362 THE GREAT BRITAIN HOTEL 362 St Kilda Rd, St Kilda 447 Church St, Richmond 9534 4666 9429 5066 BARAKI UPO MEZETHES THE HAIRY CANARY 168 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 226 Little Collins St, Melbourne 9663 1002 9654 2471 BARBARA HORSE BAZAAR Level 1, 203 Swan St, Richmond 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne 9429 3146 9670 2329 BAR OPEN HOTEL BARKLY 317 Brunswick St, Fitzroy 9415 9601 109 Barkly St, St Kilda BERTHA BROWN 9525 3332 562 Flinders St, Melbourne INFLATION 9629 1207 60 King St, Melbourne BIGMOUTH 9614 6122 168 Acland St, St Kilda 9534 4611 KATUK BILLBOARD 517a Chapel St, South Yarra 162 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 9827 9004 9639 4000 KHOKOLAT BAR BIMBO DELUXE 43 Hardware Lane, Melbourne 376 Brunswick St, Fitzroy 9419 8600 9642 1442 BLUE BAR LA DI DA 330 Chapel St, Prahran 9529 6499 577 Little Bourke St, Melbourne BLUE TILE LOUNGE 9670 7680 95 Smith St, Fitzroy 9417 7186 LA LA LAND BOUTIQUE 134 Chapel St, Windsor 134 Greville St, Prahran 9525 2322 9533 8972 BROWN ALLEY LAIKA Corner of King St, and Lonsdale St, 9 Fitzroy St, St Kilda Melbourne 9534 0002 9670 8599 THE LOFT CABINET BAR & BALCONY Level 2, 117 Lonsdale St, 11 Rainbow Alley, Melbourne Melbourne 9654 0915 9650 3388 CANARY CLUB LONG BAR 6 Melbourne Pl, Melbourne 60 Lygon St, Carlton 9663 1983 9380 4004 CANVAS LOOP Level 1, 302-320 Burwood Rd 19-23 Meyers Pl, Melbourne Hawthorn 9654 0500 9819 2200 LOUNGE CHAISE LOUNGE 243 Swanston St, Melbourne Basement, 105 Queen St, Melbourne 9663 2916 9670 6120 LOVE MACHINE CHASERS Little Chapel St (Corner Malvern 386 Chapel St, South Yarra Rd), Sth Yarra 9827 7379 9533 8837 CIRCUS LUCKY COQ 199 Commercial Rd, South Yarra 179 Chapel St, Prahran 9804 8605 9525 1288 CO. NIGHTCLUB MADAMME BRUSSELS Level 3, Crown Entertainment 63 Bourke St, Melbourne Complex, 8 Whiteman St, Southbank 9662 2775 9682 1888 MAEVE FOX THE CONTINENTAL HOTEL 472 Church St, Richmond 1-21 Ocean Rd, Sorrento 9427 1233 5984 2201 THE MARKET COOKIE 143 Commercial Rd, South Yarra Level 1, Curtin House, 252 Swanston 9826 0933 St, Melbourne MATCH BAR & GRILL 9663 7660 249 Lonsdale St, Melbourne THE CORNISH ARMS 9654 6522 163A Sydney Rd, Brunswick MANCHURIA 9380 8383 7 Waratah Pl, Melbourne CROFT INSTITUTE 9663 1997 21 Croft Alley (off Little Bourke St), MERCAT CROSS HOTEL Melbourne 9671 4399 456 Queen St, Melbourne CUSHION LOUNGE 9348 9998 99 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 9534 7575 METROPOL DECCA BAR 60 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 95 Queen St, Melbourne 9534 5999 9600 0900 MISS LIBERTINE DING DONG LOUNGE 34 Franklin St, Melbourne Level 1, 18 Market lane, Melbourne 9663 6855 9662 1020 MISTY PLACE THE DROWNING OLIVE 3-5 Hosier lane, Melbourne 407-409 Swanston St, Melbourne 9663 9202 9650 5486 MOTHER’S MILK (BRIGHTON) ELECTRIC LADYLAND 287 Bay St, Brighton Level 1, 265 Chapel St, Prahran 9596 9470 9521 5757 MOTHER’S MILK (WINDSOR) EMPRESS 17 Chapel St, Windsor 714 Nicholson St, North Fitzroy 9521 4119 9489 8605 NASH HOTEL ESCOBAR 344 Victoria St, Richmond 189 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 9428 3418 0407 845 278 NEVERMIND ESPLANADE HOTEL 336 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn 11 The Esplanade, St Kilda NEVERWHERE BAR 9534 0211 185 Smith St, Fitzroy EUROTRASH 0422 560 890 18 Corrs Lane, Melbourne NEW GUERNICA 9564 4411 Level 2, Hub Arcade, 318 Little EVE BAR/LOUNGE Collins St, Melbourne 334 City Rd, Southbank 9650 4464 9696 7388 THE NIGHT CAT E-55 141 JohnSt,on St, Fitzroy 55 Elizabeth St, Melbourne 9417 0900 9620 3899 THE NIGHT OWL FIRST FLOOR Basement, 33 Elizabeth St, 393 Brunswick St, Fitzroy Melbourne 9614 2777 9419 6380 NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB THE FOX 301 High St, Northcote 351 Wellington St, 9489 3917 Collingwood ONESIXONE
161 High St, Prahran 9533 8433 THE ORDER OF MELBOURNE Level 2, 401 Swanston St, Melbourne 9663 6707 PALACE THEATRE 20 Bourke St, Melbourne 9663 4288 PLATFORM ONE Vault 7/8 Banana Alley, Melbourne 9620 7080 THE POST OFFICE HOTEL 90 Swan St, Richmond 9428 6674 PRINCE OF WALES 29 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 9536 1166 PUBLIC BAR 238 Victoria St, North Melbournee 9329 6522 THE PURPLE EMERALD 191 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 9650 7753 Q BAR 257 Toorak Rd, South Yarra 9804 7800 RANDY DRAGON Basement, 313a Flinders Lane, Melbourne 9629 9141 RED HUMMINGBIRD 246 Russell St, Melbourne 9654 2192 RED BENNIES Level 1, 371-373 Chapel St, South Yarra RED LOVE MUSICROOM Level 1, 401 Swanston St, Melbourne 9639 3722 RED VIOLIN 1/231 Bourke St, Melbourne 0411 423 245 REVOLVER 229 Chapel St, Prahran 9521 5985 ROBARTA 109 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 9534 9041 ROBOT 12 Bligh Pl, Melbourne 9620 3646 ROOFTOP BAR Level 7, Curtin House, 252 Swanston St, Melbourne 9663 3596 ROOM 680 Level 1, 680 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn 9818 0680 ROXANNE PARLOUR 2/3 Coverlid Pl, Melbourne 9663 1018 RUBY’S LOUNGE 1648 Burwood Highway, Belgrave 9754 7445 SAGI BAR 57 High St, Northcote 9489 9983 THE SAINT 54 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 9593 8333 SECTION 8 27-29 Tattersalls Lane, Melbourne 0422 972 656 SEVEN 52 Albert Rd, South Melbourne 9690 7877 SOFTBELLY BAR 367 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 0410 329 129 SORRY GRANDMA! 590 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 9670 7493 STAR BAR 160 Clarendon St, South Melbourne 9810 9954 SYN BAR Level 1, 163 Russell St, Melbourne 9663 8990 TERMINUS HOTEL 605 Victoria St, Abbotsford 9427 0615 TOFF IN TOWN Level 2, Curtin House, 252 Swanston St, Melbourne 9639 8770 TRAMP 14 King St, Melbourne TRANSIT Federation Square, Princes Bridge (corner Northbank), Melbourne 9654 8808 TRANSPORT PUBLIC BAR Federation Square, Melbourne 9654 8808 TRYST 3 Wilson St, South Yarra 9827 5533 TYRANNY OF DISTANCE 147 Union St, Windsor 9525 1005 VELOUR 121 Flinders lane, Melbourne 9663 5589 VIOLET TEARS 192 Barkly St, St Kilda 9534 4445 WAH WAH LOUNGE 185 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 9654 5793 WHITE BAR 129 Fitzroy St, St Kilda 9593 9077 WINDSOR CASTLE 89 Albert St, Windsor 9525 0239 WORKSHOP Level 1, 413 Elizabeth St, Melbourne 9326 4365 YAK 150 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 9654 6699
THE ARSE END HEADS UP
Treme
Denzal Park
TTH HE LLAT ATEEST ST N NEEW WS S
From the ‘Didn’t See That Coming’ file is the news that a Pendulum remix of the ABC news theme this week landed at number 38 in the ARIA Singl es Chart. And it’s fucken good, too.
D-Bridge
A WALK IN THE PARK Local lads Denzal Park have done it again. New track Ascension has hit number one on the ARIA Club Chart – they already held the spot for eight weeks earlier this year with Filter Freak.
GET WIRED We keep banging on about it but… Treme, the new show from the makers of The Wire, is hitting local TV at last. Make sure you are tuned to Showcase on Wednesday 14 July – best music in a TV series EVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER.
ARSE LICKS
God Is A Ball
WHISTLING TAXI Why do people insist on trying to get taxi drivers’ attention by whistling? Note to fuck-knuckles: THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU.
Pills + Dogs = Caught/Court
HOW MANY PILLS?
CHRIST DIDN’T DRIVE A HYUNDAI
Ummm… really!?! You thought you were gonna walk through the police dogs with 720 pills on you… Where were they hidden? That could make you walk real funny-like.
Gotta love how the Catholic Church continually stick their nose in other peoples’ business but when Hyundai made an ad set in a church they scream blasphemy and get it banned.
ETS BERTINE TIhCK ing Zealand’s Antix launch ANTIX AT LibMertiISneSthisLISat urday night wit New liable Ben Evans,
r-re back at Miss port comes from the eve The Interview crew are album Cavalier. Local sup Junk, Motek (live), Deutronium, Loki, Simon dio stu rth fou new nd their bra Punkz On must be 18+. Please Andy Simpson (B:R:B), to give away. Entrants Blinky, Tony Loucas Vs ress and daytime got two double passes add ’ve e, we nam and e is, lud Can inc n Murphy and Natha ject Line: ANTIX, and Sub h wit u m.a .co ail. ess the body of your em email giveaways@inpr telephone number in
Zebra Magazine 19
OVERTONE ON DISPLAY New works by Melbourne artist Carrie McGrath are currently on display at Rearview, Collingwood – a large scale installation and a performance to enhance and directly respond to it. Overtone is exhibited until 25 June.
THIS WEEK IN
ARTS
THURSDAY 17
SUNDAY 20
Gone With The Pope - Australian premiere of the lost grindhouse gem from Z-grade filmmaker Duke Mitchell. Cinema Nova. Guerrilla - a series of dusk performances from four young choreographers in response to the word ‘guerilla’. Artists include Emiline Forster, Amber Haines, Gareth Hart, and Amy Macpherson. Federation Square Atrium until 19 June. seven thousand oaks - this sustainable arts festival official kicks off today, with its visual art component Adaptation, consisting of works by Tim Craker, Ardi Gunawan, Jordan Marani, Louise Paramor, and Brie Trenerry. Guildford Gallery until 11 July.
Melbourne International Animation Festival - today features Best Of The Next, a look at the future stars of world animation; Felix The Cat; International Programs 3 and 8; and Digital Showcase. ACMI.
FRIDAY 18 Cabaret Whore - direct from London, Cabaret Whore - starring a country and western porn star, a forgotten French diva, and a talent show reject - comes to Melbourne for two performances prior to a run at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Butterfly Club until 19 June. Rock Prints - exhibition of classic and contemporary band posters to look at and for sale, from artists such as Bob Dylan, Kings Of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more. It’s at 374 High St, Northcote until 20 June. Unfold - opening night of new exhibition of works by Jamelle Humphreys exploring the Victorian countryside. Brunswick St Gallery until 1 July.
SATURDAY 19 Ashes Of Time: Redux - restored martial arts masterpiece from Hong Kong filmmaking genius Wong Kar-wai (2046) starring WKW regulars Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung, and Maggie Cheung. World Movies Channel, 8:30pm, as part of their 25 Filmmakers You Must See Before You Die series. Generous - closing night of PMD Productions’ politically charged Generous. Chapel Off Chapel. Melbourne International Animation Festival - opening day of the 10th annual MIAF. Today: International Programs 1 and 2, featuring the best of the 2,400 entries received from around the world. ACMI.
seven thousand oaks - Touch At A Distance, a day of music, installations, and soundwalks at Heide Sculpture Garden. Artists include Alan Lamb, Anthony Magen, Dale Gorfinkel, Jim Denley, Matt Chaumont, Ross Bolleter, Philip Samartzis. Heide Museum Of Modern Art, 11am to 4pm.
MONDAY 21 Melbourne International Animation Festival - today: International Programs 4 and 5, more selected animated films from around the globe. ACMI.
TUESDAY 22 Melbourne International Animation Festival - Tuesday marks the Panorama programs, featuring the best films of what didn’t make it into competition for whatever reason. Four sessions. This is followed by International Program 10, and a showcase of works by Zagreb Film. ACMI.
ONGOING A Kind Of Alaska - Winterfall Theatre Company’s production of Harold Pinter’s play about sleeping sickness (A Kind Of Alaska). The Theatre Husk, Northcote until 4 July. BBB - exhibition of vibrant and moody photographic works by Andrew Babarczy, Bronwen Hyde, and Elaine Batton. Obscura Gallery until 7 July. The Other World - exhibition of photography by Leigh Backhouse exploring nocturnal natural landscapes and unpopulated public spaces. Kick Gallery, Collingwood until 26 June. Rooms - exhibition of works by PhD student Simone Hine spanning performance, video, and installation, investigating stillness and contemporary art and cinema. Fortyfive downstairs until 3 July.
GIVEAWAY! This Thursday 17 June at Cinema Nova sees the Australian premiere of a lost grindhouse gem, Gone With The Pope, as restored by Academy Award winning filmmaker Bob Murawski. From Z-film maker Duke Mitchell (Massacre Mafia Style), Gone With The Pope tells the story of a man recently released from prison who takes on a job to hit seven mafiosi in order to fund his trip to Rome to kidnap the pope. Thanks to Cinema Nova we’ve got five double passes to the screening up for grabs. For your chance to win one email giveaways@inpress. com.au with ‘POPE’ in the subject line. Gone With The Pope screens at Cinema Nova Thursday 17 June, and then every Friday and Saturday night.
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G A L L E RY
PROFILE
HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen heide.com.au archival material, artwork and recipes, this exhibition explores life behind-the-scenes at Heide between 1935-81 when it was a celebrated haven for progressive modernist artists and the personal Eden of art benefactors John and Sunday Reed. Affinities: The Heide Collection: This exhibition launches Heide II – originally Heide founders John and Sunday Reed’s modernist home – as the newly dedicated gallery space for the Heide Collection. See significant works by artists associated with Heide’s history, such as Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker, Mirka Mora, Charles Blackman, Danila Vassilieff’s, and Pat Brassington.
Tell us about the gallery. Heide Museum of Modern Art is only 15 minutes from Melbourne’s CBD and presents a fascinating mix of art, architecture, and landscape, with a rich social history and art heritage. The Heide site comprises a combination of indoor and outdoor spaces over 16 acres of beautiful gardens and Sculpture Park. There’s
much to explore, including the contemporary Heide III building, the iconic McGlashan and Everist designed modernist building Heide II, the heritage-listed Victorian farmhouse Heide I, and Heide’s much-loved Kitchen Gardens and Sculpture Park. What’s currently exhibiting? Sunday’s Kitchen: Food & Living at Heide: Through photographs,
Simryn Gill: Gathering: This major solo exhibition presents the work of leading Sydney-based Malaysian artist, Simryn Gill. Featuring objects, books, collections, photographs and text pieces from the last five years, it reveals the artist’s pursuit of meaning through materials, forms and ways of working. Charlie Sofo: I Wander: Working across a range of mediums
including video, sculpture and text, Melbourne artist Charlie Sofo makes artworks out of the incidental details of life, finding meaning in simple processes, materials and actions. Pan in Armour: Albert Tucker’s Bushrangers: This exhibition examines Albert Tucker’s depictions of Australian bushrangers painted during the 1950s and 1960s. Who are some local artists you admire? Young Melbourne artists Paul Yore and Charlie Sofo have had their works featured in the Project Gallery at Heide and Dylan Martorell’s musical instruments will be on display from 31 July. What’s next? Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, 31 July – 31 October. Up Close traces the significant legacy of memorable and intimate photographs and works from the 1970s and 1980s by Australian artist Carol Jerrems (1949–1980), Larry Clark (New York), Nan Goldin (New York) and William Yang (Sydney).
STARTING FROM SCRATCH SCRATCH FILMMAKING IS A FOCUS OF THIS YEAR’S MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. TOBY WALKER TALKS TO STEVEN WOLOSHEN, AN EXPERT IN THE ARTFORM.
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he Melbourne International Animation Festival celebrates its 10th birthday this month by pairing the world’s latest and greatest animation with some eagerly anticipated retrospectives of past masters. Being invited out to Australia as one of MIAF’s international guests has resulted in a couple of firsts for Montreal-based scratch film maker Steve Woloshen. The self-described “animation freak” has never been further west than Vancouver and he’s excited about smashing his travel record with the half-planet journey to Melbourne. Another revelation for Woloshen was learning how to convert the cameraless film trailer for this year’s festival, which he created by drawing images directly on to film stock, into a digital format so it could be emailed ahead of his arrival. Wolshen admits he has only recently come around to exploring the possibilities technology offers, at least for distributing his films, but he has no intention of abandoning the 75-year-old filmmaking technique in which he is now considered one of the world’s leading proponents. Direct-to-film/scratch animation is
the technique focus at MIAF this year, with Woloshen coming out to present historical and contemporary scratch films and take a workshop on how to create them. Woloshen will also be hawking his book Recipes For Reconstruction, spreading the word on another experimental technique that involves taking good film, turning it into rotten and decayed film and then turning it back into a film again. By doing away with the need for a camera all together and using inks, scalpels, marker pens, and other materials bought from dollar-shops, scratch film making is arguably the most thrifty and DIY film making technique available to aspiring film makers. But with the relentless march towards 3D and more eye-popping hyper-realism in a digital world, what future does Woloshen see for it? “Scratch film making won’t disappear,” he says. “I know it won’t, but I’m always telling myself I’m the patron saint of scratch films. It’s probably not true but it keeps me going.” “I’ve been noticing a lot of people in their teens and 20s who are into this whole retro thing, with a whole new interest in what was going on in the
’70s and early ’80s; things like the punk movement. “Although I’m old school I do feel like there’s a lot of people discovering [scratch films] for the first time. I get a lot of emails from people saying they didn’t even know this was possible and I have to tell them it’s been around for decades.” As always, this year’s MIAF will feature the best films selected from over 2,400 entries as part of its international screenings competition. The tenth birthday has also given organisers occasion to reflect on some of the best animated moments from the past decade by screening retrospective programs highlighting favourites from international competition, Australia films, student films and, of course, the bizarre films. French digital filmmaker Edouard Salier, who has won numerous awards for his films Flesh and Empire and directed music videos for Air and Massive Attack, will be there to present his latest film FOUR. That presentation will be linked with a showcase of old and new
films from his employers, Parisian animation studio Autour de Minuit, including this year’s Academy Awardwinning Logorama. WHAT: Melbourne International Animation Festival WHERE & WHEN: ACMI this Saturday to Sunday 27 June
TALE OF A DIFFERENT FAMILY First performed in 1991 during the height of the AIDS epidemic, The Art Of Being Still tells the story of seven friends – a ‘family’ – who get together every Monday night for six years until one of them passes away. Getting the crew back together then proves difficult as old wounds are opened and revelations made. The Art Of Being Still is be performed by gay theatre company Out Cast Theatre at Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre Wednesday 30 June until Saturday 17 July. Head to outcast.org.au for more details.
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CAREW
WITH ANTHONY CAREW
A BURTON
WONDERLAND TIM BURTON (THIRD FROM LEFT) WITH MOMA’S RAJENDRA ROY (THE CELESTE BARTOS CHIEF CURATOR OF FILM), JENNY HE (CURATORIAL ASSISTANT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM), AND RON MAGLIOZZI (ASSISTANT CURATOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM)
DARRYN KING SPEAKS TO JENNY HE OF NEW YORK CITY’S MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, WHO HELPED CURATE THE TIM BURTON EXHIBITION THAT MAKES ITS HOME AT ACMI FROM NEXT WEEK.
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t’s amazing to be invited into his world,” Johnny Depp has said of his longtime collaboration with Tim Burton, the shock-haired filmmaker behind Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Sleepy Hollow and Batman. This month, ACMI is inviting everyone into that world, with Tim Burton: The Exhibition, an exhibition direct from New York’s Museum of Modern Art. To Burton himself, museums resemble cemeteries. “Not in a morbid way,” he’s written, “but both have a quiet, introspective, yet electrifying atmosphere. Excitement, mystery, discovery, life, and death all in one place.” Jenny He, curatorial assistant at MoMA’s Department of Film, takes Burton’s comparison as a compliment. “Tim has a special place in his heart for cemeteries,” she says. “They’re quiet, austere places for reflection and reconnecting with yourself. I think that analogy is fitting, especially coming from Tim. We’ve reflected his artistic work and life on our walls, so maybe in that way it brings one back to one’s mortality as well.” The Museum Of Modern Art film department was founded in 1935 and has since held dedicated exhibitions on artists – Jenny He makes a point of calling them ‘artists’ – such as Alfred Hitchcock, the Coen Brothers, George Romero and Ray Harryhausen, and the work of film studios such as Warner Bros, Universal, UPA, and Pixar (an exhibition that travelled to ACMI a couple of years ago). “Tim certainly sits in that tradition,” says He. “Why did we choose him? He’s
unique in being a filmmaker who transcends mediums and discipline. He’s not trapped by celluloid; he works on paper, on canvas, he’s a photographer, sculptor and so on.” Burton is not only twitchily, restlessly imaginative, he’s also something of a compulsive hoarder. He and the Department of Film’s assistant curator Ron Magliozzi were given access to Burton’s personal collection and sifted through over 10,000 sketches, photographs, paintings and high school assignments (the comments of a former teacher are preserved on one such assignment: “Good job – some good original material – well arranged”). They also sourced items from the archives of 20th Century Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. The result is an exhibition that covers the full scope of Burton’s work and creative vision – visitors enter through the jaws of a diabolical Monster Mouth – starting with his unhappy childhood in Burbank, California. This first section of the exhibition features a loving (if slightly juvenile) sketch of Vincent Price, some school notes and some primitive experiments with moviemaking, including a stop-motion short titled The Island Of Dr Agor. It’s a tremendous insight into the influences that shaped Burton as an artist. “He idolised Vincent Price, Ray Harryhausen, B-grade science fiction and monster movies. He knew what he liked at an early age. He identified with these lonely misunderstood characters. That’s the way he started creating art. You can see that those films influenced him. He brought his own loneliness and feeling of being
segregated creatively into his work.” The next section of the exhibition is largely dedicated to Burton’s time at Disney’s prestigious CalArts art school, the original stomping ground of practically every major feature animation director of the past decade. We see Burton developing his technical proficiency and his twisted sense of humour – “for a stiff she was pretty loose” reads the caption of one doodle – but even still get the sense that Burton was creatively stifled. One page from Burton’s sketchbook illustrates where his interests really lay: a very competent nude sketch – with a monster lurking in the corner. “It’s one of the most important parts of the exhibition,” says He. “You see Tim honing his style and becoming secure in it. He began to understand why he identified with stop-motion animation, that it was the ‘tactile-ness’ of the method and working with actual puppets that appealed to him. He experiments with all these illustrative techniques but develops his own. You can see the concept for his films come in – and that’s the most interesting part of the exhibition for me.” Finally, Burton’s career as a filmmaker is also explored in lavish, loving detail – from the storyboards of his Disney animated short Vincent right through to the costumes for Alice In Wonderland (a new addition for the Melbourne leg of the exhibition). The collection of Hollywood memorabilia is fantastic: Batman’s headgear; a collection of Jack Skellington heads; the Angora sweater from Ed Wood; Sweeney Todd’s glistening
razors; the first page of Burton’s Edward Scissorhands script and a life-size sculpture of Edward himself. There’s also a short directorial note addressed to Depp from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. “We wanted to call attention to the collaborative nature of filmmaking and the way Tim works with his collaborators. It’s well known he works with the same actors, producers and designers over and over again. Having this connection and special language, I think, helps him create this unique style.” Composer Danny Elfman (who composed music especially for the exhibition) is kept on his toes in his ongoing creative relationship with Burton. At a panel at MoMA last year, Elfman spoke of never being sure whether Burton will like what he’s come up with. “They’re not worrying about how they work together,” Jenny He says, “but rather trying to break new ground with each new project.” It’s wonderful to see a filmmaker such as Burton – especially one who spent his early creative life feeling unfulfilled – get a major retrospective such as this. A line plugging Edward Scissorhands seems to apply just as well here: “An unforgettable fairytale about a most unusual character.” Tim Burton: The Exhibition is a marvellous tribute to a true visionary and a most unusual character. WHAT: Tim Burton: The Exhibition WHERE & WHEN: ACMI, Thursday 24 June to Sunday 10 October
GLASTONBURY EXHIBITION COMES TO MELBOURNE British photographer Venetia Deaden has spent the past six years photographing the Glastonbury festival in the UK, having set up her own photographic studio on site to capture the punters and artists alike. Having recently displayed her portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London, The Raw Gallery, South Melbourne will play host to the first commercial showing of her work outside the UK. Glastonbury: Another Stage opens Thursday 24 June and runs until Saturday 24 July.
There’s a scene in Get Him To The Greek, in which a cast of caricature-ish record-label underlings – including one played by the mind-alteringly unfunny Aziz Ansari, a galling little twerp whose single joke (an Indian guy uses hip hop slang!) isn’t even amusing to begin with – must impress their hardassed boss (a trying-really-hard P Diddy), with ideas to generate sales. Our pic’s downtrodden hero, the ever-charmless Jonah Hill, sells him on bringing a band out of retirement, staging an anniversary concert, and repackaging their back-catalogue. Aside from the fact that the film’s dated valentine to the pretty-muchalready-dead major label music biz feels somehow offensive in 2010 – reminiscent of Sex And The City’s delusional devotion to the grotesqueries of hyper-capitalist excess – this otherwise-weak scene clearly shows an author (guy who wrote Yes Man, Nichols Stoller) used to the meetings of Hollywood-studio suits. With the box office bottomline the only measure of cinematic ‘success’, these days even ‘edgy’ comedies seem spun off an alreadyrecognisable brand; and, just as Tom Cruise is donning the fat-suit for a Les Grossman movie, so Get Him To The Greek is leeching off a previousseason’s success, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Where that was blessed with the shaggy-dog charms of writer/star Jason Segel – who’d spent years priming that same creepydepressed-ex-boyfriend character on Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared – this flick hitches its wagon to Russell Brand’s star. Brand is on autopilot as some Pete Doherty-esque figure hijacking the flight plans of Hill, which leads to roughly 90 minutes of scenes where the two – often in shaky-cam montages – pretend to be drunk/stoned/etc, with supposed ‘hilarious’ results. The only thing less funny than people pretending to be drunk is ‘knowing’ celebrity cameos; and Stoller’s never-funny film has, sadly, more of those than bossman Judd Apatow’s flawed Funny People did. Not even the sight of Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson!) in contemporary clothes can generate much interest in this desperate, totally-tryhard, boardroom-driven spin-off.
7 UP
The sarcastic, bemused, half-ironic tone of Exit Through The Gift Shop – a pseudo-chronicle of the street-art movement as commanded by the Scarlet Pimpernel of public-spacehijacking hijinks, Banksy – is made obvious by its voice-over, in which Rhys Ifans smirks his way throughout, delivering every seemingly-benign line as if it’s a loaded punchline. This, not coincidentally, speaks of the film as a whole, in which its auteur wrests control of the camera away from its supposed-maker, a quietly-crazy Frenchman named Thierry Guetta, and turns this unsuspecting videographer into, first, its subject, and, then, in a bit of meta-conceptual pranksterism, into a street art star. Though the film is delivered as farce, it’s as much a cautionary tale on hype, on how the art world blindly throws money at any perceived hot-new-thing. Of course, the turn is not quite so clean, and the upshot never so simple; the satirical onion layers never-ending, the intersections of truth/fiction/ on-screen/in-world creating a sense of unending cynicism in the face of so much cash. Like Banksy’s other works, the point isn’t to make an audience wonder just how such a large-scale prank was pulled off, but to consider the political content thereof. Lou is an Australian film whose delivery - a gentle, self-contained domestic drama about a family living in isolation amongst canefields, replete with scenic shots and tinkly score - will have people calling it ‘small’, either as pejorative or as backhanded compliment. Which is fine, I guess, as long as small is never confused with pat; that its thematic complexity isn’t obscured by the story’s supposed simplicity. Belinda Chayko’s pits its eponymous sour-faced 11-year-old against her hapless single mother in a struggle for control of their family; with the arrival of John Hurt’s Alzheimerafflicted grandfather providing a pawn in their back-and-forth warfare. Anyone doubting and/or downplaying the drama inherent in their battle seeing its upshot as ‘small’ - is only confirming their own prejudices; showing themselves as culpable members of a society that gives no voice to children, mothers, the aged or infirm, yet doubles over backwards to celebrate dudes kicking balls or men bearing guns.
SEVEN EPONYMOUS FILM CHARACTERS AND THE ACTORS WHO BROUGHT THEM TO LIFE. By Daniel Crichton-Rouse. 1. Malcolm X – Denzel Washington (1992) 2. Johnny Mnemonic – Keanu Reeves (1995) 3. Jerry Maguire – Tom Cruise (1996) 4. Jackie Brown – Pam Grier (1997) 5. Erin Brockovich – Julia Roberts (2000) 6. Michael Clayton – George Clooney (2007) 7. Harry Brown – Michael Caine (2009)
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SEEDS FESTIVAL DIRECTOR MIYUKI JOKIRANTA TALKS TO TOBY WALKER ABOUT THE SEVEN THOUSAND OAKS FESTIVAL, A SUSTAINABLE ARTS FESTIVAL TAKING OVER THE CITY FOR THE NEXT MONTH.
