Time Off Issue 1615

N O W AVA IL A BL E O N I PA D • 2 0 F E BRUA RY 2 013 • 1615 • F R E E

INSIDE SOUNDWAVE MAPS AND TIMES 5 INSID

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BLINK-182

EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN

BLEACH* FESTIVAL

HANNAH GADSBY

ANTHRAX LUNICE BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE RUNNING GUN SOUND

EPORT NAMM RREVIEWS GEAR MORE AND ISSUE#

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ADRIAN BOHM BY ARRANGEMENT WITH LISA THOMAS MANAGEMENT PRESENTS

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“Has the audience simultaneously weeping with laughter and nodding in agreement.”

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MONDAY 11 MARCH CONVENTION CENTRE

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Madman Entertainment we have five double in-season passes up for grabs to Save Your Legs! In cinemas Thursday 28 February.

Clubfeet have been touring around the country this month to celebrate the release of their new LP, Heirs & Graces. They play Alhambra Lounge this Thursday with Collarbones, Chela and visuals by Ego. We have got two double passes up for grabs – get in quick for this one! Entrants must be 18+.

Edward ‘Teddy’ Brown is obsessed with cricket. His whole life has revolved around the game, his park cricket team and his mates.

Now that they’ve hit their mid-thirties, his friends are starting to move on, trading in the team for their careers, wives, mortgages and kids. With Ted’s precious Abbotsford Anglers on the brink of extinction, he makes one last, desperate attempt to keep his mates passion for the pitch alive and convinces his boss Sanjeet to let the Anglers represent Australia on a cricket tour of India. Thanks to

O P M TAE5=B GH5;9

Einstürzende Neubauten’s fearsome live shows have long been legendary for all the right reasons, literally trying to bring down the house (with jackhammers) on more than one occasion. Founded in West Berlin in 1980, before the fall of the Wall, they quickly became renowned for their intense noise assaults, blood-curdling screams and trenchant use of eclectic instrumentation – often constructed themselves from scrap metal and then bludgeoned and dismantled onstage with building tools – to augment their already visceral sound. You can catch them at The Tivoli this Saturday, and we have got two double passes to give away! Entrants must be 18+.

PM ROM 7:30

EB F NS WED 20 F COUSTIC SESSIO LTON,

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With their origins spanning back to 1977 while based in Sydney, Simon Bonney has led Crime & the City Solution through countless line up changes, in many cities, across multiple countries. After a 21-year hiatus which saw the band end prematurely in 1991, Crime & the City Solution are finally back. We have five double passes to give away to their show with Sleepy Sun this Sunday at The Hi-Fi. Entrants must be 18+.

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TIME OFF Foreword Line – news, opinions, tours, Backlash, Frontlash Cover stars Killswitch Engage are back to where they began When The Bamboos needed someone to own it, they turned to a legend SoCal punk trio Blink-182 have been polishing up their dick... jokes Let the buildings crumble with Einstürzende Neubauten Jack of all trades Lunice isn’t interested in the beef Number one with a Bullet For My Valentine We talk to Crime & The City Solution about the good, the bad and ugly Enjoy the final shots from Running Gun Sound Canuck punks Billy Talent can’t stop the rock Memphis rockers Lucero are nothing if not hometown boys Muso lift-out – industry news and the latest equipment San Fran’s Sleepy Sun are keen for some fun Carrie & The Cut Snakes are mad about their music UK producer Huxley keeps his garage tidy Blues star Joanne Taylor Shaw talks about riffing for the Queen

CREDITS EDITORIAL Group Managing Editor: Andrew Mast Editor: Steve Bell Contributing Editors: Dan Condon, Benny Doyle Front Row Editor: Cassandra Fumi Interns: Keagan Elder, Sophia De Marco ADVERTISING Advertising Account Executives: Alex Iveson, Corey Herekiuha DESIGN & LAYOUT Cover Design/Designer: Matt Davis ACCOUNTS & ADMINISTRATION Administration: Leanne Simpson CONTRIBUTORS: Time Off: Ben Preece, Dan Condon, Daniel Johnson, Chris Yates, Matt O’Neill, Adam Curley, Lochlan Watt, Tyler McLoughlan, Mitch Knox, Sam Hobson, Rachel Tinney, Tony McMahon, Benny Doyle, Jake Sun, Brendan Telford, Cyclone, Siobhain McDonnell, Sky Kirkham, Bradley Armstrong, Carley Hall, Eleanor Houghton,

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On The Record has the latest, greatest and the not so greatest new musical releases 34 Chris Yates spotlights the best (and worst) tracks for the week in Singled Out 34

FRONT ROW Check out what’s happening This Week in Arts Dave Thornton acts like the sharp end of the stick Look out, Hannah Gadsby is growing up Girls talk and theatre reviews from the last week Your weekly dose of arts opinion in The Looking Glass and Cultural Cringe

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BACK TO TIME OFF! Get the drum on all the coolest happenings in local music last week, this week and beyond in Live Dan Condon gets the dirt on the blues scene from the Roots Down Lochlan Watt gives you brutal metal news in Adamantium Wolf Adam Curley cuts sick with another musical pop culture rant in The Breakdown Cyclone has the wide urban world covered with some OG Flavas Soundwave map and timetable – know your shit people Get excited for the GC Bleach* Festival with our big feature

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FOREWORD LINE

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

CAN’T STOP THIS GUY

IN BRIEF

After selling out his entire run of city headline shows, Australia’s first Idol, Guy Sebastian, is taking it to the rural streets with an intensive schedule that will see him connect with his huge fanbase right around the country. Queenslanders, you have four chances to catch your man in concert: Tuesday 28 May, Ipswich Civic Centre; Wednesday 29, Caloundra Events Centre; Friday 7 June, Empire Theatre, Toowoomba; Saturday 8, Jupiters Theatre, Gold Coast. Tickets are on sale now through the respective venue websites.

STAY AWAKE He was just in the country doing a ‘stripped back’ two turntables and a microphone type deal, but we’re happy to announce that Elliot Example Gleave is coming back with his full band in tow for some festival dates with Groovin’ The Moo, and now also a select run of headline shows. Mixing dubstep, electro and trance beats with hip hop flow and spinning it all into a visceral live show, you don’t want to miss one of the biggest names in the UK dance scene right now when Example plays The Tivoli, Thursday 9 May. Tickets can be picked up through Fuzzy from tomorrow (Thursday 21 February), with support from Peking Duk.

BIGGER AND BOLDER It’s been four long years since their debut LP, but finally Sydney’s Songs are returning to the fold with their new long-player, Malabar, a sonic evolution that takes their lo-fi ideals and gives them grander scope, the new tracks sounding rich, round and impulsive. To mark the release, the quartet will be hitting the road, giving fans an exciting first taste of the fresh sounds. Check them out when they roll into Brisbane, Friday 12 April, playing the Primitive Room at Spring Hill Hotel. Get your tickets on the door.

TASTY TREATS The Caxton Street Seafood & Wine Festival is back once more on Sunday 5 May with a bumper line-up of musical entertainment, plus of course loads of delicious food and great wine. Throughout the day you can catch: Ash Grunwald with Scott Owen and a mystery guest, Chance Waters, pictured, Tyler Touché, Yung Warriors, Mental As Anything, The Choirboys, Jakarta Criers, Mr Wilson, Tyrone Noonan, Dan England, Pludo, Afrodiza and Latin Fire. All this music, food and more is coming to you for only $25+BF through Moshtix, with part of the proceeds going to Wesley Hospitals and the Queensland Floods Appeal. Tickets go on sale Monday 25 February, with the event proudly presented by Time Off.

TIME TO FEAST Those starving boys of Brisbane guitar pop are back! Hungry Kids Of Hungary are on the cusp of releasing their long-anticipated second record, and are eager to shower us in those lush four-part harmonies once again. To celebrate the occasion the local quartet are hitting the road, playing four shows around our traps during the You’re A Shadow tour, starting Thursday 18 April, Kings Beach Hotel, Caloundra; Friday 19, The Hi-Fi; Saturday 20, The Northern, Byron Bay; and Sunday 21, Alhambra Lounge for an under-18 show. Support at all shows will come from The Preatures and Them Swoops, with tickets available now through Oztix. Proudly presented by Time Off. The band will also be doing a special album launch on the Queen Street Mall stage from 5pm, Friday 22 February. Head along, hear some tracks, pick up the record and get it signed by the band – it’s a no-brainer!

Travis Barker didn’t board his plane for Blink-182’s Australian tour which starts this week. Barker, who has an acute fear of flying following a 2008 Learjet crash which killed four people, will be replaced on all Soundwave and Sidewave dates by Bad Religion’s Brooks Wackerman.

The leader of that Odd Future bunch, Tyler, the Creator, is set to drop a follow-up to his controversial 2011 LP Goblin. Titled Wolf, the record will land early April, with lead single Domo 23 currently doing the rounds online.

A half billion dollar lawsuit is currently in motion due to trademark infringement on the name Chubby Checker. The legendary artist and his lawyers are taking Hewlett-Packard and its subsidiary Palm to court after they created an app, named after Checker, which calculates penis size based on shoe size.

WE ARE BUT MEN. ROCK! Those portly pals of pure entertainment, the round men of rock Tenacious D are coming to Australia for a bunch of headline shows later this year. If you got along early to Foo Fighters’ shows back in 2011 you’d know that Kyle Gas and Jack Black bring the noise live, combining comedy, guitars and genuine musical chops in a way that’s impossible not to love. Better still, the guys are roping in Australia’s smiling lord of the organ Barry Morgan to join them on all Aussie dates, as well as US lads Sasquatch. Brisbane gets its dose of laugh therapy Friday 10 May at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. Tickets go on sale Monday 25 February through Ticketek and anyone can come – it’s all ages!

BIG BEATS AND BELLYACHES Australian/Irish electro pop favourites The Potbelleez have got a brand new single ready for the tiles, Saved In A Bottle, and will be dropping loud with a couple of Queensland shows. The trio will perform Friday 5 April on the sands of Surfers Paradise at Hard Rock Rocks The Beach and Saturday 6, Villa Noosa Hotel, Sunshine Coast. The GC show is a freebie – get on that – while tickets for the Noosa date can be purchased through Ticketmaster.

Although the promoters of Supafest are still in debt to the tune of more than two million dollars, there is talk online that the festival will be returning in some form this coming April, with 50 Cent rumoured as a potential headliner.

More shows have been cancelled on Morrissey’s current US tour as the singer continues to recover from a bleeding ulcer and Barrett’s esophagus.

TIME TO FALL IN LOVE There was no way that British punk icons Buzzcocks were going to be coming to Australia and not visiting sunny Queensland, so we’re now happy to announce that the guys will be playing a sideshow our way during their visit as part of the Dig It Up! shindigs down south. Before their Sydney gig the quartet will play one special concert at The Zoo, Saturday 20 April. Tickets are $48+BF through Oztix.

WHERE’S OUR HOVERBOARDS? The everyman of Australian rhyme, Seth Sentry, is taking to the highway in his DeLorean to get Queensland crowds jumping to the sound. The Melbourne MC is running on an all-time high right now after a fine showing in the latest triple j Hottest 100, not to mention being crowned Channel V’s 2012 ‘Artist Of The Year’, so get ready to experience one of our finest hip hop artists at the top of his game. Sentry plays one Brisbane show only, hitting The Hi-Fi, Saturday 25 May, with tickets available through his official website.

IT’S ON AGAIN The biggest thing to hit Brisbane’s music scene every year is back for its 2013 instalment. BIGSOUND is the biggest music conference in the Southern Hemisphere and transforms our beloved Valley entertainment precinct into the beating heart of music with educational and provoking panels during the day and explosive live music throughout the night. Get ready for one hell of a hangover. The event will take place from Wednesday 11 to Friday 13 September, with early-bird ticket rates available and applications now open for both conference registration and live performances.

BEDROOM TO THE BRIGHT LIGHTS Fresh from inking a deal with influential label UNFD, Doyle Perez, better known as D At Sea, has just announced a bunch of dates to launch his first official release, Unconcious. The strapping Sunshine Coast lad won the attention of the hardcore scene thanks to his acoustic reworkings of normally brutal tracks from artists such as Parkway Drive and Of Mice & Men, and will be bringing his impeccable set of pipes to Kill The Music for a free in-store and signing session at 5pm, Thursday 7 March and then hanging around for an 18+ set at X&Y Bar that same evening as part of their weekly Snitch night. Tickets for that show can be purchased on the door.

ROCK THE DIRT If you like your metal dark and dripping of desperation than you’ll no doubt be releasing some blood curdling screams to the news that Cradle Of Filth will be stirring the pot in our neck of the woods once more.

Experience the morbid poetry of main man Dani Filth and lose yourself in their gothic fury when the UK sextet arrive in Brisbane, beginning their tour Thursday 9 May at The Hi-Fi. Tickets are available through the venue website from next Monday, 25 February.

We’re hiring a

Sound

Catalyst Are you an audio engineer, sound designer, musician, producer, music therapist, sound artist, composer, promoter, music academic, or acoustic engineer? WE WANT TO GIVE YOU A Join The Edge team as our Sound Catalyst. Applications close 5pm, 28 February.

See edgeqld.org.au/jobs for details

10 • For more news/announcements go to themusic.com.au/news

JOB.

THIS WEEK at The Hi-Fi Anthrax (USA), Thu 21 Feb SELLING FAST

Bullet For My Valentine (UK) Fri 22 Feb SELLING FAST

JONSON STREET BYRON BAY Fri 22 Feb

Crime & The City Solution (USA) Sun 24 Feb

JUST ANNOUNCED

LITTLE CASINO, LYALL MOLONEY & KYLE LIONHART

Hugry Kids Of Hungary Fri 5 Apr British India Sat 6 Apr Cradle Of Filth (USA) Thu 9 May

Sat 23 Feb

The Ghost Inside (USA) Sat 1 Jun 18+ Sun 2 Jun U18

TIM STOKES BAND & WAXHEAD Fri 1 Mar

Killing Joke (UK) Thu 6 Jun

COMING UP Cheap Sober Sat 2 Mar

KILL THE MATADOR AUSTRALIAN SURF MOVIE TOUR, KINGSWOOD, PILOTS & ELEGANT SHIVA

The Tallest Man On Earth (SWE) Sun 3 Mar SELLING FAST Presidents Of The United States Of America (USA)

Fri 8 Mar

The Offspring (USA) Sat 9 Mar

Sat 2 Mar

SOLD OUT

Dinosaur Jr & Redd Kross (USA) Thu 14 Mar SELLING FAST

ROGER THAT & PIRATES ALIVE

Moriarty (FRA) Sat 16 Mar Bloodline Festival Feat. Psycroptic Sun 17 Mar

Fri 8 Mar

JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION

Da Endorphine (THA) Tue 19 Mar The Mark Of Cain Thu 21 Mar

Sat 9 Mar

Dubmarine Fri 22 Mar

THE FUMES

Mutemath (USA) Sat 23 Mar

Sun 10 Mar

SELLING FAST

Hits & Pits 2013 Feat.

Mad Caddies(USA) Sun 24 Mar SELLING FAST

DRAPHT

The Lumineers (USA) Sat 30 Mar

Sat 16 Mar

DEAD BEAT BAND

TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE www.thenorthern.com.au

SELLING FAST

SOLD OUT

Ben Howard (UK) Fri 5 Apr SOLD OUT (NL)

Epica Wed 17 Apr

Norma Jean (USA) Thu 2 May

Silverstein (CAN) Sun 21 Apr

The Bronx (USA) Tue 7 May

Mick Taylor (UK) Ex Rolling Stones Tue 23 Apr Pete Murray Wed 24 Apr Otep (USA) Sat 27 Apr

Atari Teenage Riot (GER/UK) Wed 15 May Something For Kate Fri 18 May Seth Sentry Sat 25 May

TIX + INFO THEHIFI.COM.AU

1300 THE HIFI

125 BOUNDARY ST, WEST END

11

FOREWORD LINE LOVE LIES BLEEDING Following a triumphant return at Homebake 2012, those cuddly technotubbies sonicanimation are solidifying their return with a new album and a big run of dates up and down the east coast. Since emerging on the local dance scene in the mid‘90s, Rupert and Adrian have shared the stage with The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim and created a bona fide classic in the way of the tongue twisting Theophilus Thistler.

Now, there looking to make rooms bounce once again with the Once More From The Bottom tour taking place Thursday 4 April, The Northern, Byron Bay; Friday 5, The Zoo; and Saturday 6, Solbar, Maroochydore. Get your tickets via Oztix for $18.40.

WELCOME BACK Ha! You thought that show at Woodland in 2011 was it, didn’t you? Well, in the traditions of great rock’n’roll, Screamfeeder aren’t done just yet, with the seminal three-piece line-up of Tim Steward, Kellie Lloyd and Dean Shwereb coming together again to support one of their heroes, Bob Mould, for a oneoff show at The Zoo, Friday 8 March. This might be the last show for the trio. It might not. Just get along, enjoy the classics and don’t fucking analyse the whole thing, okay? It’s going to be magic.

WE CAN BE HEROES Sibling trio Evermore are returning in a big way with a 30-date Australian tour just announced that will bring their anthemic pop rock to all parts of the country. The brothers Hume got a taste of the arena scene last year while acting as supports for Matchbox Twenty and Maroon 5, and they’re eager to take the tricks of the big stage and deliver them in intimate surroundings for their legions of fans around the country. The Hero tour is designed to shine a light on their most recent singles, while also taking on their hit-laden back catalogue. Evermore perform Wednesday 8 May, Noosa Surf Club, Sunshine Coast; Thursday 9, Hamilton Hotel; Friday 10, Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast; and Saturday 11, Spring Lakes Hotel.

CAVE SUPPORT

AND SO IT BEGINS...

IN BRIEF

Unveiling new songs from their forthcoming sophomore record, local lads done well Dead Letter Circus will be embarking on a run of dates with fellow prog leaning crew, Breaking Orbit. Tickets for the Brisbane show are on sale now through Oztix, with the gig taking place Saturday 13 April at The Tempo Hotel, with openers Guards Of May.

Three of the biggest names in dance music – Diplo, Skrillex and A-Trak – have just launched a new YouTube channel called Potato. Aiming to hark back to the days when MTV used to play music, the channel will feature regular shows, exclusives, DJ mixes, premieres and more.

A weird feud has erupted between Justin Bieber and The Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney following light criticism directed at the pop star during this year’s Grammy Awards. Carney has now assumed the Twitter name ‘Justin Bieber’ and is in the process of riling up millions of teenage girls the world over.

Bassist Colin Greenwood has stated that Radiohead will reconvene at the tail end of the year to begin work on their ninth studio record.

In news that will turn the evening into an even bigger event, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are proud to welcome the whiskey-soaked tones of Mark Lanegan onto their upcoming touring bill as national support. Furthermore, Cave and his motley crew will be joined for parts of the show by members of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and a 12-piece choir. Limited tickets are still available to the concert, happening at the Riverstage, Friday 8 March, through Oztix and Ticketmaster.

The IRS has stung the hip hop lion, Snoop Dogg over $500,000 due to unpaid bills.

If the owed funds aren’t looked after, Snoop could be convicted of tax evasion, which carries federal charges.

TOTAL CONTROL

Nicholas Clifford, the Victorian filmmaker responsible for film clips by artists such as Oh Mercy and Bluejuice, has taken out top honours at this year’s Tropfest for his short film, We’ve All Been There. He’ll receive $10,000, a car and a trip to LA.

Melbourne rock’n’roll stalwarts British India aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, so it’s no surprise that they’re heading back our way to launch their fourth record, Controller. Watch the quartet swagger through some sharp riffery when they perform at Surfers Paradise Beer Garden, Friday 5 April, The Hi-Fi, Saturday 6 and as part of the bumper Big Pineapple Music Festival, happening on the Sunshine Coast, Saturday 20. Tickets for all dates can be purchased through Oztix.

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

BUNNY IN THE HEADLIGHTS

ONLY GOING FORWARDS

Behind their assured second record Lonerism, the all conquering Tame Impala boys have shot up through the ranks to become one of our biggest musical exports, winning plaudits from every critic on the planet and delivering psych rock experiences to a new generation of bare-feet paisleys. After taking over some of the most iconic rooms on the planet including Brixton Academy and Terminal 5 in NYC, the guys are eager to get back Down Under for a big celebration on home soil. Experience the biggest Brisbane concert the West Australian boys have ever put on when they perform an all ages show, Wednesday 8 May at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Tickets can be picked up from tomorrow (Thursday 21 February) through Ticketek.

You know the funky rock bounce of Caress Your Soul, the Sticky Fingers’ jam that was seemingly everywhere during 2012. Well the boys are back with a whole swag of tricks, mixing dub with surf, sinister rock with pop, and throwing it all into the blender on a forthcoming long-player which they are hitting the road in celebration of. Get a taste of one of our country’s most promising young bands when they perform Thursday 18 April, The Zoo; Friday 19, The Northern, Byron Bay; and Sunday 21 as part of The Big Pineapple Music Festival.

Detroit, the album title paying homage to his US roots, marks the first release from Radio Birdman’s Deniz Tek in more than a decade. The record comes at the same time as No Room, the fourth LP from Leadfinger, the nom de plume of songwriter and guitarist Stewart Cunningham, a mainstay on the domestic scene since the ‘80s when he was raising hell with the Proton Energy Pills and then with a swag of bands in the ‘90s and beyond. To launch the two albums the gents will be embarking on a tour along the east coast, performing at Lismore Bowling Club, Friday 8 March and Beetle Bar, Saturday 9. Head out and see two masters of their craft go to work.

KATATONIC NEWS DZ OR DEATH Brisbane’s inglorious rock’n’roll bastards DZ Deathrays are ready to fuck shit up on home soil, announcing a run of headline shows to go on top of their already announced gigs supporting The Bronx and as part of Groovin’ The Moo. The past 18 months have seen the boys go from small Brisbane club shows to massive global stages, their rise to the top loud, wild, and if you ask us, expected. Get ready to swing from the lighting fixtures with Shane and Simon when they play Alhambra Lounge, Thursday 4 April with fellow rock’n’roll evangelists Tiger Beams, while local crew Millions will look after DJ duties amongst it all. Grab a ticket through Oztix now for $18.40.

Legends roll with legends – that’s simply how it works. So it makes sense that Opeth are roping along fellow Stockholm metallers Katatonia to head Down Under for their highly anticipated tour next month. The hairy Swedes will be knocking down our city walls when they perform at The Tivoli, Saturday 16 March. Tickets can be purchased now through Ticketek, with a couple of different options available priced from $74.60+BF.

BACKLASH

FRONTLASH

Ellen DeGeneres is trying to start a new version of ‘planking’ called ‘koalaing’ ahead of her Oz visit. If you see someone hugging someone else for no apparent reason and taking a photo punch them in the back of the head and tell them it’s called ‘rabbiting’…

Thank god all of the footy codes are back in action, couldn’t be soon enough after an incredible summer of scandal and innuendo threatening to tear everything apart. Just let them play already!

BOUNCE THE BALL

THINK P!NK

BLOODY STREWTH! LA’s rising melodic hardcore stars The Ghost Inside are bringing their bone-breaking live show to Australia for the first time. Linking up with east coast peers Emmure, the two bands will perform with Kiwi punishers Antagonist A.D and locals Hand Of Mercy on a massive bill of metallic sounds. Brisbane is getting treated to two shows, with an 18+ gig happening Saturday 1 June at The Hi-Fi, while an all ages session will take place at the same room on Sunday 2. Purchase tickets through the venue website from tomorrow, Thursday 21 February.

EDDIE PIE HANDS

TWO MEN, TWO ALBUMS, TWO INCREDIBLE NIGHTS

JUST DON’T

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

Provoking Scottish indie five-piece Frightened Rabbit are coming back to Australia for the first time in almost three years, and the exciting news for Brisbane fans is that they’ll be playing a headline show in our city during this visit. Their latest record Pedestrian Verse is an utter triumph that deserves to be heard by all and sundry, so check out the Selkirk quintet when they make The Zoo their own.

The show takes place Thursday 2 May, with tickets on sale right now through Oztix for $45.60.

Swedish rock legends The Hives are supporting P!nk in America at the moment. Seems kinda strange until you remember that they’re the freaking Hives and they do what they want!

Tony Abbott decreed that the Coalition will “always speak with a strong Australian accent” – what does that even mean? Wasn’t he born in England? Is that the veiled racism that it seems to be on the surface? So many questions…

CLASH CITY ROCKERS We’re always crying out for bands to tour Brisbane, but how can we have a single night where Nick Cave (with Mark Lanegan), Bob Mould, POTUSA and Deniz Tek are all playing in town at once? I’m looking at you March 8…

THE SMALL THINGS Totally understand Travis Barker not wanting to ever fly again after surviving the crash, but surely he knew that before Blink booked the Australian tour? What about the boat option, we love people coming here like that…

12 • For more news/announcements go to themusic.com.au/news

You’re not taking the Kingswood!

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Right place at the right time perhaps, but in 2002 Massachusetts metalcore crew Killswitch Engage created a genuine game-changer. Ahead of their Soundwave appearance, returning vocalist Jesse Leach and guitarist/producer Adam Dutkiewicz tell Brendan Crabb his days are numbered. Cover and feature pics by Andrew Boyle. didn’t even consider it; it wasn’t even a thought in my mind,” Killswitch Engage frontman Jesse Leach responds when asked if he was mindful of the considerable legacy of the band’s 2002 masterwork, Alive Or Just Breathing, when creating new disc, Disarm The Descent. “I was very much thinking in the now. I don’t think it’s healthy to look back and try to compare things. You can’t do it. I was a different vocalist, a different person and it was a totally different vibe in the band back then.”

“I

It’s now easy to underestimate the influence the Massachusetts mob had on heavy music with Alive…, their second record. Fusing American hardcore and Swedish melodic death metal eventually became a saturated market, but at the time, the impact was monumental. One wellestablished publication even framed them as “the band to kill nu-metal” upon the album’s release.

nominations but was eventually sidelined by the vocalist’s own personal and health issues. Leach and Phil Labonte (All That Remains) filled in on tour, before Jones’ proper departure was announced last year. Several weeks later the worst-kept secret in metal was confirmed when Leach returned.

His passionate, earnest lyrics on Alive… stirred audiences and during the new record he proclaims, “I would rather die than live my life in fear”, a mantra fans will warmly embrace. It’s a line that would sound ham-fisted if spewed by most vocalists, but from Leach it feels strikingly real.

humanity,” he laughs.

“But I think those two things being juggled is constant motivation and inspiration. I think at the core of it is just wanting to let people know they don’t have to settle.

There’s so much more to life than what meets the eye, on a spiritual level as well. That’s one thing that has always stayed in my blood. Hearing the instrumentals when they gave me this record, it struck me immediately; ‘This is going to be a powerful record for me.’”

“It was pretty incredible,” guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz ponders a decade after the fact. “We just did the (tenth) anniversary tour where we played the entire record. It was amazing to see every night, how energised, people singing lyrics to these songs we wrote so long ago.

That people still care about it hits you once in a while; ‘Wow, that was a long time ago and a lot of people

MAINTAINING THE HEAVY QUOTA Aside from manning the desk for the band’s own records, including Disarm The Descent, Dutkiewicz is a renowned producer of other acts. His résumé includes Shadows Fall, Underoath, As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red and countless others. By all reports the axeman is a hard taskmaster, but also a wacky personality who can instantly lighten the mood.

Perhaps serving as an unintentional, albeit fortuitous stepping stone to the new material was the pair forming Times of Grace and releasing a full-length in 2011, which the vocalist describes as, “igniting the spark for me; I realised I could do this touring life”.

“I think working in the studio and being able to go on the road with him and Joel (Stroetzel, guitars), to see how much fun touring could be with people that you’re really close to (helped). I think most bands in their honesty would say there’s one or two people in a band, or there’s always a situation where you’re on the road where things aren’t that great. But touring with those guys, they’re like family. So when the opportunity arose for me to rejoin Killswitch, there were many questions that were answered in my mind.”

“He’s hilarious and a madman, but it’s great,” Leach laughs. “We’re definitely the odd couple in more ways than one.

He has strengths where I have weaknesses. He has a perfect pitch ear, knows songwriting. I’m a creative type, but I’m not a technical person.

If you were to say to me, ‘Sing in A or B’, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I can hear it in my head, but I may not know how to get it out.”

Another high-profile act the guitar-slinger has worked with is Australia’s own Parkway Drive. The guitarist produced their first two albums, (2005’s Killing With A Smile and follow-up, Horizons).

However, in a Street Press Australia interview last year, Parkway Drive drummer Ben Gordon remarked of those records; “Adam D is really, really tight, like a drum machine.

Everything is so perfect and, in a way, it makes it sound pretty lifeless.”

BRINGING THE POWER BACK When the aforementioned comments are relayed to Dutkiewicz, he displays considerable diplomacy.

like it still.’ It’s pretty crazy,” he laughs. “We definitely have moments on tour, where it’s, ‘This is insane, I can’t believe how lucky we are to be able to do this.’”

Leach attributes the record’s honesty and “coming from a totally different place than a lot of bands were” as primary reasons for its ongoing reverence.

How much of that sentiment does Dutkiewicz feel is rooted in a case of right place, right time? “The music industry is such a tough gig,” the axeman agrees. “You really have to know the right people and write the correct song – a lot of things. We were just lucky enough to be there at that time and be able to do that. We’re definitely lucky dudes.”

Dutkiewicz first noticed a significant changing of the guard when Killswitch Engage performed on the Ozzfest juggernaut following the release of Alive… “There was a lot of positive attention at the second stage, where all the smaller bands like us were playing. You could feel the excitement about the more aggressive, technical bands over there, (rather than) the ‘I hate my mum, I hate my dad’ kind of one-string riff. It was a cool thing to see, real metal bands getting attention.”

However, the then-newly married Leach walked soon after Alive… hit stores, replaced by Blood Has Been Shed man-mountain Howard Jones. The band subsequently enjoyed gold records and Grammy

“[Lyrical inspiration] comes from all over the place, experiences from my life and the band’s,” Leach explains. “When we got back together there was a lot of discussion about the past, a lot of discussion of what they had been through in the past nine years without me. I think that had something to do with it, and just my view on the world. I’m an observer, a writer.

Everything comes into play. I try to write with a broad enough brush-stroke that people can draw their own conclusions. I try to write in such a way where people can gather their own inspiration and definition of what the song is. Because I think that’s powerful in art. “[Those lyrics], that’s me talking about life. Just being a working-class guy my whole life; I still have that mentality. People call me a rock star, and I completely deny that title. I’m a working musician.

I’ve toured, but I’ve also done jobs most of my life.

Being working-class and that state of mind of you’re just a gear in the machine, you’re insignificant. I feel like a capitalist society really beats down people, and makes them look towards the government or whoever to validate their existence. That’s my protest, that song’s just about that hardcore/punk ethos of, ‘You can make a difference, we can have our say.’

“I have changed a lot in the past ten years, various aspects of my life. The one thing I have kept intact was my hope for humanity, and also my disgust for

A decade later it’s impractical to expect Disarm The Descent to leave the same mark as its predecessor, either musically or messagewise. That said, devotees will also appreciate the record’s more aggressive edge, something which Dutkiewicz laments was missing on 2009’s self-titled album. “We’re less concerned about radio than most other metal bands,” he admits.

“I listen to a lot of aggressive music, so maybe there were a lot of those influences as well. I like that Jesse is one of those singers, everything he writes is spirited and heartfelt. He means what he’s singing, and that’s such a vital thing when you’re a songwriter and a lyricist.”

“A lot of people don’t like records that sound tight and sterile,” he admits. “I definitely get what they’re saying, because I was forcing them to play as tight as possible. ‘Cause at that point I was in that zone of trying to get records as tight as possible. But now I’ve actually changed a little, to stay in between. I like leaving things a little bit loose and believable.

Because I think there’s so many records out there nowadays that sound like that, like a grid-edited, perfectly put together Pro Tools record. I switched perspective a little, to getting the vibe of getting the players to sound human here and there. That’s an important thing when making a record, because you want the songs to be able to translate live.”

They’ve become our biggest heavy export since though, so he must have done something right. “Well, it’s not me; it’s mostly to do with them. They had the songs, man.

Those were some pretty heavy songs.”

His bandmate says it wasn’t that simple though, as they received numerous applications from throughout the world. “We wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing and Jesse didn’t actually have the job until he had an audition. We needed to hear what he sounded like when he did Howard’s songs. We wanted to make sure he could represent Howard’s songs well.”

Leach explains that it was difficult to watch the band’s relationship with Jones unravel. However, he’s audibly pleased with being back in the fold in a reunion fans clamoured for. “That record, they’d been waiting to do it for a year, but just problems with Howard and he didn’t have the motivation to write. We were definitely there for each other. I would reach out, would get a phone call from Adam here and there. It was definitely hard to watch, to know the details nobody else knows.

“As friends, I’m proud to say we just banded together and even before I joined the band I heard the new record, just supported them and said, ‘Hey, if you want to go do an Alive… reunion tour, just to make ends until you guys figure out what you’re going to do with your singer, I’m down with that.’ That was the first step that got me thinking, and probably got them thinking too. First and foremost, I wanted them to make the right decision as a friend, wanted them to be happy. Adam and I are very close; we have been for many years. I’m proud to say since rejoining my friendships have quickly increased to where I consider those guys my brothers, all of them.”

The guitarist is asked how so many years removed from the band altered the frontman. “To be honest, he’s always been that person. It’s just ten years ago he needed to find himself a bit more; I don’t think he was ready to be in a full-time touring band. He’ll admit that.

He was having physical limitations with his throat and second thoughts about being away from his family.

But now he realises if he takes care of himself, it’s doable for him. He’s doing his passion, what he loves. “[The uncertainty surrounding a vocalist] was a bummer; you don’t make money when you don’t tour,” Dutkiewicz chuckles. “Everybody was like, ‘Crap, what are we gonna do for money, this sucks.’ I was working; I did a lot of records and kept busy. It just feels great to be back out there having a career again. We’re lucky to have one.”

WHO: Killswitch Engage WHAT: Disarm The Descent (Roadrunner/Warner) WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 23 February, Soundwave Festival, RNA Showgrounds

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FLAME TREES Main man Lance Ferguson simply sums up The Bamboos’ current state of affairs for Benny Doyle: “Shit is pretty hectic but I like things to be busy so it’s pretty cool.” The two men discuss collaborating with rock’n’roll royalty and the importance of owning it on stage. et’s cut to the chase right now: 2012 was a massive year for The Bamboos.

The Melbourne collective, who have been around since Y2K, have long been recognised as one of our country’s premier funk and soul acts, dropping classy studio LPs and delivering the goods onstage, anywhere from intimate lounges to large outdoor festivals.

