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[CONTENTS]
[Canberra’s Entertainment Guide]
#501
Jan/Feb
... so Daddy Mail: PO Box 713 Civic Square, ACT 2608
SUNNYBOYS [COVER STORY]
Publisher Radar Media Pty Ltd.
p. 20
General Manager Allan Sko T: (02) 6257 4360 E: advertising@bmamag.com Editor Hayden Fritzlaff E: editorial@bmamag.com Accounts Manager Ashish Doshi T: (02) 6247 4816 E: accounts@bmamag.com Sub-Editor Sharona Lin Graphic Designer Hayden Fritzlaff Film Editor Majella Carmody Entertainment Guide Editor Nicola Sheville
BOSSY
p. 52
PAUL DEMPSEY
p. 26
VERUCA SALT
p. 19
SOUNDOUT
p. 38
Art and Design Editor Tegan Garnett Comedy Editor Ellie Windred Website Manager Andrew Nardi Social Media Manager Sharona Lin Columnists Cody Atkinson, Dan Bigna, Pip Gazard, Josh Martin, Cara Lennon, Sharona Lin, Josh Nixon, Peter O’Rourke, Alice Worley Contributors (This Issue) Ryan Curran, Jayne Hoschke, Rory McCartney, Kashmira Mohamed Zagor, Jacqui Douglas, Jessica Howard, Andrew Myers, John P. Harvey, AJP Taylor, Jeonghyun Kim, Ben Yan, Anna Franeschini, Luke Bernie, Hayley Manwaring Cover Photo by Lucinda Bilson NEXT ISSUE #502 OUT Wednesday February 21 EDITORIAL DEADLINE Friday Month ## ADVERTISING DEADLINE Friday Month ## ABN 76 097 301 730 BMA Magazine is independently owned and published. Opinions expressed in BMA Magazine are not necessarily those of the editor, publisher or staff.
ES 199 T 2 PAGE 14
SAVE THE PHOENIX
p. 42
LITERATURE IN REVIEW ALBUM REVIEWS FILM REVIEWS THE WORD ON GIGS ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE
THE ASTON p. 30 SHUFFLE
BISON CERAMICS
p. 44 p. p. p. p. p.
53 58 64 63 68
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FROM THE BOSSMAN
EDITOR’S BLAB
[THE BOOTLEG PSYCHOLOGIST] BY ALLAN SKO
[I HAD IT ALL PLANNED OUT YOU KNOW] WITH HAYDEN FRITZLAFF
[ALLAN@BMAMAG.COM]
[EDITORIAL@BMAMAG.COM]
The Curious Case of Clothes, and The Tally Poppy Syndrome With the always-controversial Australia Day in the books, my attention turns to an interesting trait many Aussies seem to adopt when it comes to our clothing. You see, I like firing out compliments; it’s my top voted skill on my LinkedIn profile (narrowly nudging out Most Likely To Pay Taxes in Coins and Can Balance A Fidget Spinner on Nose). If a family member, friend or indeed a random member of the public is sporting attire of particular sartorial elegance, I’m prone to enunciate some positive vocal verbiage in their direction. Now in the world of rap and hip hop, Clothes Maketh The Man (or, indeed, Woman) is a well held idiom. Brazen gold chains, blinding new sneakers and top line threads are the norm; by painting the canvas of the body with as much wealth and opulence as possible, you are stating to the world, “I am somebody”, or more pointedly, “I got bank, sleep with me”. Not so with us antipodean souls. Nine times out of ten (and I could almost venture ten times out of ten), when a complimentary word escapes one’s lips concerning the receiver’s apparel, I am met with the same response:
if we’re almost embarrassed at the thought of a compliment and immediately counteract it. “Oh, I know it LOOKS fantastic but I’m not rich or anything; it only cost the price of a cheeseburger! Don’t judge me!” I find this behaviour curious. Surely we’d want to go the opposite direction and talk up how much something cost, or at the very least just take the compliment sans downplaying the financial transaction of past. But of course, people who do that are wankers. Said people – who may sport a dinky-di okker accent – suddenly adopt this oh-so posh tone from nowhere and spout, “Oh yes, it’s Carla Zampatti, picked it up for a cool $2000. Isn’t it to DIE for?” What a twat, eh? That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being proud of your garments. But there is something charming about our consistent devaluing; an ingrained culture of not wanting to show off, or appear too big for your welltailored britches. A form of selfinflicted Tall Poppy Syndrome. So stay humble, Australia. It’s a lovable trait that I’m proud to call ours. Right-o, I’m off. There’s a sale on at Lowes I need to catch