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s carbon off-setting a lot of hot air? I don’t really know for sure but I do know every time I book a flight or buy tickets to a gig I succumb to niggling guilt for not checking that green box to appropriately deal with the metric tonnes of carbon being expended to justify my lifestyle. From there it’s an effortless slide into misanthropic bitching about airlines and concert promoters with country-sized carbon footprints that seem to be making cynical grabs for my cash and dressing it up as an environmental conscience. The word ‘sustainability’ gets thrown around so much these days it’s difficult sometimes to know when chasing new ways to make a dollar ends and genuine concern for the planet’s future begins. Miyuki Jokiranta, founder of not-forprofit sustainable arts website seven thousand oaks, feels vested interests guiding debates over issues like climate change has spawned a growing trend of cynicism among some people that undermines efforts to constructive
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discuss sustainable living practices. “I think a lot of people expect change or real movement around an issue has to come from a political, economic or scientific agenda,” she says. “People are getting really sick and tired of hearing the political, economic and scientific messages, to the point where people become lazy and disinterested, so it’s important to get creative visionaries to speak up now to say ‘we can’t step away from this’.” Miyuki established seven thousand oaks (STO) two years ago as an open source online database artists could use to research sustainability information and find green-friendly suppliers relevant to their field. She felt the arts community had been slow to join the international conversation about sustainability despite being in a position to contribute some of its most innovative ideas. “Because the arts industry isn’t tied to specific agendas, as in they haven’t had the bottom line affected [by emissions targets] or the way they are perceived by their peers affected,
I think there has been a bit of lag in making art part of the conversation about best practice,” she says. “A lot of people see artists as production for production’s sake, just churning out stuff that doesn’t necessarily need to be out there. “That’s a bit of a travesty because there’s some great stuff out there, but I understand that perspective, so for me the challenge is to get people to have a serious conversation about how creative change can also be at the forefront of quite a critical issue. “The biggest challenge is getting people across on the idea. “Whether you’re talking to a funding body, a punter or the press it’s getting them come on board to support the idea that creative visionaries and culture makers can add their two cents and can be quite instrumental when it comes to sustainability and environmental issues.” Ensuring STO avoided partnerships that could potentially erode its credibility later on was another imperative for Miyuki. “There are international examples like the Royal Society of Arts in England and environmental think tanks in the United States but they are connected with governments and universities,” she says. “It was really important for me to setup a not-for-profit that didn’t have any allegiance anywhere and could exist independently and take its own direction without having to answer to a larger institutional structure.” It may all sound like yet more hot air about hot air but Miyuki intends for her actions speak louder than her words. Seven thousand oaks is inspired by a work of the same name conceived by German artist Joseph Beuys in the early 1980s, in which he envisioned planting seven thousand oaks around the world, in order to bring the transformative power of art into the public sphere. Miyuki will seek to emulate Beuys’ vision next month when she heads 230km north-west of Melbourne to the Wimmera to plant almost 13,000 trees alongside local Landcare group Project Platypus. The tree planting will be the last of several events planned for the first seven thousand oaks Festival, which will use music, visual art, performance and installation to explore the issue of sustainability. A visual art exhibition given the title Adaptation kicks off the festival this Thursday (17) with five artists tasked with incorporating three dimensional works into the Guilford Lane Gallery space. A day of free experimental music, installations and soundwalks will take over the Heide Museum of
Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden, with complementary bus services from Federation Square provided for those who want to make the Sunday trip to Bulleen. Melbourne’s City Square will be incorporated into the program to host interactive public artworks that address sustainability issues over four successive Saturdays. Meanwhile, Bourke Street’s Donkey Wheel House will be used to present workshops, talks, and demonstrations on mixing art and sustainability. Miyuki acknowledges the business of staging a festival is hardly doing any favours to the environment and she is uncertain about taking it further in its current form after this one. But she hopes the experience will provide her with enough information to develop a green festival toolkit that other festival organisers can use to ensure their event is sustainable. “This is the litmus test, the first case study that will form the basis of the information provided in the toolkit,” she says. “We’ll look at the results which go towards creating a checklist of sustainability tips that could be specifically applied to certain types of events like a visual arts exhibition or music festival for instance. “It’s something I hope people will be able to use whether they are a small community event or the Sydney Opera House and it will hopefully be ready to go a couple of months after the festival and will be available for free download.” WHAT: seven thousand oaks Festival WHERE & WHEN: Various locations this Thursday to 24 July (see seventhousandoaks.org)
THEATRE A KIND OF ALASKA The Theatre Husk Oh goody. Quality theatre in the ‘hood – within walking distance for the good denizens of Northcote. And we do mean quality. New company Winterfall Theatre is housed in the Husk Theatre space on Heidelberg Rd. Harold Pinter’s A Kind Of Alaska, their second production, is proof that Winterfall is a hugely welcome addition to Northcote’s cultural environment. A Kind Of Alaska is excellent. A difficult, intense play with much
FRAGMENTED
FILMS
WEIRD HOME VIDEO WITH BOB BAKER FISH Thomas Edison once suggested that the body’s chief function was to carry the brain around. So too for Ron Jeremy. Though his function differs a little. He has to lug around his One Eyed Monster (DV1). It’s a one joke film where, whilst shooting a porn flick in a secluded cabin, Jeremy’s enormous phallus is invaded by aliens, detaches from his body and goes on a murderous spree. It’s classy fun for the whole family. Le Corbeau (Directors Suite), or The Raven, is a paranoid 1943 whodunit from the French suspense master, Henri- Georges Clouzot. A small town is torn apart by fear and suspicion as a campaign of mysterious poison pen letters reveal the dark secrets of all inhabitants. You can draw links to Clouzot’s experience of Nazi occupation as societies order quickly evaporates. It’s tense, sinister, and comes with Tarantino approval, having placed its poster in the lobby of his Inglourious Basterds cinema. Black Dynamite (Hopscotch) is the Forrest Gump of blacksploitation. The 2009 film steals every ’70s blacksploitation cliché and packs it into the impossibly smooth title character. He knows kung fu, was in ’Nam, hangs with the Black Panthers and protects the hookers and orphans. He also beds seven ‘bitches’ at once and avenges his brother’s death to super slick wah wah guitar. It’s knowingly ludicrous. Like when his lady tries to leave. “You can go, or you can cum,” he offers. Cue wah wucka wucka wah. It’s probably when Richard Nixon
attacks him with nunchucks that you wonder how far over the top this film can go. The answer is further. Timecrimes (DV1) is an intelligent Spanish time travel jigsaw. It begins in the middle and works its way out. You can’t afford to miss a single detail. It begins by asking who’s the creepy stranger wrapped in a pink bandage? And why is a women stripping in the woods? Winding up implicating the viewer in notions of voyeurism, causality and destiny whilst delivering a white knuckle thriller. Apparently Cronenberg is remaking it for us gringos. If you thought suicide was the end then think again. Wristcutters: A Love Story (DV1) is a bizarre parallel universe where everything is just a little bit worse than our own. Possessing a dark whimsical humour, it’s essentially a quirky slacker road-movie through purgatory, encountering mysterious offbeat characters like Tom Waits. No one does bleak, addictive crime TV like Denmark. First with The Eagle and now The Killing (SBS/Madman), a ten-part series that begins with a violent sexual crime and follows the investigation through multiple red herrings and all levels of government. Apparently no one in Denmark tells the truth. It’s a cracker. Finally Directors Suite have quietly been releasing a season of Japanese auteur Kenji Mizoguchi’s films from the ’40s and ’50s. Whilst Kurosawa always gets the acclaim, Mizoguchi’s films such as Street Of Shame and the epic The Loyal 47 Ronin possess a raw humanist spirit tackling social inequality with a rare kind of beauty and understanding.
REVIEW subtext is here satisfyingly welldeveloped. The central role of Deborah, who is awakened after having been ‘asleep’ for nearly 30 years, is superbly performed by Winterfall’s co-founder Michelle Williams. She holds the space magnificently, not missing a beat or fleeting expression, bringing the audience with her as Deborah struggles to regain her sense of identity and to understand the horrific, isolated situation she finds herself in. Phil Roberts excels as the doctor who has been by her side for those lost three decades; Felicity Soper, likewise, as she brings to life the sister who has also devoted
her life to caring for Deborah. The melancholy sense of three lives lost is palpably there between the lines with the unspoken needs of the two carers. The question as to why they have given up so much of their own eddies beneath Deborah’s fragmented recollections as she lurches towards comprehension. Although it seems as though much is left out, there is nothing lacking, neither in the performances, nor the narrative arc of the play nor the psychological integrity of the story. Well worth seeing! Until 4 July LIZA DEZFOULI
GOING, GOING, GONE WHILST MAKING A CAREER FOR HIMSELF WORKING ON BLOCKBUSTERS AND OSCAR WINNERS, BOB MURAWSKI HAS ALSO BEEN RESTORING A B-GRADE FILM HE HOLDS CLOSE TO HIS HEART. BOB BAKER FISH TALKS TO MURAWSKI ABOUT GONE WITH THE POPE.
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elcome to the strange and heartwarming tale of an Oscar winner, an audacious 1970s nightclub singer, and an over the top B-grade masterpiece gathering dust in the storage cupboard of a Hollywood parking garage. It all began in 1995 with an obscure 1974 film called Massacre Mafia Style, a cheap Godfather rip-off written, produced, directed by, and starring Duke Mitchell. Mitchell was a nightclub singer peddling a knockoff Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis act. Apparently sued and forced to disband by the real Martin and Lewis, Mitchell turned to filmmaking, one of his early efforts being Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla. Yet it was whilst watching Massacre Mafia Style that film editor (Spider-Man) and future Oscar winner (The Hurt Locker) Bob Murawski, along with his Grindhouse Films partner Sage Stallone, had one simple thought. They had to meet Mitchell. “We found out that Duke had passed away in 1981,” offers Murawski, “but his son Jeff still lived in Hollywood. We met with him hoping to get Duke’s mafia movie and re-release it. Jeff said he didn’t know what had happened to that one, but then dropped the ultimate bombshell on us. He had a movie that his dad had filmed after Massacre Mafia Style, but had never finished!” That film was Gone With The Pope, and Jeff offered it to Murawski to see if it could be resurrected. Not only had it been stored in less than optimal conditions, but there were issues from the original photography that needed to be addressed, such as major camera scratches, bad exposures and out-of-focus footage, not to mention five missing reels, no organisation of the 50-odd cans of film, and no shooting script. Yet about 80% of the footage was perfect and the 35mm film negative was in surprisingly good condition. “We screened the footage and knew we had to finish the movie,” recollects Murawski. “From the first scene, it was totally entertaining and unique, a crazy mid-’70s period piece with a wild, unpredictable story, off-the-wall scenes and a lot of heart. There was a crudely assembled early edit, but the picture was in such rough shape that we figured it would take us a few years
COMEDY
REVIEW
RUSSELL BRAND Rod Laver Arena, 09/06/10 Within a minute of walking onto the vast Rod Laver stage, Russell Brand somehow made us feel like we were witnessing his stand-up in the most intimate of comedy venues. The UK smart-arse hipster was climbing into the audience faster than he could flick his luscious locks out of his face. Once amidst the crowd, Brand was hugged and fondled by adoring fans but, more importantly, he was able to fire off suggestive oneliners in every direction. Yep, it was
typically smutty Brand shtick (and, we love it) but it was also off-the cuff, unrehearsed shtick – this was not one of those by-rote big British stadium comedy tours that allow for no wonderful off-script moments.
realise that Brand is one superfucken-smart guy (his geo-political comments are sharp and lead to him espousing the kind of philosophy that gives you hope for mankind… or, at least, for the skinny pant generation).
Back on the stage, Brand then began to do what he does best (or maybe second-best if those stories of past sexual escapades are really true), he reads to the audience. Especially chosen for us was some Wikipedia information about Melbourne. Brand was able to riff off this for an hour, resulting in belly-aching guffaws and a few moments of clarity where you
Soon Brand is delighting us with supposedly unused material from his last MTV Awards gig before he ends with a filthy tale of anal sex and threesomes. Just before he flits off, he says to tell anyone who asks how the night was that we “surfed out on a sea of sperm and blood”. And that is how it felt. ANDREW MAST
PIC BY KATE GRIFFIN
to get it whipped into shape. It ended up taking almost 15!” He worked between Spider-Man gigs, piecing it together, trying to stay true to Mitchell’s vision. The resulting film is incredible, like nothing else you’ve ever seen. It’s very much a product of its time; rascist, bad taste, the plot is borderline insane, yet it’s also clearly the product of a very personal vision, a little like Ed Wood, but with more swagger. “The comparison between Duke and Ed Wood is accurate,” confirms Murawski. “They were both trying to make the best movie they could with imaginative and ambitious projects that were often beyond their financial means. They didn’t let their lack of money stop them. “On a deeper level, Duke was trying to address some issues of morality and faith. He wanted to tell a story that appealed to his Italian heritage and Roman Catholic background. But, above all, Duke was a performer and wanted to entertain. To make the audience laugh or shock them or make them think.” WHAT: Gone With The Pope WHERE & WHEN: Cinema Nova from this Thursday
MIFF GETS MARRIED, CELEBRATES PSYCHO The Melbourne International Film Festival have announced their 2010 opening night film: The Wedding Party, the directorial debut from Melbourne filmmaker Amanda Jane. Starring Isabel Lucas (Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen), Josh Lawson (Chandon Pictures, The Librarians), Steve Bisley, Rhonda Birchmore, Bill Hunter, and more, the film focuses on the relationships of a family in the lead-up to a wedding. The Wedding Party screens at Regent Theatre Thursday 22 July. In addition to this, MIFF have announced a special event screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, which will be screened with Bernard Herrmann’s score performed live by The Bates Motel Orchestra. Psycho screens at Regent Theatre Saturday 24 July. Head to melbournefilmfestival.com.au for tickets.
BSG CALLOUT FOR PHOTO PRIZE The Brunswick St Gallery is doing a callout for their Picture This $10,000 Prize. Any theme is accepted, up to four photos can be submitted, and entrants will be judged by Karen Woodbury of Karen Woodbury Gallery. Entries due by 4 July – exhibition runs at BSG Friday 16 July to Thursday 29. Head to bsgart.com.au for entry form and further details.
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C U LT U R A L
CRINGE DO THE RIGHT THING
WITH REBECCA COOK As Cringe is writing her column on the eve of Australia’s first World Cup game against Germany she thought it would be only fitting to investigate how the two countries compare outside of the football stadium and inside the arts sphere. Let’s kick things off with visual art. While we have Albert Namatjira, Brett Whiteley, and Arthur Streeton, the Germans do have some talent in this area to rival the French or Italians – Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Ernst and Max Liebermann. But the point actually goes to Australia because not only do we have many excellent artists but we’ve also got all the good German works here right now – and depending on the result of the World Cup they may be here to stay. European Masters: Städel Museum 19th-20th Century is on at the National Gallery of Victoria from Saturday this week. The exhibition will showcase a collection of masterpieces from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, reputed to be one of the finest collections in Europe. Alongside masterpieces by German artists are works by the greatest French, Belgian, Dutch, and Swiss masters of the time. The German paintings are particularly rare in terms of never having travelled to Australia before. Australia 1, Germany 0. When it comes to film, the Germans have got it all over Australia in terms of necrophilia and slasher pics, but other than Run Lola Run what other German films can you name? OK,
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yes, The Lives Of Others and yes, Wim Wenders, he’s pretty good – although considering Wings Of Desire made Nick Cave a household name in Germany, Wenders seems to have kicked an own goal. Australian films have had a bad run of late, but they’re on the improve with some hot new features such as local flick The Wedding Party, which will open the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) in a month. The film that was funded by the MIFF Premiere Fund has been described by MIFF Director as “sassy, irreverent comedy from first-time local filmmakers”. The feature, which was filmed in Melbourne, stars a who’s who of Aussie celluloid including Isabel Lucas, Josh Lawson, Steve Bisley, Rhonda Burchmore, Essie Davis, Adam Zwar, Geoff Paine, Kestie Morassi, Nadine Garner, and Bill Hunter. So let’s call ‘film’ a draw and give one point to each country. Australia 2, Germany 1. In terms of theatre, Cringe has to admit that it would be hard to find an Aussie playwright or director who is as synonymous with performance as Bertolt Brecht. The equaliser. Australia 2, Germany 2. Those Germans have also got a fairly aggressive (if twisted) offence around literature with Franz Kafka, Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann. But we could hold them off with some tight defence by Tim Winton, Peter Carey, and Banjo Patersen. As the sirens sounds, Cringe feels we might as a nation need to bring out the big guns for the penalty shootout – comedy.
WHILE US ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY ORIGINALLY MADE HIS NAME IN THE EARLY ’90S, HIS ICONIC HOPE POSTER FOR BARACK OBAMA IN 2008 MADE A NAME FOR HIM AROUND THE WORLD. HE SPEAKS TO MONICA CONNORS.
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s far back as he can remember, graphic designer, illustrator and street artist Shepard Fairey has always liked to draw. “I try to bring my art into the everyday lives of others,” he says, no doubt having achieved this during his rise to fame with the Barack Obama HOPE poster during the 2008 US presidential campaign. Fairey’s ongoing legal battles with the Associated Press over fair use of images has kept his name into the media but he is now receiving a new kind of mainstream attention through his involvement in fellow street artist Banksy’s foray into filmmaking, Exit Through The Gift Shop. The mockumentary follows French immigrant Thierry Guetta, his introduction to street art, and the development of his artistic pseudonym Mr Brainwash. While being rather vague over his involvement in the film, Fairey admits he helped Guetta out with PR for his Mr Brainwash show “in exchange for his videotapes that covered almost seven years of my career”. But Fairey’s history goes back a lot further than simply this decade. As far back as 1989 his art was
garnering attention. His Andre The Giant Has A Posse stickers created while at the Rhode Island School of Design were posted onto buildings, lamp posts, and skateboards, and developed into the global ‘Obey Giant’ campaign. Fairey’s aim with the stickers was to experiment in Phrenomenology and “to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment”. At the time Fairey says, “only my closest friends knew I was the artist behind it, and I liked how the mystery made people even more interested in the work.
“MY STREET ART IS ALWAYS STREET ART, NO MATTER WHAT I DO IN OTHER AREAS.” “I felt great, not because I was on an ego trip, but because I felt like I had struck a nerve with my art.” Now 40 years old, Fairey is balancing this street cred with recognition in the fine art world and is quick to defend his success in the somewhat conflicting markets. “I do sell fine art and posters, but I also put art
on the street that’s free and open to everyone, because I believe art should be accessible and it should be everywhere. My street art is always street art, no matter what I do in other areas.” Citing a wide range of influences including designers Alexander Rodchenko and Barbara Kruger; artists Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, and musicians Joe Strummer and Jello Biafra, Fairey juxtaposes old and new in the range of mediums and styles he uses. What remains consistent throughout his work is a sense of playfulness and subversion, which he thinks, “is sometimes the best way to create an honest discussion about certain issues that the powers-that-be would prefer to sweep under the rug.” Fairey’s politically and socially themed posters are his simplest and
most effective. “The best political art tends to be the most sincere, which to me means shedding light on both good and bad as you see them,” he says. Recent projects have included posters for International Worker’s Day, Relief For Haiti, the Dalai Lama in recognition of Tibetan Independence Day and posters for the likes of Iggy Pop and The Stooges. “If we stay silent, there’s no hope,” Fairey considers. “But if we make noise, if we put our ideas out there, then maybe we can make a change like the people in the portraits have done.” WHAT: Exit Through The Gift Shop WHERE & WHEN: Screening at ACMI until this Friday
RIDERS ON THE STORM With a crack new band behind her, KIRSTEN VERWOORD tells NICK ARGYRIOU that practice makes perfect.
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irsten Verwoord is one intriguing character. Hailing from Perth, where she wrote for a music paper and presented a radio show since 2003 on RTRfm, Verwoord started writing songs with musical partner and right-hand-man, Alex Archer of the Kill Devil Hills. But when he split to work with Felicity Groom, Verwoord felt betrayed, feeling like Archer had left her for another woman. “It felt like being cheated on from a ten-year marriage… I love her and I think she’s great, but it’s how I felt,” she says. Packing her bags for Melbourne in 2007 for a fresh musical start, Verwoord spent time restoring old furniture in a Richmond warehouse before being befriended by the lads from the Cosmic Psychos. “I made friends with them around town and ended up with a five- or six-month residency playing Friday nights at the Cherry Bar. I built my relationships from there,” she admits. Taking Archer’s wise advice with her to Melbourne, Verwoord set out to right a few wrongs in both her playing style and personality. “Alex’s advice was that I needed to work on confidence in my own ability to execute songs that I write, and play them like I really mean them, so he said ‘Go play 101 shows and then come back to me’ – so I did and now I’ve gone onto this new line-up,” she tells.
THE BLUES BROTHERS Fusing blues and post-punk, BROTHERS GRIM sing about lust, sex, fighting and fucking – “you know, all the good stuff,” JAMES GRIM tells TONY MCMAHON.
liked, Verwoord was introduced to Jimmy Stewart (Clinkerfield) by Archer and went and watched his shows, before finding her way into the Silver City Highway lair through their leader Fergus McAlpin. “I was checking out their drummer Sime Edwards’ style and knew he was who would drum for me… so we spent hours talking about music and our love for Indian food and then we got Adam Afiff [Silver City Highway’s bass player] to play with us,” explains Verwoord.
mainly dirty dog inspired, you know, raucous tunes about love and lust and sex, fucking and fighting. You know, all the good stuff. Our basic premise is to take that old, ‘20s Delta blues and twist it and wrangle it in any way we can.”
With go-to-man guitarist Damian Hooper jumping on board, alongside Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Silver City Highway viola player Jason Bunn, Verwoord would assemble a cracker band that also consisted of fellow Silver City Highwayman, pedal steel gun Seamus O’Sullivan. Throw Kirri Buchler on violin and the Night Terrors’ Miles Brown on theremin into the mix to help build atmosphere around Verwoord’s smokey noir vocals, and her rhythm guitar shuffle and grind, and you get The All Night Riders – Chapter Two.
“I’m happy to be bracketed with Nick Cave. He’s a genius. An absolute legend.”
Having recorded demos in Afiff’s studio at RMIT, to rehearsal spaces in Collingwood, the very fine ‘rough cuts’ can be found on the band’s MySpace. Hoping to record their debut album in August, Verwoord has also applied for one of the 550 spots at CMJ 2010 in New York. After attending in 2009 where she spent time networking and “eating apple pies as big as my head and partying at a CMJ kick-on at John Mayer’s house”, this year Verwoord says she hopes to rekindle a long-term on-and-off (mostly off) relationship with her “lovely” US producer partner in New York, wishing to combine a little pleasure with business and stamp the All Night Riders’ sound in the biggest smoke of all. But, it’s the little things that give Verwoord the most pleasure. “Sime and I have been putting together cheese and wine gift bags for soloists who come and play with us, or those who support us, to show our appreciation… There’s a lot of love in music and the art that we do and we want to show that,” she explains. WHO: Kirsten Verwoord & The All Night Riders WHEN & WHERE: Tonight, the Old Bar; Thursday and Thursday 24 June, the Gem; Wednesday 23 June, the Empress Hotel
Continuing to build her friendship group by drinking at pubs and bars that played the sort of music she
HEART BEATS
A loose reference point here is perhaps Nick Cave, who kind of did something similar, and whose music, as with Brothers Grim, has trouble written all over it. Grim has no problem with the comparison.
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droitly and insanely mixing the darkest elements of Delta blues and a peculiarly Melburnian postpunk murder ballad aesthetic, Brothers Grim are quite possibly the darkest and most interesting band in this town at the moment. A quick trip to their MySpace site or a visit to the Gem later this week will have true music fans disbelieving their own ears and wondering where the hell this band came from. The answer, of course, is from somewhere under a rock, quite possibly on another planet, where they’ve been writing killer tunes and drinking whiskey. Fascinated and slightly frightened, Inpress managed to corner singer James Grim for a chat. He begins with the not-at-all-ridiculous claim that he and his band have invented a new genre: ashtray music. “The first semblance of the writing that my brother and I did, three or four years ago now, we called ashtray music. Basically, it’s just bitter, dark-edged blues. We both grew up with blues, but for some reason we always played rock’n’roll. We never performed them, and before we knew it we had about 20 songs just sitting on a hard drive. A friend asked us to play at their CD launch and as we were preparing for that, my brother played me this song and I was like, ‘Fuck, that’s what I want to be doing, I love that shit’. Before we knew it, we were pumping out the blues.” But it now seems that the new genre has evolved even further. Wait till you get a load of this… “What we call it nowadays is sex-voodoo-Delta-bluesabilly. It’s a pretty good description of what we do. It’s
“How good is it?” he says. “We’re very happy with the line-up. We think the line-up is killer. There’s something really great about putting together a line-up like this. And, of course, the backstage scenes are always fascinating. They’ve all just got great stories. It’s wonderful. All the performers are so road-hardened and just have amazing stories to tell. I feel really privileged. Basically, you do a lot of eating and drinking and talking. It’s great. There’s always something really special about a benefit. Everyone’s doing it for nothing and there tends to be a really great vibe.” Talking of doing things for nothing, Nankervis is both elegant and straightforward when it comes to the reasons for his involvement.
Thrillingly, the Brothers have a studio album coming out later this year that should see them garner some of the recognition they so thoroughly deserve, as well as blowing a mind or two in the process. Given their music is so connected to a live setting, though, Grim says that by necessity a lot of thinking has gone into how it will be recorded. “That’s something we’ve been talking a lot about. We love that old sound, so obviously we’d like to record to tape. I think the simple answer is that we’ll record live and do it straight to tape because that’s how we play as a band. I’m sure that there will be a bit more of a studio sound, but it’s just a matter of finding a happy medium. If we produce it in the way that we want to, it’ll also be done in a way that we can play it at live shows, too.”
WHO: Brothers Grim WHEN & WHERE: Saturday, the Gem
In hindsight, JESS CHALKER would have done things differently after a song she wrote for her fiancé went viral on YouTube, she tells TONY MCMAHON.
“I’ve had a few dealings with the Sacred Heart Mission over the years. I live in St Kilda. I care, I suppose. You know, there’s a lot of sadness and a lot of trouble in this world. And it’s very frustrating when you feel like you can’t do anything. In a way, this is just a way of contributing a tiny bit. Most people want to contribute; I think it’s a fairly common desire. The human spirit sees someone in trouble and we want to give them a hand, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. So, for a performer, somewhere like the Sacred Heart Mission is a fantastic place to start.”
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“Blues used to be played in these juke joints, in these tiny little venues. The Gem’s like that, so we’re more than at home. We’ll be crammed in this corner and under the influence of these powerful beverages, riding on the energy of this insanity. I don’t know, I can’t describe it. There’s a real kick to having this direct interaction with an audience rather that being up on a stage and just giving them a show.”
VIDEO HIT
Amazing local talent are lining up to raise money for St Kilda’s Sacred Heart Mission, concert producer BRIAN NANKERVIS tells TONY MCMAHON.
eaturing a line-up to absolutely die for – including Daryl Braithwaite, Adam Hills, Tex Perkins, Archie Roach, Clare Bowditch, Mick Thomas, Stephen Cummings and Judith Lucy, to name only a very few – The Heart Of St Kilda concert, in aid of that suburb’s Sacred Heart Mission, is perhaps the finest example this year of a mutually beneficial situation for everyone concerned. All money raised goes to supporting the Sacred Heart Mission’s community work of providing food for the homeless and those living in poverty; social work and counselling services; accommodation; drug and mental health treatment; and, perhaps most notably of all, a pilot program, A Journey to Social Inclusion, which has the forward-thinking aim of breaking the cycle of homelessness by reintegrating the chronically homeless into society. Even producer Brian Nankervis (better known as MC of the preposterously cool RocKwiz), despite the fact he’s used to hanging out with rock royalty, is excited as a kid at Christmas in Toorak.
As part of important venue the Gem’s fourth birthday celebrations, Brothers Grim are playing a show in that intimate pub that should be both exhilarating and frightening, possibly dangerous. Almost certainly, Grim says, it will be something to see.
And it seems that, in his role as producer/ curator, Nankervis is making sure that this concert not only has a broad appeal, but is focused on the local community as well. “As I mentioned before, I live in St Kilda, so it means a lot to me to be doing this. And a lot of the people on the bill live in St Kilda, as well. Also, we’re certainly encouraging the comics to have a little bit of their material somehow reflect the suburb.” Naturally, Nankervis is reluctant to isolate any one aspect of the night as a highlight. If someone had a gun to his head, though… “That’s such a tough question. You know what I’m really excited about? Seeing a young band from Geelong called The Frowning Clouds. I’ve heard them on RRR, there’s a real buzz about them. They sound incredible. They sound sort of like a garage rock band from the ‘60s. I always like to get onto a new band early on. So, yeah, The Frowning Clouds, that would be my tip.” In parting, Nankervis emphasises the important point that there are few ways for punters to spend their hard-earned that are more fun or more worthwhile than this one. “It’s a chance to come and have an incredible night of music and laughter and actually be contributing, to actually be spending your money wisely and knowing that it’s going to a good cause. So, it’s a real win-win situation.”
WHAT: The Heart Of St Kilda WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday 29 June, Palais
production can make things a little more interesting.”
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ydney folk guitarist/songstress Jess Chalker got her start by recording a song for her fiancé that became a sensation on YouTube. Now, with the release of her debut EP, Said The Raindrop To The Seed, she tells Inpress she wishes she’d done things just a little differently. “I guess the main thing it taught me was to have a little more faith in myself,” says Chalker, talking about the overwhelming online response to her music. “In hindsight I wish that I had some recordings to offer people. If only I’d known. It might have helped to fund future recordings, especially when that song was featured. I’m still kicking myself about that. Ah well!” And it seems that the aforementioned fiancé didn’t have a problem with all the attention. “It’s funny, Paul has always been the one that races to the computer to see who has commented on YouTube and sent me various other bits and pieces elsewhere in the social networking ether. So yeah, he’s been super supportive and instrumental in my taking the music thing further. He’s a cool guy.” For the recording of her debut record, Chalker added a number of other instruments to complement her own delightful strumming, mainly, she says, in order to add to the storytelling nature of the sound. “I always like to try and write songs that have strong legs when they’re performed in acoustic format as I’m often performing solo at this stage. But I do think that a discerning addition of instruments and arrangements can add to the narrative of the music and lyrics. It’s good to be taken on a journey and sometimes a bit of good
Chalker has had some serious success in songwriting competitions recently, having placed highly in both the Vanda & Young and John Lennon competitions. Pointedly, though, it appears as if she measures success by different standards. “It’s really encouraging, but ultimately if you’ve created something that you yourself aren’t happy with, then no amount of others liking it can make you see differently. It’s important to me that I like what I’ve written above all. I do feel a bit more pressure as a songwriter now. The creative process has changed for me somewhat also in that I’m more conscious of various things that can constrict your natural flow. And my expectations of myself are higher, which can be a good and bad thing.” After only her second gig, Chalker gained a support slot with superstar-in-the-making Lior. Fortunately for Inpress readers, Chalker is more than willing to share the dirt on her touring partners. “Lior’s pretty clean, although one secretly feels that all of this beautiful folk stuff he does is just the development phase of his real ambition to write death metal tunes, bite the heads off birds and go crowd-surfing,” she says. “But don’t tell anyone I told you. There was this singer/songwriter/love-child-of-Fabio in Sydney I did a gig with a while back who kept talking about all of the women he’d slept with throughout his set, which was both funny and weird because it soon became apparent that the only people in the audience who had actually come to see him were his parents.” Sadly, it seems the rest of the band won’t be accompanying Chalker on her Melbourne trip, but she assures Inpress this will not detract in the least from the power of the night. “This one will be more of an intimate, solo show. I can’t afford to bring the band with me just yet unfortunately, so it will be intimate. Plus I’m a real dag so… you’ll just have to wait and see.”
WHO: Jess Chalker WHAT: Said The Raindrop To The Seed EP (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday, Revolver; Friday, Wesley Anne
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ISSUE 1127 - WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE, 2010
TOURS
PRESENTS
Slash August 11 Festival Hall
THIS WEEK INTERNATIONAL YUSUF: Tonight, Friday Rod Laver WANDA JACKSON: Friday Corner Hotel ALESTORM: Saturday Corner Hotel
NATIONAL
ROCKWIZ TOUR: Tonight Palais MACHINE TRANSLATIONS: Tonight Northcote Social Club ROSS WILSON: Tonight Sandbelt Live PRINCESS ONE POINT FIVE: Thursday Builder’s Arms GUY SEBASTIAN: Friday Palms At Crown KATIE NOONAN & THE CAPTAINS: Friday Hi-Fi Bar DAN SULTAN: Friday Forum COLA WARS: Friday Northcote Social Club DAN PARSONS: Saturday Wesley Ann; Sunday Builder’s Arms LOVE OF DIAGRAMS: Saturday Northcote Social Club 1927: Saturday Forum THE MEANIES: Saturday Hi-Fi Bar MILES AWAY, BREAK EVEN: Saturday Arthouse, Sunday Phoenix Youth Centre (all ages)
GIG OF THE WEEK WANDA JACKSON
FRIDAY, CORNER HOTEL
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ate last year Wanda Jackson entered the studio to record with Jack White, in what can only have been a small window between his work with The White Stripes, The Dead Weather and The Saboteurs. Before she did, though, the 72-year-old had a slight dig at contemporary Loretta Lynn, whose 2004 album Van Lear Rose was also produced by White. “They had a super album, but he didn’t have her do anything different,” she told one US paper. “She just did her little Loretta Lynn songs. But he told me he’s gonna stretch me some, so we’ll see.” (Under White’s guidance, Jackson ended up covering Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good and Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ Shakin’ All Over.) If Jackson, a former flame of Elvis Presley, sounded a little cocky, she could afford to be. As a trailblazing singer and guitarist in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, she cut a number of killer singles (Let’s Have A Party, Fujiyama Mama, Riot In Cell Block #9), that led to her being christened the Queen of Rockabilly. A member of the Rock’N’Roll Hall Of Fame, Jackson’s Funnel Of Love was recently covered by The Fall on their most recent album, Your Future Our Clutter.