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But while the group had earned plenty of global respect and experienced many career victories, mainstream crossover success still eluded them. That was until Medicine Man dropped in June last year. The record introduced The Bamboos to a wider demographic, and more specifically a younger one, thanks to lead single I Got Burned, a liquid

smooth cut featuring Melbourne rock icon Tim Rogers. It was the nonet’s first charting song on the triple j Hottest 100 (#54) and has created more interest in the band than ever before. It’s been a hell of a long road, but finally The Bamboos are getting theirs.

Lance Ferguson answers the phone at his Melbourne home studio in a relaxed and chatty state, surprising considering his admission that his partner’s expecting their first child “literally any minute”.

The Bamboos founder, guitarist and songwriter recalls his first encounter with Rogers while the two men were looping the country as part of the Big Day Out circus a few years ago; the taut, tattooed rocker fronting You Am I, Ferguson playing guitar with Washington. After seeing each other around the backstage traps they struck up a conversation and immediately hit it off, finding a personal connection in between constant musical ravings, chatting like the audiophiles they are. By the end of the tour an offer of collaboration had been extended to Rogers for The Bamboos next record. He was immediately interested, leaving the New Zealand-born Ferguson to put together the necessary framework.

“When it came time to do the record I felt that I didn’t have a musical vehicle for Tim from the outset, and it was sort of halfway through the process of making a record and it felt like the [album] was missing a certain something and I wrote I Got Burned after a recording session.” Ferguson put together a “bad vocal demo” before sending the track over with a message to manipulate as needed. Rogers didn’t want to change a thing. “For me that was immensely validating because I look up to someone like Tim Rogers as a songwriter, so that was really cool.

“It was a very quick sort of process,” he continues, “and I knew right away that this was the song that would really suit Tim’s whole vibe and voice. That happened halfway through and it was completely unexpected, and it ended up being the single off the record that spoke to people more than anything else, so it’s weird how these things turn out.”

On paper it almost seems like the ultimate odd couple – the scruffy rocker with the stylish funk band. However, it’s clear that Ferguson isn’t interested in musical boundaries or operating in an expected way. With Medicine Man, all he was focused on was the individual tracks and making sure they stood up on their own merits. And listening to the record, the results speak for themselves.

“I really came into that album going, ‘I just really want to write some good songs’, and also perhaps involve some of my friends, and it just really felt like all of the collaborations on the record were just natural and genuine progressions, but we were already in an embryonic state,” he explains. “And just the conversations I had with people, like I spoke to Tim and said we should do something, and I obviously already had a relationship with Meg [Washington] and she was definitely up for doing stuff. But it felt like it was all very natural, it wasn’t a case of me calling my manger and going, ‘Get this guy’; it was more organic and I feel a lot more genuine.

“It wasn’t convoluted in that sense that I wanted to make an album aimed at some demographic and I needed certain guests because it will get me these [fans] – it was really unlike that. I go into these albums to try and write some songs that I feel are cool and are saying something and have some sort of emotional integrity or whatever. But I wasn’t thinking of any of that in the genesis of these songs, it was just, ‘Let’s try and make some music that means something’. But at the same time I’m really glad that the album was a success that it was but I just don’t ever go into it with a contrived notion of expectation.”

Let’s be clear right now – The Bamboos have long had impeccable pipes in their ranks; Australian/Samoan Kylie Auldist has been fronting the band since 2006, while newest member Ella Thompson jumped on board in 2011, just before the Medicine Man machine kicked into action. But with more guests on this latest long-player than ever before, Ferguson has been able to shine a fresh light on The Bamboos. He says that every great vocalist he’s worked with he’s watched from afar, and all the ones he loves have one thing in common – an intense persona.

“I love singers that come out and do their thing in an unapologetic and unabashed way,” he says. “Tim Rogers is Tim Rogers, and he comes in and he owns it and he makes it himself. That’s what I look for in any vocalist. So when I come up with [an idea] for a song I hope that someone with a strong enough personality will be able to come in and make it their own and also take my ideas and push them to become something that I never dreamed of or expected. And people like Tim Rogers and Megan Washington and Aloe Blacc; their sound is so signature that they’re the kind of vocalists that are able to do that just by being themselves.”

This forthcoming tour is billed as ‘Tim Rogers and The Bamboos’, but when Time Off spoke with Ferguson he was still unsure as to the exact role that the You Am I veteran was going to play. Some guitar work hasn’t been ruled out of the equation. But he was clear in saying that The Bamboos weren’t going to act as a backing band.

These will be structured shows, built around vocal rotation, with all hands on deck; just with a little more rock star firepower than usual.

“It’s always exciting because you never know where it’s going to go,” smiles Ferguson, genuine anticipation flowing through the phone line. “But if you do it with someone who’s strong with their own musical identity you know it’s going to go somewhere with conviction – they’ll take it where they want to take it.”

WHO: The Bamboos

WELCOMEZION.COM

16 • For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews

WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 28 February, QPAC (feat. Tim Rogers); Sunday 31 March and Monday 1 April, Bluesfest, Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm

THIS IS GROWING UP From hosting a talk show to a plane crash – a lot has changed for Blink-182 since they made their last trip to Australia nearly a decade ago. While vocalist/ guitarist Tom DeLonge is married with two children, runs numerous companies and is putting together the soundtrack for his second film, Daniel Cribb discovers he’s still making time to pen dick jokes for their appearance at Soundwave. just got a picture of a vagina with eyeballs and a moustache on it yesterday from my friend,” Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge, 37, laughs down the line from his studio, Jupiter Sound, in California, assuring that he is still the same fart joke-fuelled pop punker he’s always been. It’s lunchtime and he’s taking a timeout from recording demos for a new album with his other band, Angels & Airwaves, that will coincide with the band’s second feature film due out in a couple of years. “This will be a very large project with hopefully many, many things that come along with it. I can’t really talk much about it, but this will probably be one of the more exciting things that I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of,” he explains.

“I

If it’s anything like the band’s film debut, Love, sci-fi fans will be lining up out the door. It’s no secret that DeLonge has always had a fascination with the unexplained and extraterrestrial (see Blink182’s Aliens Exist). After receiving some Gone Squatchin’ attire for Christmas from his managers, his interest is currently consumed

by Big Foot. “I wanna find Big Foot like everyone else and if I can contribute, then I shall. He’s out there – he might even be here in the studio with me at this moment… my fascination with strange topics is what keeps me sanely insane,” he laughs. “It’s the one thing that pulls me out of worrying about music all day long, is when I start thinking about weird stuff like that. It’s a lot of fun.”

that, very specifically because we were able to do it and it was an important conduit to get the band working again, and that’s really what its goal was. Its goal wasn’t to be the greatest Blink album, its goal wasn’t to be the greatest album – the goal was: can we make an album? And we did and now we can move on to make better stuff.”

WHO: Blink-182 WHAT: Dogs Eating Dogs (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 22 February, RNA Showgrounds; Saturday 23, Soundwave, RNA Showgrounds

Such subject matter has drifted away from Blink-182’s music, but they’ve still kept their signature sound, as evident on their debut independent release, Dogs Eating Dogs, which sees them split with Universal Music after 15 years, cutting their ties with major labels for good.

“It’s amazing, we’re finally free. We’re able to do whatever we want to do. I mean, with a label, if you ever want to record something, you can’t, because they own it, so then you have to go to them and say, ‘Hey, we want to record something’, and they say, ‘Okay, we’ll get back to you and see if the funds are available to pay for it’. Then they get back to you and they say, ‘We don’t have the funds to do it’. It’s just a big joke, you know. You have to ask them to make music… I think Dogs Eating Dogs is a much better example of what our band can do in these times, rather than when we were on a major label.”

With DeLonge first announcing their split with Interscope on Twitter with a picture of Mel Gibson in Braveheart in the midst of yelling “freedom”, one might assume the title Dogs Eating Dogs could, in some way, be a reference to the cut-throat world of major labels.

“It’s not. Mark [Hoppus, bass] came up with that – it was a lyric out of one of the songs. He sometimes gets in these interesting moments when he’s flying to and from Europe, back over here, where I think he kind of investigates and swims in the waters of the back of his mind. Sometimes he digs into some dark places – and I think most artists do that – and that’s really where that term came from. It showed its face in the song and it just seemed like a really great line, because everyone can interpret it in different ways.

“To me, it’s just very representative of humanity – the constant fight to get ahead and the constant fight to win summed up in three words. To everybody, that’s what’s great about art – it’s different and what I liked about it was it was ambiguous at best, so people can kind of think it means a few different things.”

Before the band went on an indefinite hiatus in ’05, the vocal split between DeLonge and Hoppus was almost 50/50, but both Dogs Eating Dogs and 2011’s Neighborhoods seem to be more DeLongeheavy. “It’s not intentional,” Delonge says. “I mean, I’m more prolific now in my career than I’ve ever been. I’ve had a lot of experience over the past ten years, with all the Angels & Airwaves stuff and scoring movies, it comes naturally, or comes more naturally and quicker to me now than it ever has in my life, and you know, I’m a hard worker and I’ve got my studio and I like to be productive.”

It was a plane crash drummer Travis Barker was involved in 2008 that was the catalyst for the Blink-182 reunion, but the problem for Australian fans was it was also the thing stopping them coming Down Under. “I don’t blame him one bit; if I was him, I’d be doing the exact same thing. It’s a big hurdle to get over. I think like anybody else your logical steps are making decisions and challenging yourself and preparing emotionally for that kind of stuff, but I can’t even pretend to know how somebody does that, because it’s monumental… we haven’t been down there in a very long time, so I think we’re all looking forward to some really good stuff. It’s gonna be good – I’ve got like three or four dick jokes that I’ve been saving.”

The last time Blink-182 toured Australia was in 2004 to promote their self-titled album. Blink-182 saw Hoppus, Barker and DeLonge rent a house just outside of San Diego and spend months there writing. But with Hoppus spending half of his time at his second home in London and, until June 2012, hosting his own talk show, plus with Barker working on his solo material, amongst a slew of other commitments, it’s hard to get the band in one room for long enough to catch up, let alone write and record an album.

“My aim was specifically to write music together and not apart, because for Neighborhoods we weren’t together at all – we just weren’t even really talking. This one was, ‘Let’s write music together, and let’s try and show a more progressive form of the band’. What I wanted to do was make [us] challenge Blink’s legacy to be more modernised with larger landscapes and more delicate compositions.”

Admitting that Neighborhoods suffered due to the lack of communication, DeLonge believes it was an imperative step in getting the band back on track. “I wouldn’t change anything about

For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews • 17

STRATEGIES AGAINST ARCHITECTURE While some may be said to have left the building, Einsturzende Neubauten are said to have destroyed the building. However, on the eve of their Australian tour, Blixa Bargeld argues otherwise, as a rather contrite Paul Ransom discovers. ule number one: don’t call them industrial (even if the word does appear on their website).

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Despite their now mythic status as one of the true progenitors of the sound that now finds its expression in everything from the Teutonic stomp of Rammstein to the robo-pop of bands like Depeche Mode, Blixa Bargeld is adamant that the band he co-founded on April Fool’s Day 1980 is not, and were never, industrial or revolutionary. Einsturzende Neubauten fans, beware!

“I’m sorry, but that’s your interpretation. I never called it industrial. We never tried to be destructive,” Bargeld intones from his apartment in Berlin. “It was just things that happened, like when children play and things go kaput; and I certainly never made any statements about old buildings being better than new buildings.”

That a non-industrial (but clearly experimental) German band should be inextricably linked to architecture is right there in the name. Einsturzende Neubauten is most oft translated as ‘collapsing new buildings’; with their moniker making specific reference to what Germans call neubauten, the new buildings that sprang up after 1945 to replace those destroyed during WW2. Typically, the neubauten are considered inferior both aesthetically and structurally to their pre-war counterparts, the altbauten.

Reflecting on this, Bargeld recalls the Cold War divide that once cut his country in two. “After the war, in the west at least, you could make a fortune if you had a building company; but in the east they repaired as much as they could. You could still see the bullet marks from the second world war.”

As a native of West Berlin, Blixa Bargeld, (born Hans Christian Emmerich in 1959), grew up in a walled city steeped in the pre-apocalyptic atmosphere of the Cold War. “Historically, looking at it, I probably was at one of the epicentres of the Cold War but it played absolutely no role in my day-to-day existence,” he reveals. “To me, living in Berlin felt so absolutely normal that I never thought it was exceptional.”

However, it was in this small ‘capitalist’ enclave that EN formed; and the band’s early work shaped itself around the use of improvised instrumentation, often made from scraps scavenged from building sites, and Bargeld’s

deep, shouted, blood curdling vocals. Albums like 1981’s Kollaps and 1983’s Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T. not only gained them a burgeoning fan base but attracted the attention of Nick Cave, who famously described Bargeld’s vocals as being something “you would expect to hear from strangled cats or dying children”.

Indeed, Bargeld was with Cave (as one of the Bad Seeds) in November 1989 when Berlin, Germany and the geopolitical map world lurched into a new era. “When the actual wall fell, when they opened the border, I was right there in the recording studio with a famous Australian singer mixing one of the pieces that later came out on the record and suddenly the street, which was usually empty, was full of people,” he recalls. “We first saw it on television and then we looked out the window.”

By that stage, Bargeld was enjoying the fruits of success as a member of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and the fall of the wall coincided with personal and artistic change.

“Very soon after that I left Berlin. I lived in San Francisco and then for seven years in Beijing… Now I’m back in Berlin; but the city where I was born and grew up simply doesn’t exist anymore,” he observes. “In fact, where I’m living now is uncharted territory for me. I don’t know my way around. It’s like a completely new city.”

For EN the changes were audible, as their earlier avant-garde edge morphed into more traditional song forms, with Bargeld singing rather than shouting and softer electronic sounds making their way onto records like Tabula Rasa and Ende Neu. Reflecting on this, Bargeld insists that EN never truly had a mission statement. “A lot of things were not so much artistic decisions as they were decisions that came out of a particular life situation,” he explains. “It was not that I thought, ‘Oh, now it’s time to bang on some metal’ it was more the fact that we didn’t have anything.

We could not afford instruments. We’ve always been poor so we had to find a different way.”

As the 20th century drew to a close the band found itself being referenced by all and sundry in scenes as diverse as dark wave techno and nu-punk. With songs like Blume and Stella Maris, and their infamous expulsion from U2’s Zoo TV tour, Einsturzende Neubauten became a name to drop; not that they were ever what you could call famous.

Far from settling with their modicum of cachet, the band leapt feet first into the age of the internet in 2002 when Bargeld and his wife Erin Zhu created neubauten.org and moved the focus of their activity online. “We invented crowd funding,” Bargeld declares proudly, pointing to a range of albums, DVDs and even USB sticks aimed at the band’s pro-active web following. “Now I read many interviews lately with Amanda Palmer who said she made her album from crowd funding but what most people don’t know is that she was one of the supporters of neubaten.org and she crowd funded our albums.”

If all this has helped to sustain EN into their fourth decade, it is their reputation as an unusually ferocious live act that really gets fans buzzing and quite possibly spurred The Drones to invite them to Australia to play at ATP’s boutique, curated I’ll Be Your Mirror event in February, where they will feature alongside fellow ‘noise’ legends My Bloody Valentine and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

For Blixa Bargeld and the rest of Einsturzende Neubauten, the antipodean invitation represents the end of a significant hiatus. “The first time we’ll come together is when we’re in Australia,” he confirms.

Creatively, what this represents is the opportunity to look back over a 32-year career and once again reinvent. “The songs will all come out new again,”

Bargeld says simply. “Looking at such an extensive back catalogue, and we are able play about 90 per cent of that, we can make our choices wisely; but obviously we are limited by what we are able to take to Australia. Weight limitations,” he notes wryly, referring to EN’s onstage battery of improvised instruments.

On a personal note, it will be Bargeld’s first trip to our shores since he left The Bad Seeds in 2003. “At the time that I was still playing with Nick I was in Australia every year but I haven’t been there since. Has Australia changed in ten years?” he wonders aloud.

Just as the Berlin of his childhood has irrevocably altered, so too has the Melbourne with which Bargeld was once so familiar. “I spent a considerable amount of time in St Kilda. My first couple of times in Australia I spent there. That was in the early-‘80s. Then, when I was there in the late ‘90s I thought that St Kilda had changed quite a lot. Gentrification, that’s what it looked like to me,” he concludes, laughing at the suggestion that even in St Kilda the neubauten are everywhere.

WHO: Einsturzende Neubauten WHEN & WHERE Saturday 23 February, The Tivoli

NOT NAMING NAMES Lunice Fermin Pierre II (better known by his first-name only) can still breakdance, despite being a little rusty. Cyclone checks in with the Canadian DJ/producer, who’s basically done everything with everybody, about why Angel Haze and Azealia Banks should bury the hatchet. hose days of DJ/producers paying their dues for years in dive bars are over, the internet fasttracking careers with its global reach. Canada’s Lunice Fermin Pierre II may be no child prodigy like Porter Robinson or Madeon, but he’s made a name for himself in just a few years. In only 2010 he was a participant in the cred Red Bull Music Academy. The following year the post-glitch hopper hit Australia for the first time, headlining the niche Sydney festival música/ TUMBALONG alongside SBTRKT and Ghostpoet. Oz was, Pierre recalls, “really amazing”. “When I was in Sydney, for example, I just noticed there’s so many different cultures there, right. Everybody’s just getting along with everybody. I just felt like I was at home, you know? I felt really relaxed when I was there.”

others – Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and Mike Slott, all based in Scotland – were similarly experimenting with the genres. But can he still breakdance? “Oh, definitely, yeah,” Pierre laughs, admitting that he perhaps can’t execute “certain moves” that require continual practice. He’s breakdanced during sets.

Today Canada’s urban music is hot, with the likes of Drake and his fold of producers (led by Noah “40” Shebib) and The Weeknd. But the spotlight has been on Toronto.

Pierre is based in Montreal, Quebec, the place that gave us Leonard Cohen, Corey Hart and Tiga (Grimes and Kid Koala, both from Vancouver, went to university there).

Pierre’s best known collaboration has been with Glasgow’s Hudson Mohawke (aka Ross Birchard).

Pierre had met him in 2008. Birchard, the youngestever UK DMC finalist at 15, played a Montreal party he booked. In 2010 Pierre put out the Stacker Upper EP on the LuckyMe label, which Birchard co-founded, followed by One Hunned. He won a fan in Diplo, who brought him in to co-remix Deerhunter’s Helicopter.

Then last year Pierre and HudMo presented a trappy – and very buzzworthy – EP as TNGHT on Warp, the company behind Birchard’s Butter album. “What I like about the project is that we both take it as a project,” Pierre stresses. TNGHT don’t regard themselves as a super-duo, let alone a “band”, although they have gigged together. “We’re very focused on our own solo work. So, basically, the reason why we even came together in the first place was because we both came to a point where we just wanted to refine our sound and make it more simple and less bangin’ – just to experiment.” Pierre emailed Birchard the day he heard his remix of Gucci Mane’s Party Animal. He proposed they team up for some “very straightforward-thinking rap music”. Indeed, TNGHT is intelligent modern hip hop without the pretence.

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Pierre, once a competitive B-boy, was playing – and making – bass-heavy electronic hip hop from around 2006. He even raps. “I’m a hip hop head, so I grew up all around the hip hop culture,” he says. But he was never a purist. “Being from Montreal, you’re just naturally open to new ideas, new sounds...”

Pierre’s tastes broadened as he matured, studying film and communications at university. “Ever since I was just a kid I was into breakdancing, graffiti – all that stuff. Later in college I was just more open to different types of sound. By then, I was already listening to jazz and classical and a lot of things.

But then that’s when I started listening to electronic music and really started getting into techno and everything.” Pierre began producing beats inspired by 9th Wonder. On discovering techno, he “didn’t necessarily wanna make that type of music”, but rather co-opt it. “I wanted to bring some kind of rap instrumental to the clubs that people can dance to.

I just started working that, trying to develop that sound.” It eventually “clicked” as Pierre realised

18 • For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews

The local Turbo Crunk party crew member journeyed to London to attend 2010’s RBMA, a musical think tank. He especially enjoyed collaborating with others in its studios. “The biggest thing I got from it was working with people – like being physically there with people – because what you don’t get when you work over email is constant feedback.”

His music could be tweaked on the spot.

Birchard was employed as a producer on Kanye West’s GOOD Music comp Cruel Summer, contributing to the single Mercy. Pierre, too, is cutting beats for

big-name acts. He recorded Runnin’ with Azealia Banks. The Harlem rapper spent time in Montreal after splitting from XL Recordings and before she blew up with 212 (that’s Pierre in the video). Ms Banks might be taking ages in delivering her debut LP, Broke With Expensive Taste, yet Pierre praises her ability to work on the fly. “Oh, she’s quick, man,” he says, revealing that Runnin’ was done in all of 45 minutes. “She’s definitely a hard worker – and she gets to the point quick.” Somewhat awkwardly, Pierre is also down with Banks’ nemesis Angel Haze, the track Gimme That on his Soundcloud. The femcees are embroiled in a Twitter war, Angel unleashing the diss On The Edge. “I have no word to say in that,” Pierre says, exasperated. “But, if you look at the bigger picture, to me it’s like, I’m not even looking at them beefing, I’m more looking at why are these female rappers fighting each other? There’s no point. I like female rappers who work together and move on.” He considers any conflict trivial. “That’s just like a random little thing, whatever – like, people fight, brothers and sisters fight all the time.” He wonders if the media doesn’t spur on beefs. “Whenever there’s a female rapper, the media plays them into catfighting with another girl rapper – for no real reason.” The dude is about unity.

“I just like to see female rappers get together and do some amazing music, you know what I mean?”

The next logical step for Pierre would be to drop an album – he’s said to be prepping one entitled Three Sixty – but, then again, many of his DJ peers hold that the album is dead. “Oh, they say that?,” Pierre responds with astonishment. “That’s funny, ‘cause it feels like the whole point of an album is sorta coming back – ‘cause it used to be various people just put a lot of songs on it and that’s about it. But I feel like, more and more, a lot of people of my generation are putting albums together to, I don’t know – for some people to tell a story, for some people to create some kind of project or feel or scene... that kinda stuff.” He wants his to be a proper album, not a mere compilation.

Pierre will “definitely” be airing “new material” in Australia. Punters should be surprised by what he has planned, the DJ says, suitably coy on details.

“It’ll be worth it, though – it’ll be really, really worth it!” The Canadian has evolved since 2011, his DJing entertaining as well as experiential. “My set is completely different from the last time I played over there. I’m paying more attention to how to play now. I’m more thinking of it as like a showcase.”

WHO: Lunice WHEN & WHERE: Friday 22 February, Coniston Lane

TAKING FULL CONTROL Welsh metal outfit Bullet For My Valentine are returning to Australia with a blistering new record and a plan to destroy Soundwave’s stages.

Guitarist Michael ‘Padge’ Paget lets Tom Hersey know about all things Temper Temper and what to expect from their new live show. think for this record especially, we wanted to step out of our comfort zone and not write such a ‘safe’ record,” muses Bullet For My Valentine’s guitarist Michael Paget in his almost indecipherably heavy Welsh accent. “We wanted to try something a little bit different and fresh and new.

But I think how we achieved that newness was to do something that in a lot of ways was an extension of what we did on Fever. This is where the last one picked off, but the songs have gotten a lot more direct and leaner… It’s just a better-sculpted beast than anything we have sculpted as a band before.”

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After the metallic blast of 2008’s Scream Aim Fire and the stadium-y, hard rock sheen of 2010’s Fever, Padge and his boys – vocalist Matt Tuck, bassist Jason James and drummer Michael ‘Moose’ Thomas – had well and truly established what a Bullet For My Valentine record was supposed to sound like. When it came time to write Temper Temper they wanted to shake things up for themselves without losing sight of that. The idea of stepping outside their comfort zone led them to try and approach things a bit differently.

Firstly, there was a very unusual recording session.

“Two of the guys shot off to Thailand initially to start recording, to do drums and guitars and a bit of writing, and they spent five weeks out there and managed to come back with a base for the record.

Then when they got back we went around to four or five studios in the UK to finish everything off.

of their fourth album’s obvious metallic overtones, the guys and returning Fever producer Don Gilmore, approached the tracks with a very punk point of view.

“We wanted to trim off the parts of songs that weren’t really needed. Like, Riot, for instance, that’s two minutes forty-seven seconds, and up until now we’ve been in this bad habit of writing four-minute, five-minute songs.

And we knew that we had the chops to write music that was a lot snappier, rather than having to do things like cutting bits away for radio releases or whatever.

This way the songs are what they are and what they’re supposed to be… And rather than cut bits out so the songs can get played on the radio, we wanted to sit down in the studio and cut bits out that would make the songs sound better on the record. And that was the mentality going into this record; we wanted to make everything as neat a package as possible.”

Touring as much as Bullet For My Valentine are wont to do – Padge goes as far as to describe the process as “put out the album, tour for two years non-stop”, the question is posed whether the band’s desire to write that punchy, condensed record was a direct reaction to what the band wanted to do with their live show going forward?

“I have no idea how it ended up that we were working in all these different studios. We got a great deal on the studio in Thailand, so that was the rationale behind having some of the guys go there. And then the rest was just where we all were at the various times when we were doing this record. It just became a lot easier to split the sessions up over a few studios around the place.”

“With a sharper record, it definitely translates to the live set. The set becomes punchier, and I think that’s going to make the new stuff stick out a bit, which I think will be good. Obviously because this is our fourth record, we’ve been doing it a little while now. So the idea of what the material is going to sound like live is always in the back of our minds. Especially when there’s a breakdown or a part in the song that you know you can open up live and do something really cool. That’s always in the back of our heads, and the more we play live the more we understand that and the more we understand how to write music to accommodate that, but not too much, y’know. It doesn’t entirely dictate what we are doing when we’re writing new music, but yeah, it definitely is a consideration.”

In these various sessions, Bullet For My Valentine wanted to focus their efforts on making Temper Temper the most succinct, powerful record the band had ever produced. Which meant that, for all

With Temper Temper already out on the streets, Bullet For My Valentine have turned their attentions towards what they’re going to be doing with the new live show. There’s a lot going on in the band’s camp before

they make their way down here for Soundwave, and Padge says that it’s exciting times for the four-piece.

“We’re currently back in Wales trying to work out what we’re going to be doing with the set, so we’re just all getting more and more excited with each day.

Because there’s no better place to start a tour than in Australia, so it’s going to be great to be able to start off a cycle Down Under… We won’t be bringing too much production down with us, but that’s not going to matter. This record’s going to fly off the stage and hit people in the face, so we’ll be putting on a good show no matter if it’s the longer headlining sets we get to play or the festival sets, which will be not as long.”

As Padge tells it, BFMV’s pre-tour preparation is a rigorous affair because the band needs to have the new record up to scratch before the band head out on that first tour.

“It’s going to sound exactly like the record because that’s something we really want to do on this cycle, make sure that fans can hear everything they can hear on the record… I think we’re going to play a lot of Temper Temper on the cycle, and now that we’re in rehearsal we’re killing ourselves to make sure that everything is perfect. Because it has to be spot on, we’re all perfectionists. There’s no room for any mistakes.”

As Padge ominously intones his comment about ‘no room for mistakes’, one starts to wonder what the other members of Bullet For My Valentine might do if they caught a colleague making a mistake during one of the tracks live. Does the band employ some cruel and sadistic means of corporal punishment against one another?

“You usually get laughed at by the guys if you let a mistake slip through,” Padge says with a chuckle. “It’s not so much of a big thing. But it’s more the personal thing, if you’re up there playing and you’re getting something wrong, that just would be unacceptable.

But I think with us, that drive to perfection makes the mistakes that do slip through pretty minor… I mean, when you’re up there anything can happen; you slip over or can get a bottle in the face – anything. But if it’s something that you can control, you better well make sure that you’ve got it under control.”

WHO: Bullet For My Valentine WHAT: Temper Temper (Sony) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 22 February, The Hi-Fi; Saturday 23 February, Soundwave, RNA Showgrounds

For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews • 19

TROUBLESHOOTING There’s a lot more to Crime & The City Solution frontman Simon Bonney than his life in the band. He runs Guido Farnell through some of his perceptions of his near mythical band’s lows and highpoints.

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rime & The City Solution grew out of Sydney and Melbourne’s post-punk scenes in the late-’70s. They rubbed shoulders with Boys Next Door and The Young Charlatans and belonged to a pack of musicians that brought a new perspective to Australian rock.

“It was exciting coming to Melbourne from Sydney,” recalls frontman Simon Bonney. “Meeting Rowland S Howard and Ollie Olsen when they came up with The Young Charlatans was interesting.

They always had amusing stories to tell and were interesting people. Melbourne was definitely more receptive to the kind music I wanted to play.”

As the itinerant Bonney moved from Sydney to Melbourne to London to Berlin he established a different incarnation of the band in each city. Still grateful to Mick Harvey for buying him a ticket to London, Bonney admits that it changed his life but he never liked London or the band’s 1986 debut, Room Of Lights, which was produced there.

“London Crime was not a happy beast,” he says.

“It was never more than the sum total of the people in that band and there were a lot of very talented and creative people in that band. It never really quite gelled for me but for some people it did. I just don’t think that as a lyricist I really knew what I was doing until I went to Berlin and started playing with Alex Hacke. I didn’t have such a strong sense of what and how I wanted to say until then.” It was, of course, in the twilight world of bohemian Berlin where the band recorded most of their music and ended up featuring in Wim Wenders wistful masterpiece, Wings Of Desire.

After releasing just a handful of influential albums, Crime & The City Solution seemingly disappeared at the end of the ‘80s. Bonney gave us a couple of solo albums that were recorded in the States in the early-’90s before also bowing

ABSENT FRIEND Local rockers Running Gun Sound are dropping their accomplished second album, Friends, and then pulling up stumps.

Creative pivot Michael Fletcher talks to Steve Bell about gradual evolution and sudden endings.

out of the spotlight. Just over 20 years later, Bonney and a new incarnation of Crime & The City Solution have recorded a album called American Twilight in Detroit and are supporting it by hitting the road for an Australian tour this month. In talking about reconvening the band it seems that Bonney could not have done it without Hacke.

“When you think the golden period of a lot of bands, I think the relationship between the guitarist and the singer is quite critical to the creation of a particular sound,” he reflects. “That definitely applied to Alex and myself. Without wanting to detract from Mick Harvey’s important contribution to the sound of Crime, Alex’s approach to music was one that brought out of me the lyrics of which I remain the proudest, that I enjoy the most and most represent the kind of things that I am interested in.” In thinking about Crime’s current line-up he points out that David Eugene Edwards was someone he met on the Internet. “Yeah, the excitement of the Internet… I got an email from someone who knew me when I was five years old. They have a much more detailed memory of that time but this is something that could never have happened pre-Internet. Jim White is also perfect for Crime. I feel like he’s sitting on a precipice when he plays but never really goes over the edge.

He produces this kind of controlled chaos, which I think is what Crime does when we are at our best.”

Bringing Crime & The City Solution’s chaotic postpunk noise to Australia for the first time in many years, Bonney promises that at least 60 per cent of their setlists will be drawn from older albums.

WHO: Crime & The City Solution WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 24 February, Hi-Fi

s soon as Running Gun Sound have launched their new album, Friends, in the eastern capital cities, frontman Michael Fletcher is decamping to Berlin for a life change, effectively bringing the band to a halt. At least they’ll be leaving a befitting behind them farewell gift, the album a strong collection of up-tempo indie, a notable progression from theirrelatively raw beginnings.

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“I think it was about 2010 that the first song emerged,” Fletcher recalls of how Friends’ vibe started. “It was I Don’t Want To Know, we used to practice at our house and James [Boyd – guitar/vocals] came in and said ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got this song’ – it was really simple, like nothing else we had at that point. I was, like, ‘That’s the start of the new album!’. Everything we’d done up until [2011 single] Beasts Of England had been more of a garage punk kind of sound, and we had more than enough songs already then to record an album, but I didn’t want to make a record that was all over the place, I wanted to really write an album – what I thought was a mature record, and not just what I had lying around.

“I took my time and wrote slowly, and some of the songs I demoed four or five times just by myself; I really wanted to make great music for the record, and be more melodic. Lots of previous Running Guns songs weren’t this melodic – I never really tried to write melodies and would just spit out streams of words over a vague tune – but this time I tried to put more space and instrumentation into the songs. There was a lot going on with studying full-time and touring with Velociraptor every couple of months so it took a while, but I’m glad I took my time and put the songs first.

I learnt from Jeremy [Neale – drums] and James to make sure that you’re really happy with things – let’s not play songs that you’re only half happy about just to make do, if I was going to put a song on this record it had to be the best song it could be, for me at least.”

All five members of Running Gun Sound also play in Velociraptor, and even though the bands’ sounds are miles removed this shared membership still has its benefits.

“James and I spend a lot of time together talking about music and playing records, so we know each other’s strengths and preferences,” Fletcher continues. “And Jeremy’s like the pop manual – it’s so great having him in the band. There’s no reason to confuse Running Guns with Velociraptor – they’re two completely different things – but I feel like a lot of people don’t see it that way, just because it’s the same guys. So we’re always trying to make sure that we’re going in our own direction, but Jeremy’s got that incredible overall pop vision and it’s amazing having him around when we’re working out the songs – he always gets the best out of us.”

And is Fletcher sad to be leaving Running Gun Sound behind him?

“Definitely,” he smiles. “[Friends is] probably the music from this band that we’ve released the best, in terms of getting it out there and getting people to hear it – we put a lot of hard work in and now I’m going to go.

But whatever happens to the album I’ll always have it – it’s our record that we made together, and whether I’m here or in Germany I’ll have the record to play, and to play to other people. Maybe it’ll even get its own international second life – that’s what I’m hoping.”

WHO: Running Gun Sound WHAT: Friends (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 28 February, Crowbar

SILENCE, PATIENCE AND GRACE HOMETOWN HOMAGE Benjamin Kowalewicz and his band of Canuck brothers know a thing or two about perseverance. The hyperactive Billy Talent frontman talks to Benny Doyle about the hard work that’s taken these four Canadians right around the world. ithout much fanfare or hyperbole, Ontario mainstays Billy Talent dropped their fourth record (fifth if you count their 1999 album Watoosh! under their former guise of Pezz) in September last year. The long-player in question, Dead Silence, was put together in the band’s recently acquired studio in suburban Toronto, with the release also marking the first time Billy Talent have strayed from the eponymous album name. Both these facts excitedly point to a band starting a new chapter; refreshing considering how long the players involved have been in the game.

Lucero bassist John C Stubblefield explains to Steve Bell just why the Memphis rockers have no fear whatsoever of taking their place amongst the black-clad legions on the Soundwave line-up. emphis rockers Lucero seemed to take an eternity to finally make the long trip down to Australia, but now that they’re heading our way again courtesy of the Soundwave behemoth the affable Southern gents couldn’t be happier.