Dappled Cities pic by Carbie Warbie
UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL
PAUL DI’ANNO: June 24 Espy TRAIN: June 25 Forum MARK LANEGAN: July 7 Corner Hotel; 9 Espy Gershwin Room THE SOFT PACK: July 8 East Brunswick Club BOYS LIKE GIRLS: July 14 (U18), 15 (18+) Hi-Fi Bar SNFU: July 15 Arthouse KEVIN RUDOLF: July 16 Palace STRIKE ANYWHERE: July 16, 17 Evelyn KASABIAN: July 23 Festival Hall SCISSOR SISTERS: July 26 Festival Hall THE TING TINGS: July 26 Palace GRIZZLY BEAR: July 27 Palais ALBERTA CROSS: July 27 Corner Hotel FOALS: July 27 Hi-Fi Bar BAND OF HORSES: July 27 Palace MUMFORD & SONS: July 28 Palace Theatre 30 SECONDS TO MARS: July 28 Festival Hall BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB: July 28, 31 Billboard THE MAGIC NUMBERS: July 28 Corner Hotel LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, HOT CHIP: July 29 Festival Hall YEASAYER: July 29 Prince Bandroom THE STROKES: July 30 Festival Hall HELLYEAH: July 30 Billboard The Venue RICHARD ASHCROFT & THE UNITED NATIONS OF SOUND: July 30 Palace SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS: August 1 Northcote Social Club
THE MEANIES: June 19 Hi-Fi Bar TUMBLEWEED: June 25 Hi-Fi Bar OPERATOR PLEASE: June 25 Corner Hotel DEEZ NUTS: June 26, 27 (under 18) Hi-Fi Bar KARNIVOOL: July 6 Hi-Fi Bar THE SOFT PACK: July 8 East Brunswick Club SALLY SELTMANN: July 10 Corner Hotel THE WILSON PICKERS: July 15, National Hotel (Geelong); 16, East Brunswick Club; 17 Lot 19 (Castlemaine) KASABIAN: July 23 Festival Hall GRIZZLY BEAR, HERE WE GO MAGIC: July 27 Palais ALBERTA CROSS: July 27 Corner Hotel; 28, 29 Palace THE MAGIC NUMBERS: July 28 Corner Hotel YEASAYER: July 29 Prince Bandroom SURFER BLOOD: July 30 Corner Hotel MIDLAKE: August 1, 2 Prince Bandroom ASH, WE ARE SCIENTISTS, LAST DINOSAURS: August 4 Billboard The Venue LAURA MARLING: August 4, 5 Hi-Fi Bar SLASH: August 11 Festival Hall CKY: August 12 the Hi-Fi BLISS N ESO: August 13 Palace CORDRAZINE: August 28 East Brunswick Hotel TAKE ACTION TOUR: September 11, 12 Corner Hotel SARAH BLASKO: October 7 Theatre Royal (Castlemaine); 8 Palais; 9 Meeniyan Town Hall
with those swoonworthy harmonies and intricate layers of melody. The Night Is Young At Heart with its jaunty energy and polite enquiry – “Would you be open to a night of total CHAOS?” – is accompanied by a couple of lasers and Dappled bound about in these dense, green rays as if experiencing lasers for the first time. Dave Rennick’s vocals span impossible octaves and his generous eye contact connects with every punter in attendance. Wooden Ships is glorious and sweeps you up with its swirling dynamics and the closing “la-la-lala” vocals, which echo guitar parts, express total abandon – like rolling down a massive sand dune. Another brand new track follows and Dappled are putting the “mental” (read: awesome) into experimental with this new material. This song is ‘out there’ and Derricourt’s background vocals sound like some kind of mythical creature rooting. Keyboardist Ned Cooke randomly puts on a black beard (on a piece of elastic) much to the delight of his band mates. Although they look like they’re permanently on the verge of collapsing into fits of hysterics, Dappled Cities are capable of creating poignant musical moments that somehow encourage you to tap into an emotional reserve. Holy Chord is a perfect example of this.
LIVE: REVIEWS DAPPLED CITIES PRINCE BANDROOM
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elcome to what promises to be a magical experience!” enthuses one of Dappled Cities’ alternating frontmen, Tim Derricourt. Strands of ivy wind around mic stands and the exuberant, dreamy pop quintet bravely launch into a new song, which confuses the crowd. We try to digest it but wish for a familiar ditty to dance to – save it for ‘ron! When the chain gang intro to Answer Is Zero from the band’s latest Zounds set enters the spectrum, the boys immediately redeem themselves
Allan Kumpulainen’s infectious drumming is delivered in a casual, economical manner. Fire Fire Fire is the secret mojo that would have perfectly kicked off the band’s set tonight. Crowd members raise their hands in the air and wiggle their fingers about à la Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The Price further extends the euphoria. But where are the fairy-light overalls? Another song is debuted and proves to be a dancefloor-friendly belter! Samples and demented keys offset Rennick’s yowls and the results call to mind Pink Floyd. (Maybe it’s the laser show.) Dappled are wacky in a good way, like Split Enz. They perform joyously and display a shared passion for these compositions. Now hurry up and get that new material out already! Bryget Chrisfield
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live@inpress.com.au
Machine Translations Tonight Northcote Social Club
MIDLAKE: August 1, 2 Prince Bandroom FRIGHTENED RABBIT: August 2 Hi-Fi Bar THE DRUMS, THE MOTIFS: August 2 East Brunswick Club FLORENCE & THE MACHINE: August 2, 3 Festival Hall GOLDFRAPP: August 3 Palace Theatre MIIKE SNOW: August 3 Hi-Fi Bar BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE: August 3 Corner Hotel TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB: August 3 Billboard The Venue ASH, WE ARE SCIENTISTS: August 4 Billboard The Venue KATE NASH: August 4 Corner Hotel LAURA MARLING: August 4, 5 Hi-Fi Bar BAND OF SKULLS: August 4 East Brunswick Club JONSI: August 4 Palace FANFARLO: August 5 Northcote Social Club PASSION PIT: August 4, 5 Prince Bandroom TESTAMENT: August 6 Billboard SLASH: August 11 Festival Hall CHRISTIAN DEATH: August 14, Corner Hotel EELS: August 15 Palace SENSES FAIL: August 21 day (under-18), evening (18+) Hi-Fi Bar NAPALM DEATH: September 5 Hi-Fi Bar MAYHEM: September 23 Hi-Fi Bar CYPRESS HILL: September 23 Palace ASLAN: September 30, October 1 Clifton Hill Hotel ALEXISONFIRE: October 10 Palace RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: October 24 Palais PAUL WELLER: October 26, 27 Forum CELTIC WOMAN: October 30, 31 Palais Theatre ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK: November 5 State Theatre LEONARD COHEN: November 12, 13 Rod Laver Arena METALLICA: November 18, 20 Rod Laver Arena BLONDIE, THE PRETENDERS: December 1 Palais; 4 Rochford Wines JACK JOHNSON: December 8 Sidney Myer Music Bowl MUSE: December 14, 15 Rod Laver Arena MICHAEL BUBLÉ: Feb 22, 23, 25 Rod Laver Arena
NATIONAL
PRINCESS ONE POINT FIVE: June 24 Builder’s Arms AINSLIE WILLS: June 25 Palais (Hepburn Springs) REBECCA BARNARD: June 25 Thornbury Theatre; 29 Palais; July 3 Bennetts Lane THE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS: June 25 Palace TUMBLEWEED: June 25 Hi-Fi Bar JONESEZ: June 25 Birmingham OPERATOR PLEASE: June 25 Corner Hotel 50 LIONS: June 25 Arthouse DEEZ NUTS: June 26, 27 (under 18) Hi-Fi Bar Inferno (Traralgon); 25 Palace Theatre COMMUNITY CUP with THE LIVING END, NICK BARKER & THE REPTILES, THE BLACKEYED SUSANS and LITTLE FREDDY & THE POPS: June 27 Elsternwick Park THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT: June 30 Ferntree Gully Hotel, July 1 Bended Elbow (Geelong), 2 Inferno (Traralgon), 3 Pier Live, 4 Commercial Hotel (South Morang) ASH GRUNWALD: July 3 Corner Hotel; 4
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Ruby’s Lounge; 18 The Loft (Warrnambool) THE AMITY AFFLICTION: July 3 Hi-Fi Bar (under-18s arvo, over-18s evening); 5 Karova Lounge (Ballarat - all-ages); 6 Kangaroo Flats Leisure Centre (Bendigo all-ages) GANGA GIRI: July 3 East Brunswick Club REGURGITATOR: July 4 East Brunswick Club KARNIVOOL: July 6 Hi-Fi Bar THIRSTY MERC: July 7 Karova Lounge; 8 Bended Elbow; 9 Corner Hotel; 23 Westernport Hotel. RICHARD IN YOUR MIND: July 9 Northcote Social Club THE LITTLE STEVIES, BEN WELLS & THE MIDDLE NAMES: July 9 East Brunswick Club THE DEAD SALESMEN: July 10 East Brunswick Club SALLY SELTMANN: July 10 Corner Hotel MY FRIEND THE CHOCOLATE CAKE: July 10, 17, 23 Spenserlive THE WILSON PICKERS: July 15, National Hotel (Geelong); 16, East Brunswick Club; 17 Lot 19 (Castlemaine) ERNEST ELLIS: July 16 Northcote Social Club THE PEACENIX: July 16 Sandbelt Live FABULOUS DIAMONDS: July 17 the Toff In Town THE NATION BLUE, A DEATH IN THE FAMILY: July 17 East Brunswick Club DARREN HANLON: August 20 Thornbury Theatre VIOLENT SOHO: July 22 Northcote Social Club RICK PRICE: July 22 Wellers (Kangaroo Ground), 23 Thornbury Theatre, 24 Palais (Hepburn Springs) HARD-ONS: July 23 East Brunswick Club LOWRIDER: July 23 Westernport Hotel (Phillip Island); 24 Corner Hotel THE TEMPER TRAP: July 24 Festival Hall YOUNG HERETICS: July 24 Northcote Social Club DUTCH TILDERS BENEFIT CONCERT with DUTCH TILDERS, CHAIN, KEVIN BORICH EXPRESS, CHRIS FINNEN, STEVE RUSSELL, GEOFF ACHISON, LLOYD SPIEGEL, STEVE PAGE and JEANNIE LUSHES: July 29 Thornbury Theatre SUPER WILD HORSES: July 31 Victoria Hotel THE CAT EMPIRE: August 8 Prince Bandroom; 19, 20 Palace PVT: August 12 Corner Hotel SHIHAD: August 13, 14 Northcote Social Club CORDRAZINE: August 28 East Brunswick Hotel GRINSPOON: September 8 Inferno; 9 Ferntree Gully Hotel; 10 Pier Live; 15 Eureka Hotel. POWDERFINGER: September 10, 11 Rod Laver Arena, October 29 Sidney Myer Music Bowl PARKWAY DRIVE: September 29 Festival Hall SARAH BLASKO: October 7 Theatre Royal (Castlemaine); 8 Palais; 9 Meeniyan Town Hall AIRBOURNE: November 1 Hi-Fi Bar
FESTIVALS
SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS: July 30August 1, Woodford PARKLIFE: October 2, Sidney Myer Music Bowl and King’s Domain DARREN HANLON: August 20 Thornbury Theatre
Rickie Lee Jones pic by Lou Lou Nutt.
RICKIE LEE JONES THE FORUM It seems as though it’s been a long and winding road for the Duchess of Coolsville, whose career has spanned more than 30 years and shifted from initial mainstream pop success and being sampled by The Orb on Little Fluffy Clouds to simply exploring her poetic visions in song. Rickie Lee Jones offers up a deep, slow, burning set of classic material from her back catalogue and new album Balm In Gilead, which marks something of a comeback. For the first time in a long time we arrive late and Jones is already deep into some low-slung funk grooves, over which she layers spoken word. She is accompanied by Lionel Cole on drums and Joey Maramba on bass, who provide the muscular rhythms. The set builds slowly into the more traditional rock arrangements featured on Firewalker. Most of the set is based around chilled jazzy vibes, at times slinking into blues and country soul-inspired material. “Hasn’t Melbourne grown up into a wonderful city,” exclaims Jones, recalling that it has been some 15 years since she was here last. The packed out Forum is entranced and there is an awkward pin drop silence in the auditorium as she stops to tune her guitar. The opening notes of It Must Be Love elicit applause and Weasel & The White Boys follows, regaling us with fragments of distinctly American lives. Wearing faded denim, a t-shirt and a red waistcoat, Jones’s attire gives her the air of a workman who rather dutifully works her way through a two-hour set with no break. As she slips into Young Blood it becomes apparent that Jones is a consummate storyteller, recounting the lives of others and transforming her observations into poetry in a way that brings to mind Patti Smith. Before too long we are at the rather haunting Last Chance Texaco. At this stage she’s left the guitar behind and is sitting obscurely behind the grand piano. A rather cool version of Coolsville soon follows. Perhaps a little wizened by her reported hard living ways, Jones’s voice sounds weathered and a little cracked. The wry patter between songs comes off sounding a little jaded but when she sings, “If grown up souls would laugh this long,” in On Saturday Afternoons In 1963 the seen-it-all-before attitude leaves you feeling as though there is some wisdom here that deserves our attention. Jones is at her most compelling as she delivers Wild Girls, His Jewelled Floor and Albatross. The sense of regret on the eloquent Bonfires is compelling, and it’s hard not to wonder about who the sweetest boy in that song might have been. So many songs, so little time but Jones mesmerises with the honest beauty of her music. Guido Farnell
GREAT EARTHQUAKE, LOVE CONNECTION, MILK TEDDY THE WORKERS CLUB From the opening thrums of Milk Teddy to the closing looped melodies of Great Earthquake, tonight’s show ranks as one of the year’s best so far, and it’s a safe bet that the punters packing out the band room feel the same. The humble majesty of Milk Teddy has rarely been better held than in their closing song Michael. Shoegaze-slanted chords, intriguing halfcaptured lyrics and meandering melodies, with the welcome addition of The Motifs’ Alexis Hall, give the band a lift over other lo-fi charmers. Another band only getting better with more gigs is Love Connection, who tonight prove they’re turning into one of the best acts this city can call their own. With barely a gap between songs, their set is a stunning example of pacing, dynamics, effervescent melodies and motorik rhythms. When a band is this
early into their existence, there is a rate of change and growth unlikely to be experienced later on. Despite playing songs from their album, there is a change in accentuation and possibly unintentional reinvention that means they’re constantly changing shape. Tonight the keyboards sit back in the mix and so forcefully are rhythms pushed to the fore that singer Michael Caterer snaps drumsticks. When hooks, such as the timelessly wonderful Lost City Of Gold, emerge they’re like rays of sun bursting through swelling cloudbanks. Their brand new closing song – a fuzzy slab of radiance forced up against Neu-esque rhythm breaks – is a highlight, but what really shines is the future this band are driving headlong into. Astonishingly more than up to the task of following that set is Noah Symons, who sets expectations low by being a man sitting behind the support band’s drum kit, a bass and electric guitar, an accordion and a xylophone and with (nooo!) a loop pedal. Just when this format has been done to death, Symons takes preconceptions and happily sends them packing. Playing what turns out to be hundreds of parts perfectly, Symons is a master of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Songs tend to begin with simple rhythms or melodies, build to a dense velocity, break away and finish with some of the busiest drumming this side of the VCA. Undone somewhat by terrible acoustics, cheap amplification and average microphones, Great Earthquake nevertheless launches his debut album in style; when an encore of Joy Division’s Disorder seems wholly justified, this is one impressive talent on a steep trajectory. Andy Hazel
NICK WILLETT, THE STARLINERS EAST BRUNSWICK CLUB Wandering into the East tonight, you can almost taste the expectation and excitement in the air. From the 1950s cars parked out the front to the girls inside with their immaculate hair and fantastic ’50s rockabilly frocks, it’s evident that tonight will be one of those nights where all in attendance will be able to say, “We were there when…” Re-uniting especially for this show, The Starliners are on stage, hollering out their hillbilly country and western at full volume, and every single body in the room is getting in line, some metaphorically and some literally. All toes are tapping and there are half a dozen women up the front getting into a bit of line dancing, a sight I never thought I’d see at a gig. They wind up their set and DJ Mohair Slim from PBS’s Blue Juice show takes over on the decks, with a blend of crankin’ party tunes of the blues and soul variety. Sauntering through the crowd and deliberately taking the time to say hello and thanks for coming down to at least 75% of the room, Nick Willett is all charm and smiles before he even sets foot onstage. This personal touch elicits coy smiles and blushes from many women in attendance (including me and my two friends), and only heightens the already thick expectations. It doesn’t take long for those expectations to be met and well exceeded. Willett strolls on stage shortly after 9pm, complete with Elvis-style pompadour hairdo and sparking smile, and immediately sets the room alight with his clean-cut all-American looks, Elvis The Pelvis moves and delectable crooner’s voice. Making eyes at all the girls in the front row from the very first song (a move that doesn’t let up for the entire set), Willett is as engaging and gorgeous as he is talented. He is equal parts cheeky charm and below-the-belt swagger, and is the perfect balance of both. He simultaneously makes you want to take him home and introduce him to ma and pa and do indecent things to him in the back of a mint-green 1953 Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Delivering musical styles from honky-tonk country to rockabilly swing and everything in between, his skills as a singer and performer are clearly tangible and almost effortless. Then, 40 minutes into the set, he launches into some glorious gospel country. And even when he’s singing about Jesus, I still find myself thinking less than wholesome thoughts about a rendezvous with him in the backseat of a car. The range of ages in the audience is something to be marvelled at. I haven’t seen people from at least four different generations in the same room at the same time since… well, ever! The front row is filled with women, from the rockabilly chick with an immaculate swooped up fringe in her early 20s to the old Bettys approaching (or perhaps even beyond) the age of 60. It’s a room full of all ages and all styles, testament to the timelessness of this sort of music. Even as his perfect slicked back hair comes apart and cascades down his sweaty forehead as the show draws to a close, the girls are squealing and the guys are grooving , and not a soul in the room leaves unaffected by this gentleman with a voice that could melt butter. Lou Lou Nutt
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CASSETTE KIDS, HOWL THE TOFF IN TOWN I dump my ungainly backpack at the Toff’s cloakroom, get stamped and enter as the curtains are parting. Howl are lined up like freshfaced schoolboys, or at least they were. Within seconds they’re pegging us hard with what I was going to call electro metal but what others have branded garage punk. Whatever, we can’t stop here, this is BAT (Breakaway Adolescent Testosterone) country! Head-banging-larynx-mangling-land ahoy! Only Pythagoras could navigate those jagged fringes. People in the audience seem hesitant about getting too mobile in their appreciation of the band and through the crowd I imagine I hear a muffled explosion: I think it was the sound of Howl not giving a shit. The drummer has stripped down to his briefs – fittingly embossed with the words “GAME ON” across the crotch – and various band members leap off the stage, trailing electrical wires, like mad puppets fighting their strings. Simply, they’re awesome. Next up, Cassette Kids. I remember seeing them a few years ago at Candy’s Apartment, a pretty grimy basement venue in Kings Cross, Sydney. I remember them being quite punk and riding the electro revival wave all the cool kids were talking about at the time. Tonight they’re playing a tighter pop sound (Spin reminds me of Lady Gaga) a couple of storeys above ground in a venue that appears to know that hygiene doesn’t mean a fleeting fashion focus on denim. Are there metaphorical parallels to draw from these developments? Like Cassette Kids’ rise from obscurity? Like the spit and polish sheen that a little mainstream success and big company backing proffers?
If you have a good business model, why try to recreate it? Fortunately I saw through their masquerade of pop as rock. Very good though.
Birds Of Tokyo pic by Kate Griffin
Birds Of Tokyo predictably came on stage with their headliner tour single The Saddest Thing I Know. Surprisingly the crowd did not sing along to the highly rotated new single, although Wild Eyed Boy, Wayside and Silhouettic were predictable favourites and obviously what the crowd had come to hear. Apart from the usual soaring vocals and tight guitar chops, the band were actually a bit disappointing due to a poorly constructed setlist. It featured a majority of their slower songs strung together with some new, uninspiring tunes they understandably had to ‘test out’ before the new record comes out later this year. Singer Ian Kenny is definitely making a name for himself, with both Karnivool and Birds under his belt. But judging from Birds Of Tokyo’s new material and the reaction of the crowd I think we should reserve judgement on the new record. Shailla Van Raad
Anyway, Cassette Kids deliver a good set, but maybe the volume is too low or the lights too bright because it feels like there’s something going on which keeps everything feeling a bit insular and a bit tame. Lead singer Katrina Noorbergen works hard under the circumstances to pump up the crowd, drawing upon all her natural charisma and physical energy, and by the end of the gig it does pay off with something akin to a moshpit at the foot of the stage. Funnily enough it’s the track after which their new album is named, Nothing On TV, which reminds me of that raw underground gig, except it’s composed more sophisticatedly. Fuck it, let’s make that another metaphor, for the potential Cassette Kids clearly possess. Alice Body
GOSTELERADIO, OLIVER MANN THE TOFF IN TOWN Oliver Mann is one of those guys who likes to take normality and throw it in a pit of fi re-breathing dragons so it can fend for its life. Such a beautiful, strong, traditionally trained voice has earned Antony Hegarty endless critical acclaim, and Mann has a similar knack for inserting his voice into more obscure music. In many ways, a microphone is completely superfluous as his voice carries half way down Swanston Street and Transport’s inane thumping electronica is interrupted. And just as well because birthday celebrations for Her Majesty are in full swing tonight and the crowd might as well be at a football match. I fi nd harmonica braces about as attractive as Joan Cusack in 16 Candles but tonight Mann is working it softly and simply. The mini xylophone for ants adds a cuteness to an otherwise powerful, masculine song and, although he can be quite operatic at times, he is intriguing enough to keep me focused on nothing else. There are a few Melbourne bands that everyone should see at least once. Plug-in City brought out one of the best local EPs in the last few years and TTT’s Ladies In Vogue has one of the catchiest basslines and should be viewed live at least 25 times in a lifetime. So joining members of these two bands together should have been a surefi re hit. But of course they decide to screw with the system and do something very different to both of their respective former projects. Taking it down a few notches, Gosteleradio is more of a sweet daydream with harmonies plucked directly from ‘70s surfer tunes. It’s the light-hearted Gomez sound taken down a notch and every strain harmonised. The crowd swarm up the front with their fl annel love and are lapping up the sounds like warm milk. Wearing matching suede/leather/rope (suethope) shoes, brothers Ben and Josh Strong work so perfectly together I fi nd it hard differentiating who is who at points. It’s one giant happy blur of Sofi a Coppola soundtracks. Oh sunshine – it’s exactly what everyone needs to feel as winter hits hard tonight and noses are moments away from snapping off. And Gosteleradio work it perfectly so that a huge cheer comes up for more but, alas, with a fully commendable approach to the encore they stay behind the curtain. Leonie Richman
BIRDS OF TOKYO, MIDNIGHT YOUTH, BIG SCARY THE PALACE The Palace Theatre is a set worthy of great drama. Although the show was sold out, punters had room to move, crawling up the walls with more than five split-level mezzanines. Indie rocker sweethearts Big Scary didn’t have to stray too far from home as they strutted their stuff on stage first. The band was neither big nor scary (consisting only of two members). They played characteristically Australian indie tunes that are overly proliferated and falsely revered on Triple J. Oh, yes. Yawn. Then Midnight Youth gave it their all on stage, belting out some of their catchy guitar hooks and pop rock tunes. Showcasing songs from their debut album The Brave Don’t Run, the band were obviously looking to capture and captivate Australian audiences as they had already done in New Zealand.
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TURN AROUND, ENNIS
HAVE YOU HEARD?
Melbourne band Ennis Tola launch their debut single and film clip Turn My World Around at Spenserslive in West Melbourne on Friday with support from metal rock group Tread and slick local pop act Parker. Ennis Tola’s flawless stagecraft, where progressive Middle Eastern Rock meets soaring melodies, extends far beyond the tried-and-tested band line-up. Blending edgy and raw guitar-driven riffs with Japanese koto and woodwind along with masterful drums, bass and vocals, they forge a unique sound that demands attention. Tickets are $12+BF from Moshtix.
ROMANCE LIVES
BARB IN THE CARAVAN The Caravan Music Club (located at the Oakleigh/ Carnegie RSL in Oakleigh) continues its showcase of musical delights with Suzie Dickinson and band (featuring Dave Flett and Ron Mahony) launching her brand new album 19 Steps this Friday. The wonderfully talented Kavisha Mazzella plays the venue on Sunday 27 June, followed by the all-star Model Super Orchestra on Friday 2 July. Then, Shane Howard launches his new album Goanna Dreaming at the Caravan on Friday 16 July and Barb Waters & The Mothers Of Pearl showcase their new album Buffalo Mountain Girl on Sunday 18 July. Go and check out the beautiful old stage and candlelit seated theatre-style setting and hear some amazing music while you’re at it. See caravanmusic.com.au for show and ticket details.
PECKER REVOLUTION SS Pecker are the eight-legged underbelly freakmazid of Melbourne’s mean streets. Incarnated several times from experimental jazz beginnings towards hip hop/ rock extravagance, SS Pecker is the ever evolving chameleon of Australian live music. With an emphasis on ‘keeping it real’ and a dedication to organic beats and rhymes, they combine the raw elements of live hip hop with intricate space-rock freak-outs and deliver it all with energy and finesse. They play Revellers North on Johnston St in Fitzroy this Friday.
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Formed back in the year 2000, popular Melbourne based Bosnian band Romantic have delivered ten years of quality live sound to our community. Their unique style of pop, rock and folk party music, has made them the band choice for many memorable occasions. Senahid Mrki has vocal capabilities unrivalled in Melbourne, and his warm and outgoing personality has made him a favourite amongst lovers of Bosnian music all over Australia. They make their debut at Spenserslive in West Melbourne this Saturday. Tickets are $20 at the door from 7pm.
SLOPPY JOPPY Joppy is the project of singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Josh Johnstone. Hailing from Fremantle, Joppy now calls Melbourne home after sme recent shows in UK, USA and Europe, both solo, and also fronting rock band The Happy Endings. Joppy’s debut album, Plastic Disease For The Lonely, is released on 14 June, and he plays the Evelyn Hotel tonight, Wednesday 16 June. You can also catch him at an in-store at Pure Pop Records on Saturday.
JACK’S COLD SWEAT Melbourne indie quartet Jack’s Castle are gearing up for the release of their debut album, On A Colour TV. The highly anticipated debut draws on the success of the band’s two independently released EPs and was produced by acclaimed electro folk producer Joe Hammond and mastered at Abbey Road Studios in London. With the band’s singer John O’Brien accepting an invitation to visit London in August 2010 to learn from the master, Ray Davies from The Kinks, they’re set for a big year. They play Revellers North on Johnston St, Fitzroy this Saturday.
JACKNIVES STABBY The Retreat has more amazing Melbourne musical treats than you could possibly poke a stick at this week. Things kick off with The Rebelles, the biggest girl group sensation in town (go and see if 15 singers can fit on one tiny stage) with help from Little Freddie & The Pops featuring the notorious Fred Negro on Thursday night. On Friday night, the Retreat farewells one of its longest serving and loveliest bar staff, Jade, with a party to end all parties with Van & Cal Walker, The Jacknives then Jack On Fire and DJ Geoff Leppard to keep you dancing ‘til 3am. Saturday night shows no signs of slowing down with the JVG Guitar Method getting the front bar jumping from 7.30pm, then Midnight Woolf and Johnnie & The Johnnie Johnnies out the back from 9.30pm with DJ Xander ‘til 3am. Sunday sees The Moreland City Soul Review back with friends The End and don’t forget Bogan Bingo is on every Monday night 8pm ‘til 10pm, free and adults only. See you there!
STRANGERS, WEEKLY Like five Bear Gryllses of Melbourne’s inner north, Pretty Strangers have set up camp at the Empress Hotel, playing every Thursday in June. The band craft versatile melodies from wood and steel using their bare hands. Don’t miss the chance to catch the rising indie pop quintet, joined by some of Melbourne’s finest young bands.
Pretty Strangers play every Thursday in June at the Empress. HOW DID YOU GET TOGETHER? Ed Sharp-Paul, guitar/vocals: “Terry [guitarist] and I have played together since high school, in line-ups of varying quality. Basically, every time someone called in sick or joined the Hare Krishnas – I’m not kidding – we just got one of our mates in, on account of enjoying their company. The fact that they are all hot players is just a bonus.” HAVE YOU RECORDED ANYTHING? “We’re putting the finishing touches on a seventrack EP which will be launched at the Evelyn in August.” CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR BAND’S SOUND IN FOUR WORDS? “Post-alt noise pop.” IF YOU COULD SUPPORT ANY BAND IN THE WORLD, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY? “Probably Deerhunter, so we could borrow their zeitgeist cred, and because they’re wonderful.” IF YOU COULD ONLY SAVE ONE RECORD FROM A FIRE, WHAT WOULD IT BE? “I’d probably risk disfiguring burns to grab both Calenture by The Triffids and Station To Station by Bowie.” IF YOU INVITED SOMEONE AWESOME ROUND FOR DINNER WHAT WOULD YOU COOK? “Well, I’d do my mum’s slow-cooked chilli con carne, but first I’d need to find out if David Bowie is a vegetarian. He looks like a vegetarian, doesn’t he?”
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COASTING ALONG PBS 106.7 FM and INPRESS present
KIM CHURCHILL has found the perfect balance between surfing and music, he tells KATE KINGSMILL. I’m a solo act it’s easier for me to travel, and I think it’s worth taking advantage of those things. Everybody wants to travel and I’ve been lucky so far to have enough interest in the album to start working in other countries.” Churchill won the National Youth Folk Artist award last year, and has blown away crowds at the Woodford Folk Festival and Byron Bay’s Bluesfest. Tours with a series of highprofile artists including Diesel, Ash Grunwald and Dallas Frasca have acted as an amazing apprenticeship for this 19-year-old artist.
I
t’s an early winter afternoon, and Kim Churchill has just stepped out of the surf. Churchill lives out of a van he bought after finishing high school, and the days of his life generally involve surfing during the day and playing music at night. “I guess everybody has their place and their thing that they do and I’m lucky that mine is fun,” Churchill says. Having grown up in the small coastal town of Merimbula, Churchill discovered surfing – and music – early, and they remain the twin passions of his life, although for very different reasons. “When I’m surfing I go off into my own little world and I don’t think about anything in particular. It’s my escape,” he explains. “Sometimes you just want to turn your brain off, and that’s what surfing does. Music, on the other hand, is like this massive world that I sort of get lost in. Music is more for me like a drug, like I just can’t enough. Having a balance between the two of them [is important]; not burning out with my music and not becoming some cruisey surf bum!”
There’s not much chance of that happening. Churchill’s international schedule for the promotion of his debut album, With Sword And Shield, is hectic. This year he’s already visited the States and done a promo tour of Japan. There are plans to visit Canada, and the United States again, as well as New Zealand and New Caledonia. “I feel like the quicker I can start really working overseas the better,” Churchill says. “Because
WORKING THE FROWN With the onset of winter biting it’s teeth and lashing its tail, the Workers Club will be heating up this Sunday with The Frowning Clouds and Fuzz Fantoms picking up the torch of rock’n’roll’s freewheeling spirit. The Frowning Clouds need little introduction to Melbourne’s community of beat loving hipsters and with plenty of attention being given to their wild rhythms and throbin’ beats, the Workers Club is putting in extra support beams under the dancefloor ahead of this gig. Entry is $7 from 8pm.
“Obviously a lot of the people I’ve been touring with have heaps and heaps of experience, and I’m having to learn things very quickly. Doing that tour with Dallas was like a crash course in the music industry. It was awesome.” One person Churchill definitely doesn’t want to meet is Bob Dylan, his “favourite artist in the world”. “I want to keep him as that ideal figure,” he explains. “Everybody’s got their music artist that they love to death and I want to keep him as that.”
An exclusive gig in a secret location.
Subterranean Homesick Blues, however, will be forever close to Churchill’s heart – literally. He recently had a line from the Dylan song tattooed onto his body. “Always a big thing for me was I couldn’t get a tattoo because I had to stop surfing for two weeks to let it heal. So when we were up in North Queensland and there was no surf, I just did it.”
FEATURING
THE DRONES
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” was the line he chose. Out of all the Bob Dylan lyrics, why that line in particular?
THE DACIOS and BATRIDER
“It’s a pretty profound statement which I’ve found connects with a lot of feelings I’ve had and a lot of things that I’ve done,” he says. “It’s about being an individual and growing into yourself, and that’s what I’ve sort of been doing.”
150 double passes to be won. *
WHO: Kim Churchill WHAT: With Sword And Shield (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday, Northcote Social Club; Friday, Baha Tacos (Rye); Saturday, Baby Black (Bacchus Marsh)
Enter when you buy a Coopers Dark Ale at these pubs:
STANDARD HOTEL THE CENTRAL CLUB HOTEL Fitzroy
Richmond
WILD OSCARS THE COMFY CHAIR THE RETREAT HOTEL
LOVE MACHINE
Richmond
After a couple of quiet years, Machine Translations are back with their new single Telepathic Head (out through Spunk). J Walker and co have been honing their craft away from the limelight and Telepathic Head is the first salvo from the forthcoming album, which marks something of a departure from their previous work. The band now features Ralf Rehak and Al Barden’s two-man drum assault as well as the excellent additions of Robin Waters and James O’Brien (The Boat People) on keys and bass. On a tour of the East Coast, they launch the single at the Northcote Social Club tonight, Wednesday 16 June, with Mick Turner. Entry is $15 from 8pm.
Brunswick
Brunswick
LABOUR IN VAIN THE GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL Carlton North
Fitzroy
COMMERCIAL CLUB HOTEL THE BRUNSWICK HOTEL Yarraville
Brunswick
THE MARQUIS OF LORNE Fitzroy
CLAIRE’S CRAFT Craft connoisseurs and crime racketeers, drop your knitting sticks and your nunchucks because Claire Hollingsworth is launching her long-awaited debut album, Craft Savvy Criminal. To celebrate, the Mel-Perthian will be joined by a band for an intimate afternoon of whimsical odes to stolen laptops, a dressing table, and faux serial killers for a wonderful afternoon gig this weekend! Claire Hollingsworth & The Craft Savvy Crims play the Northcote Social Club this Sunday from 2pm with with Jackson McLaren. Entry is $10 from 2pm.
JJ GIVES BERTHA Returning to one of their favourite drinking haunts, JJ Symon & The Monochromes are primed to take their alternative blues and folk back to Bertha Brown on Flinders St in the CBD this Thursday. As part of the after-work Sundowner Sessions, they’ll play two sets featuring tunes from both of the Monochrome albums (2008’s New River, and 2009’s Black, White & Grey) beginning at 6.30pm.