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“As a band that’s been around for twenty years – a long time – to still be excited and to still enjoy each other’s company, playing together, enjoying the whole process...” he trails off. “Y’know, as you get a bit older you tend to get a bit more of a perspective and you get to really appreciate and fully realise what it is we do, and there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think we’re the most fortunate people in the world. Albeit we work our arses off, but it’s still a lovely, beautiful art form and one that we’re super-stoked to be able to do.”

Kowalewicz cites D’Sa, the Indian Goan axeman with the gravity-defying head of hair, as the natural choice to man the desk for their latest record after working with acclaimed producer Brendan O’Brien (Rage Against The Machine, Pearl Jam) on 2009’s Billy Talent III. As the two chief songwriters, the pair also focused on telling the same story twice; switching things up and approaching ideas from a different angle. The topics and messages were broad and encompassing, but ironically some of the inspiration behind them were to be found in their own backyard.

“Songs like Viking [Death March] and Surprise Surprise were kind of... We had the Occupy movement here in Toronto, we had the G20 summit here, and we saw our beautiful city that we love so much kind of turn into this military state and get flipped on its arse, and

20 • For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews

riots and burning cop cars and people getting billy clubbed, so that definitely came into the writing. But a lot of the themes that we came at subconsciously were [tied into] really trying to seize the day. Know that you only get one kick at the can and that this life is all you have so if there’s something you want to do [then] go and do it. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow. It’s all about life passing you by really quick so you better hold onto it and start steering the ship because it can go down in a real hurry.”

Not that the HMCS Talent looks like being a sinking anytime soon. It’s been a 20-year voyage for the four friends on deck, an accomplishment made even more exceptional for the fact that during that time there has never been a single line-up change – not one.

“It is an achievement but it’s one that we don’t really think about because it’s just not an option to be in the band,” Kowalewicz levels with open candour. “It’s the only thing we know. [And] when you have that love affair and there’s this symmetry that happens between the four of us when we play, it’s a really special thing and it’s something that we take a lot of solace in. You grow up with people and see them evolve into men... it’s been a pretty humbling experience and there’s no other guys that I would rather do it with than these fellas.”

WHO: Billy Talent WHAT: Dead Silence (Warner) WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 23 February, Soundwave, RNA Showgrounds

“I’m stoked,” enthuses bassist John C Stubblefield.

“We were there for the first time as a band in early2011 with Dropkick Murphys, and all the shows were great and the people were just so lovely, it was really refreshing. Touring’s our way anyway – we’d rather be playing music than not, and we’re more comfortable onstage than anywhere else. We tour hard and our live show is our bread and butter so to speak, but it’s also what we love – just connecting with the crowd is really the only way to spread the word.”

Lucero even recently released a seven-inch recorded at Memphis’ Sun Studios, the place which figures so prominently in the early careers of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash (amongst countless others).

“It was a series of tunes for PBS, for TV, and we took a couple of songs from that and released a seven-inch for Record Store Day,” Stubblefield tells. “I’ve done several different sessions in Sun Studios over the years, and it’s definitely a magic room, you can definitely feel it. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is, but there’s definitely something electric about the air there.

All of Memphis really, it’s a pretty magical place.”

Since that last visit Lucero dropped their excellent eighth studio album, Women & Work, which continues their recent experimentation with the Memphis soul sound that’s so synonymous with their home city.

And while Lucero aren’t a band you would necessarily expect on a Soundwave line-up, their versatile history attests to them feeling at home in these heavy surrounds.

“On our last album 1372 Overton Park (2009) we added the horn section in there, but that happened mainly in the studio, but then they went out on the road with us for a couple of years and became part of the band,” Stubblefield recalls of the band’s transformation from their alt-country roots. “They were actually part of the writing process this time, so that made us explore even more the regional influences of where we’re from such as the Stax Records catalogue and the Hi Records catalogue. It’s a homage to our hometown for sure.

“That’s kind of why we started and it’s been a bit of a running joke, ‘Hey, let’s start a country band to piss off the punk rockers!’,” Stubblefield laughs, “but then they all ended up loving it, and we wound up playing all sorts of crazy hardcore shows just doing what we do. Last time we were [in Australia] we opened for Dropkicks, and Mike Ness from Social Distortion loves us and takes us out on the road, and we went on a whirlwind three month tour with Against Me! back in the day – it’s always wild finding out which other bands are into Lucero. Even the guys from Metallica invited us to play their festival last summer – it turned out that they were big fans, that was pretty random. It goes to show that it takes all kinds!”

“We’re definitely informed by the regional location of Memphis, and I think the older we get the more we appreciate it. When you start out as kids it’s part of the human condition to a certain degree – no matter where you’re from – to grow up and rebel against your folks and rebel against where you’re from and wish that you were from anywhere but there, but then at a certain point your parents become your friends and you start appreciating your surroundings.”

WHO: Lucero WHERE & WHEN: Saturday 23 February, Soundwave, RNA Showgrounds; Tuesday 26, The Tivoli

INSIDE :

AUSSIE MUSOS AT NAMM - ORIANTHI, LLOYD SPIEGEL & G WYN A SHTON, NAMM GEAR REPORT, IN THE STUDIO WITH MUTEMATH, AMP PRIZE PREVIEW!

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LUSH RECORDINGS IN QLD

Muso Editor Greg Phillips at NAMM 2013

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he annual NAMM show in Anaheim, California is one of the biggest music gear trade shows in the world with upwards of 100,000 delegates attending and thousands of companies displaying product. Muso was in the thick of the NAMM show action in January and now presents an extensive report on the most impressive gear releases heading our way over the next few months.

We also caught up with three Australian guitarist/singer/songwriters who were at NAMM representing companies and making a name for themselves with their music. In particular, Adelaide raised Orianthi who is currently the lead guitarist in Alice Cooper’s band, is primed for success with the release of her new album Heaven and This Hell in March. Visitors to the PRS guitars booth would have seen Orianthi’s own Signature Series guitar on show. Radiogram and counts some heavy hitters as personal friends these days including Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant, who has been to five of Ashton’s shows. We also chatted with bluesman Lloyd Spiegel straight after his impressive performance on the Marriot Hotel main stage. Lloyd was at NAMM predominantly to demo for Cole Clark guitars but also slayed the crowd during his hot 45 minute set.

Our cover artist Live Aid founder, Midge Ure had originally planned to be at NAMM too but the life of a touring musician got in the way. Instead we visited Midge backstage at his El Rey Theatre show in Hollywood where he brought us up to speed on the future of Ultravox and the solo tour which he’ll be bringing to Australia in April. Also on their way to Australia is Mutemath and Muso spoke with singer Paul Meany about the American band’s studio experience. Plus there’s there’s some awesome music gear road tested and all the latest gear news.

GREG PHILLIPS Muso Editor

CREDITS MUSO. ISSUE 5 - FEBRUARY 2013 PH: 03 9421 4499 FAX: 03 9421 1011 ADDRESS: 584 Nicholson St Nth Fitzroy 3068 WEBSITE: www.themusic.com.au EDITOR: Greg Phillips greg@streetpress.com.au DISTRIBUTION ENQUIRIES: distribution@streetpress.com.au LAYOUT & DESIGN: Matt Davis IPAD EDITION: Dave Harvey CONTRIBUTORS: Reza Nasseri, Michael Smith, Chris Hayden, Jan Wisniewski PHOTOGRAPHER: www.pixievision.com PRINTED BY: Rural Press Published by Street Press Australia PTY LTD

Indulging his passion for the jazz of the 1920s and recasting a baker’s dozen of his own songs from across his catalogue, Roxy Music to solo albums, Bryan Ferry recorded and produced his latest and instrumental album, The Jazz Age, at Studio One in London with an octet he’s dubbed The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, recording in “crackly mono”.

Drawing on personal rather than political themes, the new album, Tooth & Nail, Nail, from Billy Bragg was recorded in five-day session with Grammy Award-winning producer Joe Henry (Solomon Burke, Aimee Mann, Elvis Costello, Hugh Laurie) in his South Pasadena basement studio, with Henry taking Bragg out of his comfort zone, all vocals recorded live without retakes or overdubs.

Recently touring Australia, Malian singer, songwriter, and multiinstrumentalist Rokia Traoré will release her new album, Beautiful Africa, recorded at Toybox Studios in Bristol, UK, with producer and English musician John Parish (PJ Harvey, Eels, Sparklehorse) April 5 on Nonesuch Records.

Coproducing with Dave Cook, veteran UK postpunk singer-songwriter Graham Parker took The Rumour, reconvening in 2011 some 31 years after they broke up after Parker was invited

by Jeff Aptow to work on the soundtrack of his latest feature, This Is 40, into Dreamland Studios in New York State to record a new album, Three Chords Good.

Multi-Grammy Awardwinning Texan singer and guitarist Boz Scaggs recorded his latest album, Memphis, at the late producer/ MD Willie Mitchell’s legendary Royal Studio in Memphis with multiinstrumentalist and producer Steve Jordan (John Mayer, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy).

Lush Recording Studios in Brisbane is increasingly being viewed as a world class SSL recording and production facility, offering the very best of both the digital and analogue worlds, featuring an SSL 4048E console and an extensive list of the finest classic and esoteric vintage outboard equipment and classic vintage tube microphones. With their acoustically designed and engineered spaces, dedicated and professional team of engineers and classic equipment list, as well as being able to draw from a diverse pool of producers and composers, plus a great vibe, Lush Studios will satisfy the needs of the most discerning clientele. Located in Clontarf Beach and only 30mins north of Brisbane CBD, the studio offers a pleasant sea-change from the city environment. Nearby are fine dining restaurants, pubs and eateries, with fine boutique hotels overlooking beautiful Morton Bay where accommodation can be arranged.

The studio has been professionally designed and engineered and consists of tracking room, isolation room and cab booth. The tracking and isolation rooms both have 4.6m high ceilings.

There’s also a fourth area, an untreated 70m2 warehouse with 7m ceilings loaded with tie lines for those wanting the organic sound. www.lushstudios.com.au

SIMON PHILLIPS DRUM CLINICS Drummer’s Dream in Sydney presents a drum clinic by one of the world’s finest drummers, Simon Phillips.

His list of drum credits is second to none, ranging from The Who, Frank Zappa, Mick Jagger and Dave Gilmour to heavy rockers like Judas Priest and Michael Schenker. Phillips is known for his technical ability mixed with his distinct musical sensibility.

The clinic takes place on Sunday 3 March at the Canterbury Leagues Club in Belmore. Simon will be doing clinics in other states too. For Sydney clinic information, call (02) 9787 4177. www.drummersdream.com.au

FRANK BELLO (ANTHRAX) BASS CLINIC Guitar Factory Parramatta is proud to announce the Frank Bello Bass Clinic. Frank and Anthrax have been touring our shores for Soundwave festival and Mr Bello insisted that he squeezes one clinic into his busy schedule. The clinic is free but it is imperative that you make a booking as there are very limited tickets.

Tuesday 26 February 26 at 7pm at Guitar Factory Parramatta (255 Church Street Parramatta). Bookings must be received before Friday 22. Telephone: (02) 9635 5552. www.guitarfactory.com.au

Stonefield. Pic by Holly Engelhardt

HUGE DAY OUT AT GH MUSIC FLEMINGTON Garry Hyde (son of Billy Hyde) has re-opened a musical instrument store GH MUSIC on the original Billy Hyde Music site at 100 Mt Alexander Rd, Flemington, which was where it all began in 1962 for his father’s music retail institution. Garry and the team at GH MUSIC Flemington welcome all to their inaugural free HUGE DAY OUT on Saturday 23 February, featuring a huge lineup of free entertainment all day on an outdoor stage, free musical instrument clinics and demonstrations from the best in the business and of course, some dirty old rock and roll!

The outdoor stage will feature very special guests Stonefield to kick off the day (performing at 10:00am sharp), Andrew Wishart (2011 X Factor runnerup), Jae Laffer (The Panics), Wendy Stapleton, Paul Norton and Sam See, Nat Allison, David Jones, The Electrique Birds, Better Late Than Never (featuring Simon Madden), DJ Kuya and more.

Plus for all those drummers, get down to the store to meet the incredible Andy Strachan (The Living End) at 2pm. Bring your guitar along for a free re-string, or your old drum head for a free re-skin (advance bookings essential – just call the store). www.facebook.com/ghmusicflemington

The instrumental debut album, Reanimation, Reanimation, by the cinematic post-rock Lights & Motion AKA Christoffer Franzen, was produced, recorded, engineered and mixed by Franzen at UpSweden Studios and mastered by Maria Adolfsson at MA Studios in Stockholm.

Utilising analogue recording technology “to organically capture” their hybrid take on heavy psych rock, Austin, Texas five-piece Scorpion Child called on Chris “Frenchie” Smith (The Answer, And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead…) to produce and arrange their eponymous debut album.

Adelaide-based pianoled pop-rockers Bill Parton Trio recorded their self-titled debut EP at hometown Chapel Lane Studios with producer Darren Mullan (The Angels, The Beards, Russell Morris), Adam Rhodes (Angus & Julia Stone, The Cat Empire, Missy Higgins) the recording engineer, the EP then mastered at Adelaide’s DiskEdits Pty Ltd by Neville Clark (Hilltop Hoods, Funkoars).

Former Bluebottle Kiss/The Devoted Few multi-instrumentalist now Sarah Blasko band member Fletcher wrote, recorded and produced his debut solo album, Upon Ayr, over two years in, variously, Sydney (‘stolen’ studio time in a university), London (his bathroom and Urchin Studios) and Stockholm (Decibel Studios), the album then mastered in Berlin.

Melbourne duo Super Wild Horses, aka Amy Franz and Hayley McKee, recorded their second album, Crosswords, in their own temporary studio in an unused butter factory just past Castlemaine in Victoria, having loaded up a van with instruments, recording gear and engineer Jack Farley (Twerps, Beaches, St Helens).

Vampire Weekend. Pic by Josh Groom

Big Day Out T

THE GEAR PERSPECTIVE

he Big Day Out skewed to a bit more of a “sophisticated” audience this year. Acts such as Animal Collective and Foals lent the day some indie cred and the new ‘Chow Town’ exhibit impressed foodies, with stalls from Huxtaburger, Cookie and St Ali. But for the musician types in the audience, of much more interest were the shiny guitars pumping through dirty amps and Muso was on hand to see who was using what.

Long-time festival favourites Grinspoon were among the Aussie cohort this year – indeed, what would be a festival without them? New material was received well, but it was 1,000 Miles and Chemical Heart from the back catalogue that really hit home.

Pat Davern ripped the licks from his exquisite Maton Mastersound, while bassist Joe Hansen laid down a groove on his Warwick Streamer LX bass.

Back at the Blue Stage, Band of Horses proved themselves to be some of the politest gents in music, complimenting each other warmly between songs.

“Good work drumming!” declared lead singer Ben Bridwell. “You’re a good drummer, Creighton!” Their set was similarly a delight, their track, The Funeral, getting a particularly great response from the crowd.

Tyler Ramsay is a fan of ‘70s era guitars; his collection included a 335, Guild S90 and Gibson L6S, running through a Blackstar 2x12 and Fender Deluxe Reverb.

Vampire Weekend were another big draw card this year. Their bright punk-infused pop made for the perfect soundtrack to a summer festival.

Mainman Ezra Koenig looked resplendent with his beautiful Epiphone Sheraton II slung around his neck. Playing at the same time, over on the Essential Stage, was Donald Glover’s hip-hop alterego Childish Gambino. Glover was charismatic and his live band was truly wonderful – Ray Suen was a particular standout, alternating between keys, guitar and violin throughout the set.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs were an absolute highlight, despite some technical difficulties. Lead singer Karen O put on the best performance of the day, stepping out in a tasseled red suit and zebra-striped cape, stalking the stage like a proper rock goddess, howling and growling as only she can. The band brought out some new material from their upcoming album, Mosquito. Its ‘lo-fi’ sound didn’t hugely impress the festival crowd, but if it’s an indication of what the new album will sound like, it’s going to be one to look out for. Guitarist Nick Zinner donned his custom-built First Act Signature Delia, a gorgeous guitar featuring built-in fuzz circuit.

While most of the punters finished up their day by heading over to the main stages to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ headlining set, Sleigh Bells were tearing it up for a small but energetic audience over at the Essential Stage. The production values might not have been as high – their backdrop was simply a wall of 12 Marshall amps – but the duo of singer Alexis Krauss and guitarists Derek Edward Miller really pack a punch. A quick peek at Edward Miller’s pedal board exposed a POG2, Deltalab DD1 and MXR Fullbore metal effects. Krauss whipped the crowd into a frenzy with tracks like Crown On The Ground and Kids, jumping into the audience as more security guards rushed over to the stage to try and keep control.

Once again, the Big Day Out proved itself adept at providing something for everyone.

Its position as the biggest, most beloved festival of the summer remains unshaken.

By Elyce Phillips

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brand guitars. They’re Chinese-built but feature British electronics. Ure’s model is a carbon copy of Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green’s old Les Paul standard, right down to the point of the bass humbucker pickup being reversed with the pickups on phase in the middle position. “They are stonkingly good guitars straight out of the box. The one I am using tonight was sent from Canada because they don’t have a distribution deal in America. I took it straight out of the box, took all the plastic off, the sticky plastic off the pickups, plugged it in and kerrang, there it is.”

Muso’s Greg Phillips caught up with Midge Ure at LA’s El Rey Theatre ahead of his upcoming Australian tour.

B

ackstage at the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Midge Ure is unsure of the reception he’ll get when he hits the stage to play a selection of solo and Ultravox tunes to a Californian audience. It’s been 32 years since Vienna was released and 28 since Live Aid, the gargantuan charity event Ure and friend Bob Geldof created. Midge need not have worried; the audience, a mix of young goths and 40- and 50-something nostalgics lapped up his classic new wave pop later that night. However Ure is a realist and knows that while 500 payers adoring his music is admirable, ironically a few miles down the road at The Staples Centre, Muse, a band who “cut their teeth on what we did,” said Midge, was playing to almost 20,000 fans.

The production team at Vintage are currently working on a signature model for Ure, a Les Paulstyle guitar with P90s but with the tailpiece of an SG standard. Ure is playing his guitar through a Vox 150 watt 1x12 combo. “This thing is amazing, a modelling amp with a valve front end so you get all the warmth and drive you would want but with the ability to pop patches anytime you like.

Although once I get the sound I like, I don’t like to change patches. I like the one sound.” Pedalwise, Midge is keeping things fairly simple and for tonight’s gig was using a Boss Blues Overdrive to compensate for the hire amp’s lack of grunt.

The reasons for the current Midge Ure American dates, and upcoming Australia tour in April, are twofold … A) reacquaint audiences with the music and have a bit of fun and B) see if there is scope for a full-scale Ultravox tour in the near

Apart from Ure’s musical success, he’ll forever also be remembered as one of the instigators of the aforementioned Live Aid, the massive global concert event organised in 1985 to raise funds for relief for the ongoing famine in Ethiopia. “I’m

Ure not alone future. Unfortunately, due to the corporate chaos that recently enveloped the band’s label, EMI, the release of a new Ultravox album, Brilliant, last year virtually went unnoticed. Certainly it didn’t get the promotional push it deserved. Ure now finds himself in a situation where to get things done, he has to do a lot of the promotional and logistical work himself. To make the American tour feasible, he’s using the support band, LA’s Right The Stars as his backing band.

“You have to leave your ego at the door and get on and drive the van,” Midge admits. “That’s exactly what we have been doing. I looked at how we could possibly do this as a toe-in-the-water for possibly Ultravox coming back later in the year with the album. There is no record company to help you support the thing. You have to do it completely and utterly on your own. The only way you can do that is by using local musicians. My agent said we look after this band Right The Stars, they’re LA-based and phenomenal musicians. So the only way to make this work is to do it with a local band, who are out promoting their own record; they’ve learned all my stuff. Five of us sit in this bus every day and drive forever and just do the thing. The bonus is that we all get on well, otherwise it could be hell.”

Much has obviously changed in the industry since Ultravox ruled the airwaves and Ure found modern record company logic difficult to fathom while recording Brilliant last year.

“We’d started the album for Universal, who instigated the whole thing. During the recording process, it became very apparent they didn’t really want an Ultravox album. They wanted an album with Ultravox’s name on it and they wanted me singing on it, they didn’t necessarily want what Ultravox did. They wanted a kind of watered-down version of what our hits were in the ‘80s. I went to a songwriting camp with the instigators whilst talking to them about this album, and the first thing they did was to announce to twenty-five writers there that they wanted songs written in an Ultravox style for Ultravox’s new album. At which point, after they pulled me off the roof and got me down, I explained in no uncertain terms that this was never going to happen. It became very apparent we weren’t talking about the same record at all. We found ourselves making a record with no record company. We decided to carry on writing and recording. We had nobody to deliver it to, so until something was in place… until EMI were given the green light… but they knew that this Universal thing was hanging over their heads and at some point they were going to be snapped up by them. What they (Universal) were trying to do was widen the demographic and make something that is a lot more palatable. They were trying to do an X Factor on somebody who has been doing what he does for a long time. It doesn’t make sense and then they wonder why the industry is in the state that it is! It is like saying to Kate Bush, we love what you do but we have this girl over here who can write really good songs very similar to what you do. You know, we love Led Zeppelin but we don’t

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still a Band Aid trustee,” Midge explains. “We’re still there. When you’re responsible for that kind of money... and the money still rolls in. Every time the record (Do They Know It’s Christmas) is played on the radio, it generates income. The income has to be overseen and monitored and assessed on an annual basis. At some point in the not too distant future, we’re going to have to decide who to pass the baton on to. That song will continue to generate money for the cause. So we have to decided who to pass the responsibility on to and who will make the future decisions.”

It took Ure a long time to understand and appreciate how important an historical event he and Geldof had created. “We were so embroiled in the middle of this huge thing that we created that we couldn’t see the wood for the trees. We were right in the heart of it and it wasn’t until many years later that the little girl next door come in and said we read about you in history today. It’s in history books. People are talking about it now not just as a musical event, but a major social event. We used a medium that the majority of people understood. It wasn’t a million miles away from what you normally do. You hear a piece of music, you buy a record and it makes a difference to someone thousands of miles away.”

The future of Ultravox is uncertain and basically comes down to economics. If there is demand, and a tour is commercially feasible, then the band will supply.

“We’d love to tour America. We’d love to tour Australia,” Midge admits. “Part of the reason of me going to Australia with my band is the same reason I am doing it with a band here, to see if there is a taste for it... to see if there is a desire for Ultravox to get off our backsides and do it. The great thing is that three years ago, we wouldn’t have been talking about Ultravox because it hadn’t existed for twenty-eight years. Now we are talking about the future of Ultravox and the future is that the door is now open for Ultravox to do something.” want Robert Plant to sing on it, we’ve got this other guy. I don’t get it!”

While record company business practices may have changed for the worse, developments in music technology have made the creative process easier for a tech-savvy band like Ultravox.

“The last tour that Ultravox did we had twenty-five synthesisers on stage, which is ludicrous,” says Midge.

“You had to do that if you needed a specific

string sound, the old Yamaha SS30 string sound. That one keyboard made that one sound. You wanted a CS80 sound, you had to have a CS80. Same with the DX7, you had to have the specific thing. You couldn’t replicate it back then and do all the keyboard split things that you can now. Now you can use a laptop with Mainstage and Logic and do keyboard splits, all the sounds that you want with all the effects on it, and all the level changes and things. It’s so much easie but, carting around all of that stuff was a pain. Almost as painful was the early ‘80s, pre-MIDI when your Mini Moog couldn’t talk to your drum machine. You had to have it altered and adapted to send the spike from the drum machine into the Mini Moog to make it go DDDDDD! So therefore you had to have two Mini Moogs and two drum machines, both adapted. And things would go wrong all the time. The drum machine in the middle of Vienna would just go quadruple-time.

There was nothing you could do about it, just stop the

song, reset and try again.

The Mini Moogs went out of tune constantly, especially in hot clubs.

The oscillators were constantly out. If you have seen any footage of Ultravox playing in the early days, a pair of headphones were constantly on the side of your head because you were tuning the oscillators between songs.

We were prisoners to the basic technology we were using.”

For the solo tour, Midge is using Vintage

Ure was due to appear in Australia last year as part of the ill-fated Rewind ‘80s Music Festival.

Australian fans can finally look forward to an energetic show from Ure when he tours in April with his UK-based band. Without giving too much away, the El Rey show consisted of a blend of tracks spanning Midge’s entire career, including a couple of surprises and his vocal cords have lost none of the power associated with those epic ‘80 tunes. “In Australia, there’s much more of a recognition factor,” he said of the upcoming tour. “It will be the combination of classic Ultravox things and what I would think are the more interesting solo things. Someone’s been dangling a carrot in front of me to come down there for a long time. It almost looks like you’re going and then it falls through, but this time I’m actually coming down to do something, which will be great.” www.midgeure.com

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SEEN AT NAMM 2013 • Brian Wilson • Elton John • Sarah McLachlan • Earth Wind and Fire • Toto • Stevie Wonder • George Benson • Eddie Van Halen • Geezer Butler • Lita Ford • Earl Slick • Devin Townshend • Randy Jackson • Michael Anthony • Nathan East • Lee Ritenour •

NAMM

2O13 SPECIAL REPORT

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WRITTEN BY GREG PHILLIPS PHOTOS BY PIXIEVISION.COM

he National Association of Music Merchants in America presents two music gear trade shows a year. The biggest and most famous is the winter NAMM show, which occurs at the Anaheim Convention Center in California in January. It attracts up to 100,000 music trade delegates and more rock stars per metre than any other place on earth. The NAMM show is a sensory overload. It’s a neverending procession of sound, colour and characters and it’s all turned up to 11. While music trade shows in Frankfurt and Shanghai may have eclipsed the NAMM show for scale these days, this is the original and the most fun. As it’s in LA, this is where the rock stars come out to play. This year you could see Elton John performing at Disneyland for Yamaha supported by Sarah McLachlan, Earth, Wind & Fire and Toto. Also at NAMM, you could see The Who’s Pete Townshend receive the Les Paul award at the TEC Awards or if you were on the trade show floor at the right booth at the right time, you could see any one of the following: Stevie Wonder testing drums and jamming on moog synths with Bernie Worrell, Brian Wilson performing for Gibson, George Benson watching our own Lloyd Spiegel at the Marriot Bar, Sabbath’s Geezer Butler signing autographs, Lita Ford laying down some hot licks, Boston performing More Than A Feeling, Nikki Sixx charming a crowd, or guitarists like Eddie Van Halen, Steve Morse, Neal Schon, Robben Ford, Devin Townshend or Earl Slick walking the aisles and talking gear. Then there were the parties which most of the bigger brands presented that went well into the night... which brings me back to something I said earlier… hangovers are not a great idea at a NAMM show. Apart from the star power, there are some serious music business and education sessions and a myriad of other really interesting historical stuff. More than anything however, NAMM is about the gear. Over the next few pages, Muso brings you a taste of the NAMM releases that will be making their way to Australia in 2013.

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She’s traded guitar licks on stage with Santana, Vai and Prince and is now lead guitarist in Alice Cooper’s band. Australia’s Orianthi has a new album coming out and speaks to Greg Phillips at NAMM.

“O

ne day you go into the Paul Reed Smith guitars booth at NAMM and you demonstrate for them, then you come back and walk into that booth again a few years later and you look up and there’s your own signature guitar on the wall. You just think, bloody hell, is this real?” says Australian-born guitarist Orianthi at this year’s NAMM show as

Miss Riff she reflects on the honour PRS bestowed on her.

A few hours earlier she had collected another accolade when honoured with the ‘Inspire’ award at the first ever She Rocks Awards, an event created by the Women’s International Music Network to pay tribute to women who display leadership in the music industry. For the very few Australians scattered around the room at the awards breakfast, it was with some pride that Orianthi rocked the house with an early morning version of Back In Black. Needless to say, the girl’s done good!

She has jammed with and since befriended both Carlos Santana and Steve Vai, swapped licks with Prince and is currently lead guitarist in Alice Cooper’s band, having completed two world tours with the prince of darkness. On 12 March Orianthi will release Heaven In This Hell a new solo album produced by Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart.

There was never any doubt in Orianthi’s mind what she wanted to do as a career path. “When I was six, I said to my mum, as I was strumming away to Elvis, I am going to America,” she says. “I am going to make a record in America and tour the world… and my mum believed me. Then when I was 15 I told my parents I was leaving school.

They were like… Ok! I guess because I am very stubborn and I just love playing guitar. They were very supportive. My dad is a guitar player and mum is awesome. That’s why I say to a lot of people who come up to me… never give up because there are so many highs and lows in this industry. The lows can be lower than low and it’s the same with the highs. You have got to live in the moment and be persistent. It is not easy. People have different ideas about what it must be like to be a musician or be up on stage in front of a crowd, it’s a lot of fun but it’s also learning 25 songs in a week.”

However, one of Orianthi’s greatest achievements was being asked by Michael Jackson to take on lead guitar responsibilities for his never-to-be This Is It tour. As the movie footage shows, Orianthi enjoyed the rehearsal experience immensely and was looking forward to the massive shows in London, Paris, New York City and Mumbai. “I have seen the movie probably once, one and a half times maybe,” she says. “I can’t really watch it because it is so real.

Being there, being in his presence and working with him, was such an amazing part of my life. I hold the memories and I am so honoured to have had that time. I am working with Alice Cooper now. I have

to say Alice is very similar to Michael.

He’s such a showman and he loves his fans.

He is so personable and sweet and I feel like I have so much fun on tour with Alice.

I say to him, until he gets sick of me I’ll continue on with him.”

Orianthi is super excited about the release of her new album. It’s her third, but first real full-on production which faithfully showcases her skills not only as a guitar player but also as an accomplished songwriter. The material ranges from big rock ballads through to smokin’ blues rock outs. Heaven In This Hell reveals a wide array of guitar

tones, highlighting a versatility we may not have expected yet shouldn’t really be surprised by. It’s no secret that her licks feature great fluidity and touch, perhaps it’s the maturity of her playing which has snuck up on us.

Orianthi wrote all of the 11 songs and describes the vibe herself as a “voodoo rock blues sound”.

On the album Orianthi used her signature Paul Reed Smith guitars through Fender and EVH amps. She also busted out a few Fender guitars for rhythm parts as well as a couple of Duesenberg guitars.

As we catch up with Orianthi at the TC

booth at NAMM, it would be remiss not to ask what her association is with the Danish gear company? “I use their Flashback delay pedal,” she says. “On my tour in 2010 I used their Tone Print effects too. I’ve got their Chorus and Flanger which I use as well. It really depends on the show.

I always switch up my effects but TC have been so supportive and I love the quality of their effects.”

There will be a Grammy Museum release party for Heaven In This Hell on Monday 11 March in America where Orianthi will be playing an acoustic set. Then it’s back on the road with Alice Cooper.

“There are a lot of different things happening, different projects which I am really excited about but I can’t talk about right now,” says Orianthi. For her own headlining gigs, she’s tossing up whether to hit the road in trio mode, which worked so well at this morning’s She Rocks Awards or to opt for a larger band. Whatever form the band take, Orianthi is keen to bring her show back home to Australia. “We’re talking to someone about doing some festivals out there. I don’t know if that will happen but who knows. I hope so.”

Heaven In This Hell is out Tuesday 12 March through Universal. orianthi.com

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Tommy Thayer (Kiss)

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Exodus

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Ohm

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Avenge Sevenfold

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Nikki Sixx

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Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple)

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Robben Ford

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Quiet Riot

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Neal Schon

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Dee Snider

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Scott Ian

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Anvil

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The Jacksons

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Fear Factory

Muso’s Greg Phillips chatted to Australian bluesman Lloyd Spiegel straight after his red hot performance at the NAMM show.

I

t was quite a coup for Australian guitar manufacturer Cole Clark to secure an afternoon performance spot for Lloyd Spiegel on The Marriot Hotel’s main stage during the NAMM show.

Spiegel used his 45 minutes extremely well, with the international music industry audience lapping up the singer, songwriter and slick fingerpicker’s fun and energetic performance. The Spiegel vibe

Spiegel's Spiegel s intent even attracted guitar legend George Benson to the bar to see what the fuss was all about.

It’s a little known fact that Lloyd travelled the States as a teenager, begging for gigs and earning his stripes in some of the toughest rooms in America. “When I was travelling the States, I was literally hungry. If I didn’t get a gig, I didn’t eat. I was under age so was using a fake I.D. to get into blues clubs. You learn to connect with an audience quite well. They are your only chance at eating or staying in a hotel that night. Seeing blues legends like Honey Boy Edwards or Luther Allison, you learn about performance, about truly connecting with an audience. Of course you are going to learn musicianship, but you get that from any musician you work with on any level.

But the showmanship, people demand a show here in the States. Someone like Luther Allison or Buddy Guy, they have this stage persona that they take on and it is absolutely professional.

They can play it at will and I do love that.”

It’s been a decade since Spiegel last toured America and the NAMM afternoon had given him fuel for thought to tackle the US market again.

“By the time I thought about coming back, I was married, child, and divorced,” explained Lloyd on

how life had got in the way of his return.

“Then in Australia I started doing really well, and then I did well in Japan, then Europe started taking off. Around that time, George Bush made it incredibly difficult to get a work permit for an Australian. It kind of never really happened. I get weekly emails from people asking when I’m going to come back. Today fuelled me because I remembered what it was like to play for American audiences.

I think I am going to have to start looking

at coming over and touring again.”

Spiegel’s main purpose for this NAMM trip however was to work the Cole Clark booth and spruik their guitars. Lloyd has been working with Cole Clark for around ten years and the company has rewarded the bluesman with his own signature guitar, which is currently in development. “I’m not playing it at the NAMM show but I have the prototype at home. What I am trying to do is make it cheaper... as funny as

that sounds. I’m a working-class musician. I want to make a working-class instrument, which is what the guitars are. So I built my dream guitar then found out it had a three and a half to four thousand dollar price point. So I went back and looked at all the little bits and pieces and said, ‘let’s work on how we make this affordable for the average player.’”

As the Marriot performance showed, Lloyd injects a lot of energy into his guitar and you’d assume a Spiegel signature model would need to be built for battle. “The most important thing for me is... if I ask it the question, it needs to answer,” Lloyd explains. “I am an aggressive player and I wanted a guitar that bounced back at me and the Cole Clarks do that really, really well. I like a lot of top end on my guitars, almost an abrasive kind of sound. The Cole Clarks sound round and beautiful and I like to maybe fiddle with that a little bit. So I am designing a guitar which will give me my sound. It is based on an FL2AC with a different sensor inside it. Instead of a short sensor on the face, I am putting an extra long one in. It’s just a little more responsive to my

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Testament

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Slipknot

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RATT

hands. What actually really made me want to work with Cole Clark was the attitude of a working-class guitar.

They wanted to build guitars for the other guy. The fact that they offered me one in the first place... ten years ago in Australia I was absolutely nobody. I’m still almost nobody but a little less of a nobody.

Back then I was just playing the local clubs.