Single Twin is the cinematic, acoustic project for celebrated ex-Deloris frontman Marcus Teague. Having released an EP in December ‘09, first track Came Home Dead has found it’s way on to radio playlists the nation over, drawing comparisons to the likes of Bon Iver, Elliott Smith and Sparklehorse. Teague has assembled a five-piece band for the Single Twin project, which now includes harmoniums, banjo, toy keyboards and other junk. They play the Edinburgh Castle tonight, Wednesday 16 June, as part of their June residency, with support from Wigwam. It’s free in the front bar from 8pm.
kwp!CPR10795
HOT TWIN ACTION
* Terms and conddititio ioons aappply. See coopers.com.au for details. Exclusive gig date 17/7. Promotion ends at 11.59pm on 2/7/2010. 67
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LILITH IS GOLD
FOX HUNT
It took two weeks to make and almost a year to release, but Lilith Lane’s Gold Diamond album will be in stores and online from 7 July. To celebrate, Lilith Lane and her recording band will play an intimate show at the Northcote Uniting Church with special guests The Bulls (Linda and Bean from The Dacios) on Saturday 26 June. Pre-sale tickets with an immediate pre-release download and CDs are available from myspace.com/lilithlane.
Ida Fox sing songs of death, deer and dogwood flowers. They blow the dust off some traditionals and play their own stuff too. Sparkling guitar, lonesome fiddle, banjo, handclaps and lush harmonies’ll take you from ocean to prairie. Ida skips around in new folk, old folk or alt-country, however you’d like to call it. 5 track EP coming soon! Join Fox for her residency at the Edinburgh Castle front bar this Sunday with special guests The Roseannas. It’s free and the tunes kick in at 5pm.
MAN MAKES GOOD
WELCOME HOME, SEAN In 2008, Sean McMahon, lead singer/songwriter and guitarist with respected alt.country outfit Downhills Home, quietly released his first solo offering, the musical story book album Welcome To Gippsland. Part lament, part celebration, Welcome To Gippsland is a collection of fictional narratives with stunning vocal performances from Laura Jean, Liz Stringer and Matt Walker. Now, for the first time ever, Sean McMahon and Downhills Home come together with Matt Walker, Laura Jean and Liz Stringer to perform Welcome To Gippsland, live in its entirety. They play the Chalk Horse in Yarraville on Saturday 17 July and the Northcote Social Club on Sunday 18 July. Tickets from the venues.
BASHING PATTERNS Birthday balloons will pop at the Grace Darling Hotel this Saturday night. These Patterns headline to celebrate the birth of a particular drummer named Sam. Filled with sound experimentation and post-punk beats, the trio pound away their grungy idealisms and create an array of swirling electronic wonders. Joining them are their one true loves, The JSB’s with their electrified spasm manufactured pop, as well as indie darlings Sleep Decade. DJs in between bands, party poppers and party hats provided. Entry is $6 from 9pm.
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I, A Man have created a collection of ruthlessly scrutinised compositions. The result is an arrangement of dense pop songs, with a focus on texture. An array of the sonically ambient made with rock instruments and lots of voices. They take to the Arthouse tonight, Wednesday 16 June, with support from psychedelic three-piece Cloudmouth and singer/songwriter Miranda Chaplar. If you like songs, people and Wednesdays then this is hard to pass up.
WE LOVE COLLEGE Dual songwriters Glenn Musto and Jodie Lee Bartlett are behind the now Melbourne-based outfit College Fall. Telling their stories within a cocoon of acoustic folk, indie pop or rollicking alternative rock, theirs is a sound that emanates from their roots; the western wastelands of outback Australia. With the upcoming release of their sophomore album The Curse of Us, College Fall play the Northcote Social Club on Friday 30 July and an in-store at Pure Pop Records on Saturday 31 July at 5pm.
SEE YA IN HELL
FEEL THE RUSH Following up the release of their film clip for the title track from The Movers And Shakers EP, Rush In Attack will be playing at the birthday bash for Ravereview.com.au being held at the Evelyn this Friday. There is no shame in melody, this is music for those who are tired of new wave clichés and garage blues. Embrace your short attention span and grab some instantly catchy tracks with both hands. Also playing are Wilfred Jackal, Detective Social and Swing Set Green, it’s sure to be a big night. Tickets are on sale through Moshtix or $13 on the door from 8.30pm.
After a whirlwind trip to shake off the cobwebs at Rock For Relief at the Espy just days back, Hell City Glamours are once again hitting Melbourne this coming weekend for more live loving. This Thursday they play at Next with the all-woman powerhouse Tantalum, then this Saturday at the world’s best drinking hole, Cherry Bar, with the returning Rock City Riff Raff (who’ve finally snared a singer) and their old friends from Chinatown Angels. Yes that’s two cities and one town in the one night in the one bar!
HERE YA GO MAGIC Magic Silver White continue their residency at the Builders Arms tonight, Wednesday 16 June, joined this week by Qua and Alarm Birds. The five-piece combine a love of classic pop songs with an equal passion for kosmische, European soundtracks, minimalism and high fidelity. Headed up by songwriter Jojo Petrina, Magic Silver White features a line up of Cornel Wilczek (Qua), Mat Watson (Mountains In The Sky), Biddy Connor (Sailor Days) and Monica Sonand (Mononke). Entry to the band room is $6 from 8.30pm.
SOLOMONS BOOM BOOM Following on from a huge Pop Boom #1, Popboomerang Records are proud to announce the line up for the Pop Boom #2. The night will be held this Saturday at the Birmingham Hotel and features co-headliners The Solomons and Brilliant Fanzine (EP launch) showcasing their indie pop rock anthems. The night will also feature new melodic Melbourne outfit The Futurists playing their farewell show before relocating to the UK for six months and a rare performance from folk pop enigma Tim Reid. To top things off, PBS’s Lukey D (Everybody Moves) will spin Aussie classic tunes as DJ for the night. Tickets are $10 and first 50 payers snare a collectable Pop Boom #2 sampler.
GET SMART Emily Smart & The Clever Girls are back at the Edinburgh Castle this Saturday to warm you up from toes to nose. Consisting of dark, soaring melodies, organic guitar, a dash of electronic and a hint of folk, a striking and emotive voice, complimented by acoustic indie pop music, Smart’s beautifully structured songs boast uncluttered arrangements with surprising little moments. Grab a couple of friends, curl up in a booth with a scrumptious dish from the Ed’s kitchen and let yourself float away with Smart’s beautifully told stories. Smart will be performing songs from her new EP, You & I, with special guests Renae Brennan and Daniel Reeves. Entry is $10 from 8.30pm.
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MACK ALPINE Electro pop sextet Alpine take their contemporary ‘80s groove to the Builders Arms this Friday night. Recalling nature, Alpine blend ethereal harmonies, eclectic dance moves and copious amounts of glitter to the stage. They’ll be supported by Melbourne’s mesmerising surf/kosmische The Jeraboms and underground indie rock lads The Latonas. It will be a soundwave extravaganza! Entry is $6 from 8.30pm.
PULL A HANGMAN Musical tales of familiar lives are steeped in southern Australian song in Manny Fox Hangman’s Club, with more than a hint of northern suburbs pride. Stories traversing the banal and the extraordinary are buoyed by something of an indie folk-noir sound where bush and Celtic folk traditions blend country, avant pop and trad jazz. The band’s debut EP is a culmination of their developing sound over the last two years, captured by the recording nous of acclaimed producer Nick Huggins. They play the Fox Hotel this Sunday 5pm to 7pm.
CLOWNS EAT RATS Clowns are a group of four 18-year-old guys who play fast, thrashy yet catchy punk rock, with enough energy and buzz to get any legs dancing and any head banging. Their live shows usually consists of sex dolls, monstrous behaviour, copious amounts of energy and tangles of limbs and microphone leads by the end of their set, following in the footsteps of some their local punk rock heroes in Link Meanie, Ezekiel Ox and Fred Negro. Clowns are performing at Rats at Brown Alley on Saturday 10 July with those awesome young bastards The Scare.
THE COLD NORTH Cold Harbour return to Town Hall Hotel in North Melbourne this Saturday. The band will be playing songs from their recently released Dust Storm album as well as older material, some new tunes and some choice covers. Their new album will be available on the night as well as their acclaimed previous releases. Head down, have a meal, a drink or two and enjoy one of Melbourne’s finest alternative bands, and all for free! The Town Hall Hotel is one of Melbourne’s coolest pubs and is at 33 Errol Street, North Melbourne.
Sorted for E&Ps REPTILES COME GET ME! Independent Four twisted tales where rawness dominates. “I woke up late one morning and I got myself real drunk” is the killer opening phrase of One By One, which you don’t anticipate will be followed by “I picked up my pistol and I went out on a hunt”. This standout track sounds like it should be sung by an ageing, toothless grandpa from Sticksville and is harnessed by jaunty drumming and riotous guitars. Reptiles definitely cast their line into Melbourne’s post-punk terrain but there’s nothing predictable here. You’ve just missed their EP launch but catching these buzzards live is imperative. Inebriation optional.
A cute music video using plasticine animation on quilted landscapes would be a good fit for this EP’s title track. Chalker’s voice “is like a gentle breeze” and the poetic lyricism of these songs seems intensely personal and generous of spirit. Piano and strings add a nostalgic quality to Love Story Endings. Chalker is an endearing songwriter who implores your ears to absorb her words (and flinch when she drops the f-bomb). A perfect excuse to head to the Wesley Anne imbibery this Saturday for some wine and contemplation.
TIGER CHOIR TIGER CHOIR EP Independent
Toe-tapping sounds. This garage pop quartet sure love tambourine – it features in each of the seven tracks on their debut EP, even the plaintive closer Mystery For Ghosts (where Tom McGrath’s keys are king). McGrath’s a demon on the harp as well (Gimme Sound). Acknowledging “guest hand claps” in your liner notes is awesome. You can hear a Tim Rogers influence in Ben Mackie’s vocals but at times instrumentation gets a tad too cluttered for the lyrics to pop on top.
Kick-off track Cop Show is more Choir than Tiger but then again a flier on this Tasmanian trio’s MySpace page depicts what looks like a lamb with human arms coaxing the last drip from a goon bag. Poptastic, exultant music where Moog, guitar riffery and tambourine all compete for pride of place alongside vocals-as-instruments in the delightful mix. Young Loving is a woozy, multilayered, upbeat offering that should inspire much spazzy dancing either at Yah Yah’s on Friday 25 or Pony’s 2am slot in the wee hours of Sunday 27 June.
Melbourne indie rock outfit Parker return to the stage after the recording of their latest release The Killing. Parker showcase their blend of gripping rock and infectious melodies live at Spenserslive in West Melbourne this Friday night. Head there to hear some brank spankin’ new tunes!
Local instrumental trio Silo will launch their debut EP, Bits, at the Noise Bar this Saturday. The trio have been turning local industry heads for the last six months and garnered some amazing live reviews since playing their first show only last year. Drawing comparisons of Mogwai meets Kyuss, catch the new instrumental boys on the block supported by The Black Ellen Line, Anna Maria Louisa Theresa, Little Boy Blue and Swidgen. Copies of the EP will be on sale for $10 on the night. Silo also play the Labour In Vain on Sunday from 5pm.
JESS CHALKER SAID THE RAINDROP TO THE SEED Independent
THE REVELS WORLD ON TIME Independent
POSEY PARKER
SEE SILO’S BITS
HEMINGWAY GETS DOWN The enchanting Beth King & The Hemingway Collective draw comparisons to the great Joni Mitchell, John Butler and Cat Stevens with captivating harmonies and unassumingly intricate guitar work, funky sax, bass, keys, drums and flute. Fresh from the release of their debut album Powerfully, Silently, the collective play the Empress this Saturday, joined by Alora, who sit somewhere between heartfelt folk and spontaneous instrument work. This promises to be an afternoon of irresistible music and amazing musicianship – the perfect warm-up for your Saturday night!
THURS 17TH:
THURSDAY IS
Country singer/songwriter Katie Brianna will be finally hitting Melbourne for the first time to play a couple of shows in July. She has had her debut EP produced by Bill Chambers and sung the song Jindabyne Fair featured in the movie Jindabyne, the music for which was written by Paul Kelly. Brianna will be playing on Friday 16 July at the Edinburgh Castle with The Stillsons, Kate Lucas and Heidi Elva, then on Saturday 17 July at the Wesley Anne with Yelka and Nicola Watson.
VIBEZ AT THE BENDIGO Drop into the Bendigo Hotel this Saturday night to get your party on with Party Vibez. Ball deep in party madness, these guys always bring a party to the stage and this time they’re bringing some friends with them. Representing the nations capital will be Yoko Oh No and Outcome Unknown with special guests Yeah Right. For a price tag cheaper than a pint (just $5) you cannot lose! Get a drink in your hand and break some shit.
SUN 20TH:
$5 BUBBLE & $10 COCKTAILS
DJ’S 9PM TIL CLOSE
FRI 18TH:
TOP 40 & COMMERCIAL PARTY TUNES DJ’S 9PM TIL CLOSE
SAT 19TH:
9654 8808 / WWW.TRANSPORTHOTEL.COM.AU
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80’s RETRO TUNES FROM 9PM TILL CLOSE
TRJAEU HOME Independent This EP calls to mind images of landscapes and the forces of nature. The melody lines of Room Rhythms swirl atop complex drum patterns and Hull would make the perfect accompaniment for a contemporary dance piece with its repetitive beat and surging instrumentation that slowly introduces each layer until vocals nestle within the song’s flotsam. You get the feeling that Trjaeu’s compositions are constantly evolving, breathing entities that would truly come to life in conjunction with another artistic medium. Check out their experimental musical explorations at Gertrude’s Brown Couch on Tuesday 22 or at Yah Yah’s on Friday 25 June (with fellow E&Ps-featured band, Tiger Choir).
WIKKED BLISS SEX, LOVE & FIRE Independent “Are you ready for some hot love?” uttered as if through a megaphone introduces Hot Love – don’t say you haven’t been warned! You know exactly what you’re in for when two of the band member’s names are Al Snakey and Dylan Villain. And, “HEY, HEY, HEY!” (complete with punctuating air punches), I’m all for it! Cheesy lyrics (“A pelvic thrust it drives me crazy/ Living a wet dream”), hairography and balls-to-thewall hard rockin’ mayhem without the need to use your grey matter. You gotta love it when guitar solos are mentioned within the lyrics in the liner notes.
KATIE’S BIG ED
LADIES NIGHT
TRANSPORT HOTEL @ FEDERATION SQUARE
EP Reviews with Bryget Chrisfield
SUNDAY SESSIONS AUSTIN BUSCH
12.30PM – 2.30PM SOLO
ELECTRIC EMPIRE 3PM – 6PM BAND
WHAT THEY SAID The New Loutonians are set to launch their debut album, Said Hello! at Old Bar on Thursday. A band of five fellows with interwoven stories, The New Loutonians culminate from 15 years of musical history together, exploring guitars, home recording, and a naïve lyrical thrust. The album was recorded by the band during 2008 and 2009 and it’s finally ready to go! Come and check it out. Supports: The Orbweavers and The Enclosures. $7 entry. 8:30pm.
EVERY NIGHT!
2010
WORLD CUP GAMES SHOWN LIVE ON SCREENS THROUGHOUT THE VENUE
EVERY WEDNESDAY
WORLD CUP
FOOSBALL COMPETITION
STARTS JUNE 16 FOR 5 WEEKS REGISTER FROM 6PM GAMES START 8PM EVERY REGISTERED PERSON RECEIVES ONE FREE BEER!
[BLOC PARTY] FEATURING ‘TENDERONI’
OUT 18.06.10
DEBUT OFFERING FROM THE BLOC PARTY FRONT MAN 71
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HAVE YOU HEARD?
BOMBERS AND LOVERS Melbourne lads Skybombers reintroduce themselves into peoples minds with their new song Love Me Like You Used To Do. The song is a sexy, swaggering lament with a chorus that reminds us how fun rock’n’roll can be. Recorded earlier this year in LA with BRMC producer Rick Parker, the tune combines honkytonk pianos, sleazy falsetto vocals and a rhythm section groove that could impregnate impressionable listeners. Skybombers launch the track (from their EP of the same name) this Friday at Revolver, with support from Luke Carlson (ex-Young Lovers) and Dancing Heals. Tickets are $12+BF from Moshtix or $12 on the door from 9pm.
DAMNATIONS OF GEELONG On Saturday 26 June, thanks to Pan Studios, the Barwon Club in Geelong is playing host to three powerful metal acts: Damnations Day, Sydney’s Friar Rush and The Greeting Method. The Greeting Method kick off the night with their alternative rock/metal before Friar Rush churn out some melodic progressive power metal in promotion of their new album. Headliners Damnations Day have established themselves in Geelong as a strong, melodic thrash metal act. Their live show is an experience in itself, displaying the mix of traditional and later metal stylings. Entry is $5.
BLOWN BY DOZERS The Bendigo Hotel in Collingwood is being ploughed over by Dozers this Friday night! The band that is – no bull (sorry, couldn’t help it). A recent review likened them to “the kind of carnage-fuelled night you had before waking up in a stranger’s bed and rushing home to fry up whatever’s in your fridge”. They’re bringing some buzz with them in the form of The Beat Disease, who have been collecting good reviews from gigs around town. Bone and Fleshworld both join arms to provide some solid stagemanship and the bar will be dishing out the best beer in Collingwood, because the Bendigo ain’t shit no more! Entry is $8 from 8.30pm.
BREAKING UP WITH DAD Dad They Broke Me have made unflinchingly confrontational music over the past six years. To celebrate the release of their third and final album on the We Empty Rooms label, titled Rot, they’re playing one last show at the Old Bar with Whitehorse, Fire Witch, Breathing Shrine and Spacebong. Yes, this will be the final ever Dad They Broke Me show, so get down to the Oldie and show ‘em you care! Entry is $10 from 8pm.
Plague Doctor play the Old Bar tonight and Wednesday 30 June. HOW DID YOU GET TOGETHER? Tim Molloy, vocals: “My brother and I started off as an acoustic two-piece in his bedroom, as a side project to our other band Richie 1250 & The Brides Of Christ. Along the way, through a series of strange and unlikely events, we accumulated, lost and finally solidified the line-up we now enjoy. Unfortunately, he had to leave the country, so the two-headed monster we created has been half decapitated. That’s okay, though; in the end, you don’t want to pull in too many different directions.” HAVE YOU RECORDED ANYTHING OR DO YOU PREFER TO TOOL AROUND IN YOUR BEDROOM? “We’ve been recording practice sessions at our drummer’s palatial warehouse studio, as a precursor to cutting our first single sometime in the very near future.” CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR BAND’S SOUND IN FOUR WORDS? “Pre-apocalyptic, melodramatic, sci-fidelic blues. Kinda?” IF YOU COULD SUPPORT ANY BAND IN THE WORLD, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY? “Tom Waits. Maximum respect for the guy. He’s carved out such a singular career and is a consummate showman. Plus he doesn’t drink any more so he might let us have his rider!” IF A HIGHER POWER SMITES YOUR HOUSE AND YOU CAN ONLY SAVE ONE RECORD FROM THE FIRE, WHAT WOULD IT BE? “Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel.” DO YOU HAVE A LUCKY ITEM OF CLOTHING YOU WEAR FOR GIGS AND WHAT IS IT? “I’m currently in negotiations to buy a pair of bright red jeans that I borrowed from a friend. I’m hoping that my repeated text messages about them hugging my pallid thighs make it easier for him to part with them.” IF YOU INVITED SOMEONE AWESOME ROUND FOR DINNER WHAT WOULD YOU COOK? “I hate to say it, but probably two-minute noodles.” WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE TO DRINK IN MELBOURNE? “The Old Bar, Fitzroy.”
VAGUE… STUFF Sydney’s Naked On The Vague return with a dense, brain frying, psychedelic punk album, Heaps Of Nothing, released by legendary US imprint Siltbreeze. The album was recorded mid-2009 after the band doubled their line-up, ditching the drum machine for a bass player and drummer, to the effect of upping the pop vibe, yet also the visceral density. The Melbourne album launch show is on Saturday 10 July at the Empress with support from Zond and Repairs. Entry is $12 from 8pm.
BOW TO US
FREE NYMPHS The Bendigo Hotel in Collingwood warms up for an epic line-up of female performers this Sunday from 3pm. First on the scene, swingin’ a’capella four-piece The Nymphs will take you back to the 1940s, echoing the sass and class of the Andrews Sisters, with a mix of old covers and originals, cheeky banter and a fine display of frills. They offer a performance that’s part comedy, part nostalgia and a whole lot of Nymph! Also playing are singer/ songwriter Carolyn Bryers, acoustic powerhouse duo She Said and wrapping up the afternoon will be all-girl three piece Missing Supergirl! This ain’t to be missed, y’all! Entry is free!
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Archer & Bow take the stage at the Great Britain Hotel this Thursday, marking a special return to the place of their genesis. Before the band, its future members would compete for the attention of a discerning audience at the Great Britain open-mic nights. One night they played together and Archer & Bow was born. Archer & Bow will belt out two sets of indie progressive-retro rock rhythm and folk from 9pm. And it’s free!
HYBERNATORS DON’T SLEEP After ripping it up at The Boogie Festival and recently taking over Lorne Caravan Park and arousing many tent poles and campers, The Hybernators return to ravage the Espy this Saturday for a crazed neck tie party of dirty rock’n’roll and punk rock. Joining them will be acid ‘60s trippers Little Freddy & The Pops and swampy rockabilly gems The Knockouts. Entry is bloody free, so get yer rockin’ arse down there!
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IT TAKES 2
REVEL IN STICKY STUFF
Melbourne’s very own 2econds are bringing their crisp, new-smelling EP to life as they launch it this Saturday at the Workers Club. Amazingly, between online poker tournaments and touring schedules the much-less-sullen-than-you-give-them-credit-for trio admit they put aside as much as six hours in the studio to come up with their booming debut effort, which has been described as Fall Out Boy meets Alkaline Trio having sex with Sugar Ray. Support on the night comes from local heroes Meet Me At Montauk and contemporaries Option as well as leftfielders Kills Collapse. Entry is $10 from 8pm.
CHINATOWN ROCKS
COSMA LIKES THE GREEN David Cosma straps on his acoustic guitar (upside down) and plays Grumpy’s Green this Saturday night at 9pm. Alongside Nick Carrafa and Jonathan Zion, Cosma plays what will be his last show in Melbourne for a while, before heading up to Queensland for a string of gigs in July. Follow details at davidcosma.com.
DROWN IN THE SEA The Angle Sea take their grimey garage post-punk rock to the Great Britain Hotel this Saturday. Having gigged around many Melbourne venues we finally hit Richmond and offer you up this raw slab of sound. String sonics courtesy of two hirsute dilettantes, tub-thumping from the man from way out west and all fronted by a Glaswegian wordsmith who finds the devil in every whisky bottle… Sounds mighty fine to us. Support on the night comes from Dog With Wheels. Expect harmonies, cracking rhythms and a wayward, down- home groove all combine to paint sound reminiscent of classic ‘70s country rock and Americana. Entry is free from 9pm.
This Thursday night at Pony is gonna be like a sticky and sweet mixed bag of lollies. You know the kind you used to buy for 20 cents at the milk bar with your change after buying three packs of footy cards (the ones with the chewy in the pack – fucken sick!). Oh, the 1980s, where have you gone? Between The Revels, The Beat Brothers, The Loop and Lost Burros cover all the stylistic bases, they’re all quite handsome and you’ll have plenty of money left in your pocket to buy footy cards afterwards. Doors at 9pm. Melbourne rock’n’rollers Chinatown Angels return to the live scene this Saturday at Cherry Bar. After spending several months solidifying their lineup the band is back and armed with a full album worth or new material to unleash on Melbourne’s punters. With their debut release due in October this year, Chinatown Angels are ready to take it to the next level. Don’t miss out on a great night of rock, also featuring Sydney’s Hell City Glamours and Rock City Riff Raff. Chinatown Angels on stage at 9pm and entry is $12.
BMX BANDITS RIDE AGAIN
WORKING WITH CHRIS Chris O’Neill will be launching his long-awaited EP, Entr’acte, at the Workers Club this Friday! Recorded entirely in his home in the Eastern suburbs and mixed via email correspondence by LA-based engineer Andy Ellis, the five-track EP is already gaining attention with the song Three Words coming second place in the Expose Yourself Song Competition. Joining O’Neill on the night are Frankston 21-year-old folk pop wunderkind Kieren Christopherson as well as Thom Crawford and Ronald Blackman. Entry is $12 from 8pm.
On Wednesday 23 June you’ll see Revolver Upstairs as you’ve never imagined. They’re clearing out lamps, shag rugs and couches and building a half pipe ramp smack-bang in the middle of the backroom for the Revs Slay The Ramp BMX comp! A slew of partners are involved, including 2020 BMX Magazine, Colony BMX, Stowaway Distribution, Backbone BMX, Sanction BMX and Focal Point Magazine, who will be providing great prizes for the teams competing on the night. Some of Australia’s best pro riders will be taking part in the comp in this unique setting. Revolver DJs will be providing a soundtrack and there’ll be plenty of refreshments thanks to Carlton Dry. Doors at from 5pm and the night riding kicks of at 8.30pm. Entry is free!
SWAMP BREATH The John Curtin Hotel hosts the masters of sunny psychotic surf, Brisbane’s Swamplords, for the launch of their new EP on Friday 25 June. They bring a cache of face-melting guitars like Brian Wilson’s darkest desires and poppy sing-along thrashed to death on the dunes by Anthony Kiedis, like in Point Break. Supporting are the reduced and reductive TTT and the effortlessly minimal Absolute Boys.
DAVID MURDERS IT David McCormack returns to Melbourne for an intimate solo show at the Edinburgh Castle this Friday. Leaving behind his trusty sidekicks The Polaroids, McCormak will be promoting his critically acclaimed album, Little Murders, as well as plundering the many treasures from his extensive back catalogue. Completing the line-up for the evening will be the surf and indie rock stylings of Trevor Ludlow & The Hellraisers, as well as Melbourne’s favourite son Mark Monnone (Lucksmiths) fronting his star vehicle Monnone Alone. Entry is $10 from 8.30pm.
SLEEP AROUND Sleep Parade will be launching their new single, Mr Identify, the first taste of their much anticipated second album, this Friday at the Evelyn Hotel. The song showcases the band at the peak of their creative powers, signalling a marked departure from their earlier work. This year has already seen the band support UK prog heavyweights Porcupine Tree for the second time, as well as blistering performances at Rock The Bay and a number of their own East Coast headline tours, exciting both fans and critics alike. Supporting on the night will be Engine Three Seven, Sadhana and The Furniture Incident. This will be a huge night guaranteed to sell out, so make sure you get your tickets from Moshtix. Doors at 8.30pm.
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SHORT FAST
Strike Anywhere
OF YOUTH
REPORT
All things under 18 with KENDAL COOMBS accessallages@inpress.com.au
Hardcore and punk with STU HARVEY shortfast@inpress.com.au Interesting to hear Strike Anywhere frontman Thomas Barnett discuss the band’s move from San Francisco-based Fat Wreck Chords to Boston’s Bridge Nine Records. He explained to Canadian-based magazine Exclaim, “Fat was really generous to us from a business standpoint and from a friendship standpoint. They’re nothing but amazing people. But there was a slight disconnect between the roots of East Coast hardcore punk and West Coast California punk. Particularly the Fat/Epitaph world is a little bloated with larger-than-life personalities, and it showcases a strange, weird part of punk. We just don’t relate to it. With Bridge Nine, there’s more of a sense of accessibility and celebration of extraordinary art from ordinary people.” Ooooooooooh young cardinals! Alexisonfire were awesome at Soundwave this year, but it’s great that they’re coming back in October to play proper club shows. Tickets go on sale Friday for their only Melbourne show which is happening at the Palace on Sunday 10 October. Take Action returns! After its debut in Australia in 2009, the tour, which donates much of its profits to charity, is back in 2010 with a quality line-up. For the very first time the much debated Attack Attack! will bring their crabcore sounds down under to headline. Joining them will be San Diego post-hardcore outfit Pierce The Veil (also making their first visit to Australia), and rounding out the line-up will be Melbourne young guns Dream On, Dreamer. The tour takes over the Corner Hotel on 11 September (18+) and 12 September (U-18). In addition to fronting the country’s biggest hardcore act, Parkway Drive, Winston McCall has now turned his hand to filmmaking. McCall recently co-directed Parkway Drive’s impressive new video clip for the single Sleepwalker. “It took a hell of a lot of time and effort, so it’s awesome to see it come out looking so good,” McCall recently told Noisecreep.com. “The song and the clip are definitely related in concept. The idea behind the clip was basically a city trying to consume its population, which ties in with the lyrical content of the song, although in a much more literal sense than intended.” McCall worked with director and friend of the band Aaron Brigg of Motion Circus on the epic clip. “After watching the Parkway Drive DVD I knew it was time for me to make them a film clip,” Brigg said. “I approached Winston and told him I wanted to make their next music video; he straight away had a ton of crazy ideas. I was thinking, ‘This guy is mental, the clip’s gonna cost
THE
RACKET Metal, heavy rock and dark alternative with ANDREW HAUG theracket@inpress.com.au As you all well know Deftones bassist Chi Cheng has been hospitalised since a tragic car accident in 2008 left him in a semi-conscious state. I have some good news to report. After a routine check-up recently by Cheng’s specialist Dr Joseph Nguyen, who has followed his progress for the past eight months, the doc said the bassist is showing marked improvement. He wrote in his progress notes that Cheng was “showing signs of improved neuro function and improved alertness at this time. Increased response to verbal stimuli. Directed movement, with purpose, seen and observed.” According to Cheng’s sister Mae, Nguyen’s reaction as soon as he walked into the room and saw her brother was profound. “When he came in, he took one look at Chi and was floored,” she said. “He couldn’t believe it. He saw a man waking up.” More updates soon. The long-awaited third album from Stone Sour, Audio Secrecy, is scheduled for release on 7 September via Roadrunner Records. Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor recently told The Pulse Of Radio that the follow-up to 2006’s Come What(ever) May is a major musical step forward for the group. “This is the culmination of all the confidence that we gained on Come What(ever) May and, you know, just the fact that for the first time in a long time, this band has all contributed to everything that we’ve got, with all five band members writing and just all the cylinders firing at once, man,” he said. “It’s incredible. I can’t tell you how proud I am of everything we’ve got right now.”
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millions just in VFX!’. But then he said one thing that made a lot of it possible. He wanted to have a high contrast stylised look (known widely as the ‘Sin City look’). With this style you can get away with a lot. It’s not ‘photo real’ so if you can go more arty on your design and animation it will still read visually.” Tickets are now on sale for the Parkway Drive Deep Blue tour which hits Festival Hall on 29 September. Guests are The Devil Wears Prada, The Ghost Inside and 50 Lions.
SHORT FAST REPORT TOP 5
The Amity Affl iction. Their eagerly anticipated new album Youngbloods hits stores this Friday. The Brisbane lads teamed up with noted producer Machine and the results are massive. Tune into Short.Fast.Loud tonight as they’ll join me in the studio to previews some songs from it. Refused. The latest reissue of The Shape Of Punk To Come is out now and includes a great live CD that captures the band at their best, recorded in front of their home crowd in Sweden. New Social Distortion. Not quite yet, but recent Epitaph signings Social Distortion are currently in the studio working on their debut for the label. Mike Ness posted an updated on the process this week: “Going back to finish the album after a month of more writing. I love this record and can’t wait to hit the stage with new songs. This album is a blend of Rolling Stones, Ramones, Hank Williams and Johnny Thunders… STOKED!” When the album is finally released it will be the first new Social D output since 2004’s Sex, Love And Rock’N’Roll. This Is Hell. Weight Of The World is the awesome new album for the Long Island hardcore crew. It’s in stores now. Did someone say tour? Matt Skiba Solo. The Alkaline Trio singer is preparing to release his first solo release since his 2002 split with Kevin Seconds. The album coming in August via Asian Man Records is simply titled Demos. You can hear a track called SOS now by heading to myspace.com/amanrecords.
If you’re one of those people determined to write the best pop song, the greatest blues number or an awesome concerto then Push Songs is for you. Push Songs is an initiative that has been set up to provide songwriting mentoring, artist support and demo recording facilities to dedicated, enthusiastic and emerging songwriters across Victoria. The course has been designed to help six of the most dedicated songwriters reach their full writing potential in three one-and-a-half-hour sessions where the successful applicants will get one-on-one song coaching from Shopfront Songs director and renowned Melbourne-based songwriter Charles Jenkins, and much more. Jenkins has more than 20 years experience as a writer, performer and producer, so if you’re serious about your songwriting you’ll want to go and register your interest right now. Term three applications have just opened and close Friday 9 July. You can apply by heading to thepush.asn.au and clicking on the Push Songs link. Good luck. To celebrate the upcoming Tim Burton: The Exhibition at ACMI, a series of Sunday sessions will be run over the course of the school holidays where you can truly immerse yourself in the world of the celebrated film director. Wander through Wonderland, create a foley soundtrack, discover your inner ghoul in a make-up workshop or direct your own stop-motion animation – anything and everything, all the magic of the movies, is available right at your fingertips. Head to acmi.net.au and click on the Creative Workshops link to find out all the details.