They wanted to give me a guitar because they decided right from the start because they were building a guitar for a guy who had to plug into a PA that belongs in a museum and play for eight guys who are playing pool and still have the dignity to have control over their sound with a really nice guitar tone.

The Jack Johnsons and other people on our endorsee list are always going to sound good.

They play with million dollar sound systems and three engineers working around the clock for them. I really like ‘the other guy’ aspect of Cole Clark.”

Another little known piece of trivia about Spiegel is his popularity in Japan, where he has found a fan base among the local guitar heads.

“Japan is like getting off a plane and being

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Drowning Pool

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Steve Gadd

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on a different planet and it is years in the future,” recalls Lloyd. “I found myself playing to these twenty-one year old metal heads who had never heard blues music before and they think I invented this shit. I did an interview for a magazine over there and they asked me if there were other people in Australia who played this style of music and I just went no! I was still doing my local show in Australia but selling out Tokyo Disneyland.

With Disneyland, I got picked up in a limousine, the sound system was the highest quality, everything you wanted backstage, signing autographs.

I then flew home, got in the Holden Commodore with my dodgy PA and drove straight to Wodonga, set up and played to twenty people.”

For the rest of 2013, Lloyd intends to tour some more, record two albums and continue his work with the Blues in Schools program, where he is on a self-propelled mission to supply every Indigenous child in Australia with a musical instrument. www.lloydspiegel.com www.coleclarkguitars.com

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Galactic Music

The amount of new gear on display at the NAMM show was mind-boggling. Housed in the Anaheim Convention Center, which includes five massive halls, an arena and mezzanine levels, as well as spilling out into the suites of nearby hotels, it is physically impossible to see everything within the four days of this event.

In our NAMM gear report, Muso has concentrated on the products which we know will filter into Australia soon via the reputable local wholesalers who import it.

www.galacticmusic.com.au

The Behringer area of the trade show floor was bigger than most and needed to be to showcase the myriad of sensational new products. Released last year yet still attaining star attraction status was the brilliant X32, a 40-channel digital mixer. The X32 mixer is the flagship of the X32 family, which also includes the X32 Producer, X32 Core, X32 Compact and X32 Rack.

Also taking pride of place was their Eurolive Active Bluetooth Loudpseakers and NEKKST K8/K5 Studio Monitors. Muso reviewed the B112 W loudspeakers in December and found them to be powerful, versatile and exceptionally great value for your money.

If you’re seeking a fine quality audio interface for your studio, look no further than Behringer’s new U-Phoria USB Audio Interfaces. The MIDAS company, which Behringer recently acquired, developed the preamps for the UMC204, UMC202 and UMC22 interfaces that include +48v phantom power.

On the DJ front, Behringer has released the visually stunning CMD DJ controllers. The CMD Studio 4A in particular is a beauty and provides all the tools required to learn the basics of DJing. The 4A features eight hotcues and can control up to four virtual decks.

Jands

www.jands.com.au Anyone who visited the Shure booth this year would have experienced their wonderful assemblage of vintage mics set out in cabinets, a veritable museum of sound recording gear. From the famous Beta and SM series to the much-lauded KSM series, seeing the classic ranges grouped together outlined just how important the Shure brand has been to the development of recording.

Dynamic Music www.dynamicmusic.com.au

Danny B Harvey (Wanda Jackson), James Trussart, Earl Slick (David Bowie) & Gwyn Ashton

Shure microphones released two impressive wireless systems at NAMM this year. The GLX-D wireless systems feature intelligent technology and smart-power options that put reliability, consistency and professional-grade digital sound in the hands of artists playing in all kinds of performance settings.

GLX-D Digital Wireless Systems apply LINKFREQ Automatic Frequency Management, making seamless, crystal-clear audio easy and worry-free. The GLX-D transmitters feature best-in-class lithium-ion batteries that quickly recharge using the charging port on the receiver, or a variety of optional USB connectors.

Also launched at NAMM was Shure’s precisionbuilt BLX Wireless systems, combining professional quality sound with simple setup and an intuitive interface for dependable performance. The BLX system is available in a variety of handheld, lavalier, instrument and headset configurations. GLX-D and BLX Systems are expected to land in mid 2013.

Classy guitars from Lakewood

Gator cases released a wide range of new products at the trade show, including the Evolution Drum Case Series, G-Tour Fixed Angle Mixer cases and G-Tour Pioneer DDJ-Sx controller case.

Awesome new Boss pedals

JBL Professional has introduced the M2 Master Reference Monitor, making world-class, largeformat monitoring feasible in a wide range of rooms. The largest speaker in JBL’s studio monitor line, the M2 integrates new JBL transducer technologies and patented innovations in a freestanding, two-way system that can be placed in any production environment and tuned to provide a superior level of accuracy and performance.

Casio

Uber-interesting UltraNova

www.soundtechnology.com.au With the release of their XW Synth range last year, Casio signalled their intention to tackle the pro keyboard market head on. The assault continued at NAMM with the launch of their amazing new stage piano, the Privia Pro PX-5S. LA-based band Fallen Riviera used a prototype model in their demo performance at the Casio booth. Jazz legend Joe Sample also put the stage piano through its paces at an invitation-only event later that night. The PX-5S owes much of its realistic and expressionfilled sound to the AiR sound source technology, which provides stunning fidelity and control over the tones and effects. A new arsenal of sounds has been included. With the PX-5S you get classic electric piano, harpsichord and clavinet sounds. Some of the tones are complete with release samples, amp and speaker simulations. The four-zone controller, with four knobs and six sliders, allows for easy control of the internal sounds and effects parameters. Each zone on the PX-5S can control an internal sound, external MIDI device or both simultaneously.

“The launch of Casio’s Privia Pro series further exemplifies the company’s commitment to the musical instrument category. We are no longer just producing musical instruments; we are going beyond sound by enabling professional musicians to express themselves and create music like never before,” said Stephen Schmidt, Vice President of Casio’s Electronic Musical Instruments Division. Casio hopes to have the unit available within the next couple of months.

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Brian Wilson and band perform at the Gibson booth

The creative people at ZOOM were recognised for their fine work at the TEC Awards, where they won an award for outstanding technical achievement for their H2n handy recorder. On the new product front, ZOOM released their iQ5 professional stereo microphone. The iQ5 is a high-quality mic that connects to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touches. Also released was the MultiStomp MS-60B, offering over 50 types of bass effects includes six bass amp models and MultiStomp MS-70CDR, which gives you over 70 types of chorus, delay, reverb and modulation effects. Celebrating 40 years of producing high-quality guitars, the Godin company presented two anniversary models: the Norman B20 acoustic, which features a new tobacco-burst high-gloss finish, and they also released the Limited Edition Anniversary Godin Acousticaster. Other models released included the Montreal Premier, MultiUke, 5th Avenue Composer and Inuk Encore and Ambience Steel models.

Already adopted by world-renowned guitarist and composer John McLaughlin, the new Fishman Triple Play™ Wireless Guitar Controller makes composing, performance and recording much easier. McLaughlin has been recording and performing with test versions of the device for almost a year, providing Fishman with valuable insight throughout the development process.

Yamaha Music Australia

Roland’s impressive G5A VG Stratocaster

au.yamaha.com/ As usual, the Yamaha company created a world of their own at The Marriot Hotel next door to the main convention centre. Yamaha took the opportunity to present some real music history with a display of classic products, from an original pump organ from 1902 to the mighty DX7 synth. With regards to new gear, there was plenty from Yamaha including the MX49 and MX61 workstations, featuring awesome sounds from the Motif XS. Guitar-wise Yamaha launched the attractive A series Koa acoustics, and new guitars in the FG, FGX, L and RBX lines.

Released last year but taking pride of place was the THR10X amp. Notably, Roland unveiled their version at NAMM this year. In percussion, Paiste gave us the new 602 cymbals and there was a new Yamaha Live Custom Drum Kit featuring one hundred per cent oak shells. Also of interest was the iPhone/ iPad-compatible Stagepas 400i and 600i portable PA systems, successors to the 300 and 500 series.

Fender Australia www.fender.com.au

The 2013 Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI marks the return of the historic, seldom-seen Fender Bass VI, a six-string bass originally produced between 1961 and 1975, now updated for a new generation. Featuring the traditional short scale of the original, today’s Pawn Shop Bass VI boasts Special Design Hot Jaguar single-coil neck and middle pickups, as well as a powerful JZHB humbucking bridge pickup.

Randy Jackson at the MusicMan booth

From the Hot Rod Design Acoustics series comes the Fender T-Bucket 100CE Acoustic-Electric Guitar. Featuring a three-colour Sunburst spruce top, mahogany back and sides, and inlaid pearloid pinstriping motif by Vince Ray on the headstock and 12th fret, the T-Bucket 100CE shares many of the cool features of the hot-rodded T-Bucket 300CE. The Select Series offers carved maple top Jazzmaster, Strat HSS, Tele HH, Tele SH, Tele Thinline and Jazz bass. From the Custom Shop there was the limited edition Ritchie Blackmore Strat featuring two-piece alder body, lightly worn urethane finish and ‘69 U-shaped neck.

Innovative Music www.innovativemusic.com.au

Kemper shook the amp world with the release of their amp profiler last year. The company took the next step forward at NAMM by presenting two rack-mount versions, the Profiler Rack and 600w Profiler PowerRack. This amazing technology allows you to capture (or profile) the sound of any amp you can get your hands on.

MUSO MEETS BRUCE EGNATER

Novation presented a couple of pearlers at NAMM including the Launchkey, a fully-featured DAW control surface, capable of launching loops/clips in Ableton Live and FL Studio. Based around a 25-, 49- or 61-note keyboard controller with a greatfeeling synth-style keyboard and 16 velocity-sensitive multi-colour ‘launch pads’, Launchkey integrates seamlessly with two new Novation iPad apps; a performance synth and a Launchpad App. Also from the folks at Novation came the UltraNova, a ‘Nova’ series analogue-modelling synthesiser with a powerful effects processor. It’s a single-part synth taking the legendary Supernova II synth engine as a starting point and packing it with the latest technology. It now has brand new features including wavetable synthesis, even more powerful filters, a software editor and a revolutionary new touch-sense performance mode.

ALVA introduced the Nanoface, a 12-channel USB Audio + MIDI Interface. The Nanoface is designed to partner modern digital audio workstations. There are no software option dialogs or an integrated mixer, just a high-speed driver The analogue gains for the four inputs, all output levels and special features, like phantom power and hardware monitoring, are controlled with the big silver rotary encoder directly on the Nanoface.

All mixing, channel routing and digital levels will be controlled by your individual audio software.

From Two Notes Audio Engineering comes the Torpedo VB-101, a DI for your head amplifier composed of three main parts: a 150W RMS Loadbox to play silently with your amp or preamp, a speaker and mic’ing simulator powered by the acclaimed Torpedo technology with all your favorite cabs inside, and a Post-FX section. This section carries all the processing effects you usually need when mic’ing a guitar cab (low-cut filter, five-band EQ, exciter, compressor).

NAMM 2013 also saw the launch of RME’s new Premium Line digital MADI converters; five new wonderfully designed products: the new MADI Router, the ADAT Router and ADAT Converter, and the AES3 Router and AES3 Converter.

While NAMM can be a futuristic wonderland, some things just don’t change

Pearl get their kit on

Recording history at the Shure booth

CMC Music

www.cmcmusic.com.au Riccardo at the Mark Bass booth was equal parts amiable and enthusiastic in his demonstration of the great new Italian-designed releases. In particular, the Bass Multiamp had winner stamped all over it.

This sturdily-constructed unit offers a wide range of virtual bass amps, speaker cabs, mics and effects.

Australian guitar legend Frank Gambale was also on stand promoting his new signature model DV Mark Ampli-tude amplifier, which offers various finely-crafted channel presets, a number of essential studio-quality effects and easy programmability.

The Lakewood booth presented some beautiful Martin Seeliger-designed acoustic guitars from their new Natural, Deluxe and Premium series. In each case, quality timbers are combined with exceptional craftsmanship to produce outstanding instrument tone. Martin was on hand to greet anyone wishing to learn about his exquisitely-built guitars.

Behringer’s modular DJ mastery

Privia launch their excellent new PX-5S Stage Piano

Over on the Ernie Ball stand American Idol judge, Randy Jackson could be seen fraternising with the indians. Making an impression were the eye-catching flouro Ernie Ball cobalt string packets. Also impressive was the Armada and Classic Sabre guitar display. Dream Theater’s John Petrucci made himself available to present his sleek new signature JP13 Music Man model too.

a simple, single-trigger pad with a compact, curved shape. It directly attaches to the hoop of most drums using a tension rod or a standard rod-type mount with the included attachment parts. The internal design eliminates false triggering due to crosstalk while playing surrounding drums and/or pads.

In response to Yamaha’s THR amps, Roland launched their Cube Lite amplifier with i-Cube link and the Cube Lite Monitor, two new compact amplifiers with built-in audio interfaces for Apple’s iOS devices. Visually appealing and featuring impressive 2.1-channel sound, the Cube Lite amps allow musicians to enjoy playing and recording music comfortably at home with their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The Cube Lite Guitar Amplifier is equipped with three killer COSM tones - JC CLEAN, CRUNCH and EXTREME - giving guitarists a wide range of sounds for playing any style of music. Reverb and chorus effects are onboard as well, with true stereo performance for a wide, expansive sound Roland were also pleased to announce the G-5A-CAR VG Stratocaster, a new addition to the acclaimed lineup of V-Guitar instruments. Manufactured in the Fender factory in California, the G-5A-CAR is an authentic American Standard Stratocaster guitar with Roland’s amazing COSM technology built in, providing players revolutionary tonal versatility in a top-level instrument.

The G-5A-CAR is a genuine American Standard Strat in every way, from pickups to tone woods to hardware, and features a gorgeous Candy Apple Red finish, plus a 22-fret maple neck with rosewood fingerboard. Its integrated COSM electronics gives guitarists an entire collection of world-class tones to pick and choose from, all in the one instrument.

Australian Musical Imports

Roland

www.gibsonami.com

www.rolandcorp.com.au BOSS debuted three next-generation compact pedals featuring innovative Multi-Dimensional Processing (MDP). Powered by this impressive new technology, the TE-2 Tera Echo, DA-2 Adaptive Distortion and MO-2 Multi Overtone pedals deliver an amazing range of dynamic and expressive sonic textures. Muso was particularly charmed by the TE-2’s expressive freeze function. Roland added another digital piano to their popular HPi series, the HPi-50. Further enhancing the SuperNATURAL Piano experience we know and love is the flagship PHA III Ivory Feel keyboard with Escapement. With fast key repetition and sensitivity, the PHA III faithfully translates the subtle tonal differences of different playing styles and the force at which the keys are played.

On the percussion front, Roland introduced the BT-1 Bar Trigger Pad, a versatile add-on trigger pad for V-Drums and acoustic drums. The BT-1 is

Kemper created a buzz with their amp profilers

Bruce Egnater is an unassuming kind of guy. You get the impression he is unaffected by the fame which has come his way through producing a range of critically acclaimed amplifiers such as the Rebel 20, Renegade, Tourmaster and Armageddon over a productive thirty year period. At Winter NAMM this year, he was always on hand at the Egnater booth, happy to chat to anyone about the art of sound.

“You tweak things, change this or that, one thing leads to another and before you know it, you’ve created something new,” Bruce said in response to me cheekily suggesting that everything that can be done in amp design has been done. It’s this ‘tinkering’ which has served Bruce well.

“One day I had this crazy idea,” Bruce explained on his website. “I took a little Gibson amp, hooked up a resistor in place of the speaker and jammed the output of that little amp into the input of my 200 watt Marshall.

Wow… now I was onto something. I could get the distortion of the little tube amp at concert volumes.”

Egnater thinks like a guitar player and fortunately has the electronic nous to be able to put his radically creative thoughts into practice. His modular amps, which allow the player to style the amp to his or her own needs has been a revelation among guitarists.

In homage to his hometown, at this year’s show Egnater released new Detroit 18 and 40 watt tube amp models which were well received. After 30 years of producing innovative, quality amplification products, Bruce is quite humble on reflection of his achievements. “I’m just proud that I’m still here doing this after all this time.”

Anaheim Convention Center

The Gibson booth is always abuzz with incredible guitars and top-line recording artists. Muso was fortunate to be present when Brian Wilson and band took to the small stage to sing a couple of Beach Boys classics. Product-wise, it was all about revisiting classics with the new lineup of Les Paul and SG models revealed. Also of interest was the introduction of the new Min-Etune tuning system, an auto-tune system akin to that found on Gibson’s Robot guitars, but now available on a wide range of their instruments.

The Min-Etune is hidden away on the back of the headstock and can be installed as an optional extra on a range of more affordable models. One of the most imposing Gibson releases was the Gothic Morte Les Paul Studio and SG guitars in “extreme black styling”. Both models feature a solid mahogany body in black satin ebony finish, a pair of black Gibson USA GEM active humbuckers, Exotic African Obeche fingerboard in black, and black Grover tuners.

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Casio Privia PX350 Digital Piano

REVIEWER: TIFFANY BRITCHFORD INFO: WWW.SOUNDTECHNOLOGY.COM.AU

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he Casio Privia PX350 digital piano is an 88-key portable keyboard that provides 250 instrument tones, 180 drum patterns and features built-in speakers. The product description boasts of a new and improved trisensor scaled hammer keyboard action.The idea behind the trisensor system is that it offers more accurate nuance and expression.

It’s the third sensor which provides the magic, allowing the same notes to sound again, before they have returned to their original position.

Impressive! Casio’s new AiR (Acoustic and Intelligent Resonator) sound source delivers amazing realism, particularly in its grand piano sounds.

The keyboard seamlessly generated detailed sounds in a great dynamic range, allowing for sensitivity and subtlety in performance. The piano, electric piano, organ and string sections all included a strong range of

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The keys are a “simulated ebony and ivory texture”, meaning they essentially have a faux-wood grain look and feel, though the colours remain black and white.

Personal preference will come into play here but I like a more glossy finish.

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Visually, the PX350 is quite attractive - nice clean shape, available in black or white, possessing elegance, with its silver navigation panels easy to operate. An optional furniture-style stand is available too.

arry Fishman has been associated with the design and manufacture of quality transducers since 1981. I myself have marvelled at some of his creations, including the amazing acoustic tone coming out the Fishman Powerbridge in Dan Hawkins’ (of the Darkness) Les Paul at their last Melbourne show.

The three foot pedals, designed to mirror those on a grand piano, were attached to a bar across the floor as part of the stand. They worked nicely but for me, seemed quite short at around 4” in length. At 11kg, it’s relatively light for a stage piano and would be easily portable. The built-in speakers are fine for home use or acoustic situations but if you like it loud or would be using it at gigs, simply plug it into speakers or DI it. As mentioned earlier, the PX 350 also includes a handy USB terminal, MIDI in/ out and 17-track recorder. It’s well priced at $1500, or $1800 with stand and pedals and compared to its competitors, hard to beat for value. If I didn’t already own a stage piano, I’d seriously consider buying one!

There are two channels onboard, one for your instrument and the other for your microphone with an XLR input. Also included is a ¼” and mini-jack (for iPod) input and a mixed D.I. output to capture your performance when recording or to send your mix to another device (like a mixing desk). Channel one sports a ¼” passive and active input, feedbackreducing phase switch, gain, a three-band EQ (Low, Mid, High), a long digital reverb and dual-function chorus. Channel two is a lot simpler with a passive XLR input (for dynamic microphones only), gain, two-band EQ (Low and High) and digital reverb.

I tested the Loudbox Mini by plugging in an acoustic guitar and setting up mic on a stand for an “unplugged” session at home. My initial reaction to the Loudbox was that it lives up to its name, being very loud and clear, with tonnes of headroom. The infamous Fishman “shine” pours out of this unit, and plugging in and leaving the gain flat was a marvellous place to start. Even though I didn’t need to touch the EQ to get a killer tone, the three bands on the instrument channel are very musical, wide and never unpleasant, even when cranked up. When

The Fishman Loudbox Mini sets a new standard in acoustic amplification, especially for the price you’ll pay for it. It’s extremely powerful and portable.

Perfect for rehearsals and jam sessions, as well as improving the quality of monitoring at gigs.

This issue, we’re checking out the Loudbox Mini, a lightweight acoustic amp, pumping out 60 watts of clean power. Out of the box, she’s a classy looking thing, the vintage coffee cream colour scheme serving as a real treat to the ol’ corneas, and even though this is advertised as Fishman’s most lightweight and portable amp, it weighs in at just under 20 lbs, with a solid, robust feel and quality components.

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Finished in the ever-popular Rick-style ‘Fireglo’, the Rebelrocker has an RK-style headstock, 12 diecast chrome machine heads, a hard maple set neck with rosewood fingerboard, basswood body and plywood veneer. The LP Bridge and RK Tail sound fantastic when amplified by two vintage humbuckers and the two-way volume and tone knobs do the business.

and looks as though it has been sprayed on quickly. Otherwise, everything else looks pretty much legit, as you’d expect from Tokai.

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The neck feels great but the action and setup need a bit of work and you might have some intonation troubles if you press down too hard on some of the strings, particularly the low E, which was set way too high in my opinion. Not to worry if you have a bit of setup knowledge, because this could probably be fixed by simply lowering the strings and re-adjusting the intonation.

The pickups on this guitar sound fantastic, providing a true ‘60s style jangle in the bridge and thick, bassy depth in the neck. Leaving the pickups in the middle position provides the most natural tone, but I really enjoy the variety you get with all the pickup, volume and tone settings.

I personally like the sound of this guitar going into a clean American amp with a bit of breakup, like a Fender Twin or Deluxe. I used my Line 6 Spider for a quick test and was able to get a similar tone out of my clean channel. I’d also say this guitar loves reverb, especially if you have some spring ‘verb to dollop on.

Not to say you can’t get some killer tones with some drive, I just prefer using it in a more conventional way as it seems to get a bit uncontrollable with too much gain. Summing up, I’d have to say this is a good guitar for one’s arsenal, especially for recording enthusiasts that need something different in the mix.

Personally I’m more of a fan of 12-string acoustics but 12-string electrics also have their place, and if you want to part of history and are not only a rebel, but also a rocker (excuse the pun), check this guitar.

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feedback started to become an issue, the phase switch helped to cancel it out a bit.

The onboard digital reverb is pure bliss; long, wet and hall-like, to add some sparkle to an already magical preamp, and there is more reverb here than one shall ever require. I’ll also state th,at for the record, I’m not a big fan of chorus, unless it’s an old, warm analogue chorus like a Boss CE-1, so I was quite happy to add a little hint of chorus, for a touch more dimension.

The vocal channel was also pretty decent, and you can rock it pretty loud if you have a decent dynamic mic. I plugged in my Sennheiser 945 and dug the loud, crisp air coming off it. Again, even at a flat EQ setting, vocals sat beautifully over my acoustic, and the lack of a mid cut or boost wasn’t missed at all.

Behind the grill a combination of a 6.5” woofer and 1” tweeter pushes the air, and the amp kicks back at a nice angle so you can hear the presence coming off it, and even though the dimensions are quite small (34.5 x 30.5 x 24.7cm), this amp still packs serious punch.

The PX350 not only wins on a sonic and visual level, but also with its technological attributes. Offering audio file(.WAV) recording and playback to USB (instead of SD card) is an incredibly handy feature, as are the PC and Mac drivers built into the piano’s firmware. No need to waste time googling and then installing drivers.

In addition to USB connectivity, the PX350 also offers MIDI ports for the traditionalists who wish to connect older keyboards and modules.

A basswood body provides a very even tone unplugged and the semi-hollowbody design provides a long, ‘floating’ sound which works beautifully in conjunction with the famous steel rattle and overtones you get from this sort of instrument. The plywood veneer sounds like a bit of a letdown, but only fails a bit in the looks department, that is if you’re looking for a classy, expensive instrument. Personally, I really like the look of some cheaper vintage-inspired instruments so it may work for you as well.

REVIEWER: REZA NASSERI INFO: WWW.DYNAMICMUSIC.COM.AU

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realistic sounds to satisfy any number of genres and uses. The most discerning of ears would be hard pressed to doubt this unit’s sonic authenticity.

REVIEWER: REZA NASSERI INFO: WWW.JADEAUSTRALIA.COM.AU

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Rebelrocker 4312 ST

he Rebelrocker 4312ST is a 12-string semihollowbody electric guitar that ‘borrows’ from the famous ‘Rick & Backers of the ‘60s.

Built in China under Tokai Guitars, this guitar is their take on the classic Rickenbacker 360-12-string, first made in 1963 as used by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds and in more recent times Radiohead, Silverchair and The Church.

At first glance this guitar looks fantastic, very close to the real deal. A couple of noticeable differences were in the shape of the F-hole (the Rebel has a traditional F shape) and that the finish lacks depth

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Fishman Loudbox Mini Acoustic Amplifier

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Behringer Xenyx Q502 USB & Q802 USB REVIEWER: REZA NASSERI INFO: WWW.GALACTICMUSIC.COM.AU

ehringer’s ever-popular Xenyx range of mixers has become “USB-ised” in recent times in order to send and receive the audio through your computer. Today I’ll be reviewing the Q502 and Q802 models.

First, the Q 502 is an extremely simple little desk featuring one mono channel and two stereo channels, for a total of five channels. Channel one houses a single Xenyx mic preamp, balanced/unbalanced input, gain control, compression, phantom power (for a condenser mic/active DI box), two-band “Neo-Classical British” EQ (based on legendary British consoles of the ‘70s and ‘80s), pan and level.

Then channels 2/3 and 5/6 are identical with two ¼” balanced/unbalanced inputs, balance (pan) and level knobs. Very simple stuff. The Q502 also has USB out so it can send and receive two channels of audio in and out of your computer, like a basic audio interface.

So essentially, you have the option of using it as either a live mixing desk, a recording preamp going into an audio interface, or even a basic audio interface itself.

I tested the unit by plugging in my Mann M21 condenser mic, cranked the gain up to around 3 o’clock and started singing. The Xenyx mic pre sure is impressive, much cleaner and smoother than one would anticipate at this price. Turning up the compression produced fantastic results, as the one-knob onboard compressor is extremely transparent and effective, wonderful for recording.

The two-band EQ is also really sweet and musical, definitely smoother in design than most three-band EQs but a little over-exaggerated in being termed as “Neo-Classical British” (invented by King Arthur and Rupert Neve?). Using the USB also worked beautifully, but required the use the supplied adaptor as it requires more juice than the Q302. Playback is flawless but there’s a bit more latency on input than a designated audio interface, so DAW monitoring with a plug-in like an amp modeller may give you a bit of a headache, but it’s fine for recording some dry vocals.

Next up, the Q802, pretty much the same thing except with two Xenyx mic preamps, two compression controls, three-band EQ, FX send, stereo aux return,

control room out and six overall channels.

This time the gain structure on Xenyx mic pres was more linear, with more gain, volume and compression on tap (better for dynamic mics), so finding a sweet spot on the desk is essential. The three-band EQ is again wide and musical, but not quite as sweet as the EQ on the 502. The addition of an FX send lets you set up an additional effect like a reverb or delay to be brought back on the Aux return, and two extra outputs for the control room allow you to hook up some extra speakers for foldback or room fill.

Personally, I liked the Behringer Xenyx Q502 more for recording, as the channel strip sounded a bit cleaner (probably because phantom power is not shared) and sweeter, but remember it’s only good for direct monitoring and DAW monitoring would require the use of a designated audio interface. The 802 is a much more practical solution for, say, acoustic duos with routing to a computer’s audio via USB for backing tracks or house music.

OUT NOW

ORDER NOW FROM THEMUSIC.COM.AU

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The shortlist for the eighth AMP (Australian Music Prize) is in.

Jan Wisniewski catches up with three contenders – Paddy Mann (aka Grand Salvo), Liz Stringer and Jess Ribeiro (who fronts The Bone Collectors) – to learn more about the creation of their nominated albums, and discovers how much they suffer for their art.

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ow in its eighth year, the Australian Music Prize saw 71 albums nominated in the longlist for the most artistically accomplished album of 2012. Earlier this month the list was cut to nine finalists: Flume (Flume), Tame Impala (Lonerism), The Presets (Pacifica), Grand Salvo (Slay Me In My Sleep), Jess Ribeiro & The Bone Collectors (My Little River), Liz Stringer (Warm In The Darkness), Daily Meds (Happy Daze), Hermitude (Hyper-Paradise) and Urthboy (Smokey’s Haunt). In keeping with the spirit of the AMP, which recognises music for creativity rather than commercial success, artists at various stages in their career have been acknowledged

Paddy Mann

Playing to win within the shortlist. Each has earned their place in the final shortlist by releasing albums that prove they are some of Australia’s finest songwriters.

Liz Stringer

Paddy Mann has been creating music as Grand Salvo since his debut LP 1642-1727 was released in 2000.

Mann’s reputation has grown incrementally with each intricate album release and the occasional live performance. Despite insisting that he feels as if he is making the same album over and over he recognises last year’s expansive Slay Me In My Sleep as an album of more extravagance than any of those in his past.

“This time I made the decision to add everything I wanted to the album,” he states. “I am quite reluctant to go overdub crazy, I like to keep it sparse if I can.

But this time I decided to go all out and add whatever I heard. I was worried it would turn into a big ugly mess, but I think it worked quite well in the end.”

Crediting German musician and producer Nils Frahm with taming and balancing his creativity, Mann recorded much of the foundation tracking in Frahm’s Berlin apartment. “It’s basically a large room with the instruments, a piano, some fancy equipment and a mezzanine bed,” Mann explains.

“He treats his room like an office and the bed is like his bedroom. He goes up to sleep and changes his mindset as soon as he comes down the ladder.”

After finishing recording in Berlin, Mann returned to Melbourne to complete the album. With Frahm unavailable to mix the album immediately, Mann had time to further realise his vision, adding layers of instrumentation using quality musicians willing to work on the album at low cost.

Like Mann, fellow AMP finalist Liz Stringer looked to bolster the sound on her latest album Warm In The Darkness with some extra production flourishes.

The Melbourne-based guitarist has made her name known around Australia with her far-reaching tours in

Jess Ribeiro support of her previous three albums. She describes her 2009 effort Tides Of Time as “very stripped back, like a solo album”, but decided her new material needed a different approach.

“There were a few songs I had played with my band live and I knew that they were much less folk and were more pop rock,” Stringer explains. With a big

sound in mind, she enlisted the help of former Killjoys guitarist Craig Pilkington to co-produce the album.

“He has a really great pop sensibility and I wanted it to be lush and big and he seemed to be the right man. I haven’t done it before, but these songs needed that kind of treatment.”

and regular collaborators Van Walker, Tim Keegan and Adam May raced through the instrumental tracking at Audrey Studios in only a week, however problems arose when it came time for Stringer to sing. “The vocals took a really long time,” recalls Stringer. “Eventually, when we started getting the good takes it was very fast but there was a period in there when I just couldn’t do it, it was very odd. I’ve never had that kind of anxiety before and maybe that’s what it was – I still don’t know. But luckily my voice appeared again and we finished it but, yeah! It was pretty weird.”

Despite this change in approach, Stringer

The making of the debut album for Jess Ribeiro & The Bone Collectors was a difficult period for

Ribeiro. Following the three months it took to record My Little River, she left for Elcho Island off the coast of Arnhem Land, to work in an Indigenous community at the completion of recording. “I was just so disappointed in myself when we finished it, I had to leave,” she explains.

“I was like, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m going to go and teach in this Aboriginal community and play music with these guys and I don’t ever want to come back to mainstream society again’.”

It seems Ribeiro was her own toughest critic as My Little River earned her many accolades for the stark, heartfelt songwriting it possesses, picking up Best Independent Country Album at the 2012 Jägermeister Independent Music Awards. The songs, mostly co-written with collaborator Rob Law, were brought to producer Greg J Walker of Machine Translations fame.

As many of the songs were half-formed, the recording process allowed Ribeiro to fully realise the tracks as Walker had her and Law play in a school hall before bringing in the full band to his home studio. “It was pretty much live,” she explains. “Some songs I think we redid in Greg’s studio with the whole band and there was just maybe a bit of wood separating us.

We did have the drums in another room, but it was almost a home recording, and Greg did a great job on bringing some other things out of it.”

Though still apprehensive in some ways towards her debut, it was an excellent platform for Ribeiro to reveal her gift for beautiful musical storytelling, a lyrical quality she

shares with fellow AMP contenders Mann and Stringer.

Stringer’s lyrical images derive from stories she has heard and the people she has met while touring, her honest observations never coming from “one strain of inspiration”. Mann’s approach is more fantastical, the “crisscrossed love story” that spans Slay Me In My Sleep stemming from a singular scene envisioned by Mann after meeting an old lady suffering from dementia in Europe.

Ribeiro’s tales are on a more intimate level, evident on songs like Truck Yard and Haunted House – personal favourites of hers.

Though there are differences in experience and style, these artists have all produced wonderfully constructed albums all vying for the Australian Music Prize’s $30,000 cash prize.

So how would they each spend the dosh?

Citing his obsession with the orchestral sound, Mann jokingly says he we would spend the money on a single recording session with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Ribeiro says she would be finding a publicist and touring before taking to the skies in a hot air balloon to take photos and to create a film clip. Stringer is more practical in her reasoning: “I want to make sure everyone gets paid that needs to get paid and [I’d] probably buy a really nice guitar as well – maybe a couple.”

AMPed-Up In Conversation (featuring winner’s announcement) takes place on Thursday 7 March at The Basement. www.thecoopersamp. com.au

[12]

SPREADING THE WINGS Ahead of San Franciscan psych rockers Sleepy Sun’s first Aussie sojourn, frontman Bret Constantino talks to Steve Bell about going back to their roots to start a whole new sprawling future. here were some tough times recently for San Francisco’s Sleepy Sun. Globally lauded for the rambling majesty of their first two albums (2009’s Embrace and 2010’s Fever), the band was rocked in late-2010 by the mid-tour exodus of female vocalist Rachel Fannan, who left amidst a cloud of acrimony and resentment. Frontman Bret Contantino – who used to share vocal duties with Fannan, but who handles them on his own since her departure – believes in the old adage ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, and that following some brief unrest his band is now back better than ever.

Line-up changes have a habit of stalling musical projects, though for Carrie And The Cut Snakes a rotating cast has played a key role in shaping their sound. Carrie Henschell tells Tyler McLoughlan of the alt-country outfit’s journey.

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“It’s well behind us at this point,” he says of the split. “We kind of went through a transitional phase for about a year, and the record which is just coming out in Australia [2012’s Spine Hits] is a part of that transition to adapting to life without Rachel. We always wrote the songs without Rachel so that wasn’t really a part of it, but from a live performance perspective she was a big part of the live show, and there were certain parts on the records where the female vocal was the only thing that could be there, so we kind of had to rediscover ourselves, and that record is a part of that experiment. We actually just finished our newest album – we finished recording it just a week ago – so we’ll be playing some new stuff when we’re in Australia I imagine.”