FRIDAY
Bairnsdale SC VCAL and FReeZA are presenting a local flavoured Battle Of The Bands, featuring A Winters Shadow, Bloodlet The Omen, Five Words That Mean Nothing, Caught In The Crossfi re, Oulive, Kingfit and Falling Exixtence at the Barc Basketball Courts from 6pm. Tickets are $5 on the door. Strictly under-18s only.
SUNDAY
The I’d Rather Be Giggin’ Tour 2010 featuring Miles Away, Break Even, Hopeless and The Broderick hits the Phoenix Youth Centre in Footscray. Tickets are available from Moshtix.
Catch Stu every Wednesday night at 10pm presenting Short.Fast.Loud on Triple J. Tonight his guests are The Amity Affliction and Grenadiers.
Spiritual Beggars are currently mixing their first new studio album in five years for a late winter/earlyspring 2010 release. The band previously stated about the new effort: “We used a lot of vintage equipment in this process and we got some really amazing tones. To describe the music itself, we feel the songs are strong and melodic with a lot of ‘70s and early ‘80s hard rock atmosphere… If you are a fan of our albums On Fire and Demons, we are pretty sure you will also enjoy this next chapter…” But there have been some more things to shake things up a little for the Beggars – they have just parted ways with vocalist Janne ‘JB’ Christoffersson (Grand Magus) and have replaced him with Apollo Papathanasio (Firewind). Commented guitarist Michael Amott: “This will be a surprise to most of you, but it’s been mutually decided for some time now that JB would step down from his role as the singer in Spiritual Beggars to focus on his own band. We had a fantastic time working with JB. We remain great friends and we wish him the best of luck! We decided to make a new Spiritual Beggars record and to find a new voice – and we found a killer singer that lives in our hometown. Some of you will already be familiar with him as a singer in the Greek metal band Firewind.” Remember this ridiculous story last year? Well, Ozzy Osbourne told The Pulse Of Radio recently that a lawsuit between him and guitarist Tony Iommi over the use of the Black Sabbath name has been settled and that everything is now okay between them. With that cleared up, The Pulse Of Radio asked Osbourne if there was once again a chance for the original Sabbath line-up to get together again. “Well, I never say never,” he said. “I mean, I’ve got a few ideas, but we’ll see what happens, you know. We did try and do another album, but we’ve all changed so much and it’s… if you don’t do an album that blows the doors off the last one that we did together, then it’s gonna be looked upon as a joke, you know.” Finnish cello rockers Apocalyptica will release their seventh studio album, 7th Symphony, on 23 August.
The majority of the album was produced by Joe Barresi (Tool). The CD’s first single, End Of Me, surprisingly features Gavin Rossdale, best known as the vocalist of the British alternative rock band Bush. The album also features a number of other notable guest performances: Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo plays on 2010 and Bring Them To Light features Joseph Duplantier from Gojira.
LOCAL GIG GUIDE Medusa, WonroweVision, Demolition, Toe Cutter – Saturday, Metal Heaven (1422 Lauderdale St, Narre Warren) Internal Nightmare (EP launch), Contrive, Humonic, Scar The Surface, Meticulous Despoilment and Deliverance We Prey – Friday 25 June, East Brunswick Club
TOURS, TOURS, TOURS Alestorm – Friday, Corner Hotel Paul Di’Anno – Thursday 24 June, the Espy Om – Friday 16 July, the Hi-Fi Testament – Friday 6 August, Billboard Slash – Wednesday 11 August, Festival Hall Napalm Death – Sunday 5 September, the Hi-Fi Mayhem – Thursday 23 September, the Hi-Fi Overkill – Friday 24 September, the Hi-Fi Metallica – Thursday 18, 20 and 21 November, Rod Laver Arena Andrew Haug hosts Triple J’s The Racket every Tuesday from 10pm – triplej.abc.net.au/ racket. Email theracket@inpress.com.au
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THE
The (real life) Runaways
BREAKDOWN Pop culture therapy with ADAM CURLEY Belinda Carlisle gives a damn about her bad reputation. The former Go-Go’s singer has released a memoir in the US, titled Lips Unsealed, with much of the promotional material for the book focusing on her cocaine abuse and constant partying. But it was one sentence in an interview published by Reuters last week that gave away what’s also on her mind as she tries to mine her own past lack of self-confidence for a bit of cash. When talking about the ‘legacy’ of The Go-Go’s, formed in 1978, Carlisle names them “the first female band (formed by women) to write our own songs and play our own instruments”. Though it’s unclear in context whether the words in the brackets are her own or the journalist’s, it is clear that Carlisle is responding to the Hollywoodpushed legacy promotion of the band often given the title of the first to be all-female, The Runaways. With the feature film The Runaways to be released on 15 July in Australia and starring two of America’s most successful teenaged actresses, Kristin Stewart and Dakota Fanning, there’s little doubt The Runaways are about to have their ‘story’ cemented into the wider consciousness. The band were essentially pieced together in 1975 by producer Kim Fowley, hence Carlisle’s firm claim to ownership of something she goes on to also claim as “revolutionary”. It might be a lewd precursory grab at the title, but there are obvious expectations that the film will make modernday ‘stars’ out of The Runaways, if they’re not already. One is the Australian release through Shock of the documentary filmed by one of the band’s many bass players, Victory Tischler-Blue, titled Edgeplay: A Film About The Runaways, the week before the movie is out. The doco was originally released in 2005 on the US cable network Showtime and has been reported to be part of the source material for The Runaways. The formation of the band by Fowley and his subsequent management of the five teen girls are at the centre of Edgeways. Many times throughout the roughly shot but well constructed film, the former members, including singer Cherie Currie and guitarist Lita Ford, call his treatment of them “abuse”, though it’s never settled on whether there was any physical abuse involved. Joan Jett has stated in interviews she didn’t participate in the doco because it wasn’t the way she wanted the story of the band portrayed.
ROOTS DOWN
Blues ‘n’ roots with DAN CONDON rootsdown@inpress.com.au I finally had the chance to catch last year’s hotlytipped feature film Crazy Heart, the story of a somewhat washed-up country singer clinging onto his past glories, not to mention the vices that he has depended on since his life in the spotlight. It was initially commissioned for America’s Country Music Television network to be a made-for-TV film, so to see it making a splash at the Academy Awards earlier this year after being picked up for cinematic release by Fox’s Searchlight subsidiary was pretty impressive. But if you’re a fan of what is mentioned in the film as “real country” music, you’ll probably agree that it is fairly limp overall. Jeff Bridges truly is fantastic as the lead character Bad Blake (though he’ll never be able to top his work as The Dude in 1998’s The Big Lebowski), indeed there are strong performances across the board, but when it gets away from the artist’s struggle to come to terms with his former collaborator’s success – which really highlights the stark difference between the “real country” of artists like Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings – and dissolves into another ‘boy meets girl’ sap-fest, it becomes yawn-worthy. Has there ever been a feature film that covers the rich and fertile ground of blues and/or roots music and do it justice? The 1991 Irish film The Commitments comes to mind, telling the story of how poverty-stricken Dubliners find power, joy, love and fame through soul music. It stands out as one film that truly captures the passion of the music and, to this day, stands up. There have been a few very successful biopics over the past couple of years; following the release of Walk The Line Johnny Cash record sales around Australia must have been just about as high as they ever had been in the artist’s career. The film wasn’t bad and Joaquin Phoenix and Reese
(In Montreal’s Mirror magazine, a 2006 story quoted her as saying, “I’m not gonna participate in a Jerry Springer fest, bottom line.”) Fowley certainly comes off as self-serving and uninterested in the mental health of the teenagers he took charge of. In fact, in interviews in the doco, he speaks of the girls being messed up more as a successful marketing point – an ideal of the ‘rock’n’roll dream’ – than anything to be regretful of handling poorly. However, he also doesn’t come across as a significantly interesting managerial figure in pop cultural history. He ran a “bootcamp” for five girls who couldn’t play their instruments well but wanted ‘fame’, based on a marketing plan for a band that was then run like a business with little regard for its underage employees. Sounds like many acts of all ‘genres’ who came before and have come since. The women Tischler-Blue interviews – with the exception of Currie, who has a penchant for the dramatic – speak plainly of their desire for fame with the kind of perspective of people who haven’t been permanently ruined by it but have seen what it can do. How they were treated and how they interacted with each other led to their demise as a group, but it also played a large role in the fame they acquired in the four years they were together. Whether The Runaways will show this relationship of market force and immature desire is to be seen. Knowing Hollywood, it will likely bolster the claim on the band’s legacy as the first something; a claim to a fame that didn’t do them much good at the time. No doubt (amongst other, better things) it will also inspire some teenage girl who’s willing to let herself be abused in exchange for fame. But then, there’s plenty of inspiration out there. And maybe it’s worth it. Belinda Carlisle obviously thinks so.
Witherspoon deserve serious praise for their vocal performances – it’s awfully brave trying to emulate the distinctive styles of Johnny and June respectively – but as a whole, the film felt like a fairytale. Those unfamiliar with Cash’s story (if you are in this boat, you must read Johnny’s autobiography Cash) could be forgiven for believing that Cash’s problems were gone forever following June Carter’s eventual agreement to marry him. But in truth, those problems were just beginning. Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles in Ray was another admirable effort, but once again, one let down by a fairly limp screenplay. Worse is that there were a number of serious historical and musical inaccuracies that can be really frustrating for fans of the artist. While not actually about music, the Coen brothers’ 2000 classic O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which is loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey) incorporates Appalachian mountain music into the story in a manner that is nothing short of genius. Less genius, though still somewhat respectable, is the sound and spirit of Mississippi blues in 2006’s Black Snake Moan. The storyline really isn’t that great, but the music is cool and Samuel L Jackson actually makes a mighty fine bluesman. There seems to be so much possibility for a stunning film to be made based on any number of blues and/or roots musicians from throughout the years, but will it ever happen? What we’ve seen over the past few years are actors who are willing and able to deliver incredible performances, only to be let down by ordinary screenplays that don’t come close to evoking the spirit of the music. Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, John and Alan Lomax, hell, even Stevie Ray Vaughan all have amazing stories and that’s just scratching the surface. Or maybe we’re just so passionate about this music that, no matter what Hollywood delivers, it will never be good enough. Dan Condon is currently in the United States taking his own special brand of music nerdism to a whole new level. Follow his travels at streetpress.com.au/spa_touring.
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DEVILROCK GRUNTS
THE PUBLIC WINS The gargantuan 16-piece Public Opinion Afro Orchestra have gone from strength to strength in 2010, starting off the year as Triple J Unearthed’s winner to play at the Big Day Out. They were crowd favourites at WOMADelaide then went on to release their debut album, Do Anything Go Anywhere, following on from their vinyl-only release in 2009 Two Sides Of The Truth. Their music possesses strong echoes of the Afrobeat movement from the 1960s to ‘70s, as well as the influences of the African diaspora in Australia over the past decade, yet this is boundary free, totally modern music that sounds as fresh in the clubs as on the streets of Melbourne where it was born. They play a double bill with Diafrix at the Corner Hotel on Saturday 26 June. Grab tickets from the venue.
This Saturday, Melbourne rock giants The Devilrock Four and Bugdust join forces to perform a rare and intimate show at Pony. Sydney’s own epic rock institution and Triple J Unearthed winners The Watt Riot also joins the bill to make for a night of high-energy mayhem. Bugdust bring you guitars that grind through your gut like tapeworm, drums that walk all over you, bass that throbs like the headache you get from 27 vodka jelly shots and vocals that that mix grunt with grave. The Devilrock Four will have you playing air guitar and remembering rocks glory days. The riffs are big, the solos sizzle, and the band whips up a mighty groove. Doors at 9.30pm.
HANNAH WINES Wine, Whiskey, Women is a weekly event showcasing the finest in local and interstate female songwriting talent at the Drunken Poet. This week sees Queensland native, now Melbourne local, Hannah Acfield taking the stage. Described by the judges of Triple J’s Unearthed as being “delicately raw, Hannah will take you on a odyssey that will turn day into night, light into dark and hate into love”, Acfield has become a welcome member of the local music fraternity. Joining her this Wednesday will be Marilla Homes from 8pm.
MADONNA’S A BITCH This Friday at Pony will be something chronic. Ready yourself for a night of bedlam as punk party-train Madonna crash through Pony and entertain way past midnight. Eclectic thrash groove-time band Power Fuck will experiment with lewd stagecraft, creating fun, fun, fun (‘til your daddy takes your beer away). Accompanying the mess will be the babypink, grunge-gaze melodies and thunderous fuzz of Jaguar Spring, as well as the dark and danceable rock’n’roll from Death Valley Band. Doors at 9pm.
SLIDE INTO AUSTIN Inspired by the sounds of soul and blues, Austin Busch delivers a unique take on the style. With twists and turns that lend from old school R&B, blues slide guitar and acoustic tones, Busch combines this with his vocals to create a sound of his own. Catch him at the Transport Hotel this Sunday afternoon from 12.30pm, followed at 3pm by Electric Empire.
CHRIS O’NEILL was destined to make music even before he starting pissing off piano teachers by ‘improving’ Mozart, he tells NIC TOUPEE. Fast-forward through secondary school, where O’Neill won numerous accolades, and university, where he studied film composition, whilst continuing to write and occasionally perform his own songs on the side. Having emerged from academic obligations, the first thing O’Neill decided to do was to put a CD together of the pieces he had been performing live in recent years. Luckily, he had the resources he required very close to hand.
HAVE YOU HEARD?
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RAVE SWINGERS Melbourne’s Rave Review.com.au turns one year old this month and to celebrate the crew behind it are throwing the wildest, most parent-inappropriate party at the Evelyn Hotel this Saturday night. Swing Set Green and Rush In Attack will have you out on the dancefloor burning off the excessive consumption of any party treats before Detective Social and everyone’s favourite “dino popsters” Wilfred Jackal turn it up to 11 for some extreme birthday shenanigans. Great tunes, party food, plenty of party beverages, surprise giveaways and a special guest MC to keep the laughs coming all night. Ripper! Tickets are $10+BF from Moshtix or $13 on the door from 8.30pm.
PIANIST ENVY
Rocketsmiths play the Evelyn on Thursday, the National Hotel in Geelong on Friday and the Karova Lounge in Ballarat on Saturday. HOW DID YOU GET TOGETHER? Ian Apuli, guitar/vocals: “Probably the same way as every other band story. But ours involved hostages and a government cover-up. Or maybe that was The X-Files.” HAVE YOU RECORDED ANYTHING OR DO YOU PREFER TO TOOL AROUND IN YOUR BEDROOM? “We have two EPs and our debut album, The Bones, will be out in August this year. That’s not to say we don’t mind tooling around in our bedrooms.” CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR BAND’S SOUND IN FOUR WORDS? “No I can not. Or, if I’m trying to be more constructive, indie party rock. There, I did it in three.” IF YOU COULD SUPPORT ANY BAND IN THE WORLD, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY? “My ambitions are to have any band in the world support me. Aim high! Maybe The Decemberists at the moment, but a reason would imply I thought this through…” IF A HIGHER POWER SMITES YOUR HOUSE AND YOU CAN ONLY SAVE ONE RECORD FROM THE FIRE, WHAT WOULD IT BE? “Powersmites is quite similar to Rocketsmiths... I guess I would take The Postal Service – Give Up.” DO YOU HAVE A LUCKY ITEM OF CLOTHING YOU WEAR FOR GIGS AND WHAT IS IT? “I generally wear my lucky jeans. Well, not so much ‘lucky’ as ‘only’.” IF YOU INVITED SOMEONE AWESOME ROUND FOR DINNER WHAT WOULD YOU COOK? “Baby back ribs. But I’d probably order out for them. I couldn’t do them justice.”
elbourne singer/songwriter Chris O’Neill penned his first song when he was about 12 years of age, and even then he was already a veteran of the stage, having performed at eisteddfods since he was five. With an extraordinary musical upbringing, O’Neill’s emergence as an accomplished musician was close to inevitable. On the cusp of his launch for debut EP Entr’acte, he admits that his love of music and performing began at his father’s recording studio and his songwriting career started from an unorthodox approach to piano lessons. “My dad is a sound engineer and my mother teaches music. A major influence early on was my father being involved in recording musicians, including a lot of African artists, at his studio. I would watch them playing there or go and see them play live. My favourite singer when I was five was one of the African artists Dad was recording at the studio. Experiencing that definitely gave me an appreciation of stuff outside conventional radio and the music I tend to write, now, covers a broad spectrum in terms of listenability – because of my upbringing,” he asserts. A string of clashes with his piano teacher at age 12, over his desire to improve upon the imperfect work of Mozart and Beethoven, led O’Neill to the conclusion that it was about time he wrote some songs of his own. “I used to take the pieces that I was learning from my piano teachers and add extra bits if I thought they needed embellishment,” he recounts. “The teachers hated it! I was working out new parts and turning them into a different song – not to be rebellious, it was just instinctive. I preferred what I was doing; I honestly thought it made it sound better.”
FREDDIE POPS IN Fab and groovy Little Freddie & The Pops are busy warming up for their Community Cup appearance with two pop concerts this week. A ‘60s extravaganza with “the world’s biggest girl group” The Rebelles (15 female singers – go on, count ‘em!) this Thursday at the Retreat, and this Saturday in the Espy Basement with The Hybernators and The Knockouts. Groovy!
CLAVIANS GROW FUZZ Raucous jungle-punk duo Clavians have garnished quite a reputation over the last few months for their high-energy and impacting, angular-driven guitar and drum sounds. See what all the fuzz is about as they play the third of their residency shows at Revolver tonight, Wednesday 16 June, with Cast & Crew, Bone and The Bad Aches. Gold coin donation entry and Scatter Brain DJs to garnish the line-up. Doors open at 8pm.
SURFY DOO-RIFFS Forget winter, it’s time to wax up your surfboard and head on down to Bar Open this Thursday for a night of crazy surf guitar madness! Opening the bill are exponents of wild punk surf The Busty Insects, followed by Ben Roger’s Instrumental Asylum, another three-piece instrumental outfit. Then The Velocettes fly in with their mixture of psychedelic surf rock before Auckland’s finest example of surf punk blues, The Drab Doo-Riffs, headline the night. And it’s all free! Doors opne at 9pm.
WHITE GOODS On 26 June, Sensory Projects will release the White Woods debut, Bellplay. Friends and fans will be familiar with the track Ballet Tea, which featured on the Sensory Projects label sampler at the end of 2009. The album solidifies the raw integrity of White Woods; recorded to two-tape, these tracks seethe with the
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“We recorded the CD in my dad’s studio set-up, with him as audio guru, and then sent it to [American audio engineer] Andy Ellis to be mixed. Dad gets into my music, but he’s also my best critic. We’re into similar styles of music, and bouncing around recording ideas is easier when you have someone who knows the tracks so well. We don’t clash very much, actually; it works well as a business relationship as well as everything else,” he says proudly. Whilst it sounds like there is a cast of thousands – okay, maybe tens – playing on his CD, O’Neill reveals quietly that it is an illusion created by some great studio trickery. “All the string parts were played by myself: there wasn’t a lot of money to throw around, and also we were running out of time to get everything prepared. I looked into string quartets, but was able to replicate something similar using film scoring software. All the additional instruments other than guitar, bass and percussion were actually done by me.” O’Neill’s need to connect with listeners also motivates him to record – and to play live. “I write songs for myself, but if I can connect with people it is more gratifying,” he says. “When I was about 15 I wrote a song and gave it to a few friends. One ran up to me later on and said she had showed my song to a friend and it made her bawl her eyes out. The fact that it affected someone I’d not met hit me hard – I realised there is a lot of power in a good song. People do come up to me after gigs and tell me a certain song nearly made them cry.”
WHO: Chris O’Neill WHAT: Entr’acte EP (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Friday, Workers Club
intensity of bands like Wire, as well as the sublime pop charms of The Clean and The Straightjacket Fits. As SYNapproved Artist for June, White Woods play Yah Yah’s this Thursday with Pageants and Angel Eyes.
ENCLOSED WEIRDOS Tonight, Wednesday 16 June, Bar Open hosts an eclectic night of weird pop, improvisation and abrasiveness. Recently formed band The Enclosures (featuring Marc Reguiro-McKelvie of Popolice) will perform their catchy pop classics, The Bunyip Moon will engulf you with sheets of blown out noise, newish two-piece Ripples are surprisingly unsure and Wizard Oz will delight with their infectious, dreamy rhythms. Tapes and CD-Rs will be available. The night kicks off at 8pm and entry is free.
LIKE THEM APPLES Under The Apple Tree have supported James Reyne, Jessica Mauboy and Kate Miller Heidke at the Australian Open 2010 on the Heineken Stage to rave reviews. With their soaring harmonies and teaming of acoustic guitar and percussion, they play the Transport Hotel on Sunday 27 June at 12.30pm. Go settle in for the arvo and stay when six-piece funk machine The OMGs take the stage at 3pm.
DANNY BEATS ANIMALS According to legend, Danny Walsh once went 12 rounds with a kangaroo in the boxing tent at the Warracknabeal Show. Moving around the ring like the bastard child of Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, the kangaroo never stood a chance. These events, triumphant as they may have been, led him to forgo the brutality of the squared circle and instead pick up a guitar and kick some ass that way. The Melbourne blues folk player rolls into the Drunken Poet this Sunday from 6.30pm, following fellow ass-whuppin’ blues-man Lloyd Speigel who takes the stage at 4pm.
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HOWZAT! Local music news by JEFF JENKINS Benjamin McCarthy
Despite its celebration of the sax and some glorious ‘70s sounds, Field Recordings is definitely a modern release. It’s available only on the net – as a free download or “whatever you feel like paying” at benjaminmccarthy.com. Ben is also planning to stream his own internet radio station and start a podcast: How To Listen To Difficult Music. And he’s promising to release a new album in the next six weeks, writing on his site: “I’m not signed to a label, so man, I’m just gonna do as I wish. As I make it, it’s out there. I’m unstoppable!” It’s going to be quite a trip.
POP BOOM #2 The Pop Boom continues, with Popboomerang Records running its second showcase this Saturday at the Birmingham, with The Solomons, Brilliant Fanzine, The Futurists and Tim Reid. The label is also getting set to release the third album from Underminers, the band fronted by Hap Hayward from The Dead Salesmen (who are re-forming for one-
night only at the East Brunswick Club on 10 July).
Immersion PENDULUM (18)
CHART WATCH
Down The Way ANGUS & JULIA STONE (20)
Sydney band Amy Meredith leap into the top 10, while 13-year-old Cody Simpson – the Gold Coast’s version of Justin Bieber – makes his chart debut.
Innerspeaker TAME IMPALA (22) April Uprising THE JOHN BUTLER TRIO (28) Hot Mama Vibes ASH GRUNWALD (31, debut)
We Speak No Americano YOLANDA BE COOL (number five)
Golden Rule POWDERFINGER (36)
Lying AMY MEREDITH (10)
HOWZAT! PLAYLIST
iYiYi CODY SIMPSON (25, debut)
Poor Old Saxophone BENJAMIN McCARTHY
Unbroken STAN WALKER (29) Mr Mysterious VANESSA AMOROSI (31) Seventeen JET (35) ABC News Theme PENDULUM (38) No Aussie albums in the Top 10. Iron Man 2 AC/DC (number 13)
Covered By Snow DEAD LETTER CHORUS Closer To You REBECCA BARNARD Avalanche BRITISH INDIA She’s The One THE FUTURISTS
I WANT YOUR SAX
“Those who wish to sing always find a song.” Benjamin McCarthy’s Twitter features that Swedish proverb. After nearly a decade playing with Pete Murray and Kate Miller-Heidke, Ben has found his song. And a wild song it is. His debut solo album, Field Recordings, is the year’s most diverse record, with influences swinging from Prince to The Beatles, and Ben Folds to Eagles Of Death Metal. One song is called A To B, but A To Z would be more appropriate. It’s a thrilling pop travelogue, with delightful detours. “The first thing people say to me when they hear the album is, ‘Gee, it’s, um, all over the shop’,” Ben smiles. “But that’s me. If I stuck to one genre, I’d be faking.” As well as a show-stopping ballad about a woman who has a sex change, and a death metal song about Ben’s cat, Field Recordings features what could easily become the novelty smash of 2010 – Poor Old Saxophone. Ben laments the demise of the sax: “Circa 1975 to early 1990s,” he sings, “if your band had saxophone, your rock was bona fide... poor old saxophone, you used to be so cool, now you’re just old school, the sorry sound of ridicule.” The song is a history of modern rock. “I’m sad to say you’re not alone: there’s the dancing line of backing girls, whereabouts unknown/Guys with 20 synthesizers, 50-piece percussion, join the poor old saxophone and left without discussion.” Ben traces the sax’s demise to the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind. “The world changed,” he says, “and it annoys me a little bit. As great as that album was, I think it killed skill a bit. You can’t just pick up the sax; it takes some effort. But those poor guys, they’re now just so not cool. It hasn’t even become a retro cool thing.” Howzat! meets Ben at Lygon Street’s University Café – “the best pasta in Melbourne”, he says. Ben moved to Melbourne from Brisbane in 2003, spending most of the decade as a key part of Pete Murray’s band, before playing bass with Kate Miller-Heidke. He also won $40,000 on Temptation, which paid for his recording equipment. And he popped up on RocKwiz, starring alongside John Paul Young, and wearing a Sharon O’Neill T-shirt. Ben says a solo album was inevitable, and he was inspired by something that Brian Eno had written: “Maybe you’ve already done it.” Ben cites another proverb: “The gem cannot be polished without friction.” But how can you generate friction when you’re a one-man band? “It’s difficult,” he laughs. Ben played everything on the album, which he recorded in the spare room of the house he shares with his girlfriend, Anita. He even stuck a Polaroid camera to the roof to take his own photos – the result reminds of the guy from The Buggles, or a crazed version of Buddy Holly. When Howzat! saw Ben at the Empress, he introduced his band, explaining where he bought his guitar and keyboard. But Ben is now looking for a real band – an all-female band. “Ben needs women,” he declares. Dirty Lucy’s Nicole Brophy, who also played with Kate Miller-Heidke, will be on guitar, so Ben is looking for a drummer, bass player and keyboard player. “I need chicks who can party and play quite well.” He stresses that he’s not doing a Robert Palmer – “the only person wearing stockings and lipstick on stage will be me”, he jokes. Benjamin McCarthy is a mad pop scientist. His dad – a one-hit wonder – got him hooked on music and recording equipment. Terry McCarthy was one-half of The Monitors, a studio-only project during the days of pub rock. Dubbed “the Aussie Buggles”, Terry and his offsider, Mark Moffatt (who became a major producer), had a top 20 hit in 1980 with Singing In The 80s, which featured the Blakeney twins, Gayle and Gillian, in the video. The song has never been played live, but Ben plans to include it in his live set.
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Ben Carr, Kewti 303 Ben Smith, Matt Katsis Band, Joppy, Jess Hieser Evelyn Hotel Bittersweet Kicks Cherry Bar Clavians, Cast & Crew, Bone, The Bad Aches, Revolver Rock in the Backroom Revolver Daryl Roberts The Spanish Club Forsaken, Hey La, the spinset, Curtain Fire, Fuse, The Take Off, Smoking Harms Unborn Babies Esplanade Gershwin Room God of Music: A Trivia Night, The Sopihisticants, DJ James Steeth The Toff In Town Hanna Acfield, Marilla Homes The Drunken Poet I A Man, Cloudmouth, Miranda Chaplar Arthouse John Flanagan & The Begin Agains, Gabriel Lynch, Bluevein Wesley Anne (Band Room) Machine Translations, Mick Turner Northcote Social Club Magic Silver White, Qua, Alarm Birds Builders Arms Hotel Mark Fitzgibbon, Boogie Nights Open Studio (204 High St Northcote) Mumble (Speak), Jon Heilbron, Ida Hansen, James McLean Stutter Open Mic Elwood Lounge Open Mic Night Bender Bar Plague Doctor, Kirsten Verwoord & the All Night Riders, Steph Brett The Old Bar Quiz Night Marquis Of Lorne Hotel Ryan Meeking The Standard Hotel Saskia Sansom, White Elephant, Monty Sparrow Empress Hotel Single Twin, Wigwam Edinburgh Castle Hotel The Black Hill Five, Cuba is Japan, San Gras, The Revels Birmingham Hotel The Brunswick Open Mic with host Matt McFarlane Brunswick Hotel
Visit coopers.com.au for all details. 80
THU 17
Archer & Bow Great Britain Hotel Art Noise Reveller’s North (downstairs) Beoga, One of Irelands Greatest Modern Day Trad. Bands, Damien Howard and the Ploughboys Thornbury Theatre Courtney Barnett, Jess Chalker, Dan Parsons, 3181 Thursdays Revolver Days of Hot Wax, LeBelle, Secretary Lily, Hybrid Nightmares, Passport For Amy, Any Last Words Esplanade Gershwin Room Ed Reed, Simon Wright The Drunken aPoet Emily Smart Elwood Lounge En Tout Cas, San Fran Disco Ding Dong Lounge Geoffrey O’Connor, Gold Tango, Pop Singles, Isle Adore Birmingham Hotel Graft Vs Host, Abomb Whores, Big Gun, No Real Need IdGAFF Grinspoon, Gun Street Girls, The Moons Corner Hotel JJ Symon, The Monochromes Bertha Brown John Montesante Quintet feat.Yvette Johansson The Commune Keggin, Madonna, The Duvtons, Chaos Kids Arthouse Kim Churchill, Justin Carter, A French Butler Called Smith Northcote Social Club Ladies Night Transport Hotel (Fed Sq) Mal Webb, Scott Edgar & The Universe 303 Mista Savona, ELF TRANZPORTER’S LO2’s FLeet East Brunswick Club Mister Black n Blues Wesley Anne (Front Bar) Native Plants Union Hotel Brunswick
JUNGAL CHIX Roarhouse presents The 4th Annual Crazy Chix Showcase! Bringing fabulous female artists from the margins to the mainstream together to put on one helluva show. Featuring the almighty Jungal with very special guests The Side Saddle Gals and Melbourne’s diva queen Isabel Hertaeg as MC. Showcases include comedy, poetry and music from Justine Sless, Fiona Claire, Prairie Nischler, KNiko, ChiaroSky, Donna Williams, Karla Dondio, Susan O’Shea and much, much more! It all happens on Sunday 27 June at the Noise Bar in Brunswick, with doors opening at 3pm. There will even be a BBQ for early birds! New Loutonions, The Orbweavers, The Enclosures The Old Bar Pretty Strangers, The Rapphaellas, Star & Cyprus Empress Hotel Princess One Point Five, Georgia Fields, Ben Montero Builders Arms Hotel Pyrene, The Shadow League, Sonic Scout, Lasso Brunswick Hotel Red Ink, The Rocketsmiths, Royal Chant Evelyn Hotel Rezzalp, Ben Abraham, Love Story with 1928 The Toff In Town Riverside Travellers The Spanish Club Seri Vida, James Danial Bender Bar Soul Safari Cherry Bar The Beat Brothers, The Loop, Lost Burros, The Revels, Slow Dance Pony The Bonniwells, Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk, The Living Eyes Grace Darling Hotel The Boy Who Spoke Clouds, Heidi Elva Wesley Anne (Band Room) The Busty Insects, Ben Rogers and Instrumental Asylum, The Velocettes, The Drab Doo Riffs Bar Open The Good China, Institut Polaire, The Bon Scotts Workers Club The Promises Edinburgh Castle Hotel
The Rebelles, Little Freddie & The Pops Retreat Hotel The Rebelles, Little Freddie & The Pops The Retreat Hotel White Woods, Pageants, Angel Eyes, Hissy Miyake, Pauli Douglas Yah Yah’s
FRI 18
Alpine, Jeraboms, The Latonas Builders Arms Hotel Ben Cue, with Supports Reveller’s North (downstairs) Benzene, Twenty Two Hundred, This Vs That The Public Bar Brightside Elwood Lounge Burly Friday Live Burlesque Burlesque Bar Chris O’Neill, Kieran Christopherson, Thom Crawford, Ronald Blackman Workers Club Citrus Jam, Team Rad, Berry Bodies IdGAFF Cola Wars, Behind Crimson Eyes, The Statics Northcote Social Club Dad They Broke Me, Whitehorse, Firewitch, Breathing Shrine, Space Bong The Old Bar Dave McCormack, Trevor Ludlow & The Hellraisers, Monnone Alone Edinburgh Castle Hotel
DJ Fanta Pants Marquis Of Lorne Hotel Dozers, Beat Disease Bendigo Hotel Emily Smart Trio, Jackson Fish Bender Bar Ennis Tola, Tread, Parker Spenserslive Fame 80’s Night Ding Dong Lounge Hi Life Wedding, The Bell Parade, Steve Lane & The Autocrates, Second Hand Heart Brunswick Hotel Jack On Fire, The Jacknives, Van & Cal Walker, DJ Geoff Leppard The Retreat Hotel Jailbait, Electric Mudcat, The California Soulman, Richie 1250 Yah Yah’s (Upstairs) Jess Chalker, Claire Jenkins, Claire Jenkins Wesley Anne (Band Room) Josh Owen Band The Basement Discs Katie Noonan & The Captains, The Jezabels, Brackets HiFi Bar Launch party fundraiser ‘The Quarterly Retort’ 303 Luke Yeaman, Johnny Dragon, DJ JV Ruby’s Lounge Madonna, Power Fuck, Jaguar Spring, Death Valley Band, Where’s Jerome Pony
Mike Noga, Davey Lane Empress Hotel Ms Butt, Dj Eamon Honey Bar NTI BluAfterGlow Poprocks at the Toff, Dr Phil Smith The Toff In Town Renaissance Man, Generik, Mu-Gen, Slap N Dash, Scattermish, Matt Cant, Lewis cancut Esplanade Gershwin Room Russia, Vice Grip Pussies, Baptism of Uzi Cherry Bar Skybombers, Luke Carlson, Dancing Heals, WAX! Weekly Audio Extravaganza, Revolver Fridays: NQR Revolver Sleep Parade, Engine Three Seven, Sadhana, The Furniture Incident Evelyn Hotel Son Of A Gun Wesley Anne (Front Bar) SS Pecker, with Supports Reveller’s North (upstairs) Suzie Dickinson, Dave Flett, Ron Mahony Caravan Music Club The Bombay Royale, Sam Evans, Josh Bennett Bar Open
HUGE KIM DEAL Nineteen-year-old guitarist and songwriter Kim Churchill is a truly gifted soul. His achievements so far include winning National Youth Folk Artist Of The Year 2009, a national tour with Dallas Frasca, performing alongside artists such as Ash Grunwald, Jeff Lang, The Fumes, Lloyd Spiegel, and most recently Seasick Steve plus sharing the bill with acts such as Xavier Rudd, Ben Harper and John Butler. Churchill has just released his debut album, With Sword And Shield, and the single Loving Home is receiving regular national airplay. Before he heads to the USA and Canada, catch him at the Northcote Social Club this Thursday with Justin Carter and A French Butler Called Smith. Entry is $12/$15 from 7.30pm.