Spine Hits was something of a departure for Sleepy Sun from the expansive psychedelic rock which characterised their early output – even though it was recorded at Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, California with QOTSA alumni Dave Catching, it featured more succinct arrangements, and was the band’s least experimental record to date. That’s all about to change. “[The new record’s] definitely going back to more of the vibe and meditation of space which I believe we did a much better job of expressing on our first couple of albums,” Constantino admits. “Just a kind of respect for space within songs and a kind of patience, trying

San Francisco is often strongly associated with the psychedelic rock scene, both from an historical ‘60s perspective and with the current crop of bands who call the city home, but Constantino doesn’t see the city as any psych rock Mecca.

“I don’t know, it’s hard because I’m rarely in town so I don’t participate much in the local scene – we don’t play San Francisco any more than we play London or someone like that,” he ponders. “We do share a rehearsal space with a band called Assemble Head who are really good, and we’re friends with Howlin’ Rain – Ethan Miller actually sang on our new record, and Isaiah Mitchell from [San Diegan outfit] Earthless, he played guitar on the new record too – but apart from that I’m not really sure.

“You can walk on Haight Street and buy all the commercialised ‘60’s shit – the Summer of Love and that –but it’s not an overt presence. I imagine there was a lot more compassion back then than there is now, I don’t really see it in San Francisco.”

WHO: Sleepy Sun WHAT: Spine Hits (ATP Recordings) WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 24 February, The Hi-Fi

Cyclone traverses the EDM spectrum with UK garage champion DJ/producer Huxley, AKA Michael Dodman.

It was back in Tring where Dodman first embraced jungle, DJing at 12. It was a brief phase. “I went to my last drum‘n’bass rave when I was about 17,” says Dodman, who worshipped Micky Finn. From jungle, he discovered garage, which eventually led him to (deep) house. Dodman, who threw garage parties in Tring, then migrated to the South Coast for a Media Studies course at the University of Portsmouth. Here, he’d focus on refining his production skills over DJing. “There wasn’t exactly a thriving scene.” Dodman goes so far as to describe Portsmouth as “pretty rank” before backtracking – he recently played an “amazing” gig there, things having changed. In 2012 Dodman, now producing for some years and even launching his own Saints & Sonnets imprint, unleashed his breakthrough record, the nu-garage Let It Go, on Hypercolour.

His house bass-heavy, Dodman is often identified with a post-dubstep movement – as is Maya Jane Coles (whose Dazed he’s remixed). “The first house music I released was kind of loopy German tech-house [cue: 2009’s Sassanids EP with mate Tim “Ethyl” Hopgood on Cécille], and then I found my way by going back to what I used to love. I’d say it was more garageinfluenced than dubstep – I still take a lot of influence

“I’ve always written songs, like I started writing songs from a very young age. My mum used to have to drive me from the farm to play gigs when I was fifteen, in the big smoke…” laughs Henschell of her trips from Scrubby Creek into the metropolis of Toowoomba. “I started off kind of writing what I would think are folk songs, and I played acoustic guitar.”

Gigging around Brisbane for the past couple of years, Henschell’s backing band The Cut Snakes have taken many varied forms, with the assortment of personalities and styles having a big influence on how their sound developed.

“It would depend on the guitarist a lot; that and what their influences were,” Henschell explains of the style transformation of many of her songs as other commitments changed the outfit’s membership. “There’s really great things about having a flexible line-up that changes. We’ve just got a fiddle player onboard, so we’ve gone from a four-piece to a five-piece, and when you kind of have people coming and going, you’re more open to your sound changing and developing, and it seems to happen I think quicker when you’ve got new people coming in and bringing their influences. You’re always challenged to look at the sound that you’re developing and the arrangements because you’re going through it with a new person each time.”

A shiny new purchase also had the Brisbane songwriter open to growth.

“I think there is a kind of country base which we didn’t realise was there; I was writing country songs and I didn’t even know it!” Henschell chuckles. “I always kind of saw myself as this girl with an acoustic guitar

playing folk music, and then when I got an electric guitar, that changed everything a lot too. When I started the band together I bought an electric guitar and I’m like, ‘Yep, it totally changed the dynamic!’”

As Henschell worked through the trials and experimentations required to understand the form her sound should take for her debut album, she also took the opportunity to lyrically process her formative years of adulthood.

“I guess generally it’s very much about reflecting on just life experiences in that kind of 20-year-old time period,” she muses. “There’s all sorts of things from grappling with the fact that we’re all gonna die and what kind of meaning we’re making in our lives while we’re here and what our relationships mean to us in this time in our life as well.”

Closing the album, Henschell covers Sound Of Silence, the song of a local anarchist Andy Paine who uses stories of child exploitation to highlight the importance of speaking up about social injustices.

It’s a fitting touch considering Henschell’s dayjob as a social worker, and complements her personable and honest style as a lyricist.

“I give a shit about people; I care about people, and that song really talks about acting, like not just sitting back and just going, ‘Oh well, you know I care about people but what can you do?’ It’s saying how silence, that’s really a destructive kind of response and there is more that you can do than just to be silent to other people’s suffering.”

WHO: Carrie And The Cut Snakes WHAT: Carrie And The Cut Snakes (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 22 February, Dowse Bar; Saturday 23, Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna (afternoon) and Prince Of Wales Hotel, Nundah (evening)

BEYOND THE BLUES Lauded as one of the finest white blues artists of our generation, Joanne Shaw Taylor assures Michael Smith that she’s pushing the boundaries way beyond the genre.

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The DJ/producer, his handle inspired by Brave New World author Aldous Huxley, is returning to Australia after 2012’s “whistlestop tour” that saw him in the country for just two (jetlagged) days, playing Melbourne and Sydney. “It almost feels like I haven’t been there yet.”

s Carrie Henschell prepares to launch her self-titled debut record at Dowse Bar this week, the local songstress who uses a powerful vocal to connect country, blues and folk recalls how music became a part of her life.

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to create a real vibe and not trying to do so in such a precise manner. It’s much more of a confident record than Spine Hits – that to me feels like a record that we had to get out of our system, an attempt to write songs in a very concrete way of expressing an idea and story in a shorter manner of time. So the new one is spacey and very heavy at times, it’s very dreamy, and I would hope that it’s more transcendent.”

BRAVE NEW WORLD ring isn’t a house hub like Chicago or techno capital like Detroit. It doesn’t even rival the dubstep epicentre of Croydon in South London. But the old Hertfordshire market town is home to Huxley, among those reinventing UK garage. “It’s a really tiny place,” Dodman says. “The only thing of note is it’s got a museum of stuffed animals [the former Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum], which had some fleas dressed in clothes!” No wonder, then, that the so-called “Big Thing from Tring” has lately moved to London.

MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS

ever gonna live down those angel wings,” Birmingham, UK-born-and-raised, Detroit, USA-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Joanne Shaw Taylor laughs, recalling her contribution to The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee last June, performing with Annie Lennox on the Eurythmics classic, There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart). Not that she need worry – she pulled off the solo perfectly, albeit without her customary tone due to a pedal malfunction, but more on that later. More importantly, playing something so far from the genre within which Taylor has been carving an enviable international career worked in perfectly, though in no way reflecting, with the way she’s perceiving her music right now, as is evident on her latest album, Almost Always Never.

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from old garage. I’ve never really listened to loads of dubstep – I like bits of it, like Burial and all the obvious kind of things that are around – but, I don’t know, it’s a weird thing...” Dodman still digs techno – though, with his roots in “deeper” music, he favours the “Detroity sort of stuff” to the hard variety, rating Carl Craig.

Dodman has spoken of developing a techno project with Sam Russo, a Craig Richards ally. “We’ve done a few tracks,” he divulges. The pair are considering an LP. “I’ve never been one to make out-and-out techno before, so this is quite good fun – it’s quite different from what I’m used to.” Nevertheless, that undertaking has “taken a backseat” to Dodman’s solo album, which he’ll begin working on in earnest following a US jaunt.

Dodman, who’s reportedly been liaising with vocalists, is unsure of his album’s direction; it could be either clubby or song-based. “I almost feel like I’ve got two albums in me,” he ponders. “It’ll probably come out as a mixture of the two – and the ideas that I have got down kind of reflect that.” Meanwhile, the Brit, who in November issued No Matter What via Kevin Griffiths’ Tsuba (with remixes from Detroit houser Marc Kinchen!), will release Bellywedge/Little Things, again through Hypercolour, next month, with another EP forthcoming on Rinse. The pirate radio veteran has, coincidentally, also started an “eclectic” monthly radio show on Rinse FM. Dodman’s plans for Oz? “I am gonna play a mixture of housey stuff and a bit more garagey – not too garagey, but just a couple of classics. Last time I played there the crowd were quite responsive to a lot of stuff, so I’m looking forward to being able to play a bit more across the board.”

WHO: Huxley WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 24 February, Sky Room

“I think this album is quite different to the previous two [2009’s White Sugar and 2010’s Diamonds In The Dirt],” Taylor suggests, “in that I did get a bit more time to write for it, so I was able to focus more on the songs. And therefore I think I experimented a bit more, certainly outside the traditional blues box, I suppose, and just tried to focus on writing the best songs I was capable of, really.

“So it’s about taking a bit of a gamble and I do think it paid off – I’m personally very happy with the songs and I also think they’re quite diverse. There’s a lot of different stuff on the album which is tying in nicely together, so that was kind of my main goal was make an album of original songs that show my influences but isn’t too derivative, and I do have some very sort of random influences,” she laughs.

A change of producer, from Jim Gaines, who did the first two albums, to Mike McCarthy, whose CV includes albums for acts as diverse as Spoon, Patty Griffin and …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, also had an impact on Taylor’s approach to Almost Always Never. As she admits, “This time we decided to go with a non-kind of traditional blues guy. We both have a great love of classic rock.”

Lyrically too, the inspiration behind Almost Always Never was decidedly not that of traditional blues.

“It was a bit of a weird one really, lyrically, ‘cause I was in a very sort of happy frame of mind. Unlike the first two albums, when I was a bit younger and more angst-ridden,” she chuckles. “I was very content, which I think is a very odd place actually for a songwriter to write a song from. So I just tried to stretch myself really and think of some sort of stories.”

Though she was 23 by the time she released her debut album, Taylor’s musical journey got its initial rocket blast when the other half of the Eurythmics, Dave Stewart, heard her playing. Though she was only 16, he was impressed enough to offer her a place in his ‘supergroup’ of the time, DUP, touring Europe. Now she’s sharing stages with the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Candye Kane and, of course, Annie Lennox outside Buckingham Palace.

“That was great fun – it was shocking but quite an experience,” she laughs, commenting on the failure of her fuzz/phase pedal, though it seems that Stevie Wonder, no less, was very impressed by her “clean” guitar tone. “That was really funny ‘cause the whole night afterwards I was winding myself up on it – ‘God I can’t believe the pedal let me down, of all days’, and then his drum tech came running up to tell me and I was, like, ‘Thank God for that pedal malfunction!’”

WHO: Joanne Shaw Taylor WHAT: Almost Always Never (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 21 February, Black Bear Lodge

For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews • 33

SINGLED OUT WITH CHRIS YATES

ON THE RECORD

JAMES BLAKE Retrograde Universal Republic

SUPER WILD HORSES Alligator Dot Dash/Remote Control Taking off like a bolt, the new uptempo footstomper from Melbourne’s Super Wild Horses is only sedated by the wash of guitars that cascade throughout the track, drenched in reverb and jangling almost happily. The mix of drums and guitars and effects at the start give the impression of some kind of spaghetti western moment on speed, if only until the vocals kick in and you’re reminded of how deliciously pop they can be amongst the lo-fi spectacle of the production. It’s a fantastic track of simple ideas, energy and style, holding the sparse elements of songwriting together with no deliberate attempt to lull you in with an obvious hook or singalong chorus.

Holy Fire

Matador/Remote Control

Lucky Number/Cooperative

Danish teenagers Iceage got chins wagging with their 2011 debut New Brigade. It was an album of unmistakable promise – 25 minutes of virulent punk rock with absolutely no breathing room and plenty of attitude – but it still left something to be desired. The album’s intangible, missing piece was reflected in the conversation about the album, where everyone talked about how young Iceage were and what promise the album showed. Fast forward a couple of years – heavy with touring on the back of New Brigade, getting signed to indie bigwig Matador and presumably, maturing – and Iceage’s return in the form of You’re Nothing captures the young band making good on the promise heard on their first LP.

Darwin Smith and his Deez inexplicably built a rabid cult following over 2010’s debut self-titled album, especially with the tweeer-than-thou Radar Detector. It wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine – Smith’s lyrics often hide darker navel-gazing than the sugar-rush melodies may suggest – but the band’s aesthetic, erring on the side of self-knowing hipster-writ-large, was always going to be a tough sell a second time around.

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VD

Putting their best foot forward with album opener and stand-out track Ecstasy – a dense, frustrated, goth-y disco number – Iceage spend the rest of You’re Nothing careening through a litany of post-punk and adjacent styles with aplomb and unchecked wildness. For New Brigade’s rather strict atonality, You’re Nothing has the band utilising a much more dynamic range of sounds.

Without forsaking the abrasiveness of their debut, You’re Nothing ventures from the skronk of AmRepesque noise rock guitars on Burning Hand to no wave-y coolness on tracks like Everything Drifts to fire-breathing hardcore on It Might Hit First. And listening as the band lithely slip in and out of these styles is a delight.

You’re Nothing is the sound of a one-time hype band delivering the goods. And at a time when Pitchforkapproved bands are whipping the blogosphere into a furore as quickly as they’re then being forgotten, Iceage’s You’re Nothing is definitely something. ★★★★½

Tom Hersey

Warner

Songs For Imaginative People is already an ambitious project from the name onward. Yet it also underlines the problem – that Smith perceives his music to only work for people who can “expand their minds”. It’s evident throughout the ten tracks that there’s a lot going on – some of the compositions are incredibly busy, with echoes of kaleidoscopic tricksters Menomena in the dynamics of songs like You Can’t Be My Girl. Yet the issue is that the band fails to control this melange of sounds, with many tracks offering a stuttering rhythm and mess of tone that makes it hard to embrace. The effort becomes Everest-like when you take on board Smith’s vocals and lyrics. Most of his existential, inner-turmoil lyrics are barbed with deliberately quirky couplets that feel contrived and forced – the Our Father aping in (800) Human, the grating Free (The Editorial Me) – “Life is a greenhouse gas/Half the police in masks/Pretending to be my friend…” Ugh.

If you heard My Number on the radio a thousand times in the past week, you should be forgiven for LIVE Holy Fire, the third studio full-length approaching from Oxford-based dancy math-pop quintet Foals, with a degree of trepidation. After all – and this may fly in the face of instincts aroused by its undeniably contagious vibe – it’s a terrible song. Or, rather, it is a terrible Foals song. Repetitive, flat and frustrating in its aimlessness, it lacks the precise, intricate guitar juxtapositions, the dynamics and the sense of fun VDthat drives so much of the band’s earlier work.

“But, jerk,” you’re saying, “Foals songs have always been kind of repetitive.” Well, shut up, but that’s true.

But there’s always been a purpose personified in an exploding crescendo or a groove change or a reckless and free conclusion. There are still those elements present on Holy Fire, undoubtedly. In fact, Prelude, the four-minute instrumental opener, gets hopes up early with its burst-and-bloom build and fall, its reverbsoaked guitar waves and lofty yet obscured vocals. In kind, Inhaler keeps spirits lifted, even if it sounds like Foals are simultaneously trying to channel QOTSA’s Make It Wit Chu and every Deftones chorus ever.

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Not the big impact single you might expect to accompany the announcement of a new record – it seems more like this is a bit of a teaser for what will no doubt be a massive deal when it finally does arrive. It’s a real simple beat, with Drizzy running a hook over and over to hammer it home and create a new catchcry. It’s actually more like a hook masquerading as a whole song, but it’s a damn catchy hook so maybe that’s enough? Feels like the record company might have thought it needed something, with a clip that’s practically got a sitcom kind of jammed in the middle of it for maximum views.

FOALS

Songs For Imaginative People

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Young Money/Republic

DARWIN DEEZ

VD

Started From The Bottom

You’re Nothing

VD

DRAKE

LIVE

ICEAGE

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His songs almost aren’t always songs, but when they are they rule. There’s been a bunch of singles and EPs and things since James Blake’s self-titled proper debut, and there’s been some gold stashed away on them, but the real anticipation is for the follow up, and Retrograde is the first taste. The vocals are sparse and infrequent as you would expect, but his voice has rounded out with a soulfulness that sounds confident and powerful. Never giving you enough to latch onto first time round, it’s only on repeated listens that the melody sinks in and then its game over.

Darwin Deez do get some things right – the idea of struggling against loving someone you hate with You Can’t Be My Girl, the more plaintive pop of Redshift – but Songs For Imaginative People works so hard to be the geek outsider that it becomes unlikeable, no matter how much Smith squirms and whines.

Then My Number smacks you with its limp-wristed mediocrity, the spectre of which never really leaves thereafter. The pizzicato arpeggios and bowed instrumental dramatics of Milk & Black Spiders and the spasmodic irreverence of Providence somewhat make up for it and much of the album, but they are two strong tracks buried too far in to have a meaningful impact. All up, Holy Fire is not bad, but it isn’t great, either: it’s the Coke Zero of musical evolution.

★½

★★★

Brendan Telford

Mitch Knox

BLOODS Freak Like Me (Spod Mix) Teenage Values This collaboration has been executed for exclusive release on a Teenage Values compilation – the label of Bleeding Knees Club’s Alex Wall. Bloods have jumped at the opportunity to show off their love of classic R&B with a cover of Adina Howard’s Freak Like Me, ably assisted by the lo-fi legend Spod, who himself has more than a soft spot for the genre. This track is a perfect example of the great things that can happen when you approach this kind of thing with a different attitude. It’s totally honest to the original while still sounding like something from another time that hasn’t happened yet.

KURT VILE Wakin On A Pretty Day Matador/Remote Control With the wax well and truly worn out of Kurt Vile’s 2011 album Smoke Ring For My Halo due to intense repeat plays, the announcement of a new album from the Vile one is certainly good news. Almost the title track from the record Wakin On A Pretty Daze, the single lives up to its name with a shimmery, summer vibe. Vile languidly mumbles the vocals of the pretty nine-minute(!) pop song, still managing to inflict some melancholy and sadness into the lush tune.

34 • For more reviews go to themusic.com.au/reviews

FRIGHTENED RABBIT

GUARDS

JOE GIDEON & THE SHARK

Warner

Pod/Inertia

Freeform Patterns/Fuse

Full disclosure: this reviewer is a sucker for a Scottish accent in song. Idlewild, Biffy Clyro, We Were Promised Jetpacks – spread that good shit on.

There’s something about the Scots’ vocal timbre that manages to capture the depth of human emotion, be it pain, longing or triumph, and on Pedestrian Verse Scott Hutchinson’s poetry is arresting end to end.

It is hard to assess In Guards We Trust, the debut record by Richie Follin’s solo project turned band, Guards. As sibling to Madeline Follin (of Cults fame), it can be assumed that his music will be filled with the same insistent, hook-overloaded indie pop gems.

And it is. Yet there’s one thing missing that ultimately leaves the album flat – a lack of true personality.

Three years after the release of debut album Harum Scarum, siblings Joe Gideon & The Shark (aka Viva Gideon, an ex-Olympic ribbon gymnast) burst forth with Freakish, which fittingly heightens the weird and in the process creates a far superior record.

Frightened Rabbit help maintain the northern quality with their fourth record, a release that deserves to be heard, absorbed and lost within. The release isn’t built around mind-bending technicality, nor is it full of bold and provoking messages; the greatness here lies within basic structures, with slight nuances peppering simple yet magnificent tracks.

Things start promisingly with Nightmare, a song that revels in its darker moments and fervour. After this though, it’s hard to differentiate from many of the tracks on offer. The modus operandi is firmly set in stone – exploitative hooks, stadium level guitar wash, echoed backing vocals, vague verses that lead into OTT choruses, whistling here and there… There’s nary an original thought to be found.

These tunes are ready-made for the pretty young things that beg for a sunny afternoon so as to jump around in a park, hair flailing, beads jangling, cider spilling over plastic cups, Instagram at the ready.

Pedestrian Verse

Following the plundering piano-heavy opener Acts Of Man, Backyard Skulls serves up a real nice bass line that drives the scratchy guitars, synth noises and Hutchinson’s longing voice until it all rises into a triumphant climax.

The increased energy that closes that track is rolled over to Holy, where Billy Kennedy’s low-end chug combines with Gordon Skene’s key work to create this energised, danceable tune that still manages to sound infinitely sad. The Woodpile is lurching and takes you to the streets of Selkirk while the guitar work stands as the hero on December’s Traditions and the Modest Mouse-esque Dead Now. Much like good cooking, there is just basic ingredients here, but they’re prepared and presented in such a magnificent way that overcomplication would simply dilute the final product.

In Guards We Trust

By the time I Know It’s You arrives with its new wave posturing, buzzsaw guitar and forlorn vibe, it feels like the second half of the album might break the trend – but then that chorus with its bells and chiming vocal gaiety kicks in again. And again. And again…

Intense without the volume, catchy minus the cheese, honest while still holding an air of mystery, Pedestrian Verse is an album for the everyman and woman looking for a soundtrack to find amazing.

In Guards We Trust is manipulative indie pap that’s manufactured for the slaves to fashion, advertising and summer festivals. Combined with the incessant promotional spiel, it’s almost dystopian in its relentless take on opium for the masses. And while Richie and Madeline Follin are two peas in a pod, at least Cults came up with Come Outside. Do not trust these Guards.

★★★★½ Benny Doyle

★★

Brendan Telford

Freakish

It certainly isn’t a straightforward listen – renowned for their visual flair and interaction, the duo often struggle to find that common middle ground in the recording studio. Thus a silly comedic blues rock song like Snake Candy struggles to maintain interest for its three-minute running time, or Joe’s insistence to do spoken word.

That said, when they get it right, it’s mesmerising. The magnetic opener I’m Ruined swings from monotone (strangely reminiscent of Simon Pegg) to primal yelps, all over a macabre funereal dirge. Poor Born stands as Viva’s first vocal lead, and its vocoder-heavy eclecticism combined with her frenetic drumming, distorted guitar wails and a Goldfrapp-worthy playful synth line is a strong song, if sticking out here like a sore thumb. The warped swagger of The Insignificant Bullet (based on the shooting of Werner Herzog) is hypnotic, while Nine Bells Of Hell is six minutes of slowly building guitar arpeggios and rollick drums, an organ whipping up a gospel fervour as Joe tries to find a cure (“I thought I’d let off some steam by playing ping-pong/But the only thing off the boil was my form/I lost 21-10 to my brother-in-law”). The title track rivals this for comedic atmosphere, with a psych detour in the final third.

Freakish suffers from some unevenness, yet that barely detracts from what is a fun, inventive listen, and in Joe Gideon we have a truly idiosyncratic wordsmith. ★★★★

Brendan Telford

PISSED JEANS

RUNNING GUN SOUND

TV SNOW

Sub Pop/Inertia

Independent

Independent

Pissed Jeans have changed a lot since their 2005 debut Shallow, but the sonic shift between 2009’s King Of Jeans and Honeys is relatively slight, particularly given the long gap between them. Bathroom Laughter is a vicious beginning, rumbling bass gives way to the almighty, guttural expounding of vocalist Matt Korvette who screams “You’re in the kitchen crying, You’re in the kitchen crying, I saw you in the kitchen crying”. It’s a perfect reminder of how brilliantly he makes the banality of life connect and a brilliant song. Chain Worker pulls the floor from underneath you; the tempo drops to nought as Korvette screams over a fuzz bass and shrieks of guitar noise. It’s fine, but not as powerful as the band at full tilt.

This second album from Brisbane outfit Running Gun Sound (formerly Running Guns) is something of a farewell for the band as well, with chief songwriter Michael Fletcher decamping to Berlin for a seachange immediately following the album launches. The fact that all five members of the band are also in Velociraptor is a handy calling card for the band, but probably confuses the issue from a sonic perspective as RGS deal in music quite far removed from the carefree garage indie of the ‘Raptors.

Instead what’s found is here is confident indie rock’n’roll, rooted firmly in the ‘80s and beyond rather than the ‘60s.

Perth five-piece TV Snow tread that fine line in crafting indie rock that straddles pretty, washedout guitars without pushing them out of reckoning and into tedium on their debut long-player, Red. Luckily they only nudge out of bounds occasionally here and for the most part, Red is a fairly satisfying, albeit not standout, ten-track listen.

Honeys

Cafeteria Food sees Korvette in perhaps his best form lyrically; My Family stickers, fantasy football and microwave cookery references all delivered in a dreary, deadpan manner give this sense of the everyday, middleclass lifestyle as kind of foul feeling. Something About Mrs Johnson is a minute-and-a-half of guitar noise and a coughing fit – at first seeming a waste of space before it kicks into Male Gaze and you realise that its inclusion has purpose; the latter song then proceeding to drag your brain through a hypnotic four-minute punishing. Cat House and Health Plan are thrashy gems tucked away in the back end, while the big riffs of Teenage Adult have Pissed Jeans sounding more epic than ever before.

The high points of Honeys aren’t as frequent as King Of Jeans, but they’re better. Best listened to while sweaty, stinking and despondent. ★★★★

Dan Condon

Friends

Opener, Just You See, is a shakily bouncy statement of intent, tipping its hat to the ‘Raptors with lyrics about “doing the ruby”, while following track, I Don’t Want To Know – penned by guitarist James Boyd – has the same laconic charm of early Strokes but with a distinctly Aussie bent. Omar is a change-up – off-kilter and vaguely melancholy – but still rife with hooks and some great keys lines. Local wunderkind Jeremy Neale drums for RGS but you can’t help but feel his pop nous all through tracks like Good Friend and Fight Time Winner, everything’s so breezy and upbeat. Obscure pop bands such as Orange Juice were apparently the album’s sonic touchstones, yet the result isn’t miles away from the sound of recent indie garage bands like The Soft Pack, loose and accessible but somehow ragged at the same time.

Friends is an assured collection of rock songs, and if it does end up being Running Gun Sound’s epitaph at least all involved can take solace in the strength of this parting salvo. ★★★★

Steve Bell

Red

Singer Sean Tyler is a nice reminder of the usual suspects of early- to mid-‘90s indie: gentle, steady, slightly nasal. You get an overarching sense of his humble capabilities and what the band is all about on opening track, Call To The Siren – it’s soon awash with jangly guitar lines after a neatly clipped rhythmic intro, reining it back in towards song-end with lines that step in and around the kit. That’s part of Red’s success – breaking up blocks of pretty and predictable sugar-infused melodies with interesting textures and interludes. Downtown and Underground change gear to a more upbeat and brassy sound, while Plastic Painting and Game Show burrow back down and build on the dynamics. New bassist Derek Wardrobe – former bassist Ben Linden was tragically killed in a shark attack last year, the album title a homage to his nickname – turns up the dials for the standout How Young, with its crisp and interestingly-shaped melodic lines.

By album end a noticeable song structure appears – gentle meanderings that swiftly ease off and come back full bore. It’s not a bad thing per se and is perhaps just a predictable idiosyncrasy from an otherwise promising new outfit. ★★★★

Carley Hall

VARIOUS

Son Of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs And Chanteys Anti-/Epitaph Back in 2006 producer Hal Willner oversaw the compilation Rogues Gallery, which found contemporary artists – albeit of the more whiskeysoaked variety – deliver their takes on traditional sea shanties and pirate songs, with interesting results on both musical and anthropological levels.

Now Willner has gone back to the well for a second instalment, with equally fascinating outcomes.

Son Of Rogues Gallery opens fittingly with Shane MacGowan doing a ragged reading of Leaving Of Liverpool, the liner notes hinting that this second volume exists primarily to allow inclusion of both him and Tom Waits and Keith Richards (who together offer an authentic take on the poignant Shenandoah) into the project. From here it continues strongly, Robyn Hitchcock’s Sam’s Gone Away perfectly rendered and Beth Orton’s haunting Bamboo setting the bar high.

But there are plenty of highlights and surprises to be found among the 36 tracks, including excellent guests

by Iggy Pop (Asshole Rules The Navy with A Hawk & A Hacksaw plus The Dreadnought with The Elegant Too), Patti Smith & Johnny Depp (The Mermaid), Ed Harcourt (The Ol’ OG), Dr John (In Lure Of The Tropics), Michael Stipe & Courtney Love with Jack Shit (Rio Grande), and Broken Social Scene (Wild Goose).

Not everything here will be to everyone’s taste, but if you dig amongst the wreckage there’s plenty of treasure to be found. ★★★★

Steve Bell

For more reviews go to themusic.com.au/reviews • 35

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THIS WEEK IN

ARTS

Comedian Dave Thornton talks to Baz McAlister about how a review of his physical appearance inspired his new festival show.

Tommy Dassalo

WEDNESDAY 20 Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good) – the Australian premier of this new work from German/British theatre collective Gob Squad. Based on Andy Warhol’s films set in his kitchen complete with bad coffee, nervous breakdowns and wild parties. Part of The World Theatre Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse: Powerhouse Theatre, 7.30pm; to Sunday 24 February.

The Last Supper – a play written and directed by Mole Wetherell and performed by Leen Dewilde, Tim Ingram and Mole Wetherell about a final dinner party. Part of The World Theatre Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse: Turbine Platform, 7pm; to Sunday 24 February.

THURSDAY 21 22nd FlickerFest – an evening of made-in-Brisbane shorts and international winners. A showcase of the local talent that featured in this year’s FlickerFest 2013 competition, which includes screenings of Yardbird, Dave’s Dead, Tiger Boy and Lois. Judith Wright Centre Of Contemporary Arts, 7.30pm; to Saturday 23 February.

FRIDAY 22 Holding The Man – a play by Tommy Murphy adapted from the book by Timothy Conigrave and directed by David Berthold. This memoir is one of Australia’s great love stories. La Boite, 7.30pm; to Saturday 16 March.

SATURDAY 23 McAllister In Conversation – a 60-minute talk with The Australian Ballet’s Artistic Director David McAllister and QPac’s resident choreographer Stephen Baynes.

Along with principal artists Amber Scott and Adam Bull, the panel will discuss the company’s new production of Swan Lake. QPAC: Lyric Theatre, 5pm.

Oedipus Schmoedipus – written and directed by Mish Grigor and Zoe Coombs Marr, this is a black comedy about histories of stage deaths. From Shakespeare to Brecht and Shaw. Part of The World Theatre Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse: Powerhouse Theatre, 6pm; to Sunday 24 February.

Berlin Nights – the debut solo show of Argentinian-born, Berlinbased artist Juan Arata, the works inspired by late night, alcohol-fuelled antics at his friend’s bar in Berlin.

Opening, KAREN contemporary Art Space, 6pm, exhibiting to Saturday 23 March

TUESDAY 26 Tommy Dassalo: Spread – part standup show, part biography and part comic strip this is the great grandson of Fred Walker, the man who invented Vegemite, telling his story. This is comedian, Tommy Dassalo. Part of Brisbane Comedy Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse: Graffiti Room, 7pm; to Sunday 3 March.

POINTED OBSERVATIONS

ART NEWS Miss Burlesque Australia 2013 – the Australia finals to be held nationally throughout March, with the Mr Boylesque competition for guys. In Brisbane at the Old Museum, Sunday 24 March.

36 • To check out the mags online go to themusic.com.au/mags

Or maybe it was a riff on the word’s other meaning, that Thornton just had some good points to make? “That’s not a bad way to look at it, but it’s a bit of a backhanded compliment for a comedian,” he says. “He’s a really good point-maker. Did he laugh? Not really, he make you laug just brought up some subjects I thought were interesting...”

Thornton’s had Outside of stand-up, stan since his last festival a busy year sin scored a supporting role outing. He sco House in Nine’s comedy-drama come Husbands, but isn’t sure whether his character, Gabriel, will be recurring.

Gab

NO MORE A GADABOUT

Fresh Cut 2013 – an annual exhibition of emerging local artists, the show is limited to artists born or living in Queensland, who are up to six years out of art school, who have not shown at the IMA before.

Submissions close at the end of March and the show will run from Saturday 3 August to Saturday 21 September. For more info head to ima.org.au

Holding The Man

“I don’t know if I can work on anything from that review,” Thornton muses. “When someone critiques you on your physical appearance you think ‘Well, either I’ve got to put on weight, or saw my shins off so I’m less tall’. I suppose it was an apt description anyway. I’m 6’2”. I don’t know where the ‘pointy’ came from, though – maybe it was the lighting.”

“My first real aacting role was on Bed of Roses on o the ABC and I was Kerry Armstrong’s character’s son [Shannon], and I got shipped off to Perth,” Thornton says. “And then in House Husbands, my character got shipped off to Hong Kong. The

CASTING CALL

Tropfest – the Tropfest 2013 winner was Victorian finalist, We’ve All Been There, directed by Nicholas Clifford and produced by Michael Ciccone, Jim Wright and Bridget O’Shea. Clifford’s film, Kitchen Sink Drama, was a finalist in 2012.

“Dave Thornton is tall and pointy with pencil legs.” That was how reviewer Kate Herbert, writing in The Herald Sun, chose to open her assessment of Geelong-born comedian Thornton’s festival show last year, The Some of All the Parts. Thornton has copped it on his (admittedly slightly angular) chin and worked the biological observation into a title for his new show this year, Tall and Pointy.

Comediann Hannah Gadsbyy talks to Baz McAlister about the wning furniture, the subject of her new festival show. joys of owning Tasmanian comic Hannah Gadsby isn’t chasing fame, money or a lavish lifestyle. She’s just after somewhere safe she can pop her glasses while she sleeps.

That’s the heart and soul of her new hour-long stand-up show, Happiness is a Bedside Table.

“It’s just all about settling down,” she says. “I’ve always been a bit of a drifter. That’s the comedian’s lifestyle, touring all the time, of course, but to be honest I was nomadic before I did comedy. I’ve never lived anywhere longer than six months. I’ve always been in

other people’s spaces, really, and I’ve never owned stuff. So for the first time in my life, I own stuff!

Useful stuff, like furniture.”

Gadsby pauses, taking stock of how her enthusiasm has leapt skywards during her last two sentences. “It feels very adult, but it sounds very juvenile to say. I’m a 35-year-old woman, I really should have chalked this up before now.”

Gadsby’s on the phone from her new-found and long-term digs, a flat above her brother’s fruit and vegetable shop. She’s settled in nicely already; as we

speak she’s playing Wii Tennis on the pride and joy among her “stuff”, a giant television.

“I found out that if you’re on television, a television is taxdeductible, so I thought I’d make use of that. I’ve never owned a television before, I’ve not even hooked it up to the aerial, I just watch DVDs... Oh, great rally, just one down the line there if you don’t mind,” she says, momentarily distracted by her onscreen efforts.