What are you doing AFTER DARK on July 17?
The Devils Ride Out, My Left Boot, Immolate, Ancient Man Birmingham Hotel The Gun Runners, ANCHORS, The Grenadiers, Human Pollution Arthouse The U.V Race, The Drab Doo Riffs, Constant Mongrel, Ash Naylor Yah Yah’s The Wildes Builders Arms Hotel Front Bar Through The Eleventh Hour, When We Fall, Empires Fall Barwon Club TOP 40 & COMMERCIAL PARTY TUNES, DJ’s Transport Hotel (Fed Sq) Traditional Irish Music Session, Dan Bourke & Friends The Drunken Poet Voodoo Economic, The Holy Sea, Kirsten Verwood Grace Darling Hotel Wanda Jackson, Itchy Fingers Corner Hotel
SAT 19
2econds, Meet Me at Montauk, Option, Kills Collapse Workers Club 80’s RETRO TUNES, DJ’s Transport Hotel (Fed Sq) Alestorm, Claim Throne, Be’Lakor Corner Hotel Bass Odyssey, Samari, Luke Lawrence, Syme Tollens, Darko BluAfterGlow Ben Abraham, with Supports Reveller’s North (upstairs) Ben Carr Trio Wesley Anne (Front Bar) Beth & The Hemingway Collective, Alora Empress Hotel, Arvo Show Bois et Charbon Builders Arms Hotel Front Bar Bugdust, Devil Rock 4, The Watt Riot, In Tongues, Pink Fitt Pony Cirque De Femmes Burlesque Bar Cold Harbour Townhall Hotel North Melbourne D Squared Elwood Lounge DJ Ash Honey Bar
Dub The Magic Dragon, El Moth & The Turbo Rads Bar Open Emily Smart & The Clever Girls, Renae Brennen, Daniel Reeves Edinburgh Castle Hotel Hell City Glamours, Chinatown Angels, Rock City Riff Raff Cherry Bar Indigo Children, Nacional, Royston Vosie, The Late Show Revolver Jack Castle Reveller’s North (downstairs) Japan For, Kemp, A New Born Science, DJ Ken Eavel, Vinyl Vendetta Barwon Club Little Freddie & The Pops, The Hybernators, The Knockouts Esplanade Basement Little John Labour In Vain Love of Diagrams, Dick Driver, Miniature Submarines Northcote Social Club Midnight Woolf, Plague Doctor, JVG Guitar Method, DJ Xander The Retreat Hotel Mike & Bill Harvester Moon Café Miles Away, Break Even, Hopeless, The Broderick, Fires Of Waco Arthouse Mink Jaguar, The Ronson Hangup, The Palenecks, Tasty Cakes Yah Yah’s Nick Charles St Andrew’s Hotel, Arvo Show Party Vibez, Yeah Right, Yoko Oh No, Outcome Unknown Bendigo Hotel Phil Gionfriddo Marquis Of Lorne Hotel Phil Para Esplanade Lounge Rave Review’s ‘First B’day Bash’, Wilfred Jackal, Detective Social, Rush In Attack, Swing Set Green Evelyn Hotel Red Season, Caroline Crivera Bender Bar Rick Doherty, Mad Love, Valkyer, Roger Morgan & Band, Elephant Empress Hotel Romantic Spenserlive Royal Control, Straw King Eye, Champagne Reggae 303
kwp!CPR10778
WED 16
The Enclosures, The Bunyip Moon, Ripples, Wizard Oz Bar Open
Wed. 16th (Wine, Whiskey, Women) 8pm: Hannah Acfield 9pm: Marilla Homes Thurs. 17th 8pm: Ed Reed 9pm: Simon Wright Fri. 18th 6pm: Traditional Irish Music session with Dan Bourke & friends Sat. 19th 9pm: The Idlehoes Sun. 20th 4pm: Lloyd Spiegel & Arun 6.30pm: Danny Walsh Tues. 22nd 8pm: Weekly Trivia
All Shows Always Free! The Drunken Poet, 65 Peel Street (Directly opposite Queen Vic Market). Phone: 03 9348 9797 www.myspace.com/drunkenpoets 81
gigguide@inpress.com.au Shwayze feat Cisco Adler, The Knux, Jason Smith, Red Ink, Dublin Aunts Esplanade Lounge & Gershwin Room Silo, The Black Ellen line, Anna Maria Louisa Theresa, Little Boy Blue, Swidgen Noise Bar Slacquer, Tim Woods & The Dirty Shoes, Greenroom, Young Raptors, Mark Nixx, The Vera Knights Brunswick Hotel Spoonful, Paul Winstanley, Kit Warhurst, Andre Warhurst, David Lord Union Hotel Brunswick Tang, The Dirty Sirkus, DRSS The Public Bar That Rare Bird St Andrew’s Hotel The Angle Sea, Dog With Wheels Great Britain Hotel The Enclosures, The Melodies, Fatti Francis Builders Arms Hotel The Gin Club, Eagle and the Worm!, Joel Silbersher and The Baggage Handlers East Brunswick Club The House Of Slunk, Andee Frost The Toff In Town The Idlehoes The Drunken Poet
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The Meanies, Jam, Kit and Wanet, Wicked City, Money For Rope HiFi Bar The Ska Vendors, Loonee Tunes, Thee Wylde Oscars Ruby’s Lounge The Solomons, Brilliant Fanzine, The Futurists, Tim Reid Birmingham Hotel These Patterns, The JSBs, Sleep Decade Grace Darling Hotel Tobias Cummings, & guests Edinburgh Castle, early show Tone Deaf, Noxshi, Dead Actors Club Ding Dong Lounge Ya Aha, Adam Cole & The Afterland Band, DJ Drawfour The Old Bar
SUN 20
A French Butler Called Smith, Couching Tiger DJ’s Bar Open Alexis Nicole, The Missing Pieces, 3 Card Monte, CC Thornley Brunswick Hotel Andrew and Alison Honey Bar
Austin Busch, Electric Empire Transport Hotel (Fed Sq) Ben Smith Band The Carringbush Hotel Big Left, The Lights, Second Chase, Swamp Donkey, Black Creek, Lounge Detectives Esplanade Gershwin Room Cazi, & guests Builders Arms Hotel Front Bar Chicken House St Andrew’s Hotel Claire Hollingsworth, The Craft Savvy Crims Northcote Social Club, Arvo Show Coda, Drunk Mums Arthouse Collard, Greens & Gravy Union Hotel Brunswick Dan Parsons, D Rogers, James O’Brien Builders Arms Hotel Ducks in the Mud, Genevieve & Jezebel, The Vertical Smiles, Lucy Wise Open Studio (204 High St Northcote) Earl Grey Policy, Julianne Jessop Wesley Anne (Band Room) Emily Ulman Great Britain Hotel Gerry Hale’s Uncle Bill, Atrocity Burlesque Burlesque Bar
BOYS ARE GIRLS Synth pop rockers Boys Boys Boys! have earned quite the reputation for themselves in the last 12 months. An unmissable presence on the Perth live circuit, they’ve provided killer support for Uffie and Matt & Kim as well as taking the stage at Parklife, Laneway and Summerdayze. Their catchy pop riffs, sugary all-girl vocal harmonies, ‘80s electronica and a fun filled onstage presence are bound to win you over, so catch Boys Boys Boys! when they hit Melbourne to play Shake Some Action at Onesixone on Thursday 22 July. Ida Fox, & guests Edinburgh Castle, early show James Kenyon & The Lloyd Weir Wesley Anne (Front Bar) Jimi Hocking’s Blues Machine Sandbelt Hotel JVG Guitar Method The Standard Hotel Lloyd Spiegel, Arun, Danny Walsh The Drunken Poet Lucy Gallant, Katt Beames, The SoulaR Sky Evelyn Hotel
Michelle Meehan, Terry Hart The Chandelier Room Moreland City Soul Revue, The End The Retreat Hotel Mr Brady, Frankie Andrew, Nic Tate, Nathan Davis, Short Film By Vic Farrel 303, Arvo Show Open Decks Bender Bar Petticoat Lane Elwood Lounge Phil Para Band Manhattan Hotel
Revolver Sundays Revolver Smoking Gun, The Adam Rudeyeair Band, Pete Coles 303 Sundayz Open Stage Ruby’s Lounge The Broken Splendour, The Sketching Room Empress Hotel, Arvo Show The Detonators Y & J’s The Frowning Clouds, The Delta Riggs Workers Club The Nymphs, She Said, Carolyn Bryers, Missing Supergirl Bendigo Hotel The Sunday Set, DJ Andy Black, DJ Haggis The Toff in Town, Afternoon session The Toot Toot Toots, Buried Feather, Ancient Slate The Old Bar Tim Rogerstein, Dan Kelly, Henry Wagons Adalita, Jordie Lane, James McCann, Davey Lane, Kat Spazzy, Chromenips, Phil Gionfriddo Yah Yah’s Willow Stahlut, Jess Ribiero & The Bone Collectors, Kinch Kinski Edinburgh Castle Hotel
MON 21
Adam & Fergus, & Friends Marquis Of Lorne Hotel Bogan Bingo The Retreat Hotel ‘Crotchety Knitwits’, Boozing, Sewing & Drinking The Old Bar James Annesley Quartet 303 Josh Owen Band Esplanade Lounge Karaoke The Spanish Club Passionate Tongues - Poetry and Spoken Word, Hosted by Michael Reynolds Brunswick Hotel Reece Dillon, Brendan Kelly Empress Hotel Swing Classes The Toff In Town
TUE 22
Comede’ Latte’ 303 Custom Kings, The Bowers The Toff In Town
Dan Musil, Carly Fern, Nic Tammens Wesley Anne (Band Room) DJ Shaky Memorial The Retreat Hotel Mark Nixx, All Day Breakfast, Dancing Heals, Dave Cosma Esplanade Lounge ‘Melbourne Fresh Industry Showcases’, Never Cheer Before You Know Whos Winning Revolver Melissa Main & Band Open Studio (204 High St Northcote) Open Mic Empress Hotel The Basics, Hot Little Hands Northcote Social Club The Brunswick Discovery, WilNo, Julez and Mc Dragonfly Brunswick Hotel Water Music, Two Jacks & a Jill, Rooster Hannigan The Old Bar Weekly Trivia The Drunken Poet
WEDNESDAY 16TH
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WED JUNE 16 - 8:30 PM
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WITH HOST MATT MCFARLANE. $10 JUGS! REGISTER AT 8PM ON THE NIGHT! (FREE BEER PER PERFORMER!)
THURS JUNE 17
PYRENE
THE SHADOW LEAGUE SONIC SCOUT LASSO
FRI JUNE 18
HI-LIFE WEDDING
THE BELL PARADE STEVE LANE AND THE AUTOCRATS SECOND HAND HEART
SAT JUNE 19 - 6PM
SLACQUER
TIM WOODS AND THE DIRTY SHOES 9PM - GREENROOM YOUNG RAPTORS AND MANY MORE
SUN JUNE 20 - 5PM
ALEXIS NICOLE AND THE MISSING PIECES 3 CARD MONTE CC THORNLEY
MON JUNE 21
PASSIONATE TONGUES
POETRY AND SPOKEN WORD FEATURING A CONSTANTLY CHANGING LINE-UP OF SOME OF MELBOURNES FINEST POETS. KICK OFF AT 8PM. HOSTED BY MICHAEL REYNOLDS
TUES JUNE 22
THE BRUNSWICK DISCOVERY
GIVING CHANCES TO NEW UP AND COMING ARTISTS (ENQUIRIES TO BRUNNYGIGS@GMAIL.COM) THIS WEEK: WILNO, JULEZ AND MC DRAGONFLY
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303 Wednesday Ben Carr, Kewti Thursday Mal Webb, Scott Edgar & The Universe Friday Launch party fundraiser ‘The Quarterly Retort’ Saturday Royal Control, Straw King Eye, Champagne Reggae Sunday Smoking Gun, The Adam Rudeyeair Band, Pete Coles Monday James Annesley Quartet Tuesday Comede’ Latte’
303, ARVO SHOW Sunday Mr Brady, Frankie Andrew, Nic Tate, Nathan Davis, Short Film By Vic Farrel
ARTHOUSE Wednesday I A Man, Cloudmouth, Miranda Chaplar Thursday Keggin, Madonna, The Duvtons, Chaos Kids Friday The Gun Runners, ANCHORS, The Grenadiers, Human Pollution Saturday Miles Away, Break Even, Hopeless, The Broderick, Fires Of Waco Sunday Coda, Drunk Mums
BAR OPEN Wednesday The Enclosures, The Bunyip Moon, Ripples, Wizard Oz Thursday The Busty Insects, Ben Rogers and Instrumental Asylum, The Velocettes, The Drab Doo Riffs Friday The Bombay Royale, Sam Evans, Josh Bennett Saturday Dub The Magic Dragon, El Moth & The Turbo Rads Sunday A French Butler Called Smith, Couching Tiger DJ’s
BENDER BAR Wednesday Open Mic Night Thursday Seri Vida, James Danial Friday Emily Smart Trio, Jackson Fish Saturday Red Season, Caroline Crivera Sunday Open Decks
EAST BRUNSWICK CLUB Thursday Mista Savona, ELF TRANZPORTER’S LO2’s FLeet Saturday The Gin Club, Eagle and the Worm!, Joel Silbersher and The Baggage Handlers
BE LIKE MIKE Ol’ buddies Mike Noga of The Drones and Davey Lane of You Am I fame will be teaming up for a special one-off show at the Empress this Friday. Due to their schedules conflicting a little too much at the moment, the boys decided the best way to catch up for a drink would be to play a show together. And so Lane and Noga will be presenting songs from their respective solo careers, forthcoming albums, the odd Pictures and Gentlemen Of Fortune tune, side projects and a cover or two. Hell yeah!
BENDIGO HOTEL Friday Dozers, Beat Disease Saturday Party Vibez, Yeah Right, Yoko Oh No, Outcome Unknown Sunday The Nymphs, She Said, Carolyn Bryers, Missing Supergirl
BIRMINGHAM HOTEL Wednesday The Black Hill Five, Cuba is Japan, San Gras, The Revels Thursday Geoffrey O’Connor, Gold Tango, Pop Singles, Isle Adore Friday The Devils Ride Out, My Left Boot, Immolate, Ancient Man Saturday The Solomons, Brilliant Fanzine, The Futurists, Tim Reid
BRUNSWICK HOTEL Wednesday The Brunswick Open Mic with host Matt McFarlane Thursday Pyrene, The Shadow League, Sonic Scout, Lasso Friday Hi Life Wedding, The Bell Parade, Steve Lane & The Autocrates, Second Hand Heart Saturday Slacquer, Tim Woods & The Dirty Shoes, Greenroom, Young Raptors, Mark Nixx, The Vera Knights Sunday Alexis Nicole, The Missing Pieces, 3 Card Monte, CC Thornley Monday Passionate Tongues - Poetry and Spoken Word, Hosted by Michael Reynolds
Tuesday The Brunswick Discovery, WilNo, Julez and Mc Dragonfly
BUILDERS ARMS HOTEL Wednesday Magic Silver White, Qua, Alarm Birds Thursday Princess One Point Five, Georgia Fields, Ben Montero Friday Alpine, Jeraboms, The Latonas Saturday The Enclosures, The Melodies, Fatti Francis Sunday Dan Parsons, D Rogers, James O’Brien
BURLESQUE BAR Friday Burly Friday Live Burlesque Saturday Cirque De Femmes Sunday Gerry Hale’s Uncle Bill, Atrocity Burlesque
CARAVAN MUSIC CLUB Friday Suzie Dickinson, Dave Flett, Ron Mahony
CHERRY BAR Wednesday Bittersweet Kicks Thursday Soul Safari Friday Russia, Vice Grip Pussies, Baptism of Uzi Saturday Hell City Glamours, Chinatown Angels, Rock City Riff Raff
CORNER HOTEL Thursday Grinspoon, Gun Street Girls, The Moons Friday Wanda Jackson, Itchy Fingers Saturday Alestorm, Claim Throne, Be’Lakor
DING DONG LOUNGE Thursday En Tout Cas, San Fran Disco Friday Fame 80’s Night Saturday Tone Deaf, Noxshi, Dead Actors Club
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EDINBURGH CASTLE HOTEL Wednesday Single Twin, Wigwam Thursday The Promises Friday Dave McCormack, Trevor Ludlow & The Hellraisers, Monnone Alone Saturday Emily Smart & The Clever Girls, Renae Brennen, Daniel Reeves Sunday Willow Stahlut, Jess Ribiero & The Bone Collectors, Kinch Kinski
EMPRESS HOTEL Wednesday Saskia Sansom, White Elephant, Monty Sparrow Thursday Pretty Strangers, The Rapphaellas, Star & Cyprus Friday Mike Noga, Davey Lane Saturday Rick Doherty, Mad Love, Valkyer, Roger Morgan & Band, Elephant Monday Reece Dillon, Brendan Kelly Tuesday Open Mic
EMPRESS HOTEL, ARVO SHOW
Tuesday Mark Nixx, All Day Breakfast, Dancing Heals, Dave Cosma
EVELYN HOTEL Wednesday Ben Smith, Matt Katsis Band, Joppy, Jess Hieser Thursday Red Ink, The Rocketsmiths, Royal Chant Friday Sleep Parade, Engine Three Seven, Sadhana, The Furniture Incident Saturday Rave Review’s ‘First B’day Bash’, Wilfred Jackal, Detective Social, Rush In Attack, Swing Set Green Sunday Lucy Gallant, Katt Beames, The SoulaR Sky
GRACE DARLING HOTEL Thursday The Bonniwells, Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk, The Living Eyes Friday Voodoo Economic, The Holy Sea, Kirsten Verwood Saturday These Patterns, The JSBs, Sleep Decade
HIFI BAR Friday Katie Noonan & The Captains, The Jezabels, Brackets Saturday The Meanies, Jam, Kit and Wanet, Wicked City, Money For Rope
LABOUR IN VAIN Saturday Little John
MARQUIS OF LORNE HOTEL
ESPLANADE BASEMENT
Wednesday Quiz Night Friday DJ Fanta Pants Saturday Phil Gionfriddo Monday Adam & Fergus, & Friends
Saturday Little Freddie & The Pops, The Hybernators, The Knockouts
NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB
Saturday Beth & The Hemingway Collective, Alora Sunday The Broken Splendour, The Sketching Room
ESPLANADE GERSHWIN ROOM Wednesday Forsaken, Hey La, the spinset, Curtain Fire, Fuse, The Take Off, Smoking Harms Unborn Babies Thursday Days of Hot Wax, LeBelle, Secretary Lily, Hybrid Nightmares, Passport For Amy, Any Last Words Friday Renaissance Man, Generik, Mu-Gen, Slap N Dash, Scattermish, Matt Cant, Lewis cancut Sunday Big Left, The Lights, Second Chase, Swamp Donkey, Black Creek, Lounge Detectives
ESPLANADE LOUNGE Saturday Phil Para Monday Josh Owen Band
Thursday Kim Churchill, Justin Carter, A French Butler Called Smith Friday Cola Wars, Behind Crimson Eyes, The Statics Saturday Love of Diagrams, Dick Driver, Miniature Submarines Tuesday The Basics, Hot Little Hands
NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB, ARVO SHOW Sunday Claire Hollingsworth, The Craft Savvy Crims
PONY Thursday The Beat Brothers, The Loop, Lost Burros, The Revels, Slow Dance Friday Madonna, Power Fuck, Jaguar Spring, Death Valley Band, Where’s Jerome Saturday Bugdust, Devil Rock 4, The Watt Riot, In Tongues, Pink Fitt
RETREAT HOTEL Thursday The Rebelles, Little Freddie & The Pops
REVELLER’S NORTH (DOWNSTAIRS) Thursday Art Noise Friday Ben Cue, with Supports Saturday Jack Castle
REVELLER’S NORTH (UPSTAIRS) Friday SS Pecker, with Supports Saturday Ben Abraham, with Supports
REVOLVER Wednesday Clavians, Cast & Crew, Bone, The Bad Aches, Revolver Rock in the Backroom Thursday Courtney Barnett, Jess Chalker, Dan Parsons, 3181 Thursdays
Wednesday Machine Translations, Mick Turner
Friday Skybombers, Luke Carlson, Dancing Heals, WAX! Weekly Audio Extravaganza, Revolver Fridays: NQR Saturday Indigo Children, Nacional, Royston Vosie, The Late Show Sunday Revolver Sundays Tuesday ’Melbourne Fresh Industry Showcases’, Never Cheer Before You Know Whos Winning
THE DRUNKEN POET Wednesday Hanna Acfield, Marilla Homes Thursday Ed Reed, Simon Wright Friday Traditional Irish Music Session, Dan Bourke & Friends Saturday The Idlehoes Sunday Lloyd Spiegel, Arun, Danny Walsh Tuesday Weekly Trivia
THE OLD BAR Wednesday Plague Doctor, Kirsten Verwoord & the All Night Riders, Steph Brett Thursday New Loutonions, The Orbweavers, The Enclosures Friday Dad They Broke Me, Whitehorse, Firewitch, Breathing Shrine, Space Bong Saturday Ya Aha, Adam Cole & The Afterland Band, DJ Drawfour Sunday The Toot Toot Toots, Buried Feather, Ancient Slate Monday ’Crotchety Knitwits’, Boozing, Sewing & Drinking Tuesday Water Music, Two Jacks & a Jill, Rooster Hannigan
THE PUBLIC BAR Friday Benzene, Twenty Two Hundred, This Vs That Saturday Tang, The Dirty Sirkus, DRSS
THE SPANISH CLUB Wednesday Daryl Roberts Thursday Riverside Travellers Monday Karaoke
THE STANDARD HOTEL Wednesday Ryan Meeking Sunday JVG Guitar Method
SPOON IT IN
THE TOFF IN TOWN
Get yer boots on and yer mouths open because Spoonful are shacking up inside the Union Hotel in Brunswick for the month of June. Every Saturday in June this highly charged rhythm and blues rock band – featuring Paul Winstanley, Kit Warhurst (Rocket Science), Andre Warhurst (Silver Night Drive) and David Lord (The Rectifiers) – deliver a killer show. You’ve got to see it to believe it, so get on down there from 5pm.
Wednesday God of Music: A Trivia Night, The Sopihisticants, DJ James Steeth Thursday Rezzalp, Ben Abraham, Love Story with 1928
Friday Poprocks at the Toff, Dr Phil Smith Saturday The House Of Slunk, Andee Frost Monday Swing Classes Tuesday Custom Kings, The Bowers
THORNBURY THEATRE Thursday Beoga, One of Irelands Greatest Modern Day Trad. Bands, Damien Howard and the Ploughboys
TRANSPORT HOTEL (FED SQ) Thursday Ladies Night Friday TOP 40 & COMMERCIAL PARTY TUNES, DJ’s Saturday 80’s RETRO TUNES, DJ’s Sunday Austin Busch, Electric Empire
UNION HOTEL BRUNSWICK Thursday Native Plants Saturday Spoonful, Paul Winstanley, Kit Warhurst, Andre Warhurst, David Lord Sunday Collard, Greens & Gravy
WORKERS CLUB Thursday The Good China, Institut Polaire, The Bon Scotts Friday Chris O’Neill, Kieran Christopherson, Thom Crawford, Ronald Blackman Saturday 2econds, Meet Me at Montauk, Option, Kills Collapse Sunday The Frowning Clouds, The Delta Riggs
YAH YAH’S Thursday White Woods, Pageants, Angel Eyes, Hissy Miyake, Pauli Douglas Friday The U.V Race, The Drab Doo Riffs, Constant Mongrel, Ash Naylor Saturday Mink Jaguar, The Ronson Hangup, The Palenecks, Tasty Cakes Sunday Tim Rogerstein, Dan Kelly, Henry Wagons Adalita, Jordie Lane, James McCann, Davey Lane, Kat Spazzy, Chromenips, Phil Gionfriddo
THEMHUMM
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IBANEZ THERMION GUITAR HEAD
W. Flight case. Offers welcome. Alltube circuitry, 4/8/16 ohm selector, 60 watts rms, 3-way rectifier switch (ClassA/cathode bias/tube rectifier, Class AB/grid bias/tube rectifier, Class AB/grid bias/SS rectifier). 2 channels,independent cascading gain controls in drive channel for ultra intense distortion textures, EFX loop, ext speaker out, 2-button footswitch, birch/maple ply cabinet. 2x 10” Celestion speakers and all-tube spring reverb. iFlogID: 5520
Position available in Busy music school in Beverly Hills, Kogarah and at various government schools. Teaching mainly beginners to intermediate level. Enthusiasm, patience and ability to inspire will be looked at more than your qualifications and experience. Email resume jobs@jumbonote.com.au
Ibanez Thermion TN120 All Tube Guitar Head. Good Condition, great amp. $600 iFlogID: 4027
DRUMS PEARL EXR CYMBALS RACK STANDS
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KEYBOARDS KORG TRITON EXTREME88
BUSINESSES
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VIPER GUITAR AMP.ALL VALVE
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CD / DVD
Backstagejobs.com.au Australia’s very own dedicated online employment website to backstage jobs. Subscribe to our free jobs & news
100 watt head and matching 4/12 angled quadbox.2 fully seperate channels with reverb/crunch/mean/filth. effects send/return.all footswithable. very versatile.Australian designed quality.MINT CONDITION.$850 ono. iFlogID: 4664
MARSHALL VS100 VALVESTATE AMP.
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DJ EQUIPMENT *NEW* N.I MASCHINE
Melbourne Pa and Instrument Hire Specialists. We have a large range of Pa equipment, large and small to suit any occasion. Dynacord,yamaha,mackie,cordless mics,etc etc. Instrument hire also available such as drumkits,keyboards,amps and much more. Call for 9689 4622 Just 10 min from cbd
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A rarely used example of this classic and much sought-after synthesizer in excellent condition. Price includes delivery to any destination on mainland Australia. iFlogID: 3583
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GUITARS
MIXERS
ACOUSTIC GUITAR MATON M225
ROSS PC110 POWERED MIXER
Maton M225 Solid Sitka Spruce soundboard Queensland Maple Back, sides & neck Rosewood with dot inlays fingerboard Australian Made Original Elixir strings Natural Finish $750 *pick up in Sydney area iFlogID: 3645
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PA EQUIPMENT HEADROOM SOUND Using; P Audio, B & C, JBL and E.V. Top quality drivers in all our custom built bins. Top boxes, mids, subs, wedges to spec. This online pic is our new folded horn with one 18inch challenger, putting out 137db – 140+ when coupled. Call us for a free quote. 0414355763
Professional high end audio mastering in our dedicated analog and digital mastering studio. Professional results at highly competitive rates. Pay by the track. Integrated online service available. www.forensicaudio.com.au Are you thinking of hiring quality musicians that bring an audience ? Do you have a function/event and considering live entertainment ? For a limited period, we are offering a Venue Promotions Package featuring favourite entertainers. If it is about raising your venue profile or just great entertainment you want, contact us now. Chris 0419 272 196 http://infovisionproductions.yayabings.com.au
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OTHER CUSTOM BASS DRUM HEADS
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PA SYSTEMS, LIGHTS , STAGES
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GIBSON 1960 RI GOLDTOP
Custom bass drum heads ensure your bands name gets remembered after the gig. The sickest, best quality custom bass drum heads, banners, backdrops, stickers, and full drum wraps! www.kustombassdrumgraphics.com.au sales@kustombassdrumgraphics.com.au
MUSIC SERVICES 100watt rms. 4 channell with EQ/ REVERB. stereo CD input. CUBE STYLE. Very good condition. $300.00 Ph Jimbo on 0428744963.
BAND MERCHANDISE ON LINE BOOKING AGENCY
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OTHER SECONDHAND 1960 RI LES PAUL GOLDTOP IN EXCELLENT CONDITION W/CASE ONLY $3395 CALL US 07 54743033 - MUSIC@NOOSA
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12-24 MONTHS INTEREST FREE, NO INTEREST EVER, TAKE HOME YOUR GUITAR,AMP,P.A,KEYBOARD,ETC TODAY... CALL US FOR MORE DETAILS 07 54743033 MUSIC @ NOOSA
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FENDER PINK PAISLEY STRAT.
Shop online 24/7 at www.tsp.net.au for Australia’s biggest and best range of official licensed band merchandise. Hundreds of bands, thousands of products! AC/DC, Blink 182, David Bowie, Dead Kennedys, Escape The Fate, Iron Maiden, Jimi Hendrix, Joy Division, Megadeth, Metallica, MGMT, Minor Threat, Misfits, Nirvana, Opeth, Parkway Drive, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, Ramones, Slayer, Sonic Youth, Tool, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more! T-shirts, fleecy hoodies, caps, beanies, bags and loads of other cool stuff. Shop now at www.tsp.net.au. iFlogID: 4737
ROCK MEMORABILIA Authentic Signed Rock Memorabilia and reprints from around the globe. www.rockgodsandlegends.com iFlogID: 4954
ROCK MEMORABILIA Genuine 1980’s Pete Townshend jap model. all original. in case. plays great. nice patina. very rare. suit collector. EXCELLENT CONDITION! $2500.00 Ph Jimbo on 0428744963. iFlogID: 4711
GUITARS FENDER GIBSON MARTIN Vintage and USA guitars. Buy, Sell and Trade. mattsvintageguitars.com 02-9518-0150 iFlogID: 5483
NEW SEAGULL ACOUST/ ELECT
We have the gear and have the people. From small to BIG - give me a call for a quote - PA SYSTEMS from $110 - CALL MATT on 0424 399 801
HEADROOM SOUND Using; P Audio, B & C, JBL and E.V. Top quality drivers in all our custom built bins. Top boxes, mids, subs, wedges to spec. This online pic is our new folded horn with one 18inch challenger, putting out 137db – 140+ when coupled. Call us for a free quote. 0414355763
SHOP FOR BAND MERCH ONLINE!
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LOOKING FOR A JOB BACKSTAGE ?
Have YOU been to our shop. Sales / Repairs / Hire / Service / Rentals / Trade –Ins / Tuition. We also deal in Pre-Loved equipment.OPEN Monday to Saturday - MUSIC CAVERN - JOHN LANE , Beenleigh - 3807 5688
Viking Lounge mastering provide the best in personalised service and attention to fine detail. Paul Stefanidis will take your project to the next level! Credits include a national number one by Shortstack and top producers Craig Porteils, Lee Groves and Trevor Steel! For more details see www.studioprojects.com.au and www.vikingloungemastering.com or call Andy om 0424 656 973
MUSICIANS FOR FUNCTIONS/ VENUES
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ENTERTAINMENT
FENDER TREMOLUX HEAD AND 2X12 CAB.made in 1965 IN EXCELLENT CONDITION. ONLY $3499 CALL US 07 54743033 - MUSIC@NOOSA
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PA AND INSTRUMENT HIRE
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Pearl EXR (2005 model) drum kit with the following: - 14” snare - 8” tom 10” tom - 12” tom - 13” tom - 16” floor tom - 22” bass - double kick pedal - single kick pedal - Pearl drum rack - numerous clamps for additional drums and/or cymbals - brand new skins for all 5 toms - Drum City cymbal bag (leather) - clamp arm 3x boom cymbal stands - 2x straight cymbal stands - stool - additional tom arms Cymbals: - Zildjian A Custom 14” hi-hats - 10” splash - 17” crash - 18” crash - 16” fast crash - Zildjian A - 21” sweet ride All in perfect condition, reluctant sale. Call Kieran on 0410691616. Pickup from Sydney.
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Valleyarm are a global digital music supplier and are seeking sales contractors Australia wide to sign bands and artists. On target earnings of $37800 PA, flexible hours and awesome incentives! A passion and an ear for good music is essential, if you like checking out bands and have good people skills then this might be the job for you! A real chance to make huge dollars within the music industry! Training provided. Email interest and resumes to info@valleyarm. com or call 03 9525 5589 for more information.
For as low as $100, you get a PA system with a sound mixer, complete with a human operator as well to set it up for you for the evening. You can play your own music through it, sing, talk, do a disco, small function, etc, etc, etc. Contact Chris 0419 272 196.
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LITTLE MUSIC SHOP IN THE LANE
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MUSIC INDUSTRY BIBLE
The Directory is a sourcebook for all the contacts in the Australian music market. There are over 5,000 listed companies & individuals in 70 sections covering all business sectors from Artists cross referenced by Booking Agents, Managers & Record Labels, Promoters, Music Media, Venues, Lawyers, Publishers & much more! We have 3 versions of the Directory available in Print $55 (GST & Postage included)--6 Month Online Subscription $40--iPhone App $19.95 (from Apple iTunes Store). To purchase your print or online version go to www.immedia.com.au/amid or call the IMMEDIA! Office (02) 9557 7766
For Sale! Fantastic Sounding AKG K701 Headphones, Brand New with original packaging, manual and warranty card. Bought $900, will let go for $700. You don’t wanna miss this occasion, don’t you!? Email me on vangelis2133@yahoo.com or just phone: 0449672435. First Come, First Serve!
IMMORAL FASHION
FENDER 1965 TREMOLUX STACK
WANT TO WORK IN THE MUSIC BIZ?
BRAND NEW SEAGULL ENTOURAGE RUSTIC BURST ACOUSTIC IN BOX Top : Select Pressure Tested Solid Cedar Back & Sides : Wild Cherry Neck : Silver Leaf Maple with the Seagull Slim 1.72” nut width. Fingerboard & Bridge : Rosewood Tusq® nut and compensated saddle Finish : Rustic Burst Custom Polished Finish Electronics : Godin Quantum I PICKUP RRP $ 949.00 SELL $700.00 SHIPPING $30.00
Super Rare Original 2 channel Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier. Excellent Condition. $3000. 0412642196
FENDER PROSONIC 2 X 10 W CASE
PIANO TEACHER NEEDED!
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MESA BOOGIE TRIPLE RECTIFIER
AMPS
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NATIVE INSTRUMENTS MASCHINE SAMPLING PAD - HUGE SPECIAL - ONLY $899 IN BOX ONLY ONE AVAILABLE - CALL US 07 54743033 MUSIC@NOOSA
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ARE YOU LOOKING FOR FREEDOM? Do you earn a great income but have no time to enjoy it? Are you working harder and harder to help someeone else live their dreams? Can you follow a simple and proven system? Do you have a burning desire to change your personal and financial situation. ONLY if you’re SERIOUS and READY to act NOW...... visit: www.ezylifenow.com. au
Prefer female: Position available in Busy music school in Beverly Hills, Kogarah and at various government schools. Teaching mainly beginners to intermediate level. Enthusiasm, patience and ability to inspire will be looked at more than your qualifications and experience. Email resume jobs@jumbonote.com.au
PA/OPERATOR FOR HIRE
English made reliability. 100watts in 2 fully seperate channels with reverb/ chorus/lead boost. all footswitchable. very grunty. great fat sound! PERFECT CONDITION! $400.00 Ph Jimbo on 0428744963
RADIO CAREERS Short of time but want that break in being a radio guru? Why not do short courses at the 2SER Radio School then get involved with volunteer work at the station’s radio programs. 2SER is run by volunteer programmers who’ve ended ahead in the industry with radio skills. Learn voice presentation,editing, interviewing, podcasting and more. There are fees for the course based on accredited units and you can enter into a payment plan so you invest on your radio skills. Contact Annamarie 02 9514 9511, email radioschool@2ser.com and grab this hot opportunity!
THE BEST IN MASTERING
HIRE SERVICES
LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY
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SELF-EMPLOYMENT
HEADROOM SOUND AUSTRALIA
product sounds amazing. www.matthewgraymastering.com.
Authentic Signed & Reprint Rock Memorabilia from across the globe www.rockgodsandlegends.com iFlogID: 4956
ABSOLUTE VALUE!
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MASTERING Australia’s first online booking agency with a difference!!!! For Artists & Promoters
MASTERING BY PAUL GOMERSALL
WANT TO PERFORM OR TOUR? Do you want to perform or tour? Need help sourcing $ for? There are government grants closing soon. For help contact: speakeasywordsandmusic@ gmail.com or 0439 620 526. Professional, down to earth, affordable grant writing and music/tour booking iFlogID: 3637
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COOL PERTH NIGHTS
BOOKING AGENTS CALLING ALL DJS & ARTISTS
Are you a budding bedroom DJ busting to get your BIG break? Are you struggling to get work in this economic climate? Do you want to stand out? If you’re going to get the attention of the media, labels, promoters, clubs, agents or just about anyone else in the music industry, you’re going to need a professional artist promotional pack. A promotional pack or website is your introduction to the world and these promotional tools should always put your BEST foot forward. Let’s face it... Times are tough these days and we know what it takes to get you noticed without having to spend a fortune. We can tailor a package deal that will help get you one step closer to your first gig or your next big step in the industry. For more information please contact us on +61 449 729 009 or email info@ cheekydjs.com iFlogID: 5005
EP RELEASE WWW.MYSPACE.COM/
Trust your next mastering project with Paul who’s been working with major international artists for over 25 years..you’ll probably find his name on CDs you own.....For a limited time song transfers through the ATR100 - the worlds finest 1/2” tape machine - is absolutely FREE!! (Worth up to $100 a song)...So for only $88 per song you can get the results you want at the price you can afford..-..Post - Upload, or call in......For further details visit --- www.gomersall.com --- Call Paul 0407 488 697
Cool Perth Nights weekly mailout features all the coolest live music, theatre, indie film screenings and art exhibition happenings in and around Perth Western Australia. Sign up via www.coolperthnights.com and receive this clean presented and very fun info each Wednesday lunchtime WST. iFlogID: 4351
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SPACE SHIP NEWS.COM.AU
MATTHEW GRAY MASTERING - $99
$99 per song +gst for online mastering via our secure servers. Analog chain, digital chain, mix evaluations, online mastering and attended sessions - we ensure your mastered
Perth Music News Your one stop for local Perth music news, gig guides, photogrpahy, reviews, bands, CD’s & more... Sign up to our weekly e-news & keep up to date! www.spaceshipnews.com.au iFlogID: 4790
For a limited time. Free online and print classifieds Book now, visit iflog.com.au 85
TOP SHELF DJS - MELB DJ HIRE
challenger, putting out 137db – 140+ when coupled. Call us for a free quote. 0414355763 iFlogID: 3102
PORTABLE RECORDING SERVICE
Unlike other DJs, Top Shelf DJs have a background in alternative and indie music. So if you want your party to have a distinctly indie/alternative feel,or just want a few alternative tunes in the mix, we are the perfect fit for your event! Find out more at www.topshelfdjs.com.au iFlogID: 5074
GET IN THE KNOW!
Assisting with CD releases, Live DVDs, Offering you professional audio which you can also upload to Myspace, YouTube, E.P.Ks etc. ANY GENRE 18 channels of Pro Tools, 16 channels of professional isolated stage splitters (Radial, JensenTransformers), Quality pre amps, Great microphones, Internationally experienced engineer Jeremy Conlon MOB: 0421 836 876 EMAIL: jeremy@cooperblack. net www.myspace.com/jeremythesoundengineer B. Music (Composition) , Cert IV Music Tech, Cert IV Work Place Skills and Assessment
Photography...Get the right shot the first time at an affordable cost..Contact Mike 0447572106 iFlogID: 4631
DANE BEESLEY PHOTOGRAPHY
4 MICROPHONES, 4 MICROPHONE LEADS AND 4 MICROPHONE STANDS. OUR REHEARSAL ROOMS ARE ALL AIR CONDITIONED. THEY ARE ALWAYS KEPT CLEAN AND WELL MAINTAINED. WE HAVE TWO ROOMS WITH PIANOS AVAILABLE FOR SOLO, PRIVATE USE. THESE ROOMS ARE AVAILABLE FOR HIRE WHEN THEY ARE NOT BEING USED FOR TEACHING. PLEASE CALL FOR AVAILABILITY. THEY ARE HIRED AT $5.50 PER HOUR. EXTRA EQUIPMENT CAN BE HIRED WITH THE ROOMS. PLEASE TELL US WHAT YOU WILL BE NEEDING WHEN YOU BOOK SO THAT WE CAN HAVE IT READY FOR YOU. FOR ALL BOOKINGS PH: (03) 9532 9530. iFlogID: 4330
TUITION
not teach you at school, I work from my home setup (Surry Hills) only, $65 per hour. http://www.steevebody. com iFlogID: 4776
BASS/ GUITAR/VOCAL TUITION
ABLETON CERTIFIED TRAINER
GUITAR TUITION 100+ LOCATIONS
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PA HIRE PA Hire & Experienced operator, Pubs, Clubs, Corporate & Private Events plus more. Contact Matt 0412474551 iFlogID: 4089
ROCK MIXER WANTED FOR EP From the people who brought you TheMusic.com.au comes two new free news resources, The Daily News Feed and Velvet Rope; the only source of music business and industry news you will ever need! Each morning the Daily News Feed posts crucial music business news, helping you stay current with Aussie and overseas breaking stories. Velvet Rope is brought to you via Door Bitch and is a weekly news column that keeps you up to date on the happenings of the music biz. From job opps, news, events & a bit of back room gossip, Door Bitch has it covered. It’s out every Friday at noon. Check out the new news at www.TheMusic.com.au
We have 5 days recording in late June. We need a great Rock producer/engineer to mix our 5 tracks. Must have plenty of experience in Rock/Metal/Punk www.mypace. com/droptankband droptankband@ gmail.com
TOP US MIX ENGINEER PAUL LANI
MARKETING AND PROMOTION
Learn to play from some of Australia’s best guitar teachers. G4 GUITAR is a network of over 100 teachers across Australia using the latest learning techniques to ensure students the absolute best tuition available. Backed by the G4 GUITAR METHOD our teachers have the reputation to take you from beginner to pro. Please visit our website to find your closest teacher and grab a free download. www.g4guitar.com.au or Phone 0405-274456 iFlogID: 2633
SOUNDORNOT.COM.AU!
iFlogID: 5244
ILLUSTRATOR AVAILABLE NOW!
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Is your music HOT or NOT? Upload your music and let the general public vote, 1-10, is your music HOT or NOT? Visit soundornot.com.au today!
POSTERS
Get one of the best mix engineers in the US to mix your single or album! It costs less than you may think! Credits include Beyonce, Robbie Williams, U2, Snoop Dogg and a cast of thousands! See www.studioprojects.com.au for details or ring Andy 0424 656 973.
Professional illustrator available for any project. Book covers, children’s books, album art and much more. Based in Melbourne, drawing world wide! Excellent rates. www.paulikin. com -Phone: 0403 996 129 or email paul@paulikin.com
SINGING LESSONS THAT ROCK
iFlogID: 4701
RECORDING STUDIOS $$ ATTENTION ALL STUDIOS $$
LIVE AUDIO ENGINEER
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Take your band to the next level with old school high end engineering form a veteran with 28 years experience! Credits include The Next, The Vandolls, The Art, Eskimo Joe, KIlling Heidi and many, many more! For more details see www.studioprojects.com.au or ring Andy on 0424 656 973. iFlogID: 4866
HEARTICAL SOUND SYSTEM HIRE
Want to become an agent for Valleyarm? Valleyarm are a global digital music supplier and are seeking studios and producers Australia wide to be official agents, you’d be responsible for signing new bands and artists to add to our catalogue and getting paid to do so. If you ever have bands asking how they can get their songs on iTunes then this is the perfect chance to bring in extra revenue with excellent monthly bonuses available! Training and point of sale is available to get you started straight away. Email info@valleyarm.com or Call 03 9525 5589
Your voice has the ability to sing at the Audioslave/ Radiohead/ Aretha/ P.J.Harvey level because of Design. Extend your vocal range learn to sing the right technique the first time, career counseling how to start a band. For advanced students: • Microphone Techniques • Recording Techniques • Songwriting • Harmonising. Free performance nights for current and previous students. 10 + years teaching experience. Beginners to Advanced also guitar lessons 0405-044-513 iFlogID: 2671
INTEGUITAR.COM
New TV show on C31 Digital - Saturdays 10.30 PM,Tune into 44 on your box For Guitar players and guitar music fans. iFlogID: 5373
PA / AUDIO / ENGINEERING
From small PA to large high powered rigs. Crystal clear custom built mids and tops cabs with heavy duty bass bins. Suitable for indoor and outdoor events. delivered, set up and operated. Call Derek for quotes on 0423979396
SPEAKER REPAIRS - ALL MODELS
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Headroom Sound Australia. Re-cones to all models e.g. JBL, P Audio, B & C, E-Tone etc Custom built crossovers, all at budget prices. For quotes contact Ray on tallpoppies@iprimus. com.au or 04143 55763 iFlogID: 3094
HEADROOM SOUND AUSTRALIA Using; P Audio, B & C, JBL and E.V. Top quality drivers in all our custom built bins. Top boxes, mids, subs, wedges to spec. This online pic is our new folded horn with one 18inch
PHOTOGRAPHY BAND PHOTOS Looking for a photographer for your band?Checkout theartofcapture. com to see examples and portfolio of work. Studio and location shots.All states. Contact Kane Hibberd Kane@theartofcapture.com or call 0419 570 660. iFlogID: 1256
PHOTOGRAPHY
iFlogID: 5184
EASY TIGER RECORDIND STUDIO Relaxed and atmospheric studio tucked away in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. Good Gear Good Vibe! www. myspace.com/easytigerstudio or ph 0417038353 easytigerstudio@ yahoo.com.au iFlogID: 5420
REHEARSAL ROOMS CAULFIELD MUSIC CENTRE **MENTION THIS ADVERTISEMENT TO RECEIVE A FULL 5 HOUR REHEARSAL STUDIO BOOKING ON SATURDAY OR SUNDAY FOR $45** WELCOME TO CAULFIELD MUSIC REHEARSAL STUDIOS. WE HAVE FIVE LARGE, SOUNDPROOF ROOMS AVAILIBLE FOR HIRE. ALL OF THE ROOMS ARE THE SAME SIZE (APPROXIMATELY 7 X 6 METRES). EACH ROOM IS EQUIPPED WITH A 12 CHANNEL P.A. SYSTEM,
A1 very experienced guitar teacher available for home call tuition.we come to you! become a better musician soon!based in sydney’s inner west.I had the best teachers,now you can too.learn the fundamentals that make a great guitar player!many styles taught in a relaxed,fun manner that will get you happening fast.ph 0421727864. iFlogID: 4240
Caulfield Music Centre MUSIC SCHOOL * where students become musicians * www.caulfieldmusic. com.au QUALIFIED TEACHERS AVAILABLE Monday - Friday: 4pm-9pm * Saturday: 10am-4pm * Sunday: 11am-4pm * *Please call for lesson availability times. PRIVATE LESSONS - $28 PER HALF HOUR GUITAR BASS PIANO SINGING & VOICE PRODUCTION DRUMS PERCUSSION SAXOPHONE FLUTE RECORDER HARMONICA VIOLIN At Caulfield Music Centre Music School, we offer private, oneon-one lessons. We believe this is the best way for students to learn their chosen instrument. All students receive special student DISCOUNTS on musical instruments and equipment. All lessons are payable weekly, one lesson in advance. A DISCOUNT applies when paying for 10 lessons in advance. Missed lessons incur the full fee unless a minimum of 24 hours notice is given. Exceptional circumstances will be considered. ALL ENQUIRIES AND BOOKINGS PHONE 9528 1162 OR EMAIL music@ caulfieldmusic.com.au iFlogID: 4356
iFlogID: 4841
Write, develop and record your material in a creative, positive environment. I am a producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocal coach with vast experience in helping artists polish their songs. Studio features Pro-Tools and vintage gear with three recording rooms. Extensive industry contacts. Phone Andrew Covell 9798 2665 or 0425 262 594
A1 HOME CALL GUITAR TUITION
SINGING TEACHER NYC TRAINED
SONGWRITERS/SINGERS
GUITAR GODS AND MASTERPIECES
iFlogID: 4154
CAULFIELD MUSIC CENTRE
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A rockin’ salute from the Team at Clk Click Publicity! Clk Click Publicity is a music and entertainment publicity company that specialises in providing excellent quality management, marketing and PR services in order to promote music, film, arts and events in Australia. We have an introductory offer that will blow your mind, and keep your pockets full! For a limited time Clk Click Publicity can whip you up a professional Bio and Press Release for only $100. We can also organise band photos and logo creation for a very reasonable price. If you’re interested in finding out about our full range of publicity services, we’d love the opportunity to have a chat with you and put together a proposal for your next release, event or tour. For further information please shoot us an email at info@clkclickpublicity.com or visit our website at www.clkclickpublicity.com We look forward to working with you!
Ableton certified trainer and author of Ableton video training for Groove 3 (USA) Craig McCullough is available locally in SE Qld for private Ableton and music technology training. Video training is also availble from www. groove3.com. Mobile: 0431 556 746 email: abletontrainer@optusnet. com.au
Play songs on guitar instantly. $49.99 postage inc. kit of 4 x interfaces + tutorial CD. Special deals for the first 100 buyers. The guitar is an easy instrument to play but it is an extremely difficult instrument to learn. Getting past the initial stumbling clanging strumming period of learning guitar can take a number of years and its made all the more difficult by the blank fret board. InteGuitar solves this problem by giving the fret board a temporary movable visual interface of rudimentary OPEN and BAR Chords in the form of a silicon strap. If you can see how the chords are played these basic functions can be over come in much shorter time and be less frustrating. Because the interfaces can be repositioned along part of the neck Bar Chords be displayed. It takes a few attempts to get used to setting up an interface eventually taking 1 to 5 minutes to complete. Silicon Interfaces stretch to fit on all steel string acoustic and electric guitars. Fatter necks like classical guitars are a little harder to fit. Call us now on 0405 044 513 iFlogID: 2716
BLUES HARP LESSONS
CONTEMPORARY AND MUSIC THEATRE SINGING TUITION. TRAINED WITH LEADING NYC VOCAL TEACHER WORKED WITH ARTISTS IE. AVRIL LAVIGNE, KELLY CLARKESON AND BEYONCE. WORLD RENOWNED VOCAL EXCERSISES TO VASTLY IMPROVE VOCAL TECHIQUE BASED ON EXCSERCISES FROM MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC. LOCATED EASTERN SUBURBS. AVAILABLE TO TRAVEL. ORIGINALS WELCOME. AUDITION COACHING. 0435 426 012 iFlogID: 4452
NY TRAINED SONGWRITING TUITION PROFFESSIONAL ROYALTIES EARNING POP ROCK SONGWRITER AVAILABLE FOR TUITION AND GUIDANCE. TRAINED WITH LEADING NYC VOCAL TEACHER WHO HAS WORKED WITH ARTISTS IE. AVRIL LAVIGNE, KELLY CLARKESON AND BEYONCE. COMMERCIAL RADIO PLAY FOR ORIGINALS. LOCATED EASTERN SUBURBS. AVAILABLE TO TRAVEL. ORIGINALS WELCOME OR BEGINNING FROM AFRESH. K.I.S.S. = $$$$$. 0435 426 012
Modern Life Music School offers professional performance based tuition for the dedicated beginner or established musician. A tailored program to achieve your goals utilizing a modern studio and live performance facility will ensure that you achieve your potential .
Lead guitarist looking to jam/form a heavy metal band, preferably on the central coast but willing to travel. Influences: Mercyful Fate, Judas Priest, Metallica, Iron maiden - Blake 0403138542 iFlogID: 5350
OTHER SAXOPHONIS AVAILABLE
Lola Vocal Tuition is a team of two female music students, teaching beginner to intermediate students (of any age) in all styles of contemporary music. We work on technique, vocal confidence and overall on-stage performance. We do either single or group singing tuition. For prices email us at lola_vox@hotmail.com or call Laura on 0427763653 or Luise on 0419329896 . iFlogID: 5176
GUITAT TUITION Experienced guitar teacher, all styles and skill levels welcome. Learn how to play like your heros. teaching in collingwood area. flexible hours, competative rates. 0439404403 gypsyjones11@gmail.com iFlogID: 5180
mer is forming a fast paced professional original alternative rock band to get signed to a major label. Must be ambitious, self-motivated, committed, reliable and have a lot of drive. No metal. Age: 18-30. Rehearsing at Wetherill Park. Only contact me if you want to get signed to a major label! E-mail: cooleywill2@hotmail.com. iFlogID: 5465
DRUMMER FUNKY RYTHYM SECTION WANTED! funky rythym section wanted for dynamic sexy funk/rock/blues hip hop band.influences-the meters,early rhcp,sly stone,james brown,jimi hendrix,parliament/funkadelic.phone 0421727864. iFlogID: 4238
WANNA BE IN MY BAND??!!! Who wants to be in a all girls original pop rock band hav some fun and make some $$$?! Guitar/bass/ drummer needed. Must be able to sing passable back up vox and luv performing!Practice 1-2 times per week. Gig asap. All ages welcome. www.myspace.com/nicolesero 0435 426 012 iFlogID: 4394
DRUMMER WANTED
Experienced saxophonist is looking for bands and studio sessions. Jazz, funky, afro, reggae, latin, rock, folk. If interested contact me at 0410041979. Cheers. Lorenzo
Drummer wanted for originals band in Melbourne. Have the basics of songs completed, just need to learn the songs to add the drums and get them gig ready. Looking for someone determined and eager to play. Influences are Sonic Youth, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, etc. COntact 0403929446. iFlogID: 4431
iFlogID: 2848
SONS OF GENGHIS NEED DRUMMER!
PRO TROMBONIST AVAILABLE
SINGING TUITION Tired of cracking on high notes? Not enough range or power? Learn to sing it right 1st time, every time. Dramatic improvement guaranteed. Beginners to professionals welcome. Creative, friendly environment. Also recording, songwriting, multi-instrumentalist. Phone Andrew Covell 9798 2665 or 0425 262 594 iFlogID: 5186
VIDEO / PRODUCTION 360 DEGREE INTERACTIVE VIDEO
Professional Trombone player available for gigs, session and tours. Jazz, Funk, Latin, Pop, Rock and Classical. Can sight read, improvise and write parts. Contact Brendan 0409833827. iFlogID: 4101
SINGER
Sydney Based “Sons Of Genghis” need versatile drummer, if you play like primus meets Chilli Peppers, Faith no more meets Pantera,this is the band for you and we want your chops!! Check the sounds at www. myspace.com/sonsofgenghis. Call Jono 0410 330 702 or Andy 0420 771 357. iFlogID: 4485
LOOKING FOR LIFE TIME BAND
GUITARIST
genuine music man searching life time members.
GUITARISTS WANTED TO TEACH
iFlogID: 2424
HAVE VOCALS WILL TRAVEL Panoramic Video create interactive 360 degree online videos that are a unique addition to any website, putting your fans and web viewers virtually there with you. We can add in hotspots into the videos too so that you can direct users to other web sites for ticket or music purchasing, and with the ability to be embedded into other pages such as blogs etc, a Panoramic Video is a perfect choice for viral marketing.. Our videos keep the interest and by their nature keep users and fans on your website for longer than a standard video. It’s cool, and it’s unique, and a great option if you are looking for something different and innovative.. Costs will vary depending on where you are and what we do for you, but our rates are very reasonable.... We are a new innovative business in Melbourne and looking to help promote local bands and artists with our interactive videos.. so give us a call for a great deal. Check out some of our samples at www.panoramicvideo.com.au then give us a call on 03 9457 7600 today.. We would love to hear from you! iFlogID: 2774
MUSICIANS AVAILABLE BASS PLAYER BASS PLAYER AVAILABLE
iFlogID: 4454
PRODUCTION/MIXING TUITIONS I’m a professional Music Producer and Sound Mixer who has worked with internationally renowned artist such as Seal and De La Soul, and I’m offering private tuition in Mixing and Production. Bring your own session (Logic or Protools) or use one of mine, and I will show the tricks that they do
GUITARIST TO FORM/JOIN BAND
LEAD GUITARIST AVAILABLE
LOLA VOCAL TUITION
iFlogID: 5363
GUITARIST
iFlogID: 4990
iFlogID: 5039
Dane specialises in providing high quality creative images to a diverse range of clients. Contributor to Rolling Stone, Time Off and Slam Magazine. www.photodane.com
iFlogID: 5037
i am looking to form a serious band, influences include Stone Roses, The Smiths, Beatles, Kinks, Suede. Preferably looking for vocalist to collaborate with, then add bass and drums later. songs ready, looking to be gigging asap. own transport preferable. email - thevilliers@hotmail.com
Learn Blues Harmonica all styles from Ragtime, Country Blues , Chicago Blues styles. Private lessons in Sydney with Blue tongue & Workshops across Australia with Bluetongue, Ian Collard & Doc Span. web- http://www. bluetongueharmonica.com.au p-02 80037132 m-0412 668575 iFlogID: 3683
0407505764
Gary Soloman Bass player for Marie Wilson, Bo Diddley, Free zone etc is available for local/ touring gigs and recordings. Original acts or covers OK , any genre styles OK call Gary
Vocalist looking for home. Happy to begin with new band or established. Influences blues rock punk folk metal everything. Have experience playing in bands and vocal training. iFlogID: 5369
MUSICIANS WANTED BASS PLAYER BASS PLAYER WANTED Bass playwer wanted for originals band in Melbourne. Have the basics of songs completed, just need to learn the songs to add the bass and get them gig ready. Looking for someone determined and eager to play. Influences are Sonic Youth, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, etc. Contact 0403929446. iFlogID: 4224
VOCALIST WANTED Professional band with clubwork and agent, looking for charismatic male vocalist.Ideal influences would be 80’s 90’s pop/soul.Must be true showperson. Age: 35 - 50years of age. For details call Cora on 0418 122 370. iFlogID: 4994
G4 Guitar is an Australia wide network of Guitar Teachers who teach from their own homes and studios. With over 100 teachers we are the No.1 name in guitar tuition. We welcome both inexperienced and experienced teachers and we provide online training and support. To apply to become a teacher please visit our website at www.g4guitar.com.au or phone 0430-426137 iFlogID: 2631
WANNA BE IN MY BAND??!!! Who wants to be in a all girls original pop rock band hav some fun and make some $$$?! Guitar/bass/ drummer needed. Must be able to sing passable back up vox and luv performing!Practice 1-2 times per week. Gig asap. All ages welcome. www.myspace.com/nicolesero 0435 426 012 iFlogID: 4392
BASS PLAYER WANTED Bassist wanted to join melodic metal band with death/black/thrash influence. Must be determined, skilled and have own gear and transport. Easygoing but professional environment. Ages 18-30 Wollongong/ Sydney based. Influences: Dimmu, Old man’s child, arch enemy, children of bodom, immortal, megadeth, slayer, amon amarth etc. Interest gained nationally and internationally with distribution deals on offer for the band. Great opportunity. www. myspace.com/asmodaiaus or email asmodai_aus@hotmail.com
GET SIGNED TO A MAJOR LABEL! Session Guitarist Wanted! Drummer is forming a fast paced professional original alternative rock band to get signed to a major label. Must be ambitious, self-motivated, committed, reliable and have a lot of drive. No metal. Age: 18-30. Rehearsing at Wetherill Park. Only contact me if you want to get signed to a major label! E-mail: cooleywill2@hotmail.com. iFlogID: 5467
KEYBOARD
iFlogID: 5302
GET SIGNED TO A MAJOR LABEL! Session Bass Player Wanted! Drum-
SKILLED KEYBOARDIST WANTED to complete lineup of new show. Ability to cover orchestrations and excel-
For a limited time. Free online and print classifieds Book now, visit iflog.com.au 86
lent sounds to match a must. High quality show with good pay. Contact: onemoreguitar@yahoo.com.au iFlogID: 4323
MULTI-GENRE KEYBOARD PLAYER SEEKING KEYBOARD PLAYER WITH A LIKING AND SKILL IN VARIOUS GENRES OF MUSIC FROM THE 60’S ONWARDS. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN A LONG TERM PARTNERSHIP WITH A PROFESSIONAL LYRICIST, SINGER WITH AMBITION TO FROM A SONGWRITING DUO TO CREATE SONGS FOR ALBUMS, FILM AND OTHER MEDIA. PROFICIENCY IN APPLE, GARAGEBAND A DISTINCT ADVANTAGE. , PLEASE CONTACT ENRICO ON 0407 781156 FOR FURTHER DETAILS.
offering a Worldwide Digital Deal to a band or artist that we think we can market on a global scale! This will include $5000 worth of online marketing and a worldwide release on all the major digital stores. Submit your tracks (1 per band/artist) along with bio and contact details to - info@valleyarm.com www.valleyarm.com
SINGERS/MUSICIANS WANTED!
iFlogID: 5226
KEYBOARD PLAYER / SYNTH WIZ
Keyboard Player / Synth Wiz needed urgently for exciting new band (trip hop / electronic / rock / indie inspired). We are ready to record our debut album and support it playing gigs, but still looking for the right person to complete the line-up. Chops are less important than enthusiasm, commitment and appreciation of mood and space! Contact: Rokk Latanzio - 0407 518 526 iFlogID: 5298
SYNTH NOISE MAKER WANTED FOR ELECTRO POP ROCK BAND, WE LIKE INTERESTING SOUNDS, BANDS LIKE THE KNIFE, BOWIE, NINA HAGEN, ENO, DELTRON, PORNO FOR PYROS, KRAFTWERK AND MORE. BALLARAT AREA...WE HAVE RELEASES..WE NEED A DEDICATED OPEN PERSON.. OWN GEAR, TRANSPORT, WE HAVE SYNTHS TOO, MULTI INTRUMENTALIST WOULD BE GOOD..OPPORTUNITY TO CO WRITE NEW MATERIAL.. HAVE FUN..TRAVEL AND PLAY..EMAIL softrobots@gmail.com PHONE Jez. 0421 836 876 iFlogID: 5409
KEYBOARDIST AVAILABLE!!! I am looking for a job that is musically related, preferably performing or something along those lines. Studying a B. Music (Performance) at AICM. mobile number: 0435544916 email: brat.dog@hotmail.com Thankyou iFlogID: 5531
OTHER MUSO’S WANTED TO JAM/ FORM BAND muso’s wanted to jam form rock/ metal band, steve,0424487379 iFlogID: 2814
MUSICIANS AND AUDIENCE WANTED
Five world-class passionate vocalists wanted for a Gospel music CD project. Must have beautiful, passionate, powerful and devotional delivery.