“But you know, beggars can’t be choosers. This flat is a shithole, but it’s mine because it’s something

way things are going, the next thing I’m on I’m surely going to end up in the Arctic Circle.”

The other side-project that’s been taking up a lot of Thornton’s time is his ongoing hosting gig with Mia Freedman on her female-focused Mamamia Today talk-back radio show, alongside Em Rusciano.

“It’s extremely interesting because it focuses on mothers, and me being a human, 33 years old, with, let’s be honest, testicles, sometimes I find myself in the position of going, ‘Really?’ Mia’s so direct.

She really cuts to the chase. Even off air, she explains things to me in such detail that I can’t unlearn them. She explained to me all about mastitis the other day and I was like ‘Oh, God. I don’t know if I’m prepared for this’. It’s like those scare campaigns they had in school sexual education class.”

Thornton gamely keeps his head above water in this women’s world but says sometimes “the sheer futility of having the emotionally bereft brain of a man means I’m quite often sitting there going, ‘I wish I had something to say but I don’t’. But doing a show like that, you realise the tides are turning [from men to women]. I keep joking that I want to hold onto copies of Mad Men so I can show my grandson how we used to live. ‘Look at that, men were allowed to read and we could still vote. Those were some good times’.”

WHAT: Dave Thornton: Tall & Pointy WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday 5 to Sunday 10 March, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Powerhouse, Turbine Studio I can afford. I was only at home three months of last year so it seems silly to mainta maintain a place while travelling, but I can do that with this place. Ther There’s no heating, no cooling, so there’ there’s only about two months of the yyear where that’s okay in Melbo Melbourne, and it’s got ugly carpet but I love it. I’ve found the secret of hhappiness is to have really low ex expectations.”

As well as touring he her show around the country’s comedy festivals this year, du during her run in Melbourne Gadsby will again be doing her extreme extremely popular art-themed show at the National Gallery of Victoria. B Becoming an annual tradition, it tie ties into one of Gadsby’s dearest hobbies and is always funny as well as informative. Last yea year’s show looked at the role of the Virgin Mary as a muse for artists.

“I love doing that show because it’s a chance to talk about anything but myself. I studied art history and curatorship at uni, back when I thought I might be normal,” she says. “I had no ambition to be an artist, no, because I had no talent. I just loved art. Maybe it was all the naked women. I’m doing a show all about nudes this year – I got sick of doing the virgin,” she laughs.

WHAT: Hannah Gadsby: Happiness Is A Bedside Table WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday 12 to Sunday 17 March, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Powerhouse, Visy Theatre

F R O N T R O W @ T I M E O F F. C O M . A U

REVIEWS WAT C H I N G

GIRLS

A DOLL HOUSE THEATRE In A Doll House, Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre picks up Henrik Ibsen’s ground-breaking 19th century text and throws it into a modern setting. Protagonist Nora (played manically by acting tour de force Judith Roddy) is a trophy wife who flagrantly plays to her disenfranchisement with a disturbing mix of overt sexuality and childlike glee before spectacularly unravelling as the reality of her situation becomes clear.

In Pan Pan’s hands, A Doll House is frenetic and filled with enough modern theatrical devices to have Ibsen rolling in his grave. It makes for slightly messy theatre and it’s difficult not to think that

THE LOOKING

BOYS E6, S2 This Week On Girls? Tonight’s ep is aptly named ‘Boys‘. Ray goes to retrieve his copy of Little Women from Adam’s where Hannah left it in the toilet. Adam has stolen a vicious dog (Adam insists it’s not “a break-up dog“) from the sidewalk and Ray convinces him to return it. The pair head to Staten Island and to Ray’s surprise he discovers they aren’t so different. Adam begins to recognise his love for Hannah and Ray’s feeling of inadequacy heighten. Meanwhile Booth Jonathan holds a party and Marnie hosts (she thinks as his girlfriend, he thinks for $500). Hannah calls Marnie to talk, but neither are honest. Marnie says she’s catching fireflies on the roof with Jonathan (reality: she is in the underground going home) and Hannah says she’s

a pared back version would have been much more effective.

In and of itself there’s nothing wrong with theatre based on other theatre, but there is a problem if the reinterpretation is largely incomprehensible without a thorough understanding of the original. Perhaps Ibsen’s canonical status is less recognised by Australian audiences, but it’s nonetheless difficult to see how A Doll House could be fully appreciated without knowing the plot and significance of the original. This raises an unwelcome question: if Ibsen’s story is being relied upon so heavily as to make knowledge of it essential, why go to the trouble of rewriting it?

Helen Stringer World Theatre Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse

PARAH THEATRE The rallying cry at the centre of Malaysian production Parah is the familiar, plaintive teenage lament, “You don’t understand me!” – a ubiquitous existential crisis that, for the four friends at the heart of the play, is catalysed by a subscribed school text, the language of which brings to the surface long-simmering racial tensions in Malaysia. As the four use their own microcosm to play out larger societal issues, friendships are threatened, futures questioned and pasts exposed.

It’s unfortunate to admit but the kind of racism explored by Parah is completely relatable; with change of language and a minor adjustment of affected minorities, the play could just have easily been set in

THE ECONOMIST THEATRE The Economist, by Melbourne’s MKA: Theatre of New Writing, tells the story of Norwegian Utoya Island massacre, following Anders Breivik’s (here Anglicised to Andrew Berwick’s) journey from regular xenophobe to nationalist, mass murdering fanatic. It’s a brutal, unsympathetic, no holds barred exposition of the devolution of an alienated young man and it’s overwhelmingly successful in exploring a damaged and dangerous psyche without resorting to easy caricature.

The Economist is for the most part, riveting, with tight storytelling and masterful performances hurtling at breakneck speed through its 65-minute run. Zoey Dawson,

been hit with a wave of creativity for her e-book (reality: she’s lying on her bed). Then Ray weeps with only the dog next to him, as Tegan & Sara’s cover of Fool To Cry takes us out.

Girl Talk Of The Week? “You’re like Bella Swan from Twilight and I am like her weird friend who doesn’t understand how fabulous her life is because my boyfriend won’t spend $4 on tacos. “ Shoshanna Shirtless Adam Watch? Adam is back (phew) but his shirt is firmly on.

Girl On Top? Our honorary ‘girl’ on top is Ray for opening up and discovering how much Shoshanna means to him – and, at four weeks, it is the 33-year-old’s longest ever relationship.

What We Learnt: Hannah reads on the toilet.

Cassandra Fumi Screening every Monday night, 8.30pm, Showcase

who takes the role of Berwick and imbues it with an ever-increasing, unhinged intensity is excellent, while the rest of the ensemble cast play Berwick’s (perceived) antagonists with unerring finesse.

If there’s a fault worth noting it’s that there are moments, albeit brief, that feel slightly like student theatre (a synchronised chorus, profuse swearing and very loud shouting come to mind) and it sometimes – again, very briefly – attempts to cram too much into too small a space, which seems to be a theme for World Theatre Festival this year. That aside, this is new theatre at its most exciting: uncompromising, fearless and unrelentingly, disturbingly human.

Helen Stringer World Theatre Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse

Australia. Such universality is both good and bad; on the one hand it makes Parah hugely accessible, on the other it gives some stark insight into the continuing prevalence of racism at home.

Parah is beautifully acted, but there is a lack of subtlety, with moral lessons dealt out with a sledge-hammer and not a scalpel; pivotal moments lack delicacy and drift precariously close to being hackneyed. It’s unclear whether this is a deliberate tactic to capture the explicitness of adolescence or an attempt to ensure the point gets driven home.

Regardless of the method, the message is loudly received.

Helen Stringer World Theatre Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse

GLASS

WITH HELEN STRINGER Over the weekend an asteroid smashed into Russian town Chelyabinsk; G.I. Joe president Vladimir Putin has since released a statement explaining that the town avoided fatalities because he singlehandedly altered the asteroid’s trajectory in a man versus rock hand-to-hand combat. Such reports remain unverified, but it’s widely believed that they may be slightly exaggerated. Regardless, according to every piece of meteor-based apocalypse fiction ever created we can assume that the meteor was merely an extra-terrestrial Trojan horse and at any moment we’re going to be faced with either: a) giant, murderous aliens hell-bent on enslaving mankind or b) an unstoppable alien virus which will cause the majority of humankind to turn into undead, flesh-eating monsters that absolutely no-one will refer to as ‘zombies’. Scientists are yet to comment on any of the aforementioned possibilities so I think we can safely conclude that we’re all going to die. Of course, this could have been avoided if we’d sent Bruce Willis and an untrained group of whoring, boozing oil-riggers onto that baby and blown it up mid-air with some thermonuclear devices, pithy one-liners and a goddamned Aerosmith power ballad. In fact, ‘could Bruce Willis save the world’ has been the question on the lips of responsible journalists everywhere; the premise ‘nukes and Bruce’ is obviously so convincing that actual scientists are required to test its plausibility. The answer? No. Bruce Willis could not have driven a spaceship onto an asteroid travelling at inconceivable speed, deposited a nuclear weapon

C U LT U R A L

into the belly of the beast and set it off by hand while Steven Tyler’s enormous mouth crooned, “I don’t wanna miss a thing”.

Perhaps you’re right, science; but let’s just do a quick calculation here. Bruce Willis has saved the world from terrorists on earth, terrorists in space, a manmade virus, surrogate robots, a telekinetic wunderkind, and – just to drive the point home – a freaking asteroid. Science has saved the world from? I’m drawing a blank. According to the internet, it’s Bruce: 11, science: 0.

But let’s just pretend that, as science insists, Bruce can’t save the world. Fine. Let’s think bigger.

Maybe Bruce can’t save the world.

By himself. But what if we were to do what all money-hungry major movie studios do to perpetuate dying franchises and get together a team of highly experienced world savers; a crack team of apocalypse avoiders. After complicated statistical analysis I’ve put together the team best equipped to save the world. First, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; that little arse-kicking hottie is not just a feminist icon, but has also saved the world eight times.

And she’s familiar with zombies.

Second, pre manic, anti-Semitism crazy times Mel Gibson. Why? Two words: ‘Mad’ and ‘Max’. Third, Will Smith, because we’ve got to have at least one team member who’s prepared to wear a suit. And fourth, Tom Cruise; he already communes with aliens on a regular basis which, under the circumstances, is a highly useful skill. Together they’re an unstoppable, fast talking, arse kicking force. Even science can’t argue with that logic.

Yippee-ki-yay motherfuckers!

CRINGE

WITH MANDY MCALISTER With scandal dogging her since early in the appointment, last week Ros Bates finally resigned from the position of Minister for Science, Innovation, IT and the Arts. Her teeny tiny shoes are set to be filled

by Ian Walker, previously Assistant Minister for Planning Reform. Sure he’s a honky, Stuart Little-looking mofo with a bio to fit (his interests include “rugby league and classical music”), but a figure carved out of the frozen piss of Colin Hay would be more worthy of a public-funded paycheck than Ros Bates. In a state government that can be aptly described by the acronym SNAFU, Walker would have to be a class-A turd to even get noticed.

It’s probably just as well for Minister Bates that she bailed out before fulfilling presenting commitments at next week’s Matilda awards. No one needs a hundred artist twitter feeds full of #thatawkwardmomentwhen posts. The awards celebrating the best of Brisbane theatre will be held on Monday 4 March at QUT Gardens Point Theatre. Five major Matilda awards are given for special achievements and commendations in ten categories will be given out on the night. Indie productions are well represented and it’s sure to be close call in all categories, especially the main five.

Best Mainstage Production: As You Like It (La Boite), Bombshells (QTC), Kelly (QTC), Tender Napalm (La Boite), The Harbinger (La Boite & Dead Puppet Society).

Best Independent Production: 1984 (Shake & Stir), A Tribute of

A Tribute of Sorts Sorts (La Boite & Monsters Appear), Loco Maricon Amor (The Danger Ensemble & Metro Arts), Thérèse Raquin (Zen Zen Zo), Vikram And The Vampire (Zen Zen Zo).

Best Male Actor in a Leading Role: Bryan Probets (1984), Dash Kruck (A Tribute of Sorts), Kurt Phelan (Tender Napalm), Steven Rooke (Kelly).

Best Female Actor in a Leading Role: Christen O’Leary (Bombshells), Emily Curtin (A Tribute of Sorts), Helen Howard (As You Like It), Lizzie Ballinger (Thérèse Raquin), Margi Brown Ash (Home).

Best Director: Ben Schostakowski (A Tribute of Sorts), Helen Howard (Thérèse Raquin), Michael Futcher (1984), Todd MacDonald (Kelly).

Regardless of the lacklustre performance of the bureaucrats charged with running the joint, Queensland has an independent theatre scene with an abundance of wonderful performers and passionate creatives. The Matilda Awards honour those who engage in the struggle to create exciting theatre in Queensland in the face of a culture of downsizing. The awards are open to the public and free to attend but you must RSVP via the Matilda Awards website, matildaawards.com.au.

For more reviews go to themusic.com.au/reviews • 37

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THE LAMPLIGHTS Member answering/role: Ryan Gittoes – vocals.

How long have you been together?

As a five-piece we have been together about two-anda-half years, but The Lamplights began in 2009.

How did you all meet?

I met Ash at a market in Palm Beach, he was playing acoustic guitar and I introduced myself and asked if I could have a sing with him some day. About two months passed and I saw him again and he had a mic set up so we did. We played Hallelujah and a local café owner came up to us and asked if we could play at her café on the next Saturday night, and The Lamplights were born. We met Jason at a festival in Mackay called Wintermoon and had an instant connection and it turned out he lived about 40 minutes from us, so it was just meant to be. Mik was a friend of Jason’s and Mattie was a friend of mine and we all just came together and it just works.

You’re on tour in the van – which band or artist is going to keep the most people happy if we throw them on the stereo?

I’m really liking Bruno Mars at the moment. I love driving to something funky, but we seriously have a huge range of influences so it’s almost like a music history lesson when we all get together.

Would you rather be a busted broke-but-revered Hank Williams figure or some kind of Metallica monster?

Somewhere in the middle; one of our greatest assets is that we are enjoying the experience of playing together. I once said, “We are not a destination band”, meaning we are not striving for some distant magical moment of feeling like we have made it. We decided we were going to base our success on how we feel when we play, and the connections and positive impact we can have on our audience, and only then have we “made it”.

Which Brisbane bands before you have been an inspiration (musically or otherwise)?

I’d say Powderfinger are an inspiration in terms of their commitment and ability to connect with a large demographic.

What part do you think Brisbane plays in the music you make?

We have so many amazing friends who play in bands in Brisbane and it’s the ability to have access to these musicians when recording or being able to get them up on stage with us when we play live that we love.

Is your band responsible for more make-outs or break-ups? Why? We would definitely say make-outs. We play a song called Wallflower, which is a waltz. It’s been a highlight when you can get a whole room waltzing together and it’s a moment when people can feel connected.

Wallflower has chalked up quite a few “make-outs”.

What reality TV show would you enter as a band and why?

I would like to start a new reality TV show where each week they would feature three or four different bands and showcase their music nationally so that the general public could be exposed to more music than just the over-produced, pop dancing, scantily clad women. We would go on that show.

If your band had to play a team sport instead of being musicians which sport would it be and why would you be triumphant?

We would be the national ping pong champions. We are fierce competitors and our combined arsenal of weapons could take down anyone.

What’s in the pipeline for the band in the short term?

We will tour nationally with this album and continue to play as many shows as we can. We continue to put all the pieces of the puzzle together behind the scenes and deliver live shows that people walk away from feeling good about themselves.

The Lamplights play Cabarita Sports Club on Friday 22 February, Bleach* Festival at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on Saturday 23 February, The Hideway on Friday 8 March, The Joynt on Thursday 21 March and the Beach Hotel, Byron Bay on Sunday 24 March. New single The River (Independent) out now.

Photo by TERRY SOO.

Man Gloom and drummer Ben Koeller is pounding the living daylights out of his kit, creating a furious backbeat that fills out the entire room. A band renowned for the energy they bring to just about every stage they touch, the energetic catharsis captured by the quartet tonight is par for the course, but what’s truly spectacular about the set is how the band transform the material, particularly the title track and Trespasses from latest LP All We Love We Leave Behind. An album defined by guitarist Kurt Ballou’s tinny tones, when Converge explore the material live the songs sound so much fuller, and with all the heft of classic Converge the All We Love… numbers brutalise the crowd. It’s another superb showing from Converge, and there’s scarcely a person leaving The Hi-Fi without a shit-eating grin plastered across their face.

Tom Hersey

JENS LEKMAN, COURTNEY BARNETT, SCRAPS THE ZOO: 16/02/13 It’s still summer, but Brisbane seems caught between seasons tonight. Rain begins, stops, half-heartedly resumes. Humidity hangs oppressively, but the heat seems almost hospitable in this early evening, even inside The Zoo where Scraps (Laura Hill) makes for a minimalist presence on stage. The music is similarly unobtrusive: spare synth-pop that’s distant and quiet despite the volume. Quavering synth pads follow the night’s mood; neither melancholic nor happy, or perhaps both. With a lack of showmanship the music stands or falls purely on its own merits: tonight it stands, largely disinterested in the reaction it may receive and all the better for its own self-absorption.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ The Tivoli pic by Terry Soo

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR, PRIMITIVE MOTION

THE OH SEES, PER PURPOSE, GO VIOLETS

THE TIVOLI: 13/02/13

THE ZOO: 14/02/13

Taking the coveted support slot, local elemental pop duo Primitive Motion are corralled into the corner of the stage due to the overflowing expanse of equipment laid out for the main act. This doesn’t faze them, however – aided by vibrant visual projections, Leighton Craig and Sandra Selig show no signs of nerves. Selig’s saxophone echoes over Craig’s plaintive organ melody, a sense of naivety fuelling the attraction to these lo-fi wanderings. A multitude of instruments are utilised and exchanged, with the basic beats proving the backbone. The vocals aren’t always defined, especially Craig’s whose focus is more on sound than tone, and so it is to the credit of the sound engineer that the music doesn’t seem dwarfed. At times a kitschy oddity, Primitive Motion resonate most when the musical palette is darker.

An intriguing and ultimately appropriate precursor.

The Zoo is generally kind of shitty for opening bands; the stage is high, as are the ceilings, and any time it’s less than half full it looks empty. Regardless, Go Violets are determined to have a good time, and opening with the insatiably poppy Runner is a great way to do it. The band obviously know how to write a catchy hook, and when they put their impressive and dynamic vocals on top of that (singers Alice Rezende and Phoebe Imhoff go from sweet to snarky to commanding effortlessly, until halfway through the set when Rezende unfortunately starts to lose her voice) these songs are a force of nature. Their cover of Girls’ Lust For Life sounds like it could have been written by them, and there aren’t many better compliments than that.

The crowd are incredulous at the fact they are seeing Canadian instrumental demi-gods Godspeed You! Black Emperor at all, yet the first fifteen minutes are jaw dropping. Looped effects dropping a cloak of ambient static bubbling and roiling across an empty stage, it is a coalescing drone that usurps most other sounds of its ilk – and the eight-piece haven’t even presented themselves. When the band do take their places, with nary a word spoken, they launch into an incendiary set that reminds everyone why their sound is often emulated but never replicated.

Sophie Trudeau’s effects-laden violin is a constant source of aural amazement, while the punishing triumvirate of Efren Mennuck, Mike Moya and David Bryant on guitar continually turn each other inside out with their interwoven guitar lines. There’s the dual percussive metronomes of Aidan Girt and Tim Herzog, while Mauro Pezzente and Thierry Amar tether the majesty together on both electric and stand-up bass. The highlights reside not only in the songs – Storm from Skinny Fists… is an epiphany – yet it is in the elements that create the whole. The films that accompany the set – images of manuscripts, microfiches, tunnels, rail tracks, burning film and overexposed images of buildings – elevate the nuanced atmosphere to euphoric levels; the brutal dirge attack of “new” track Mladic impresses with each build, another step in noise that was previously deemed impossible; the stately grace held in negotiating the calm before the apocalypse. So many elements go into crafting such an all-encompassing squall of sound that attention is perpetually arrested.

Closing with a crushing rendition of Moya, the band roll out a miasma of noise and disappear once more into the shadows. Such a set may never be witnessed in Brisbane again – nor does it need to.

Brendan Telford

40 • For more reviews go to themusic.com.au/reviews

After Go Violets, Per Purpose’s swampy, earnest, hipthrusting rock seems almost comical, but they soon win out with brute will. Their sound has a bit of The Drones and Nick Cave and probably a myriad of other more obscure modern Australian rock’n’roll bands that we all should have heard of, but it’s probably better to forget all of that and commit to the snarling, hedonistic performance that singer Glen Schenau is treating us all to. In the end it’s strangely cool and convincing, if still a bit funny.

Thee Oh Sees start right on time, John Dwyer promising that they’re gonna play as many songs as they can in their short time with us. He is not joking; the band rip into these alien garage tracks like the end is truly nigh, the pure force and speed of their sound immediately electrifying and incredibly exciting. The crowd dance and jump around like they might keep going until their legs turn to pulp and jelly, and then flop on the floor ecstatically to the beat. Dwyer’s guitar is as perfectly spazzed out and frantic as you want it to be, and there are definitely less of their records’ experimental or psychedelic elements showcased here, which just leaves pure energy and power. Mike Shoun’s drumming, which is not flamboyant but ridiculously tight and skilful, is especially impressive and a driving component of the set.

Hang A Picture and Lupine Dominus – from the band’s latest album Putrifiers II – are two highlights, but it’s hard to pick out any part of this show that particularly stands out; it’s so killer from start to finish. Show of the year? It’s only February… but yeah, probably.

helped the band’s live performance immeasurably.

There’s a real confidence at play as they rip through numbers that sound like Gothenburg metal getting into a fistfight with d-beat hardcore.

Roughly a minute passes in between the time Aaron Turner says ‘Yes... Hello’ to the audience and Old Man Gloom’s first note of music. The space between the two points is filled with feedback and pedal manipulation.

Beyond showing what noise Turner and fellow metal/ hardcore vets Nate Newton and Cave In’s Caleb Scofield are capable of creating, it’s a nice metaphor for the dichotomy between OMG and tonight’s headliners.

When Converge operate within the tropes of modern hardcore because, well, they basically made them standard operating procedure, Old Man Gloom are unattached to any sound or scene, and are delightfully freeform in their underground obscurity. The fourpiece’s set is a sometimes swirling, sometimes harsh noisescape where strains of USBM, glitchy post-rock, down-tuned doom metal and prog-influenced rock comes together to, slowly, loudly, pulverise a room waiting for the headliner’s lightning quick, firebomb hardcore.

The crowd seems to take four steps closer to the stage as soon as Converge, arguably the most influential hardcore/metalcore band to emerge from the dying days of the last millennium, hit the stage...‘Hit the stage’ is actually a misnomer – Converge explode like a goddamn nailbomb when they’re front and centre. Vocalist Jacob Bannon is pacing across the stage like he’s looking to fight the entire audience at the same time, you can’t even tell bassist Nate Newton has just played a set with Old

There’s no confusion in Courtney Barnett’s set: largely leaving behind the slacker-pop of their EP, the live experience is relatively straight blues-rock.

They’re walking the same territory as St Vincent or Sharon Van Etten, but they’re doing a highly credible job: energetic and talented, they look like they’re having fun on stage, grinning broadly at each other during songs. As the room fills, the weather seems to reach a decision as well, settling into a humid swelter that sits comfortably with the music; a swampy heaviness that lends the blues lines a presence that may otherwise have been lost on a lighter evening.

Last seen in Brisbane performing under a house somewhere near Milton due to visa restrictions, Jens Lekman is back tonight with a four-piece band and a new album to showcase – his first in five years and the focus of the early part of tonight’s set. Always the consummate storyteller, Lekman pauses between songs to give some context: an almost-marriage to a friend for citizenship (I Know What Love Isn’t); a joke about the length of time between albums (the as-yet unreleased Golden Key). In lesser hands it could end up an annoying digression, but Lekman maintains an endearing charm, and so the stories become an important part of the show, an invitation into the artist’s life.

It’s a joyous performance tonight; the sadder songs left aside or sped up lent an air of jaunty nonchalance.

Certain pantomimes – the air xylophone at the end of The Opposite Of Hallelujah for example – have been part of his repertoire for years, but he performs them still with such joyous enthusiasm that it’s impossible to be cynical.

That sums up the entire live Jens Lekman experience, really. It helps that the band is incredibly tight, Lekman is in fine voice, and he has a brilliant knack for catchy pop, but even when the show borders on twee selfparody, it’s impossible to maintain any ironic distance against the joy in the songs, the self-deprecation in the stories and the onslaught of his genuine performance.

Sky Kirkham

Madeleine Laing

CONVERGE, OLD MAN GLOOM, THE FEVERED THE HI-FI: 17/02/13 The Jane Don’ts have stayed at home tonight and The Hi-Fi is bustling with anticipation as locals The Fevered take to the stage. Something of the go-to band when an international show of the extreme music persuasion rolls through town at the moment, the time playing good stages to decent crowds has

Jens Lekman @ The Zoo pic by Sky Kirkham

do and you are ready to work two days a week for six months to help others come to love it as well. See www.edgeqld.org.au for full details.

ARTIST APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR CALOUNDRA MUSIC FESTIVAL

Macklemore And Ryan Lewis @ Arena pic by Chi Pham

MACKLEMORE AND RYAN LEWIS, DIAFRIX ARENA: 14/02/13 One would have to be deaf to not know that the Seattle team of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis was in the country. They’ve dominated the airwaves of late, and despite three venue changes, it’s obvious from the massive queue, and even the few asking to buy someone’s ticket, that Brisbane has caught the bug.

Melbourne group Diafrix maintain the buzz in the already packed Arena with their short but energetic set. As the jubilant keys of I’m A Dreamer drop, cheers circulate the venue and everyone is swaying, singing and all smiles, ready to meet their hero.

Almost an hour passes and the venue is fast becoming a sauna but everyone holds their spots as towels and water bottles are laid out onstage. The lights finally dim as Owuor Arunga steps out, producer Ryan Lewis soon follows to take his station as Arunga blasts through his trumpet and Macklemore dramatically takes the stage in his dark denim vest and skinnies, arms out with his back to the roaring crowd. Ten Thousand Hours has him jumping on elevated platforms front of stage while Lewis and Arunga jump around. With a “Brisbane! Welcome to the heist!” all three pause for effect to lap up the love from the hysterical crowd.

Q Music is a not for profit organisation supporting Queensland music, musicians and industry workers. This column will present you with information on grant and export opportunities, conferences and the general lowdown on the state’s music industry.

BIGSOUND REGISTRATIONS & LIVE APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN BIGSOUND registrations and BIGSOUND Live showcase applications are opening early this year for the 11-13 September event. Held annually in Brisbane, BIGSOUND is recognised as Australia’s leading international music industry gathering. Over three days each September, BIGSOUND draws a growing contingent of musicians, managers, buyers, industry experts and music lovers to meet, learn, and discover new music in Brisbane’s renowned entertainment precinct, Fortitude Valley. To register, or apply to showcase, see www.bigsound.org.au.

THE EDGE SEEKS SOUND CATALYST The Edge is looking for someone to help them to explore the world through sound. To join The Edge’s team as a Catalyst you must be good at what you do. You may be an audio engineer, sound designer, musician, producer, music therapist, sound artist, composer, promoter, music academic or acoustic engineer – it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you love what you

Artist applications for the 2013 festival are now open and close on the 20th of March. This call for submissions is for creative artists and musicians who would like to join the fun at CMF in 2013!

This year, the festival is held 4 - 7 October. Please ensure you are available on these dates before you apply. See http://www.caloundramusicfestival. com/artist-applications to submit your application.

SCORE IT! QMF CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS IN FILMSCORING COMPETITION Queensland Music Festival’s Score IT! competition throws down the gauntlet to young composers across Queensland to create a unique and original composition to accompany a short film. Entries will be judged by a panel of leading practitioners in film and composition and the winners of each category will be announced and awarded at a presentation ceremony during Queensland Music Festival on 25 July, 2013. See www.qmf.org.au to enter.

BRISBANE FESTIVAL SEEKS EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST Brisbane Festival is committed to providing opportunities for independent artists in all areas of the performing arts including emerging, midcareer and established practitioners. Expressions of Interest are now being sought from independent artists interested in having their work considered for programming in Brisbane Festival 2013.

See www.brisbanefestiva.com.au for details.

WANT TO KNOW MORE OR BECOME A QMUSIC MEMBER? For these stories, memberships and more, go to www.qmusic.com.au.

From topics such as the heat, how Australians are funnier than Americans, whether everyone is really as drunk as they seem, to trusting each other for “our show”, Macklemore takes time out for some long talks between dancing all over stage and diving out into the crowd into a complete stand as his lucky fans hold him up by his Jordans. Referring to the “treasure hunters” out there the familiar “what what” of Thrift Shop has hands raised as Wanz enters in his grandpa’s suit to join in for the chorus, while Arunga is now smashing the hi-hat with his hands. Giving a shout out to Australia for “paving the way to equality”, Macklemore busts into current number one Same Love as Lewis holds out the mic stand, letting the crowd take the hook. Ryan Dalton joins the party in his bowtie for Can’t Hold Us while each band member maintains their own boogie. By Victory Lap, it’s Lewis’ turn for a crowd surf while Arunga takes on his best jam for the night, leaving everyone energised for the encore.

Macklemore returns in a sequined cape and blonde wig for the glam rock silliness of And We Danced, which has him booty dancing on the floor and acting as a conductor under spotlight, controlling the cheers with his hands. After a “We are fucking awesome!” battle cry, streamers explode out onstage to end tonight’s sweaty and hyper celebration.

Justin Townes Earle @ Byron Bay Community Centre pic by Stephen Booth

Jann Angara

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE, ROBERT ELLIS, JACK CARTY BYRON BAY COMMUNITY CENTRE: 17/02/13 The theatre of the Byron Bay Community Centre is a small, impossibly intimate round, where even the worst vantage point seems almost in the performer’s pocket. Young Sydney-based troubadour Jack Carty grew up in nearby Bellingen and seems delighted to be indulging in a homecoming of sorts, appearing barefoot and unkempt as he begins to unveil a steady flow of narrative-driven tracks. Everything, Unhappily, Giveth And Taketh Away and the poignant Travelling Shoes are highlights, and while a tad overwrought at times, the set is a fine precursor to what’s about to unfold.

Emerging Americana proponent Robert Ellis claims to be under the weather tonight for the last show of his first Australian sojourn – he’s being whisked away following this set to support Richard Thompson in the

UK – but it doesn’t seem to affect his performance one iota, his honeyed voice and intricate fingerpicking during opener Westbound Train setting the scene for a spellbinding performance. On a borrowed guitar because the hot weather has wreaked havoc with his own, the affable entertainer shows that he’s part of the authentic country lineage with his dextrous skills and strong songs such as Comin’ Home, Two Cans Of Paint and the lyrically Weezer-esque No Fun. A great cover of Randy Newman’s Marie at the tail-end of the set completely seals the deal.

Just Townes Earle is looking very boho tonight in his flat cap and thick glasses, but he’s oozing charm and engaging from the outset as he kicks off with the jaunty Memphis In The Rain. He seems in great health and spirits and delivers a moving personal introduction to They Killed John Henry, quickly moving on to affairs of the heart with touching renditions of Look The Other Way and Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel

About Me Now. It’s fantastic seeing him operate in solo mode from such close quarters, the singer completely at ease and effortlessly charismatic as he delves into his by now considerable catalogue and plucks out a bluesy version of Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving, the moving Mama’s Eyes and the gorgeous Unfortunately Anna.

Earle’s between-song candour is completely disarming as he whips through Harlem River Blues, One More Night in Brooklyn, Christchurch Woman and Down On The Lower East Side. He harks back to the 1920s with Jimmy Cox’s Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out and makes it his own, before finishing the set with a touching new song and the evergreen Wanderin’. The besotted crowd beg for more and Earle eagerly obliges, returning to make everyone’s night complete with Halfway To Jackson, Rogers Park and Dwight Yoakam’s Close Up The Honky Tonks.

Road trips are made for nights of music this good.

Steve Bell

For more reviews go to themusic.com.au/reviews • 41

ROOTS DOWN

OG FLAVAS

ADAMANTIUM WOLF

BLUES ‘N’ ROOTS WITH DAN CONDON ROOTS@TIMEOFF.COM.AU

URBAN AND R&B NEWS BY CYCLONE

METAL, HARDCORE AND PUNK WITH LOCHLAN WATT

Brandy

Bonnie Raitt Have your ears stopped ringing with the sound of the name Gotye yet? The country certainly did go a little bit nuts when he picked up those three Grammys – but so we should have, it’s a remarkable achievement.

As I say every year in this column, unless you deliberately go out of your way to seek it out, you probably don’t really know how many fantastic artists and brilliant records actually are honoured at the big glamorous night of nights that is the Grammy Awards, so I figured I’d take the opportunity to once again point out a couple of the highlights.

Best Americana Album: Bonnie Raitt – Slipstream This is Raitt’s tenth Grammy win! Sometimes you forget that she was so damn popular around 20 years ago. Anyway, Slipstream is another great record from an artist who, quite frankly, doesn’t let us down very often. It’s tough but slick at the same time, something Raitt does well, and once again proves the brilliance of her guitar playing and the general awesomeness of her voice. The record was also produced by the masterful Joe Henry – it has to be said that the guy really does have a special touch when it comes to making records of this kind and he showed real class with his work on this one as well. The only issue with her winning this award is that it meant another great record in The Avett Brothers’ The Carpenter missed out, but they can’t all be winners! Of course we get to see Raitt performing tracks from it when she’s out here for Bluesfest and sideshows next month, seeing as it has been so long since her last visit it’s very exciting to have her back.

Best Blues Album: Dr John – Locked Down If you paid any mind to my end of year ranting and ramblings – and I’m sure you didn’t – you’ll know that this was actually my favourite record of last year. Dr John is always going to hold a special place in my heart, but to hear him completely revitalised with the help of Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys was something really special. It proved he could still write great songs and play music that pushed boundaries and it has paid massive dividends. I’m glad the Grammys could agree with me on this one. Mad props go out to Shemekia Copeland who continues her unstoppable run of great records with 33 1/3, Ruthie Foster whose Let It Burn was excellent as well (though not as good as her jaw-dropping liver performances, it must be said) and the Heritage Blues Orchestra who certainly showed they had arrived with their nominated debut And Still I Rise. These were great records and they deserved to be nominated, but I think the Grammys got it right in this case.

Best Folk Album: Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile – The Goat Rodeo Sessions The Grammys got it wrong with this one, though.

I have to admit that The Goat Rodeo Sessions is a rather stunning sounding album, but there’s no way it held a candle to a number of other records it was up against. Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Leaving Eden was a brilliant example of how young artists are continuing certain old-time string band traditions. Ry Cooder’s Election Special was one of the finest records he has released in a while (and he’s hardly been in terrible form), an acerbic take on American politics that expressed a very real fear that he, and a lot of other Americans, expressed about the future – what’s more pure folk than that? While it may not quite be the kind of record Grammy are looking to give awards to, This One’s For Him – A Tribute to Guy Clark is an incredible tribute to one of the best songwriters that country has ever produced and was put together with serious class; it was a real shame that neither of those records could come home with the prize.