SINGER FOR GRUNGE/ROCK BAND
Talented Musicians, Singers/Songwriters Wanted for collaborative project. Im a Perth based Producer seeking friendly and talented singers and musicians in any style for serious yet fun musical projects leading to an album and gigs. Interested? feel free to contact me : recording_studio19@ y7mail.com iFlogID: 4931
ROCK BANDS WANTED FOR ITUNES Attention all Rock bands! Valleyarm Digital are releasing an Aussie Rock compilation album called “ROCK ME DEAD!”. The album will be exclusive to iTunes and will released and promoted worldwide. We want to show the world that Australia has the best rockin’ bands on the planet so submit your track (1 per band) and bio to info@valleyarm.com now to secure a spot. We’ll also be offering a $5000 online marketing and global digital distribution deal to a “Stand Out” act that we think has what it takes...this could be you!! iFlogID: 5512
SYNTH NOISE MAKER WANTED
iFlogID: 5242
iFlogID: 3585
MUSICIANS WANTED FOR POP BAND
TECHNO WANTED FOR ITUNES! Attention all Techno, Dance, Electronica bands, DJs and producers! Valleyarm Digital are releasing an Aussie Electronic compilation album called “Technically Australian”. The album will be exclusive to iTunes and will released and promoted worldwide. Submit your track (1 per band) and bio to info@valleyarm.com now to secure a spot. We’ll also be offering a $5000 online marketing and global digital distribution deal to a “Stand Out” act that we think has what it takes...this could be you!! iFlogID: 5514
METAL BANDS WANTED FOR ITUNES Attention all metal bands! Valleyarm Digital are releasing an Aussie Metal compilation album called “METAL AS F#@K!”. The album will be exclusive to iTunes and will released and promoted worldwide. We want to show the world just how heavy Australia is so submit your track (1 per band) and bio to info@valleyarm.com now to secure a spot. We’ll also be offering a $5000 online marketing and global digital distribution deal to a “Stand Out” act that we think has what it takes...this could be you!! iFlogID: 5516
Details: http://hotelwilliam.yayabings. com.au This is the underground melting pot of music jam sessions, organised by the Yayabings Music Club with the JazzKatts romping the Fusion Bar. Musicians/singers, comedians and artists at all levels perform by coming in on that evening. Totally impromptu and musicians may improvise with other musicians/singers or perform their own set. Local/Backpackers/ Internationals all welcome. iFlogID: 2923
GET YOUR MUSIC ON RADIO! Want to get your music heard on radio? Australian Broadcasting Media(ABM) has over 30 radio stations so getting your music out there is no problem! Interested? email andy@zfmcountrywide.com iFlogID: 3458
BANDS WANTED FOR ITUNES ALBUMS Valleyarm Digital are looking for bands to be included on compilation albums that will be featured on iTunes worldwide, you’ll still own 100% of your recordings & publishing plus make money from the sales!! All genres are welcome and we’ll also be
iFlogID: 5522
GUITAR/BASS/KEYS/VOCALS WANTED Guitarist and drummer looking for serious band members to jam, write songs and learn together with. Relatively close to CBD if possible. Technical ability not as important as having right personality and taste in music. Our favourite music includes: The doors, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Nick Cave, Radiohead, Modest mouse, Mgmt, Presets, Mogwai, Kooks, Gorillaz. Call Andy 0430079765. iFlogID: 5541
Professional Sydney based band with club work and agent requires a frontman for Simply Red tribute show.For further information call Dianne on 0418 122 370. iFlogID: 5290
PINK TRIBUTE NEEDS SINGER
Sydney Grunge/Rock band Samsara looking for a talented singer and front man to join a complete band looking to gig and record. An albums worth of music is already written but need vocal melodies and lyrics. Influences include Silverchair, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin, Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Black Sabbath etc etc. Contact Daniel: 0403 885 433, for more information and demos. iFlogID: 4187
SKA SINGER WANTED We are a new band called Low Gear. Have had about 16 practices together at home, and now about 10 in a studio. We’re not looking for anyone interested in making money as soon as they join a band as we are not gigging yet, but will be looking to just for fun to start, then who knows. Whilst we dont like to admit to being influenced directly by any particular bands, we all like a mix of, The Specials, Toots and the Maytals, Madniess, Reel Big Fish, Prince Buster, Sublime as far as ska goes, we also individually have many opposing influences such as, The Clash, The Ramones, Stiff Little Fingers and thats just me! We have had a great time in the rehearsal rooms in Marrickville, Sydney for the past couple of months, doing 2 hours every fortnight until we get storage then looking to make it more regular. We are now finding that we are hitting a wall without a singer and are looking for someone to come along and give us some input and help us over this hurdle. We are looking for a singer who is decent, but doesnt feel the need to bash it out at 100% all the time, someone who can relax into a voice and also belt out some cheeky stuff every now and then too. If you feel you would have a good time practising with us, give us an email and see how you go. If you enjoy our company then I am sure you would be a welcome friend. iFlogID: 4579
SINGER WANTED [METAL] Melodic/Trash Metal band aged early 20’s seeking a singer. We play covers but also working on originals, we plan to gig in the near future. Influences; Slayer, Pantera, Children of Bodom, Amon Amarth, Mudvayne & more. Practice at Newtown Zen-Studio [Contact me at Memo.oi@hotmail. com] iFlogID: 5029
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS SINGER Sydney based, agent backed and well established Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute require a singer. Please send bio and pic to info@ozredhotchilipeppersshow.com.au
The Australian Pink Show, Sydney’s well established and leading Pink Tribute needs a Fill In singer. We require someone with experience and the stage presence to be Pink. We are agent backed and have loads of gigs ready to go. You need to be available on weekends to perform. So... Ya reckon you can do it? then email Rob at info@ozpinkshow.com.au or go through the link on our website www. ozpinkshow.com.au
ALEY GREENBLO, A CURRENT FINALIST FOR MISS EARTH AUSTRALIA HAS RECENTLY BEEN CHOSEN TO BE THE FACE OF THE “BEAUTY FOR A CAUSE CAMPAIGN”. ALEY HOPES TO CREATE AWARENESS ABOUT CURRENT ENVIRO PROBLEMS AND HAS SET OUT ON A MISSION TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE! THIS “DOWN TO EARTH” COMMERCE LAW STUDENT IS EXTREMELY PASSIONATE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT & IS DEDICATED TO ENSURING THAT OUR BEAUTIFUL PLANET REMAINS CLEAN & LITTER FREE! ALEY HAS BEEN INCREDIBLY ACTIVE IN PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS & HAS TAKEN ON VARIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL INITATIVES. “IT IS SO EASY AND EVERYONE CAN HELP BY DOING THE SMALLEST THINGS!”
GET SIGNED TO A MAJOR LABEL! Established (experienced) singersongwriter wanted! Drummer is forming a fast paced professional original alternative rock band to get signed to a major label. Must be ambitious, self-motivated, committed, reliable and have a lot of drive. No metal. Age: 18-30. Rehearsing at Wetherill Park. Only contact me if you want to get signed to a major label! E-mail: cooleywill2@hotmail.com. iFlogID: 5479
Aley Greenblo who was crowned as a finalist in January for the MISS EARTH AUSTRALIA PAGEANT TEACHES THE WORLD HOW TO ADOPT A GREENER WAY OF LIFE. Aley is studying COMMERCE LAW at UNSW and has been speaking out to encourage others to get active. In a speech Aley delivered to her fellow peers on Friday she mentioned that “MANY PEOPLE ARE INTIMIDATED BY THE IDEA OF ‘GOING GREEN’. IN REALITY HOWEVER, “GOING GREEN IS VERY SIMPLE AND MANY PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED HOW EASY IT IS TO FOLLOW AN ECO-FRIENDLY LIFESTYLE”. ALEY GREENBLO’S ACTS INSPIRE US TO INCULCATE GREEN LIVING IN OUR LIVES AND SPREAD ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN OUR OWN LITTLE WAY. TO FIND OUT MORE GO TO: http://aleygreenblo.blogspot.com/ or facebook: aley greenblo iFlogID: 5314
GRAPHIC DESIGN
SONG WRITER
REAPERS IMAGE DESIGN
GET SIGNED TO A MAJOR LABEL!
CD Art/Layout design,posters, stickers etc, video editing/filming,DVD, multimedia. Cheapest rates in Melbourne. reapersimagedesign.com.au 0403 416 424
Established (experienced) singersongwriter wanted! Drummer is forming a fast paced professional original alternative rock band to get signed to a major label. Must be ambitious, self-motivated, committed, reliable and have a lot of drive. No metal! Age: 18-30. Rehearsing at Wetherill Park. Only contact me if you want to get signed to a major label! E-mail: cooleywill2@hotmail.com.
SINGER NEEDED
iFlogID: N/A
WANT A LOGO FOR YOUR BAND?
iFlogID: 5481
SERVICES BEAUTY SERVICES WEB & GRAPHIC DESIGNSYDNEY
Singer needed for hard rock band. We’re looking for a singer, male or female, for our all original hard rock band. The guitarist and I (bass) have been playing together for over 8 years now and over 3 years with our drummer. We have been writing new songs the last 2 years and continue to work on fresh original material. We have also been playing gigs all over Melbourne for the last year getting some stage experience up but we are really dying to get a frontperson with a voice that works with our music. We’re willing to give anyone a listen, we’re all easy going and in it for the fun above all else, but also been keen to take the next step and make it a serious commitment. Have a listen at our myspace link upon application. http://www.myspace.com/psyecho Please note the myspace recordings are over 2 years old now and we have progressed in style and skill greatly since then. iFlogID: 5131
SINGER
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS SINGER
GOSPEL SINGERS WANTED
Established and agent backed OZ
iFlogID: 2762
BEAUTY FOR A CAUSE CAMPAIGN
GRAPHIC DESIGN SERVICES
PHOTOGRAPHY
100% devotion to music and the packaging it comes in. Pi (Paul Ikin) has a Complete Design Studio aimed at album cover design, packaging and Band Websites. Based in Melbourne Central Complex its easy to get to. Some of the services include * Art Layout design for CD’s/Digipack/ Gatefolds, * Vinyl Sleeves 12” & 7”, and professional Band Websites. Feel free to visit our site to find out more about our services www.paulikin. com
iFlogID: 4498
TROY MUSIC SCHOOL FOOTSCRAY Global Sanctuary Photography are currently running their yearly May, June and July specials. To name a few people we have shot: John Mayer, Jimmy Barnes, Iva Davies, Cruel Sea, Panic at the Disco, Human Nature, Killing Heidi and Delta Goodrem. We come to you on location or at your gig or come to our awesome warehouse studio at Botany. Studio style or grungy warehouse, the choice is yours. We are creative and easy going producing quality work using canon pro gear. Call us on 0416 144 277 or email us at globalsanctuary@mac. com. Visit www.globalsanctuary.biz
1100 FULL COLOUR POSTERS = $80
Join us for the Winter Solstice around the midnight fires and turn the wheel of the year together. On the darkest night of the year we welcome the warmth and light of the Solstice fires! www.witchesworkshop.com
SYDNEY MUSICIANS WANTED Musicians wanted to join our new online community - thesound.com.au iFlogID: 5209
Visit our website for an extensive price list and other services!
WANTED AMPS
PRO TOOLS/LOGIC TRAINING
TOUR STAFF WANTED
iFlogID: 4554
With over 20 years experience, ACE Design & Print has gained an unequaled reputation as a reliable supplier of quality printing with exceptional service and competitive prices. Our print services are designed for fast production and fast delivery within your budget. Here are some prices for your consideration, let us know your specific requirements and we can quote & deliver! 100 A4 Posters printed in full colour onto 150gsm gloss = $40 250 A6 Leaflets printed in full colour onto 150gsm gloss = $50 250 Full Colour Digital Business cards onto 300gsm gloss = $50 100 A3 Posters printed in full colour onto 150gsm gloss = $80 1000 Business Cards in full colour 2 sides with plastic coating = $160 1000 A5 Flyers printed in full colour onto 150gsm gloss = $210 1000 A4 Letterheads printed in full colour onto 100gsm bond = $230 1000 A4 Flyers printed in full colour onto 150gsm gloss = $300 500 A2 Posters printed in full colour onto 150gsm gloss = $490 1000 A5 Booklets 8pp printed in full colour onto gloss = $735 500 Presentation Folders printed in full colour on white board = $795
OTHER NAIL DOWN YOUR NAME You got a great band. Your band is tight. you look great, your getting gigs your getting known but you haven’t protected your name. If you don’t lock it down some one can come along and steal it. That’s what we do. We can register your name and trade mark it so it will be yours, protecting your future money making ability and your creative talent. Call me today 31142123 or email ej@engelbertjones.com.au
UTS:Pro School offers high quality, professional short courses in Digidesign Pro Tools 8 designed to improve your music and audio postproduction skills. PT 101 12-13 July PT 110 14-16 July PT 201 19-20 July PT 210M 21-23 July Logic Pro 101 7- 9 July Ring 9514 9931 or go to http://www.utsproschool.uts.edu.au to book your place iFlogID: 4586
CLOTHING ALTERATIONS Clothing Alterations, Mending & Embroidery Servicing Mont Albert, Box Hill, Balwyn & surrounding areas Call Laura for a quote & appointment 0435005309 iFlogID: 4978
BAND PHOTOS
Need band photos? Then contact Atomic Pics as we can provide high quality live show and Promo Photos at a very affordable price Contact me with a message @ www.myspace. com/volume11 iFlogID: 5118
ILLUSTRATOR! BOOKS TO ALBUMS Do you need an affordable Illustrator? Freelance illustrator Paul Ikin can create a range of styles for your project. No hidden cost at an affordable price. Album Covers - Film Clips - Book Sleeves - Children Books - Online Images - Fliers - Posters Editorial Artwork. Visit www.paulikin. com - T: 0403 996 129
iFlogID: 5308
OTHER THE CHILLI MAN IS BACK!!!!
iFlogID: 5133
4 Tonne Truck with Hydraulic Lift available for Hire for deliveries private, commercial or contract (by negotiation) $65 p/hour for man and truck $85 p/hour for two men and truck. Call Derek 0423979396.
TUITION SINGING & VOCAL PRODUCTION
Trust the professionals to capture the fun and magic of your party or event! 21st parties, sports clubs, nightclubs, promoters, concerts, seminars plus corporate and social functions! We’ve
JOBS, JOBS, JOBS! Ever found yourself putting on a tour and don’t know how to get a sound engineer or someone to sell merchandise on the other side of the country? Well, that is how CoverYourArtz.com came about... The website enables anyone offering a service that can be used by touring artists to browse for work, and for touring artists to find the people they need to make their tour work anywhere in Australia. By visiting CoverYourArtz.com, anyone who is putting on an event is able to source all types of crew from tour managers, sound engineers, and lighting technicians to merchandisers, photographers and poster distributors in areas where they wouldn’t normally know where to start looking. Anyone working in the industry can look for work, and also list their details so that they don’t miss out on that next ‘big job’! Registering and browsing for jobs on CoverYourArtz.com is absolutely free, you only pay when you want to apply. For further info please contact the team at info@coveryourartz.com or visit our website at www.coveryourartz.com.
TRUCK AND DRIVER FOR HIRE
iFlogID: 5137
100 COLOUR POSTERS ONLY $80
iFlogID: 4622
WITCHES WINTER SOLSTICE
iFlogID: 4933
SUPER CHEAP COLOUR PRINTING
PARTY & FUNCTION PHOTOGRAPHY
iFlogID: 3643
Troy Music School where Students become musicians. Tuition in Guita r,Vocals,Drums,Piano,Sax,Violin,Cl arinet,Trumpet,Bass Guitar,Ukulele and now offering Lessons In Recording,Protools, Cubase,Ableton live. Record your songs now. Ph. 9689 4622 184 Barkly st Footscray 10 min from city.
iFlogID: 4518
iFlogID: 4626
iFlogID: 3496
MYSPACE - WEBSITES - ALBUM ART - POSTERS - LOGOS - PROMO - TSHIRT DESIGN - Graphic Design services for everything in the music industry. Website packages start at $449 Custom Myspace $899 WE KNOW YOUR BUSINESS Email for a free quote/consultation paul@cattanachdesign.com.au or vist the website www.cattanachdesign.com.au
P&O have teamed up with DJ Bootcamp to bring u Australias first 8 day/3 island professional DJ Course Cruise.Learn DJing and enjoy, food,entertainmet,accommidation and 3 islands!Early booking discounts.Go www.djbootcamp.com.au to book 95472578 info. Sails August 29, 2010
iFlogID: 4552
iFlogID: 4914
Want a logo to differentiate yourself from other bands? We can make you stand out from the rest! Boggleworks are currently offering a special price of $250 (RRP $349) for your very own custom designed logo. Visit www. boggleworks.com for more info. Be sure to enter the promotional code “IFLOG” for the special discount! iFlogID: 2808
Inspire Design Studios provides meaningful, smart and economic design solutions that communicates clearly with a given market. From website design, to branding, we can take you through the entire process of creating an identity for your organization. Maybe you just need some business cards, or maybe you need a completely new look. From logo design, to website creation, to company apparel, and anything in between. To provide you with the most competitive pricing contact us to discuss your requirements without any obligation. Special prices Static website (within 5 pages) $495 CMS website (within 7 pages) $695 Online shopping site $795 No hidden charges or on-going monthly fees To find out more please visit www. lydiay.com
iFlogID: 4437
P&O/DJ BOOTCAMP CRUISE
PI BAND ART AND DESIGN
GREEN, GLAM & GORGEOUS
VOCALIST / ENTERTAINER
iFlogID: 5415
100 Full Colour A4 Gloss Posters = only $40 100 Full Colour A3 Matt Posters = only $50 100 Full Colour A3 Gloss Posters = only $80 and many more options to choose from Posters • Flyers • Handouts • Business Cards We can print a sample for you while you wait and complete the job within the hour. bsd@zip.com.au www.blackstar.com.au
iFlogID: 5082
iFlogID: 5379
Rolling Stones Tribute Band are currently running auditions for the role of Mick Jagger. Professional attitude and experience required. Industry contacts well established. (some guitar and harmonica skills would be an advantage) Contact Chris 0431 530 330 E-mail bazza40@tpg. com.au
sons can be recorded and take place in a relaxed and fully equipped studio in Botany. All ages welcome - female teacher- children welcome. INTRODUCTORY OFFER: $30 per lesson for the first 3 months. Conditions apply. Email: alteregoprom@gmail or phone 0403.869.364
iFlogID: 3672
iFlogID: 5035
ELECTRONIC MUSICIANS WANTED Electronic musicians wanted to form a live act. Preferably using Ableton & with some hardware. Influence :Groove Armada, Bent, Justice, Faithless, Röyksopp, Nightmares on Wax, Thievery Corporation, Air, Bonobo, Cassius. Tell me a bit about yourself & preferably send some links to your soundcloud : whooyeah@gmail.com. Also Want to hear from other musicians that would like to colaborate on this type of project.
been awarded “Best scene Photograph” PDMA in 2009, member of the AIPP and have extensive experience in photographing events from parties through to music events of 40,000 revellers, so you can be assured of affordable quality and professional photos for your party or event! Check us out or make a booking today at www.atomikarts.com
SIMPLY RED VOCALIST REQUIRED
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Melbourne bassist seeking RELIABLE, DEDICATED, CONFIDENT, CREATIVE musicians to form pop band. Influences: Faith No More, INXS, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, GnR, Soundgarden, The Police, Godflesh, Icehouse, M.I.A, Depeche Mode, Pantera, Genesis ect listen to demos at soundcloud.com/integra and call Mike on 0424 838 782
Red Hot Chili Peppers Show are looking for a experienced singer, to front the band. Must be based in Sydney, with own transport, and ready to gig on weekends.Gigs waiting. Please email details to info@ozredhotchilipeppersshow.com.au
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FINISH LINE
INDUSTRY NEWS BY BRYGET CHRISFIELD
LONDON FIELDS THE VIEW FROM EC4 WITH JAMES MCGALLIARD
The ceremonial passing of the stamp as the Tote reopens. Pic by Carbie Warbie
As much as it’s easy to sometimes loathe where you live, dreaming of other far away or remembered places, sometimes events conspire to deflate fantasies of an imagined life elsewhere by providing experiences that couldn’t be found anywhere else. At times like this you find yourself tearing up those mental lists of reasons to be or not to be where you are and just revel in your time. Recently I’ve looked enviously at Melbourne shows by The Chills (compensated by seeing The Clean here), the closure and rebirth of the Tote and commemorations of the Seaview Ballroom.
SUMMIT WINNER Adelaide singer/songwriter Courtney Robb has been selected by Triple J Unearthed to take part in this year’s Song Summit. Robb will be flown to Sydney to attend the Summit and will take part in an exclusive songwriting workshop with APRA Songwriter Of The Year, Julian Hamilton, Washington and Kevin Mitchell.
QUICK FIX SHUTS DOWN Following extensive coverage in the Australian music press, the controversial Chartfixer website now greets you with the message: “Chartfixer is closed.” The website claimed to be able to rig the charts via iTunes by paying users to download digital singles. Although an ARIA spokesperson denied the company had anything to do with the website shutting down, ARIA CEO Stephen Peach told Billboard.biz that he thought Chartfixer looked “very much like misleading and deceptive conduct” and seemed to be “in breach of the Trade Practices Act.”
LAUNCH YOUR CAREER Gig Launch is an online booking agency that caters for both artists and promoters and is designed to help artists/ bands find gigs in Australia and abroad, without having to use international booking agencies. Artists are able to put together an electronic press kit that contains their music, bio and press information, which can be sent directly to the promoter when the artist is interested in a gig. Head to giglaunch.com.au where artists/bands get one month’s free trial.
SHOP FOR SONGS The Song Shop (thesongshop.tv) is calling for artists for their Artist Shopping project. Head to the website and listen to the available Raw Songs. If you like what you hear, you can book an Artist Shopping audition session. When each Raw Song hits its budget target, an Artist Shopping entrant will then be chosen to record the song. The artist chosen will then receive royalties from sales of the song and promotion on the site.
THE SONG LAB The Push’s free, all-ages songwriter’s program, Push Songs, returns for round three from Tuesday 27 July to Tuesday 31 August. Six successful applicants will have the opportunity take part in three one-on-one song development sessions of one-and-a-half-hour’s duration. Workshops are run by Melbourne songwriter Charles Jenkins, Wally De Backer (Gotye, The Basics), Liz Stringer, Monique Brumby and Joel Silbersher. Apply online via thepush.com.au/html/pushsongs from Tuesday 15 June to Friday 9 July.
WE ARE THE WORLD Multicultural Arts Victoria are holding a series of free business skills workshops for world music artists every Saturday in July, 12-5pm at Melbourne Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Bookings essential (projects@multiculturalarts.com.au).
PASSING NOTES Reports have just emerged from the UK that post-punk guitarist Stella Nova died age 50 after a long battle with cancer on Monday 24 May. As Steve New he was an original member of seminal pop-punk band The Rich Kids (with Glen Matlock, Rusty Egan and Midge Ure) before playing sessions with Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Johnny Thunders and PiL and issuing a solo album on Alan McGee’s Poptones. US bass player Marvin Isley died on Sunday 6 June age 56 from diabetes complications – a member of soul outfit Isley Brothers, he co-wrote their 1975 political anthem Fight The Power. UK singer Crispian St Peters died last Tuesday, he had a worldwide top ten hit in 1966 with the poppy Pied Piper. Former Stereophonics drummer Stuart Cable, who was sacked from the band in 2003, died on Monday 7 June age 40. Got news? Announcements? Gossip? Unsubstantiated but hilarious rumours? Send them all to finishline@streetpress.com.au.
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VIVA LA TOTE As live music venues around the country struggle to stay afloat and venue closures are an all too regular occurrence, the Melbourne music scene experienced victory as the Tote reopened its doors for an industry-only event last Thursday. The venue was forced to close its doors in January because of liquor licensing restrictions, which prompted outraged music fans to form the Save Live Australian Music (SLAM) group. A rally was quickly arranged in protest of Victoria’s draconian liquor licensing laws and thousands convened at the foot of Parliament House for the SLAM rally in February. The Tote’s reopening is an important first step in correcting the assumption that live music venues are magnets for violent behaviour. The venue’s famous sticky carpet was pulled up and sold off in numbered specimen bags when previous owner Bruce Milne auctioned off memorabilia to help pay legal costs incurred while trying to keep the venue open, but the new publicans – Jon Perring, Sam Crupi and Andrew Portokallis AKA Seventh Tipple – have definitely preserved the pub’s flavour. Columns that blocked sightlines have been removed, a new soundsystem has been installed and a van has been set up in the carpark so that tacos can be sold in the beergarden. Jet’s bassist Mark Wilson was serving tacos on the night. Milne gave a speech and commended the Melbourne music community for fighting to keep the Tote open. He also praised the new owners for taking over the venue’s licence without a guarantee that the high-risk conditions would be alleviated. It was revealed on the night that the pub will retain its name and Milne handed the Tote entry stamp over to Portokallis, who cheered, “Viva la Tote!” Director Natalie van den Dungen then introduced a trailer for the six-yearsin-the-making Tote documentary and advised that the finished product will be on TV and DVD by the end of the year. The venue will be open to the public four nights a week from Thursday while the licensees apply to have its ‘high risk’-rating lifted. The departure of Sue Maclellan from the licencing department may prove a big win as her replacement Mark Brennan approved the Tote’s new liquor licence within 24 hours of receiving the paperwork. Music fans are urged to keep the fight going until election time. Tonedeafcom.au have advised they will be issuing rock’n’roll how-to-vote cards.
SHOCK RESTRUCTURES
LITTLE HONOURED
The Shock Entertainment Group and One Stop Entertainment Group are restructuring and have decided to close down One Stop Entertainment Pty Ltd, Shock Exports.com Pty Ltd and Shock Music Publishing Pty Ltd. “These three businesses that were closed were completely separate and autonomous entities to Shock Entertainment and they were becoming a strain on Shock,” Tim Janes, General Manager of Shock Entertainment told Finish Line. “As far as our core business, Shock Entertainment, it’s business as usual and at the moment we’re having a fantastic June with The Drums and Kele [Okereke] and Parkway Drive to [tour here] this month.” A statement confirmed that One Stop Entertainment Pty Ltd and Shock Exports.com were placed into voluntary administration and Shock Music Publishing Pty Ltd was placed into voluntary liquidation.
This year, APRA’s Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music will be awarded to Jimmy Little, AO. Little began his recording career in 1956 and is still making music 45 years on. His biggest hit was Royal Telephone (1963), which sold more than 75,000 copies. Although mostly recognised for his country musical style, Little celebrated big orchestral sounds in his 1972 album Winterwood. Little is also an ambassador for the Department of Training, Youth and Education’s literacy and numeracy Indigenous education program and has been mentoring Indigenous music students at Redfern’s Eora Centre since 1985. In 2004 he released his 34th album, Life’s What You Make It, covering songs by artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Red Hot Chili Peppers. A public vote named Little a ‘National Living Treasure’ that same year.
APRA SCORES WIZ The 2010 APRA Music Awards will be hosted by RockWiz’s Julia Zemiro and resident MC Jonathan Biggins on Monday 21 June at the Sydney Convention Centre. Francois Tetaz has curated the evening’s musical line-up with the following acts scheduled to grace the stage: Basement Birds, Washington, Art Vs Science, Operator Please, Urthboy, Katie Noonan and a performance by members of The Church plus a special guest, who will be revealed on the night. The awards will be aired on cable television on Sunday 4 July at 8.30pm.
PRESENTS FROM [V] Channel [V] have announced another [V] LIVE event with international superstars Kasabian and local heroes The Temper Trap to perform in Melbourne next month. You’ll get the chance to catch British psych rockers Kasabian, who will perform songs from their latest West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum album as well as older material, on Thursday 22 July at Trak Lounge Bar. Kasabian will perform exclusively for Channel [V] to an intimate crowd of 300 people for a 60-minute [V] Live episode to premiere in August.
But when you’re standing in a 350-capacity club, and Peter Hook is playing his six-string Shergold less than ten feet in front of you, and Mani is a few feet further away playing the lower baselines, you just know that this is something you’d be unlikely to experience in the confines of the Northcote Social Club. For this is Manchester supergroup Freebass playing only their second proper gig. Andy Rourke is sadly absent, and Hooky is the centre of a fine night‘s entertainment, one which may recall the past, but is also entirely of the present, the band not relying on any of its member’s huge back catalogues to get by. It’s a performance free of frills, and watching it I’m reminded of the difference to seeing another new buzz Manchester band this year – Hurts, who had everything right as far as looks and staging, but had forgotten the need for songs. Two nights later comedian Stewart Lee is playing a free show in a woefully ill-equipped pub on the edges of Shoreditch. The circumstances see him abandon his plans to test new material, and instead he improvises around some themes from his 2009 Edinburgh show. That night, his thoughts on leaving London for the country or places further afield struck a certain resonance with me. Escaping the confines of the Hobby Horse for a calmer locale, a wander down Orsman Road ends at The Stag’s Head. But I’m soon drawn into the band area where I witness an extraordinary bass groove that loops hypnotically for the next 15 minutes. This it turns out is the single launch of Chips For The Poor and I leave happily clutching their new 7” clear vinyl and a free bonus CD of the full version. Between these two nights I’m in Brighton to witness Julian Cope turn in a virtuoso solo performance. After sitting on that strange cobbled beach (nothing stranger than the sound of waves rolling over pebbles), I head off to the Komedia. While he can tend to be a little erratic, somehow on this balmy Brighton evening it all came together brilliantly, nearly resulting in me missing the last train back to London. He’s a fabulous raconteur, and extremely funny, interspersing songs with thoughts arising from research into his next book (Lives Of The Prophets), weird Japanese lyrical translations, and tales of his 50th birthday acid trip. His acerbic wit remains and his comments that The Teardrop Explodes were consistent at being not very good makes his non-appearance a few days later to collect an award from Mojo in their honour not unsurprising. With shows this month by Gang Of Four, James, Brendan Perry, The Lotus Eaters and Marc Almond, you do sometimes wonder what decade this is. But other than a visit in May 1982 with a disintegrating The Teardrop Explodes, when has Julian Cope visited Australia? Where else but London would you see John Foxx reunited with guitarist Robin Simon to perform songs from the landmark Systems Of Romance album? Or experience the preternatural stillness of the streets during an England World Cup game? And while Daniel Kitson may seem to spend more time in Australia than he does here, never would his former landlord and enemy turn up at the end of an Australian performance of 66a Church Road as happened here last Sunday. As I reflect on all this heading home on one of the last remaining bendy buses, I think that despite all the fears for a bleak future forecast by the new Liberal Con coalition, it’s worth enduring life here for the things that couldn’t happen anywhere else. But as Daniel Kitson’s landlord said, there are two sides to every story.
melbourne
international
ANIMATION festival
19-27 June 2010 ACMI Cinemas Australian Centre for the Moving Image Federation Square Melbourne
50screenings 400+films 35+countries
www.miaf.net
Felix the Cat, USA, 1923
The Haplocks, Veronica Sive
Ves ge, Florian Witzel
Malice In Wonderland, Vince Collins
The Small Dragon, Bruno Collet
Mad val, Comfort Arthur
No Sleep Won’t Kill You, Marko Mestrovic
Stars and Stripes, Norman McLaren, 1941
FELIX THE CAT
BEST OF THE NEXT
> SUN 20.06, 7 > FRI 25.06, 9.15
SIGGRAPH WRAP-UP
VINCE COLLINS RETROSPECTIVE
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
PANORAMA PROGRAMS
ZAGREB FILM STUDIO SHOWCASE
DIRECT TO FILM SHOWCASE
presented by StormFX
presented by Qantm College
> SUN 20.06, 8
> SCREENING EVERY DAY OF THE FESTIVAL!
> TUE 22.06
> TUE 22.06, 5.45
> WED 23.06, 6
More from the new gen of Croa an animators.
The amazing technique of scratching or pain ng directly onto film stock one frame at a me - seriously seduc ve filmmaking.
The original megastar! A selec on of rare films from the 1920’s. You just can’t miss this one... seriously!
INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE ANIMATION
> SUN 20.06 #1: 2 #3: 4
, #2: 3 , #4 AUS : 5
New talent launching from Australia & around the world - only 6 bucks a session.
> SUN 20.06, 6.15 Straight from the digera specialists - 26 films jam packed into one big program.
The psychedelic genius will take you on a mind bending ride you’ll never ever forget!
..YEEHAH A great way to get a diverse snapshot of recently released films.
#1: 5.30 #3: 7.30
, #2: 6.30 , #4: 8.30
Some of the fes val’s hidden gems for the wee price of $6 per session.
Local Dive, Sarah Wa , Australia 1999
Who I Am and What I Want, C Shepherd & D Shrigley
The Mouse That Soared, Kyle Bell
The Petrol Can Rider, Simon O’Carrigan
Logorama, H5
Dukes of Broxstonia - Ear Ache, S Parera
photo: Ben Landau
CAREERS IN ANIMATION FORUM
MIAF 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY SERIES
SLINKY PICS STUDIO SHOWCASE
KIDS PROGRAM & CLUB
AUSTRALIAN SHOWCASE
AUTOUR DE MINUIT STUDIO
LATE NIGHT BIZARRE
BEST OF THE FEST
presented by Qantm College
prizes from Qantm College
presented by Holmesglen
presented by JMC Academy
> SAT 26.06, 9.30
> THU 24.06, 7.15
> BIZARRE: 24, 9 > STUDENT: 25, 5.15 > AUSTRALIAN: 26, 6 > INTERNATIONAL:S 27,4
> FRI 25.06, 5.45
photo: Ben Landau
All you need to know to get your foot in the door (& out of your mouth!)
Some of our faves from 10 years of anima on goodness!
...special thanks to
An awesome collec on of Bri sh animated gems & award winning commercial projects.
presented by Media World Pictures
> SAT 26.06, 11.30 Interna onal films for our youngest audience (& the young at heart).
+ MEET THE FILMMAKERS > SAT 26.06, 4
Home-grown talent strut their stuff on the big screen. O yeah. Love it.
> SAT 26.06, 7.45
EDOUARD SALIER SHOWCASE presented by Qantm College
> SUN 27.06, 6 Catapul ng you to the forefront of the French digital anima on scene.
The name says it all! A MIAF ins tu on. Warning: some films will offend.
> SUNDAY 27, 8 > SUNDAY 27, 10 Check out the best of the best... then head to Misty Bar across the road at 3-5 Hosier Lane for the last hoorah closing party!