42 • For more opinion go to themusic.com.au/blog

The CDs may litter op shops, but ‘90s R&B has manifested into a hipster cult. It’s not necessarily nostalgic. Edgy artists have long reconfigured Aaliyah’s tech-soul. The xx covered the Detroiter’s Hot Like Fire, while dubstep auteur Burial sampled her vocals on 2007’s Untrue, as did James Blake on his early CMYK (together with Kelis). Beyond that, the output of Aaliyah’s sometimes mentor (and husband) R Kelly is now considered pleasurably kitsch, Blake proclaiming him “a borderline postmodern genius” in Q. In fact, Blake is “reinterpreting” hip hop and house on his upcoming second album, Overgrown, RZA featuring on the cut Take A Fall For Me. The Brit reformulated soul with 2011’s eponymous album. Drake’s a fan.

Also back in vogue are TLC – literally. Last month Grazia paid homage to the streetwise girl group in a fashion shoot with model (and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas lookalike) Shanina Shaik. Meanwhile, Californian rock sisters Haim, who won the BBC Sound Of 2013 poll, have been compared to TLC and Fleetwood Mac. Haim have urban cred, cameo-ing on A$AP Rocky’s Long.Live.A$AP. Not all ‘90s R&B acts are faring so well. A year on from her sad demise, Amy Winehouse was lauded by the rock media, but not Whitney Houston (who, yes, did launch in the ‘80s). Winehouse actually inspired Patti Smith’s gorgeous This Is The Girl. But where are the Whitney tributes? There isn’t even much of a (creepy) posthumous industry. Just prior her death, the sometime actor shot a remake of the ‘70s flick Sparkle with American Idol winner Jordin Sparks (in a role originally intended for the late Aaliyah). Mid-2012 Sony noiselessly issued the OST, comprising two ‘new’ Houston recordings: one Celebrate, a Kelly-helmed duet with Sparks; and the other the gospel His Eye Is On The Sparrow. The movie is yet to screen in Australia.

(A ‘best of’, I Will Always Love You appeared, too.)

It’s not much better for those still alive. Brandy debuted as a teen with 1994’s self-titled LP, spawning the hit I Wanna Be Down. However, her career unravelled in the 2000s. In 2012, 14 years after the Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins-produced mega-duet The Boy Is Mine, Brandy reunited with Monica for the Paul McCartney-ish It All Belongs To Me. Both singers had comeback albums that surfaced locally – Two Eleven and New Life, respectively – but these received zero promotion.

Brandy’s US number three LP was sufficiently modish to be recommended to OG Flavas by Manchester postdubstepper Holy Other, who performed at Laneway.

“That Brandy album was a little imbalanced, but it had a fair few brilliant tracks compared to most of what’s been coming out,” he says. The resolutely anonymous producer spliced up R&B samples on his recent album Held, Burial-style. And Two Eleven, Brandy’s first album since 2008’s Human, is worth tracking down for the song Scared Of Beautiful, co-written by Frank Ocean, alone. The Odd Future innovator, then an unknown, previously wrote for Human. His synthy Scared... is conservative for him, being closest to Thinkin Bout You, but it’s delicate. The Two Eleven album title references the date of Houston’s passing. Brandy was close to the soul diva, starring opposite her in the Disney tele-musical Cinderella, which Houston produced.

Plus, Brandy’s younger brother Ray J dated her.

Hiring producers like Bangladesh (but not old allies Jerkins or Timbaland), Brandy subtly updates her trad groove-led R&B with the spacey atmospherics and textures of illwave – which she herself presaged on 2002’s Full Moon. The single Put It Down, featuring trouble man Chris Brown, is incongruous, a loud hip hop joint with Brandy rapping (!), as is the slow motion banger Let Me Go, which fussily samples Lykke Li and evokes the undeveloped experimentation of Beyoncé’s 4. Mercifully, the album is mostly downbeat – or quiet storm – which suits Brandy’s husky alto. Switch produces the squelchy Slower.

Nevertheless, the best song is Danja’s Kraftwerky Can You Hear Me Now on the album’s deluxe version.

Solange would dig it... Two Eleven deserved a push in Oz. Next, Ashanti (another Burial fave!) will return in June with Braveheart. Show some love.

THE BREAKDOWN POP CULTURE THERAPY WITH ADAM CURLEY

Inc. Anthony wants to know if I’ve ever had a song with a boyfriend. Like, if I’ve ever been able to swoosh my skirt in a diner and declare, “Gee whiz, Albie, they’re playing our song”. I haven’t. Not really. Brian did go nuts for There Is A Light That Never Goes Out when I put it on a mix CD I made for him when we were 22, but by that time I’d already wrung every bit of hope and hopelessness out of the song and it never felt like ‘ours’ and I didn’t and still don’t think a Smiths’ song could ever be shared, especially not in a relationship. Then there was the Devastations’ album Yes, U, which is not a song and therefore not technically in the running except that it was the closest I had to offer seeing as it was a convenient but also appropriate soundtrack to the sex I was having with a new boyfriend around the time of its release and then took on the role of Pavlov’s bells and then we couldn’t listen to it if we were in public or with other people and I’ve had a hard time listening to it since. But no, no ‘our song’.

The word ‘sexy’ is being used my many in the media to describe the debut album from Los Angeles brother act Inc., titled no world (4AD/Remote Control). It’s an easy descriptor: the duo make mid-tempo R&B that reaches back to the ‘80s with its keyboard sounds and whispered vocals. As has been pointed out, the two bros owe a fair amount of their approach to Prince and to D’Angelo, both of whom have a large stake in the brand of ‘sexy music’. But influence does not emotion (or action) make, and no world struggles to make any real connections. Check it: as a CD package, the album features pictures of the brothers wandering a coastline in the sleeve

booklet, a photo of a crown of thorns on the disc, gothic font on the back cover and lyric sheets that highlight the cut-and-paste-from-the-charts method of lyricism. “Until it’s over/until the day is done/I’ll look to find you/when all the pain is gone.” It’s a collage of symbols that is not drawn together by their satin music; its meaning can only be found in its role as product, factory-made sounds and images in a never-ending flood of the same; a sticker on a photo of a frowny face that reads ‘SEXY’.

Grant Macdonald seemingly uses dialogue taken from pornography and reads it over stolen background music to make songs that are also superficial representations of the meaning of ‘sexy’.

Exactly who Macdonald is, where he comes from or how he works is almost impossible to uncover online. His identity is a series of conflicting spam messages and sites, his work a barrage of products barely different from each other, sold through mega companies. He has an album titled 12 Inch Cocks, one called Sucking Cowboy. The songs are variously metal, country and muzak instrumentals over which Macdonald (or someone) spouts X-rated directives and observations, occasionally with an historical twist. From Prince Harry: “Hey Prince Harry from the days of King William of Orange and Culloden/Ride those big hard Ram Ranch cowboy cocks up and down, up and down.”

Macdonald has profiles on iTunes, Amazon, Rdio and ReverbNation. On Amazon he has a ‘book’ for sale titled Holy Faux with a series of homemadelooking covers. On iTunes, older albums display an obsession with Jean Paul Getty, the Texan oil billionaire who provided support to Hitler in WWII. Album and single covers are MS Paint-quality posters featuring stolen soft porn photos. A linked website is a fake porn site that has no content. Macdonald takes us nowhere beyond the loud veneer, offering spam, reproductions of spam, reproductions of the reproductions, all for sale. He sells the word ‘sex’ as something ‘sexy’, as a mirror to our relationship with sex, to current vacuous R&B pastiches, to the idea of standing in a diner and swooshing a skirt, saying, “Hey, Albie, they’re playing our song”.

Happy Soundwave week! Not so happy for Blink182 fans, with drummer Travis Barker unable to overcome his fear of flying and make it down for the shows... Bad Religion drummer Brooks Wackerman will be filling in. Anyway, stock up on your sunscreen and water, and let’s do our best to will this rain away from the weekend.

Finnish grinders Rotten Sound have announced a couple of other shows surrounding their appearance at the Melbourne instalment of Obscene Extreme Festival in April. They’ll appear in Sydney at The Bald Faced Stag on 9 April with Roadside Burial, Ether Rag and The Holiday Project. They’ll also play at Amplifier Bar in Perth on 14 April with DFC, Nails of Imposition and Abhorrent. Word on the street is there’s a gig being lined up for Brisbane as well, but we’ll have to wait and see...

Goth/black metal pioneers Cradle Of Filth are returning to Australia in May. The British group released their tenth album The Manticore And Other Horrors late last year through Roadrunner Australia.

You can catch them at The Hi-Fi on 9 May. UK hardcore group Brutality Will Prevail have just announced their first-ever visit Down Under. Aussie bands Warbrain and Thorns will support. Catch them at X&Y Bar on 11 May and upstairs at 199 Boundary Street on 12 May. Katatonia have been added to the forthcoming tour of fellow progressive, metallic Swedes Opeth. Unfortunately though this doesn’t mean that we’ll get to see any Bloodbath (a brutal side project containing members of both groups).

Catch them at The Tivoli on 16 March.

Byron Bay’s 50 Lions are hitting up their first shows in over a year next month. Catch them at 199 Boundary Street on 22 March with Outsider’s Code, Survival, Rain Dogs and Dead Ends, and at X&Y Bar on 23 March with Outsider’s Code, Rain Dogs and Deadlift. The band’s new 7” Pray For Nothing is out on 1 March through Resist Records.

Former A Death In The Family member Jamie Hay recently released a video clip for the title track to his recent King Of The Sun album. The piece was created by Andrew Seward of Against Me! while they were here recently for the Big Day Out. Confession have debuted the video clip for their new single This Is War. The band stated that the song is “for people who suffer from life threatening illness, people who have to fight to survive. Our hearts go out to these people and their families.”

It’s the band’s first release since devastating line-up changes saw frontman Michael Crafter as the only remaining original member last year.

Adelaide-based melodic punks Paper Arms have dropped an impressive video clip for Tanks Of Dust. The track is from the band’s latest full-length – The Smoke Will Clear – out now on Poison City Records.

Melbourne’s Ne Obliviscaris recently announced their signing to international metal label Season of Mist (Atheist, Cynic, The Dillinger Escape Plan).

Having finally released the critically acclaimed Portal Of I last year, the band is working on material for a follow up release due in late-2013.

Triple M radio’s metal show, DISTORTION, has recently expanded. Originally a 40-minute show broadcast only in Melbourne, you can now listen to Higgo bringing you the latest in Aussie and international metal for two hours every Saturday night from 11pm in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

GIGS OF THE WEEK: Thursday: Anthrax (USA), Malakyte – The Hi-Fi. Friday: Beckon The Dead, Headwound The Pony, This Means War, Bound For Ruin, In The Shadows – Crowbar. Puscifier (USA) – The Tivoli. Buried In Verona, Awaken I Am, Shorelines – X&Y Bar. Blink-182 (USA), The Vandals (USA), Sharks (UK) – RNA Showgrounds.

Bullet For My Valentine (UK), Cancer Bats (CAN), Miss May I (USA) – The Hi-Fi. Saturday: This little thing you might have heard of called SOUNDWAVE – RNA Showgrounds. Quiet Steps, Make More, Capeweather, Wallow – Crowbar.

43

beach on his new board he calls Margo. He rides her pretty hard, or so he says.

What’s the latest on a full-length?

We’re about to release the Change Of Heart EP, the She’s My Baby CD and a new single together all on the same ‘Deluxe’ release. It’s a good way to bridge the gap to our first album which will be out later this year. Everyone is very excited about it, no one more than Alex’s mum! She’s always going on about it, ‘Alex you need to get your full-length out! I can’t wait any longer!’ She is a big fan.

Bleach* has also called on a host of renowned Australian artists to create an artistic response to Harvey’s Longest Wave. The Longest Wave Installation will feature at Queen Elizabeth Park, Coolangatta, from Friday 22 February.

THE SALT OF THE SURFING WORLD Just before the turn of the millennium it was Occy and Layne; two times in the late noughties it was Mick and Steph; now, it’s Parko and Steph.

Once again, the men’s and women’s surfing world champions call the Gold Coast home.

Throw current ASP junior world title holder Jack Freestone into the mix and it’s a clean sweep for Snapper Rocks Boardriders Club, an unprecedented competitive hat-trick in the surfing world.

WHAT: The Longest Wave Coastal Walk

The Kingswood experience is...

Rambunctious climactic bluesplosions of rocktabulous psychedelia!

WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 28 February and Friday 1 March, 9.30am (schools program); Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 March, 8.30am & 5pm (general public), Kirra Hill Community & Cultural Centre TICKETS: $10 (adult), $5 (child) bleachfestival.com.au

For Cooly kids Joel Parkinson and Stephanie Gilmore, their respective journeys to the 2012 ASP crown took on vastly different routes. Parko was taken all the way to the heaving reef of The Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore by his main rival Kelly Slater before the 31-year-old won the event in a dramatic finale, securing his first ever world title. Meanwhile, ‘Happy’ Gilmore sealed her fifth victory in six years in Biarritz, France with an event still in hand.

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 2 March, Coolangatta Hotel (with Violent Soho, The Medics, Woe & Flutter and Blonde Bear) How are surf culture and music intertwined do you think?

I have no idea, but I guess like any other culture there’s some form of music or sound that’s married to it.

Tell us about the band’s surfing prowess...

I don’t really know too much about the surf scene, but it seems the people in the scene are very passionate. To them it’s an art form. I’ve been talking to a young kid by the name of Dillon Nikolai – a young kid starting up his own line, Divine Bodyboards – about his passion for the scene. He reminds me a lot of us when we first started.

With these victories, the Gold Coast has once again become the beating heart of the surfing universe.

Riding the waves isn’t merely a pastime if you grow up on the Sunshine Strip; it’s a way of life and runs blood deep for many. And why wouldn’t it? The GC is a veritable playground for all things ocean.

Face east and you’ll find world-class breaks up and down the coastline. From Duranbah and Snapper Rocks through Currumbin Alley and Burleigh Point; Nobby Beach all the way to Narrowneck, The Spit and South Straddie. There is no shortage of point, beach and (artificial) reef breaks to keep surfers busy 365 days a year, so it’s no wonder our professional crop makes up the finest on the planet.

What’s your history with the Gold Coast?

We nearly didn’t make it to a show in Cooly one day – the three non-surfers, including myself, got swept out in a rip. These three legends who I remember well – Charlie, John and Frank – came up behind us with their long boards and saved the day. And that was that.

This art will tie in with The Longest Wave Coastal Walk, a stimulating guided tour of the area where Harvey’s ride took place. With Coolangatta surfing identities, artists and musicians assisting the storytelling, the history and folklore of one of the most colourful parts of the Gold Coast will be brought to life.

LOON LAKE Simon Nolan – guitar/vocals Why does your music channel the vibes of the beach?

We all like to surf so that probably finds itself seeping into our music. Sam has stated previously that three songs he really enjoyed writing happened directly after good surfs. There is something in that isn’t there?

Maybe if we surfed more there would be more hits!

How are surf and musical culture intertwined?

You only have to watch surf movies to see and hear how much the soundtrack plays a significant role.

The surf has long been iconically linked to music – take a band like The Beach Boys. Their sound is synonymous with surfing and I don’t think one of them even surfed [Ed’s note: Dennis Wilson surfed a bit].

What are the biggest positives from your second record Pocket Full Of Dreams?

I would have to say how supportive our fans have been. We worked hard on this album and the great feedback we’ve been getting from fans and media is a blessing. That’s priceless.

What’s your history with the Gold Coast?

Sunshine all around and amazing beaches.

Looking forward to playing this gig and experiencing more of Gold Coast.

The Diafrix experience is: A feel-good high-energy experience. We like to think that each time we play we’re having a party!

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 23 February, Bleach* Festival Hip Hop Party, Coolangatta Hotel (with Urthboy and Seven)

The focal point for the 2013 Bleach* Festival is The Longest Wave, a conceptual journey with themes drawn from the legendary Super Bank ride of Damon Harvey, which took the local surfer from Snapper Rocks north to Kirra in autumn 2002, his ride, just shy of 2km, regarded as one of the longest ever ridden in the ocean.

Long relegated to the annals of history, surf author Tim Baker and Festival Director Louise Bezzina have returned to the legend and worked together to add a whole new dimension to the tale.

The Longest Wave Historical Photographic Exhibition sees Baker and curator Michael Aird blend newspaper and library images, treasured family album memories and video interviews with Harvey, Joel Parkinson and more, all examining the history of the Super Bank area. This free art display runs from Saturday 23 February to Sunday 3 March at Kirra Hill Community & Cultural Centre.

How is the debut record coming along?

It’s coming along nicely; we’ve just finished recording the first single. We’ve written a bunch of new songs which we’re happy with and just need to keep working hard. I really hope we can have it out towards the end of this year.

What’s your history with the Gold Coast?

Sam lived there and returns most years to sign write the GC 600. He really loves surfing at South Straddie. We’ve all had our family fun park holidays there; it’s what you do as an Australian. I reckon it would be hard to top a day at Wet’n’Wild.

The Loon Lake experience is: A shitload of guitars.

WHEN & WHERE: Friday 22 February, Coolangatta Hotel (with Oh Mercy and Oceanics)

DIAFRIX MoMO – MC/vocals/producer Where have your summertime sounds stemmed from?

That was a cold winter, we couldn’t wait for summer.

But more so that was the mood we were in while working our LP so it channelled through the music.

44 • For more news/announcements go to themusic.com.au/news

Like any wave rolling through the Pacific, the Bleach* Festival unfortunately but inevitably has to conclude. The finale washing up on the Snapper Rocks’ shore comes in the way of the Last Wave, an evening event where music and cinema combine in spectacular fashion.

After earning his stripes as the heart and soul of much loved coastal roots collective Beautiful Girls, Mat McHugh is now standing on his own two feet.

Backed by the tight grooves of The Seperatista Sound System, the Sydney songwriter will be delivering raw and honest jams on stage, no doubt channel the surrounding beauty of the southerly Queensland tip and the ocean that he holds so dear.

Tell us about the band’s surfing prowess...

We all enjoy it a lot. I wouldn’t say we are rippers or chargers or anything, but it’s our favourite pastime.

We all try and surf every spare moment we have. I love the whole experience of it: the water, hanging out with mates and enjoying the outdoors. It’s healthy.

THE LONGEST WAVE

LAST WAVE

KINGSWOOD Fergus Linacre – vocals How do Kingswood tie in with summertime vibes?

We spent most of last year on the road in our wonderful van affectionately known as Conny, driving around the country listening to great music, and although we never pump our own tunes inside Conny (well maybe Justin would), I’m sure our music would be great for a drive along the coast.

Talk about the connection between music and the surf...

The surf and the beach towns always have good vibes. People are there to relax, be free and party.

What better nest is there for music to thrive?

Tell us about the band’s surfing prowess...

Mango is the only one of us who can surf. He is always up early and off to the

Following McHugh will be the world premiere launch of Spirit Of Akasha, a new film and soundtrack created to celebrate the iconic gamechanging surf film Morning Of The Earth. The new movie features local world-beaters like Stephanie Gilmore and Mick Fanning, and documents a time when perfection was gliding on a single fin. Relax and enjoy a 40-minute preview screening with musical accompaniment courtesy of filmmaker Andrew Kidman and The Windy Hills.

As well as toasting the concluding Bleach* Festival, the evening is also a celebration to mark the beginning of the Quiksilver Pro, with Novocastrian surf hero Matt Hoy lined-up to deliver The Hoy Show. The everentertaining Hoyo will be holding court, conducting interviews with your favourite surfers, musicians and some special guests that the big man has roped in.

So come together, celebrate Gold Coast wave culture and let’s make this one a night to remember!

WHAT: Bleach* Last Wave WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 3 March, The Quiksilver Pro Surfers Deck, Snapper Rocks TICKETS: $40+BF: bleachfestival.com.au

BLONDE BEAR

AISLINN SHARP launch means people can experience my new song in their own time from anywhere in the world. Also as an independent Australian artist, an online launch means my song and video are available to a global market. So yes – I think online launches are the way of the future.”

Paul and his brother Rhys. The urgency found within those soaring instrumental rock numbers still holds true a year on; sucking the oxygen out of your lungs one moment and soaring skyward the next. The guys are currently putting together a long-play follow-up, enjoying the additional strengths of being a four-piece.

Blonde Bear began as a sibling studio project, but the quality of songs called for the music to be heard. Paul Slater talks to Benny Doyle about turning two into four and digging in on a more human level.

“I believe it was a natural progression for the band,” Slater begins, talking about the Gold Coast group’s doubling in members. “People really responded to the EP and we wanted to be able to give our music a new dynamic. We’re essentially still a new and growing band so translating the atmosphere from the EP into a live setting is still somewhat difficult, but I believe we’ll continue growing and become the band we’ve always aspired to be.”

The EP Slater speaks of is their self-titled release of 2012, back when Blonde Bear was simply made up of

“Writing music to everyone’s strength and dynamics is fun and challenging at the same time,” Slater admits. “It’s great for me as well because I’m very difficult to satisfy musically so I always try to push the band further and strive to find the best way to express a story with our music. I think the main goal is more personal for me and the rest of the band [this time around] which is to write an album that we love and enjoy and hope that translates to other people as well.

“I’d love for our music to have this connection with the audience who can just close their eyes and forget about reality for 30 minutes and to really make people enjoy what we’re playing as much as we are.”

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 2 March, Bleach* Festival Rock N Roll Party, Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast

CHRIS SOUTHERN

For the video accompanying the song, Sharp had the privilege of working with renowned hip hop dance crew Runway DC. Not surprisingly, Sharp says the experience was one to savour.

“Just fantastic!” she enthuses of the experience.

“We were having so much fun on set between filming takes for my video. The guys were play Kung Fu fighting, and having dance battles. My favourite though was the hair whipping contest using a silhouette light on the stage wall.”

Local singer-songwriter Aislinn Sharp has eschewed traditional launch ideas for her new single and video, Alone (Bye, Bye), she explains to Tony McMahon.

“I think it’s quite natural and almost expected that an artist would organise a live music event to launch a new record,” says Sharp. “I’ve also arranged physical launches in the past. However, it seemed a little too indulgent asking people to come along at a set time and place to watch my four-an-a-half minute video, when they could just as easily do this at their own convenience. People are busy. But having an online

KOLORSOL the infectious bluesy stomp of Be Mine Tonight.

Robertson points to the song – which sees his verses dance effortlessly with female singer Ashleigh Slattery – as a good indicator of the songwriting style which comes naturally to the four-piece.

“I write very few songs. Maybe one or two a year.

The rest just don’t get finished. I probably have close to enough songs for another album after this one, but after that I’m not too sure. I do tend to obsess over the one song forever, but that’s what I like to do. I’d be surprised if I get to the end of my life and I’ve got ten albums under my belt.”

“I wasted a lot of time trying to put bands together,” says Southern. “It’s hard work trying to find the right people who are good enough to play the songs and willing to turn to up to rehearsal every week. It was holding me back to be honest, so in the end I took what I had (a bass player) and hired session musicians for the rest. Drummers are the hardest to find. The decent ones are usually in about five different bands so they’re stretched pretty thin. Going solo’s an expensive way of making a record, but at least it gets done properly.”

When it comes to playing live, though, Southern takes an approach that could be seen as slightly opposed to his deliberate and well thought out recording strategy.

“Our first round of shows we’re doing as a threepiece which means playing the songs a bit more stripped-back than the album, which I’m enjoying actually. I try and avoid doing too much slow ‘singersongwriter’ stuff. I think that gets a bit boring for an audience. We’ve a got a pretty upbeat set list.”

WHAT: The Only Show In Town (Joyhouse Records) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 21 February, Dowse Bar

SHELLEY SEGAL

It’s not often an artist will release two albums at the same time, but this is exactly what Melbourne singer-songwriter Shelley Segal is doing with An Atheist Album and Little March. An admiring Tony McMahon gets the lowdown.

“I make music in a lot of different styles,” explains Segal of the double release. “The two records themselves are very different. An Atheist Album is a live band recording with pop, folk, rock and reggae tracks. Little March (co-written with guitarist Adam Levy) has jazz, blues, folk, pop and country tunes. My first EP was folk-rock and I’ve co-written a drum and bass track with DJ Carl Cox. I felt that the double release really reflected my writing across

“To create a music video, I had to extend my songwriting skills, and look at my song in a new way.

This involved trying to visualise my music, and represent its meaning using physical elements. Alone... has an upbeat and energetic feel, so I wanted to step away from the piano and express myself through movement in the video. In a single word, this process was liberating.”

WHAT: Alone (Bye, Bye) (Independent)

Talking of doing things properly, it appears that Southern is something of a perfectionist, and this can be heard in his music, very much to its benefit.

Just don’t count on any triple albums anytime soon.

Folk rocker Chris Southern has done his time playing in bands. Now, discovers Tony McMahon, he’s released a new single, The Only Show In Town, from his forthcoming album.

Did Sharp find she had to look at her song in a new way once she decided to make a video? She says she did, but that it was a redemptive experience.

Who says chemistry can’t be found in the classifieds? Not Damien Robertson and his Kolorsol band mates. He speaks with Benny Doyle about human connection on the front and backline.

“We all came together through advertising in the local music classifieds in March 2012 and from our first jam everything fell into place,” Robertson recalls, talking about the local quartet’s lucky dip beginnings a year ago. “Since forming we’ve rehearsed every week and played regular gigs, even squeezing in a little tour.

We all get along amazingly well and make each other laugh so we do consider ourselves quite [fortunate].”

The chemistry is tangible in the band’s music, with a confidence permeating through jams like

Kolorsol’s follow up single, Until You Leave, is going to drop this week, tying in with their headline show at The Zoo later in the month. For punters, this is a great opportunity to get to know the band’s full musical swag, with a debut EP pencilled in to land in March.

It’s also just an excuse to get down and have some hip-shaking fun. “We’re always trying to engage the crowd, whether it’s by throwing ourselves around the stage, giving out free stuff or holding a dancing comp.”

You heard correctly – mother flippin’ dance offs!

“There is some serious hidden talent amongst our live music lovers!” Robertson exclaims. “The ‘Best Dancer Award’ continues to lure the inner Billy Elliot/Kevin Bacon out in everyone and we have decided to make it a tradition. [The third] Best Dancer Award takes place at our next gig at The Zoo. We pretty much do whatever it takes to get the crowd on our side and enjoying the show; it is hands down our number one priority.”

WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 27 February, The Zoo; Thursday 21 March, Ric’s

THE FAMILIARS a broad range of genres. It’ll hopefully make it easier for me to keep releasing varied material without creating an expectation for one style.”

we’re a local band. There’s a massive push for folk and blues/roots music [here] so it’s kinda fun and exciting to be doing something a bit different.”

Naturally, a release of two albums means the release of two singles. These are Saved, from An Atheist Album, and Stuck In The Memory from Little March. Segal explains the thinking behind each.

This is reflected in their latest single Start It Up, a tune that drifts and gradually builds, managing to contradict itself by being immediate while offering plenty of layers to delve within. A few years in the making, its original broken dance beat has matured along with the band to be fully-formed as the final product we’ve been left with.

“Because the albums contain different genres within themselves, it’s hard to choose one song from each that reflects the album. I chose Saved from An Atheist Album as the single because I think it’s the strongest and most critical song of the release. I think melodically it’s also the most accessible. Little March is less political in nature. The instrumentation is also very different, being mostly vocals and guitar. Half the tracks have a double bass and the title track features my dad on violin. I think it was hardest to choose a single for this album. Stuck In The Memory features the double bass and two guitar parts, but it’s still one of the slower tracks. I think it showcases both Adam and I as well as the focus on relationships and jazz influences that the album has.”

WHAT: An Atheist Album/Little March (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 24 February, X&Y Bar; Sunday 2 March, Tatts Hotel, Lismore

Byron Bay four-piece The Familiars are revving their engines and motoring up our way to help celebrate National SLAM day. “Drummer and sometimes vocalist” Michael Hardy chats with Benny Doyle about fresh songs, fresher tech and swimming against the current.

Using the peace and quiet of their northern New South Wales home to knuckle down and focus on their craft, The Familiars have discovered a sound which is anything but typical for their locale.

“To be honest, we’re kind of going against the flow here,” says the 22-year-old. “We have the potential to get a little vibrant and energetic on stage... we sometimes get funny looks when people realise

“I guess the vibe of the track was largely influenced by the space we recorded it in,” Hardy informs.

“We had access to this beautiful house in the back of Byron that had all this analogue recording gear which gave it a great authentic sound. It was pretty late in the evening when we started rearranging the sections and it just sort of fell into shape.”

And with a new toy to tinker with, Hardy excitedly envisages this more daring path to pave out further in the future.

“Definitely!” he exclaims. “Yes, we recently added one of the analogue Moog synths to our collection. Along with some basic drum machines that we’ve added in as well, we’re trying to push our sound further.”

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 23 February, The Zoo; Friday 1 March, The Brewery, Byron Bay; Friday 8, Elsewhere, Gold Coast

To check out the mags online go to themusic.com.au/mags • 45

PERSONAL BEST RECORDS

LOVING DEATH

KAMIKAZE CREW

Hard rock is going to get served up in thick doses when The Mercy Beat hit their Brisbane locale over the head with new cut Sex Funeral. The guys are energised following sessions in the studio with Shihad’s Tom Larkin, so get a taste of their upcoming sophomore release by heading to Beetle Bar, Saturday 30 March.

Skypilot have quickly made a mark on the local scene, with their melodic arena-built rock captured on a stellar 2012 EP that the quartet are looking to following up later this year. Before they do that though they’ll be embarking on a bit of minitour, playing Beetle Bar, Friday 22 February, with Galapagos and War On Sara, before hitting Solbar, Maroochydore, Friday 8 March, and The Loft, Gold Coast, Friday 22, with local supports at both shows.

THREAT IN THE NEST

JOHANN BEARDRAVEN FROM THE BEARDS Best record you stole from your folks’ collection?

Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler. I just loved the way all the women on the front cover are in awe of this great bearded man. He’s clearly dominating the beardless dealer. Other kids hid porn under their mattress – I hid Kenny Rogers.

First record you bought?

ZZ Top’s Greatest Hits. I was just blown away by those beards. They looked so damn good.

I’ve actually never listened to it – I just spent the whole time staring into those immaculate beards. I later heard that ZZ Top are quite the accomplished rock band. How about that.

Record you put on when you’re really miserable?

Wrath by Lamb Of God always cheers me up. Not only do those boys have some serious beards, but I can never understand what Randy Blythe is saying so I just assume that he’s ranting about how good beards are. Speaking of Randy, I hear he’s on trial in the Czech Republic for not having as good a beard as the rest of the band.

Record you put on when you bring someone home?

Dog House Music by Seasick Steve. What a man, what a beard. I feel like you can really feel his beard through the production on this album. If that doesn’t get you in the mood, nothing will, as far as I’m aware.

The big Counting Crows show next month just got a bit bigger with news that Jackson McLaren and The Triple Threat will be bringing their polished brand of rock up north. Catch the two groups when they team up on Wednesday 27 March, QPAC Concert Hall. Head to Live Nation now to pick up your ticket, with prices starting from $102+BF.

THAT OLD CHARMER Ultra-talented Irish multi-instrumentalist Paul Brady is heading back to Australia, bringing an unplugged show to audiences with the promise of an intimate and captivating experience that will highlight his immense skill on everything from guitar and keyboard to bouzouki and mandolin. This is a rare opportunity to witness this celebrated performer up close and personal, so don’t miss out when Brady plays The Irish Club, Thursday 28 March.

MIX IT UP A couple of much-loved Brisbane musicians are coming together at The Loft’s Mixed Up Sunday Club with Tyrone Noonan (George) and Cameron Gould (Propaganda Klann) playing originals, covers and then spinning some tunes – their mixtape if you will. Discovering new music with a tasty drink in your hand... um, yep, absolutely. It’s happening this Sunday, 24 February, as you probably guessed.

WHAT A WEB THEY WEAVE

TRIBUTE NIGHT

THE SOUNDS OF TOMORROW TODAY Future folk and neo soul artist Ngaiire is dropping her highly anticipated debut album Lamentations later this year, but before the Sydneysider gives us the long-player she’ll be whetting our appetites with first single Dirty Hercules, full of dramatic insight into the darkness of the human condition. Get swept away with this precocious new talent when Ngaiire visits our region for a select run of shows – catch her Friday 12 April, The Joynt; Saturday 13, Full Moon Party, Noosa; and Sunday 14, Buddha Bar, Byron Bay.

HELL AWAITS Progressive and symphonic metal collide at The Tempo Hotel, Friday 1 March. Catch Prophets Of War, Zombie Apocalypse Theory, Dark Symphonica and Seven Sermons going hell for leather on this bumper bill. Doors are at 7pm and it’s free entry all night.

FRANKIE SAYS ROCK Rock’n’roll icons Brian Mannix (Uncanny X-Men), Scott Carne (Kids In The Kitchen) and Dale Ryder (Boom Crash Opera) are joining forces to deliver ‘Absolutely 80s Show’, playing a whole bunch of hits from their respective careers together onstage! Fell like a big hard slap of nostalgia? Then get along to Lonestar Tavern on Friday 22 March or Saturday 23 for an afternoon show with proceeds going towards Queensland flood relief.

TRIBUTE NIGHT

ALL YOU NEED IS THE BEATLES Band: Grand Atlantic

Favourite Beatles album? Depends on my mood definitely. I do really like Revolver though...

What songs will you be tackling on the night? Spoiler alert! I don’t think I’m gonna answer this one.

ALL YOU NEED IS THE BEATLES Band: Rattlehand Member/role: Josh Shelton – singer Favourite Beatle? George Harrison Favourite Beatles album? Revolver What songs will you be tackling on the night? One After 909, Yer Blues, Hey Bulldog, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Blackbird.

Why do you think this band is so globally revered?

With a group like The Beatles you could bang on about all the peripheral reasons as to why, however the only reason worth talking about is the quality of the music, which in this case is terrific.

Do you have any reservations about tackling such an iconic canon?

Not really. I’ve been listening to this music long enough to know how it goes and in this case at least one of the songs will be arranged differently to the original Beatles version.

Will there be any dressing up or rehearsed stage moves involved?

We’ve been focusing on getting the music to sound good, and that’s really what folks should come to the show for, not to mention that the proceeds from the event are donated to Medicines Sans Frontiers.

Rattlehand play All You Need Is The Beatles Tribute Night at The Zoo on Friday 22 February.

46 • For more news/announcements go to themusic.com.au/news

SAVE LIVE AUSTRALIAN MUSIC! Band: My Fiction Member answering/role: Jimmi Laubscher – guitar Why did you guys decide to get behind SLAM Day? We believe in live music, we can’t live without it! SLAM stand up for us musicians that are out to play a rockin’ show and protect us against the punters that lead a more violent existence other than just having a love-filled, good time.

Do you think that the live music scene gets enough government support in QLD? I think we should expect more from a government as strong as ours. I admit it must be hard to consider these sort of things during the stubborn popularity contest that is Australian politics, but I’m sure that when the smoke clears from the factories, overpopulation and politicians arses they’ll realise that live music is an incredibly effective way to bring people together.

Do you think that it’s also up to the punters to vote with their feet and get behind our local scene?

Most definitely, and well put! The only support I think a musician would ever need is a full room of eager listeners to bounce/dance/groove the night away. So if anyone wants to support their local artists, that’s the best way to do it!

Favourite Beatle? This is a hard one to answer, because they were like a fourheaded monster. I’ll settle on John.

The Beards play Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast on Saturday 23 February and Solbar, Maroochydore on Sunday 24 February.

Taking their cues from more traditional jazz styles and giving it a 21st century makeover, Trichotomy tie the sounds of keys, bass and percussion together to create individual and arresting songs that are entirely their own. Fourteen years into their career and still continually evolving, you can catch the trio live at the Judith Wright Centre, Saturday 9 March. The two-hour performance begins at 7.30pm, with tickets available through the venue website for $20+BF.

They’ve played with everyone from Powderfinger to Regurgitator and Frenzal Rhomb, have cut a record with acclaimed producer Magoo and also provide live entertainment at Quiksilver functions on the coast and in the mountains. Now, Sunshine Coast’s Grandmas Basement are looking to celebrate their 21st birthday with a big bash at Kings Beach Tavern, Caloundra, Saturday 9 March. There’s heaps of supports on the night, including Astroboi, Drawcard, Phantom Lighter Thieves and Spent Rent, so grab a ticket now (including CD! ) from Oxtix for $10+BF.

Member/role: Phil Usher – vocals/guitar

Last thing you bought/downloaded?

The Beards’ Having A Beard Is The New Not Having A Beard. We needed a boost in sales so I decided to do my bit. Plus it’s the most beard-related album I’ve ever heard.

THEY’RE TRICKY TRICKY

HIDING DOWNSTAIRS

Spurred on by exorcising some relationship demons, The Arachnids latest single Daydreaming screams out to the world, ‘Fuck you, I’m sick of taking your shit!’ But don’t think this is done with loud guitars and screaming vocals, no sir, this is some booty shaking goodness right here with a positive message delivered over nice, sexy grooves. The Brisbane quartet will be busting out their new single and plenty of other party jams when they perform at Trainspotters, Grand Central Hotel, on Saturday 23 March.

Most surprising record in your collection?

Peaches’ Fatherfucker. She’s underrated as a bearded artist. Seriously, have a look at that beard. It’s full on.

SLAM DAY

Why do you think this band is so globally revered?

The ‘60s was an amazing time for music. Rock’n’roll was still fairly young and it seemed like there was an open palette, with so much room for experimentation and so many doors unopened at the time. The Beatles were one of the bands at the forefront of this experimentation. They didn’t only experiment, they knew how to write damn catchy tunes that have managed to stand the test of time. Plus they had almost unlimited time to do as they wished in the latter part of their career. Let’s not forget the mind-altering drugs as well...

Do you have any reservations about tackling such an iconic canon?

Not really. We haven’t thought about that, but I must say that it is hard to re-imagine the songs and present them in a different way than the original. The Beatles’ versions are so well-produced and arranged. Having said that, it’s a hell of a lot easier to play the songs live rather than to be brave enough to record a cover version. I’ve heard so many try and fail dismally with this band. People who come to these shows really want to hear the songs done in a faithful manner anyway I guess...

Will there be any dressing up or rehearsed stage moves involved?

We’ll be focusing our energy on putting on a rock’n’roll show. Once the first note is struck, who knows what will happen from there.

Grand Atlantic play All You Need Is The Beatles Tribute Night at The Zoo on Friday 22 February.

You tour a fair bit, how does our scene and infrastructure stack up against other states?

It’s actually surprisingly similar I think.

Although the great thing about touring a new city is that it’s a little like your first show in Brisbane... you hope people like the show enough to want you back for more! So we have just got in the habit of giving it all we got every venue we play – old or new and in any state that’ll have us. It works the same everywhere though, if you want people to have a good time to your music you’ve got to work at it to make it the best it can be.

What’s in the pipeline for My Fiction for the rest of 2013?

Writing has come quite easy for us given the subsequent adventures and successes of our last album release. We’re really lucky to be back in the ring with our dear friends Magoo and Jeff Lovejoy to get our latest body of work trained, ripped and ready. We’re terribly excited about how the album is shaping up, and it ain’t even been mixed yet! Final tracking and mixing dates are in March/April, then it’ll be all systems go for another bout of touring around our fabulous little island, USA and hopefully Europe if they’ll have us.

Will be sure to keep y’all up to date though!

My Fiction support SLAM Day at The Zoo on Saturday 23 February.

ON TIME OFF STEREO I See Seaweed THE DRONES You’re Nothing ICEAGE Push The Sky Away NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS Detroit DENIZ TEK Django Unchained OST VARIOUS Honeys PISSED JEANS Forever Changes LOVE Singles Going Steady BUZZCOCKS Misadventures SUCH GOLD Bronx IV THE BRONX

HAVE YOU HEARD

EXPERIENCE THE SPIN CYCLE

NEXT STATION: GUITAR NOISE

Ska punk energisers Alla Spina don’t seem to stop touring, which is probably why they’re always a hell of a good time live on stage. The Brisbane five-piece have a bunch of shows lined up over the next few weeks, beginning with some SLAM Day action over at Beetle Bar, Saturday 23 February to tie in with the launch of their new hip hop-tinged single, No Rest For The Wicked. Following that they’ll play The Prince of Wales Hotel, Friday 8 March and The Irish Club, Toowoomba, Friday 15.

Get amongst the bright lights of the CBD with a big Saturday night of rock’n’roll this weekend at Grand Central Hotel for their weekly Trainspotters night. The venue plays host a trio of acts in the way of Gold Coasters The Ottomans, Sunny Dread and the Zionites and Brisbane indie four-piece Say Do Now. It’s free, and you know it’s going to be fun – get involved.

EXTENDED PLAY-TIME

SUNDAY FUNDAY It’s all happening this Sunday, 24 February at Mustang Bar’s weekly Rock’n’Roll BBQ. Tearing up the venue from 2pm will be the likes of Barbituates, White Girl, The Madisons and Tiny Migrants, with tasty treats on the grill and no cover charge. Forget your Soundwave hangover; kick on and create a world of hurt come Monday!

BECKON THE DEAD Name of EP: The Dead Are Coming

CALL IN THE RIOT VAN

EMERSON SNOWE How did you get together?

Jarrod M. Mahon (songwriter): Emerson Snowe is my solo project, as for the the live band I have made music with Harrison and I had been friends with James for a while, Adrian is my housemate so it just seemed like the right people I wanted to play my music with.

Sum up your musical sound in four words.

Electronic, folk, sexual, emotional.

If you could support any band in the world – past or present – who would it be?

Sufjan Stevens or a Dev Hynes project.

You’re being sent into space and there’s only room to bring one album – which would it be?

Come On Feel The Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens or Very Best Of Burt Bacharach.

Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career?

I’m not sure, I can tell you what it will be, though; sharing a bucket of chicken with the Madden brothers.

Why should people come and see your band?

A lot of people seem to be surprised with my live shows, I don’t think many people take me seriously as a person until they actually hear the songs I have and the way I perform them.

Emerson Snowe play Alhambra Lounge (supporting Collarbones and Clubfeet) on Thursday 21 February.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL Head along to Dowse Bar for a sweet Sunday session this week as Liam Bryant & The Handsome Devils will be playing a free concert from 4pm.

Bryant has traded in his one-man band instruments, ‘Stompy’ (stompbox) and ‘Tamby’ (tambourine), for some strapping young players, so get along to hear some solid rock tunes, with support looked after by Golden Age Of Ballooning and Vincent Kemp.

Label: Looking to be signed…

Sydney-via-Perth political punks The Spitfires will no doubt be biting the hand that feeds when they make their way north to deliver their storming new long-player, Songs From The Debt Generation. Get deep in the pit when the two-piece juggernaut locks in and goes bat shit crazy at Ric’s, Friday 1 March.

How many tracks: Five Tell us a little bit about the release: We started writing some new, heavier tracks and jumped in the studio with Andy Marsh to record in April of last year. It’s heavier than anything we’ve written before and we’re pretty stoked on the outcome.

WHAT A WEB THEY WEAVE Spurred on by exorcising some relationship demons, The Arachnids latest single Daydreaming screams out to the world, ‘Fuck you, I’m sick of taking your shit!’ But don’t think this is done with loud guitars and screaming vocals, no sir, this is some booty shaking goodness right here with a positive message delivered over nice, sexy grooves. The Brisbane quartet will be busting out their new single and plenty of other party jams when they perform at Trainspotters, Grand Central Hotel, on Saturday 23 March.

What do you have planned for the launch?

We’re playing at Crowbar on Friday 22nd alongside In The Shadows, This Means War, Bound for Ruin and Headwound The Pony, and donating all profits from the show to the Muller Family to help fund medical expenses for their little girl who is fighting Leukemia.

What’s on the horizon for the band?

Once the EP has launched, we’re planning to do some local shows before launching into the preparation for our national tour with the hopes to tour internationally soon after.

THE SENSITIVE SOUL WITHIN With punters still talking about his last show at the venue, Daniel Kuhle, that big bushy beard you know from local trio Ironside, is returning to The Hideaway for another night of holding court. Get ready for an impassioned performance that shines a light on the troubadour’s softer side, with solo numbers, choice covers and reinterpretations the order of the evening.

Support for the gig, happening Friday 15 March, will come from The Steady As She Goes in full-band mode.

THE BIG O To tie in with university O-week celebrations happening right around the country, Westfield Garden City are putting on OMG, a mini-festival with some hot DJ talent manning the decks throughout the evening. The free event kicks off at 3pm, Thursday 21 February, with main stage entertainment featuring DJ Tenzin, Rave Radio, DJ Rhythm, Silver Sneakerz; meanwhile, the Red Bull Silent Disco will be hosted by Yahn, Nado, Teen Girls DJs and Greaves. There’ll be giveaways, mechanical surfboards, ice-cream and a whole bunch of other fun shiz so head on down!

DARK AND STORMY Going against the grain of their Gold Coast home, punk overlords The Wrath will be raising hell with In Ashes We Lie, The Final Fall and Always Yesterday in a big bill of badness at Crowbar, Friday 15 March.

Tickets can be picked up on the door for $10.

Beckon The Dead launch The Dead Are Coming EP (Independent) at Crowbar on Friday 22 February.

THEY’RE TRICKY TRICKY Taking their cues from more traditional jazz styles and giving it a 21st century makeover, Trichotomy tie the sounds of keys, bass and percussion together to create individual and arresting songs that are entirely their own.

Fourteen years into their career and still continually evolving, you can catch the trio live at the Judith Wright Centre, Saturday 9 March. The two-hour performance begins at 7.30pm, with tickets available through the venue website for $20+BF.

LOW FRONT APPROACHING

Someone Else is the lush new single from sexy funk seven-piece Stormchasers, a local crew who have been generating plenty of positive buzz thanks to their infectious tunes and sheer dominance on the stage. After wowing audiences at Falls Festival over New Year’s, the band are riding a legitimate buzz so take a look for yourself when they play Saturday 16 March, Solbar, Maroochydore with Kindread and Thursday 21, The Zoo with The Mornings, Golden Sound and Matthew Barker.

LOVING DEATH Hard rock is going to get served up in thick doses when The Mercy Beat hit their Brisbane locale over the head with new cut Sex Funeral. Drawing comparisons to everyone from The Jesus Lizard to Foo Fighters, the guys are energised following sessions in the studio with Shihad’s Tom Larkin, so get a taste of their upcoming sophomore release by heading to Beetle Bar, Saturday 30 March.

For more news/announcements go to themusic.com.au/news • 47

TOUR GUIDE PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED: Tuesday 9 April, Eatons Hill Hotel

INTERNATIONAL FATHER JOHN MISTY: The Zoo Feb 20 MY BLOODY VALENTINE: The Tivoli Feb 20 GLENN FREY: BCEC Feb 21 ANTHRAX, FOZZY, THIS IS HELL: The Hi-Fi Feb 21 FLOSSTRADAMUS: Sunday Safari Feb 17, Oh Hello! Feb 22 PUSCIFER: The Tivoli Feb 22 LUNICE, BLAWAN: Coniston Lane Feb 22 BLINK-182: The Marquee, RNA Showgrounds Feb 22 EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN: The Tivoli Feb 23 FLOGGING MOLLY, THE LAWRENCE ARMS, LUCERO: The Tivoli Feb 26 SLAUGHTERHOUSE, SCHOOLBOY Q: The Arena Feb 27 ALL TIME LOW, POLAR BEAR CLUB: RNA Showgrounds Feb 27 STONE ROSES: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 1 TUBA SKINNY: Woombye Pub Mar 1, Black Bear Lodge Mar 3 ARLO GUTHRIE: Judith Wright Centre Mar 2, Star Court Theatre, Mar 3, Twin Towns Mar 5 THE WEDDING PRESENT: The Zoo Mar 2 GOLD PANDA: Alhambra Lounge Mar 3 CAT POWER: The Tivoli Mar 5 BLOC PARTY: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 5 TITLE FIGHT: YAC Mar 6, Sun Distortion Mar 7, Crowbar Mar 8 MXPX: The Zoo Mar 6 RITA ORA, DJ FRESH: The Tivoli Mar 6 SAVAGE SKULLS: Coniston Lane Mar 7 RONAN KEATING, BRIAN MCFADDEN: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 7 WILD NOTHING: Alhambra Mar 7 NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE: BEC Mar 7 THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION: The Zoo Mar 7, The Northern Mar 8 BOB MOULD: The Zoo Mar 8 THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The Hi-Fi Mar 8, Coolangatta Hotel Mar 9 JULIO BASHMORE: The Met Mar 9 PURITY RING: The Zoo Mar 10 KISS, MOTLEY CRUE, THIN LIZZY: BEC Mar 12 RICKIE LEE JONES: Old Museum Mar 13 DINOSAUR JR, REDD KROSS The Hi-Fi Mar 14, Coolangatta Hotel Mar 15 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND: BEC Mar 14, 16 OPETH, KATATONIA: The Tivoli Mar 16 THIS WILL DESTROY YOU: The Zoo Mar 19 ZZ TOP: Southport RSL Mar 19 GUNS N’ ROSES, ZZ TOP: BEC Mar 20 TIM HECKER, POLE: IMA Gallery Mar 21 CHRIS SMITHER: South Leagues Club Mar 21, Woombye Hotel, Mar 22 MUTEMATH: The Hi-Fi Mar 23 THE JACKSONS: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 24 ROBERT CRAY, TAJ MAHAL, SHUGGIE

OTIS: The Tivoli Mar 26 JOAN ARMATRADING: The Tivoli Mar 27 WANDA JACKSON: Old Museum Mar 27 JAKE SHIMABUKURO: Brisbane Powerhouse Mar 27 DAMIEN DEMPSEY: Old Museum Mar 28 THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA: The Tivoli Mar 28 JON ANDERSON: Brisbane Powerhouse Mar 28 SANTANA, STEVE MILLER BAND: BEC Mar 28 ROGER HODGSON: The Tivoli Mar 30 THE LUMINEERS: The Hi-Fi Mar 30 RODRIGUEZ: The Tivoli Apr 1 NEWTON FAULKNER: The Tivoli Apr 2 BIRDY: The Tivoli Apr 3 (AA) SOJA: The Zoo Apr 3 PASSENGER: Conservatorium Theatre Apr 3 THE DARKNESS, JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS: Brisbane Riverstage Apr 4 BLACK BREATH: Crowbar Apr 5 PENNYWISE: The Tivoli Apr 6, Coolangatta Hotel, Apr 7 CHRIS ISAAK: Caloundra Events Centre Apr 7 THE SCRIPT: BEC Apr 9 PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED: Eatons Hill Hotel Apr 9 MIDGE URE: Kedron Wavell Services Club Apr 18 BUZZCOCKS: The Zoo Apr 20 MICK TAYLOR: The Hi-Fi Apr 23, Coolangatta Hotel Apr 24 BRYAN ADAMS: BEC Apr 27 FIREWIND: Beetle Bar Apr 28 BLACK SABBATH: BEC Apr 25 OTEP: The Hi-Fi Apr 27 DEATHSTARS: The Zoo May 1 NORMA JEAN: The Hi-Fi May 2 FRIGHTENED RABBIT: The Zoo May 2 ADRIAN EDMONSON & THE BAD SHEPHERDS: The Zoo May 5 TOOL: BEC May 6 THE BRONX: The Hi-Fi May 7 THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS: The Zoo May 8 FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND: The Rev May 8, Surfers Paradise Beer Garden May 9 THE KOOKS: The Tivoli May 8 MATT & KIM: The Zoo May 9 EXAMPLE: The Tivoli May 9 CRADLE OF FILTH: The Hi-Fi May 9 TENACIOUS D: BCEC May 10 (AA) THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM: The Tivoli May 10 DEFTONES, LETLIVE: The Tivoli May 14 LOCAL NATIVES: The Zoo May 19 THE GHOST INSIDE, EMMURE: The Hi-Fi Jun 1 (18+), Jun 2 (U18)

NATIONAL ALEXANDER GOW: Southside Tea Room Feb 21 NEIL FINN & PAUL KELLY: BCEC Feb 26, 27 FULL TOTE ODDS: The Arena Feb 27 TIM ROGERS AND THE BAMBOOS: QPAC Feb 28 D AT SEA: Kill The Music Mar 7 (5pm), X&Y Bar Mar 7 (evening) NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 8 DENIZ TEK, LEADFINGER: Lismore Bowling Club Mar 8, Beetle Bar Mar 9 THE ANGELS (Dave Gleeson): Acacia Ridge Hotel Mar 14, Eatons Hill Hotel Mar 15, Southport RSL Mar 16 GRINSPOON: The Tivoli Mar 15, Coolangatta Hotel Apr 21 THE MARK OF CAIN: Coolangatta Hotel Mar 21, The Hi-Fi Mar 22

48 • To check out the mags online go to themusic.com.au/mags

Father John Misty, Oh Mercy: The Zoo

PRESENTS FATHER JOHN MISTY: The Zoo Feb 20 BLEACH* FESTIVAL: Gold Coast Feb 22-Mar 3 EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN: The Tivoli Feb 23 NEIL FINN & PAUL KELLY: Brisbane Convention Centre Feb 27 GUNG HO: Black Bear Lodge Feb 28 THE STONE ROSES: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 1 FUTURE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013: Doomben Racecourse Mar 2 CAT POWER: The Tivoli Mar 5 BLOC PARTY: Brisbane Riverstage Mar 5 THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION: The Zoo Mar 7 DINOSAUR JR: The Hi-Fi Mar 14, Coolangatta Hotel Mar 15 GRINSPOON: The Tivoli Mar 15, Coolangatta Hotel Apr 21 THIS WILL DESTROY YOU: The Zoo Mar 19 THE MARK OF CAIN: The Hi-Fi Mar 21 PVT: The Zoo Mar 22 JOAN ARMATRADING: The Tivoli Mar 27 WANDA JACKSON: Old Museum Mar 27 JAKE SHIMABUKURO: Brisbane Powerhouse Mar 27 BLUESFEST 2013: Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm Mar 28-Apr 1 BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA: The Tivoli Mar 28 JON ANDERSON: Brisbane Powerhouse Mar 28 ROGER HODGSON: The Tivoli Mar 30 THE LUMINEERS: The Hi-Fi Mar 30 STRANGE TALK: Alhambra Lounge Mar 30 RODRIGUEZ: The Tivoli Apr 1

THU 21 FEBRUARY 2013 Main Street Brats, Edward Guglielmino, Frail Marys: 633 Ann Shannon Noll: Acacia Ridge Hotel Joanne Shaw Taylor: Black Bear Lodge Rod Christensen Jazz & Latin Duo: Cafe Lemonde, Noosa Chris Southern: Dowse Bar (Iceworks) Marley Strecklebruck, Sam Cahill, Chris Miller: Elsewhere, Gold Coast Oh What A Night: Empire Theatre, Toowoomba Jeff Carter: Hamilton Hotel Jabba: Irish Murphy’s Pete Murray : Lismore Workers Club John Wilkenson: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central Ballad Boy: Loving Hut Steve & Mitch: Mick O’Malley’s Timmy Trumpet, Chris Coast: Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast Glenn Frey, Troy CassarDaley: QPAC Concert Hall Alexander Gow: Southside Tea Room The Flangipanis, The Effects Of Boredom, Malibu Stacey: Beetle Bar No Agendas: The Boundary Hotel

The Lazy Valentines: Albany Creek Tavern Mac Miller, + Special Guests: Arena Pete Murray , Nathan Kaye: Armidale Ex Services Club Louis Flores, Spl, Hypnotech, Mr Rogers, TranceduceR, Tekka, Blunt Instrument, Td Shagga, Duos, Manesh Magan, Leon Farrel, Malleate: Barsoma Zoe K & The Shadow Cats: Brisbane Jazz Club The Russel Family: Brisbane Jazz Club Lunice, Blawan, + Guests: Coniston Lane Bleach* Festival Opening Party: Oh Mercy, Loon Lake, Oceanics: Coolangatta Hotel Wayfare, Nick Muir: Coolangatta Sands Hotel Beckon The Dead: Crowbar Carrie & The Cut Snakes, Desert Blues Cartel: Dowse Bar (Iceworks) David Bentley Duo: Ecco Bar Clubfeet, The Belligerents, Ray Antonelli, Audun: Elsewhere, Gold Coast Peter Cupples: Gazebo Restaurant, Hotel Urban Brooksy & Co: Hamilton Hotel B-Rad: Irish Murphy’s Le Breeze: Lambert’s Restaurant Seductive Soul, Abba Re-Bjorn: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central Mark Lockyer & Daniel Gowen, Strings For Ammo: Mick O’Malley’s Felicity Lawless: Post Office Square

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: Wednesday 20 February, The Hi-Fi

BEN HOWARD: The Hi-Fi Apr 5 THE SNOWDROPPERS: The Zoo Apr 12 BOB EVANS: The Zoo Apr 13 HUNGRY KIDS OF HUNGARY: The Hi-Fi Apr 19, Alhambra Apr 21 (U18) TEGAN AND SARA: The Tivoli Apr 30 HAPPY MONDAYS: The Tivoli May 3 GROOVIN’ THE MOO: Townsville Cricket Grounds May 5 CAXTON STREET SEAFOOD & WINE FESTIVAL: Caxton St, May 5 THE KOOKS: The Tivoli May 8 MATT & KIM: The Zoo May 9 SOMETHING FOR KATE: The Hi-Fi May 18

WED 20 FEBRUARY 2013 DJ Gurps: 633 Ann Radio Club Band: Barsoma Daisie May, Some Jerks, The Gonzo Show: Black Bear Lodge The Company: Brisbane Powerhouse

Locky: Irish Murphy’s Strings For Ammo: Mick O’Malley’s DJ Redbeard, Subsea, Errol Hoffman: Ric’s Mark Sheils: Royal George Mojo Webb: The Joynt Open Mic: The Loft, Gold Coast Open Mic, Cass Mitchell: The Music Kafe Jesse Mann, Josh Elton, The Deep End, Georgia & Sally With The Heart Breakers: The Tempo Hotel My Bloody Valentine: The Tivoli

Anthrax, Fozzy, This Is Hell: The Hi-Fi Lyall Maloney: The Joynt The Fire, Barrellfish, One Horse Town, Cooper Music: The Music Kafe Andrew Hunt, Triplickit: The Tempo Hotel The Royales, The Mistaeks, Hello Hokkaido: The Zoo Kristin Beradi, James Sherlock, Jam Sessions: Turnaround Jazz Club Silver Sneakerz, DJ Rhythm, Rave Radio, Dj Tenzin: Westfield - Garden City

FRI 22 FEBRUARY 2013 Oscar, Swet, MC Xy: 633 Ann

Forever The Optimist, The United States Of Oz, DJ Valdis, DJ Strex: Ric’s Blink-182, The Vandals, Sharks: RNA Showgrounds Bo Jenkins: Royal Mail Hotel Brodie Graham, + Special Guests: Solbar, Maroochydore The Roshambos: Solbar, Maroochydore A Little Province: Southport Sharks, Gold Coast Skypilot, War On Sarah, Galapagos: Beetle Bar Alter Egos, Mustang Duo: The Elephant Arms Bullet For My Valentine, Cancer Bats, Miss May I: The Hi-Fi The Ten Fours, The Kramers: The Hideaway Bullhorn: The Joynt Jimmy The Saint And The Sinners, Cherrywood, Karl S Williams: The Loft, Gold Coast

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LE PARTY SOUL WITH DJ REDBEARD FEATURING SUBSEA (10:30PM) + ERROL HOFFMAN (9:30PM) THURSDAY 21ST FEBRUARY

SLOW RIOTS (9:30PM) + DAVE’S PAWN SHOP (8:45PM) + LOVE HATE REBELLION (8PM) + DJ VALDIS FRIDAY 22ND FEBRUARY

DOWNSTAIRS - FOREVER THE OPTIMIST (9PM) + THE UNITED STATES OF OZ (8PM) + DJ VALDIS UPSTAIRS – DJ RYAN – 8PM–5AM SATURDAY 23RD FEBRUARY

DOWNSTAIRS – TIMBER BONES (9PM) + SNEAKY PICNIC GIRLS (8PM) + DJ VALDIS UPSTAIRS – DJ CUTTS – 8PM–5AM SUNDAY 24TH FEBRUARY

BACKYARD – RIC’S BACKYARD BBQ BLOC PARTY FROM 2PM FEATURING TIM & JEZ INSIDE – SABRINA LAWRIE (9:30PM) + NEW JACK RUBY’S (8:30PM) MONDAY 25TH FEBRUARY

RACHEL BY THE STREAM (9:30PM) + SPECIAL GUESTS (8:30PM) TUESDAY 26TH FEBRUARY

STEPHEN BRANDON (PLAYING 2 X 45MIN SETS FROM 8:30PM)

FREE LIVE MUSIC AND INDIE DJS

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WWW.RICSBAR.COM.AU 49

GIG OF THE WEEK

Oh Mercy

BLEACH* FESTIVAL OPENING PARTY FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY, COOLANGATTA HOTEL We’re heading down the highway for this week’s feature gig, getting away from the sold out Soundwave behemoth and its plethora of sideshows for something a bit earthier and connected to the land. On Friday night at Coolangatta Hotel on the GC the opening party for the 2013 Bleach* Festival kicks off, officially opening what promises to be one hell of a cultural shindig from both a musical and surfing angle. On the night you’ll hear live music from Oh Mercy, pictured, Loon Lake and Oceanics – three hot Aussie bands at the top of their respective games and all fanging to get this ten-day party started. Hit this massive night of music and then check out what else is happening at Bleach* Festival between then and Sunday 2 March at www.bleachfestival.com.au.

Collins Class, Josh Gambles, Yoke Fellows: The Music Kafe Soula, Motorway Ends, Kodiak Empire, Penny Rides Shotgun, Disparity, Balloons Kill Babies: The Tempo Hotel Puscifer: The Tivoli Boss Fight, D-Wizz 2.0, Green Nose, Tuberz McGee: The Waiting Room All You Need Is Beatles Tribute Night: Drawn From Bees, Grand Atlantic, Rattlehand, The Slow Push , Stormchasers, Little Odessa: The Zoo

SAT 23 FEBRUARY 2013

SUPPORT A NATIONAL SLAM DAY GIG Deux, Cutloose, Roman: 633 Ann Vote For Pedro: Albany Creek Tavern Jason Haskell, Jay Berry, Jason Morley: Barsoma Sheppard, Meredith: Black Bear Lodge Andy & Carl: Breakfast Creek Hotel

Hanna Rosa , Helen Smith: Brisbane Powerhouse Chicks On Speed DJ Set: Brisbane Powerhouse Bleach* Festival Hip Hop Party: Urthboy, Diafrix, Jimblah, Seven: Coolangatta Hotel Mohini Cox, Amos: Coolangatta Sands Hotel Quiet Steps , Make More, Capeweather, Wallow: Crowbar Swick, Grivs, Giv: Elsewhere, Gold Coast The Ottomans, Sunny Dread & The Zionites, Say Do Now: Grand Central Hotel Stewart Fairhurst , Benjam: Hamilton Hotel Jabba, Motion: Irish Murphy’s Archie Rye Duo: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central Jetstream, Johnny Jump Up, Ger Fennelly: Mick O’malley’s - Brisbane The Beards, + Special Guests: Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast

Timber Bones, Sneaky Subway Girls, DJ Valdis, DJ Cutts: Ric’s Soundwave: Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Blink-182, Kyuss Lives, Linkin Park + More: RNA Showgrounds Cherrywood, Rattlehand, Sue Ray , Mayhem County Boys, + More: Royal Mail Hotel One Dread: Solbar, Maroochydore The Lamplights, Nadia Sunde, Kingfisha, Fairchild Republic, The Vernons, Alone With Wolves, Lucas Proudfoot, Samba Blisstass, Linsey Pollack, Strange Fruit, Jimmy The Saint And The Sinners, Tully John & Liza Jane: Surf World, Gold Coast The Halls, Race Of The Harridan, Pack Animals, Alla Spina, Dan Smith Duo: Beetle Bar Mission X, Brad Garnett: The Elephant Arms Cherrywood, The Hi Boys: The Joynt

Heather Peace, Kristy Apps: The Loft, Gold Coast Kryptamistik, Scripted Dialects, Arig, Bean Stalks, The Shakeouts, Stephen Brandon, Rachel

By The Stream, Meester Thingy: The Music Kafe Tim Stokes: The Northern, Byron Bay Brazen, Electric Samurai: The Tempo Hotel Einsturzende Neubauten: The Tivoli Ben Fahey, Amy Crow, Scott Mercer, Little Sister: The Waiting Room My Fiction & The Familiars, Wafia, Ammunitions: The Zoo DJ Helena: Woombye Pub

SUN 24 FEBRUARY 2013 Tiny Migrants, White Girl, Maddisons, Barbituates: 633 Ann - Fortitude Valley Heather Peace, TJ: Black Bear Lodge Clare Hansson Trio , + Friends: Brisbane Jazz Club Desert Blues Cartel: Burleigh Beach, Gold Coast Elemental Jazz Quartet, Karen Anderson: Catos, Noosa Heads Rod Christensen Jazz & Latin Duo: Channel Sports Bar & Bistro, Caloundra Liam Bryant & The Handsome Devils, The Golden Age Of Ballooning: Dowse Bar (Iceworks) Nat Dunn: Elephant Rock Cafe, Gold Coast Sessionkatz, Stretch Paper Cranes : Elsewhere, Gold Coast Jeff Carter: Hamilton Hotel Jabba: Irish Murphy’s Steve & Joey, Ger Fennelly: Mick O’Malley’s Tim & Jez, Sabrina Lawrie, New Jack Rubys: Ric’s

The Beards, Franky Walnut: Solbar, Maroochydore Lo-Fi Way, Timbah: The Elephant Arms Crime & The City Solution, Sleepy Sun: The Hi-Fi Harrison & Stocky, Dillion James, Ethelred, Progressive Tan, Leon Green: The Music Kafe

MON 25 FEBRUARY 2013 Rachel By The Stream, + Special Guests: Ric’s Mark Sheils: The Elephant Arms Funky Monkey Jam: The Music Kafe Rockaoke: The Tempo Hotel

TUE 26 FEBRUARY 2013 Neil Finn & PauL Kelly, Lisa Mitchell: Brisbane Convention And Exhibition Centre Deep Purple, Journey: Brisbane Entertainment Centre David Logan, The Jar: New Farm Bowls Club Stephen Brandon: Ric’s Mark Sheils: Samford Valley Hotel Steve Rudken: The Elephant Arms Choonzday, Young Knight, Matty & The Motivators, Alex Cook: The Music Kafe Exit Ghost, The Lone Stranger, + More: The Tempo Hotel

TOUR GUIDE YACHT CLUB DJS: Alhambra Lounge Mar 22 PVT: The Zoo Mar 22 BIRDS OF TOKYO: The Tivoli Mar 21, 22, Coolangatta Hotel Mar 23 STRANGE TALK: Alhambra Lounge Mar 30 SPIT SYNDICATE: Spotted Cow Apr 4, Coolangatta Hotel Apr 5, The Zoo Apr 6 DZ DEATHRAYS: Alhambra Lounge Apr 4 SONICANIMATION: The Northern Apr 4, The Zoo Apr 5, Solbar Apr 6 BRITISH INDIA: Surfers Paradise Beer Garden Apr 5, The Hi-Fi Apr 6 BOB EVANS: Woombye Pub Apr 11, The Zoo Apr 13 DEAD LETTER CIRCUS: The Tempo Hotel Apr 13 HUNGRY KIDS OF HUNGARY: Kings Beach Tavern Apr 18, The Hi-Fi Apr 19, The Northern Apr 20, Alhambra Lounge Apr 21 (U18) JORDIE LANE: Jet Black Cat Music May 1, The End May 2, Coorabell Hall May 5 TAME IMPALA: BCEC May 8 (AA) SOMETHING FOR KATE: Coolangatta Hotel May 16, Joe’s Waterhole May 17, The Hi-Fi May 18 PSYCHOTIC TURNBUCKLES: Beetle Bar May 25 SETH SENTRY: The Hi-Fi May 25

FESTIVALS SOUNDWAVE: RNA Showgrounds Feb 23 FUTURE MUSIC FESTIVAL: Doomben Racecourse Mar 2 HITS AND PITS: The Hi-Fi Mar 24 BLUESFEST: Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm Mar 28-Apr 1 EASTERFEST: Queens Park Mar 29-31 LIVE IT UP: RNA Showgrounds Apr 13 DIG IT UP!: The Tivoli Apr 18, Twin Towns Apr 19 BIG PINEAPPLE MUSIC FESTIVAL: Big Pineapple Apr 20 MOVEMENT: Brisbane Riverstage Apr 28 GROOVIN’ THE MOO: Townsville Cricket Grounds May 5 CAXTON STREET SEAFOOD & WINE FESTIVAL: Caxton Street May 5

my lawyers’ the drummer

march 8, 2013 JUPITERS THEATRE

All remaining * tickets $

49

Book now at jupitersgoldcoast.com.au/smashmouth Show subject to availability and cancellation. All guests under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult or guardian at all times. *Handling fee applies to all internet and telephone bookings, please refer to the website for further details.

50 • To check out the mags online go to themusic.com.au/mags