“Thanks! It was only $10 from Big W!” “Oh cheers! I got it on sale for $200 off.” “Appreciated! It was $2.50 from a garage sale in Charnwood.” Dollars to donuts, the response always downplays the cost; as
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It’s true. Not all live music venues last forever. Last year, in the wake of news that ANU Bar was set to close its doors, a local promoter posted a list on Facebook. It was the kind of post on which you had to click ‘see more’. It named many (I dare not say all) of the venues and clubs that had come and gone from the city over the past decade. As well as making me lament my youth for meaning that I never got to set foot in Trinity, it was also a sobering reminder that these spaces in which we experience the music and art that we love are nearly always temporary. You know, I had a plan for this column. What was going to happen, was I was going to talk about possible closure of The Phoenix as part of the wider transient nature of running a venue. Then I was going to link it seamlessly into a dissection of sexism in the music industry (very topical, go read what Bronte McHenry from Bossy has to say on page 52). And after all that, I also had plans to namedrop a bunch of local heroes who are doing great things out in the world this month. But – and fair warning, I’m going to be ‘real’ for a moment – I’m pretty tired. Sure, there’s the physical tiredness I feel from staying up three nights in a row putting this thing together (think of me when you next find a spelling mistake). And then there’s the emotional tiredness of living in the world right now.
worries! There are two. They’re on at the same time. Want to see worldconquering post-punk band Cable Ties? We’ve got them too! They’re on at 12pm. That’s the daytime one. It irks me that a festival I had so much respect for can fall victim to the same traps that virtually every other festival does (see any social media post with the words ‘Camp Cope’ in it from the past month). But we can’t afford to get down (unless we’re getting down to ‘Bibimbap’ by TOKiMONSTA). We’re putting the foundations in place. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia are all being put up with less and less. And if we can stop giving megaphones to the people who employ these things then we’ll be making even more progress. The problem, of course, is that people on the other side with megaphones aren’t the problem. More often than not it’s the way a business is structured, or the way we talk to each other, or the way your friends act or, heaven forbid, the way you or I act. And that, for me at least, is much harder to deal with. Anyway, I should probably send this thing off to print. I’m gonna head over to my parent’s place and chill out. triple j are meant to be spinning my band’s new song tonight. Maybe dreams do come true.
I’m part of an epic squad heading up to Laneway Festival in Sydney in a couple of weeks time. The lineup hits that sweet spot of relevance, nostalgia and fundamentally good vibes (smell ya later Kirin J Callinan). At least it’s meant to. I woke up this morning to read the newly-published set times, only to find that there’s a fuck-off big four-hour section in the schedule where only men are performing. Want to see a nondude play music after 5pm? No
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[TIDBITS]
WHAT’S COMING UP
PHOTO BY LOUISE WALPOLE
CC:Disco / First Light Tour / Fri February 16 / Canberra House Social CC:DISCO!, Soothsayer and Village Sounds are thrilled to announce some very special one off shows featuring CC:DISCO! and a handful of artists featured on First Light: Volume 1 in February and March. The 12-track vinyl release, First Light: Volume 1 Compiled By CC:DISCO! will feature two exclusive
tracks not found on the digital release, delivered on two double sided 12” inch wax pressings which are now available for pre-order. The digital offering (track list yet to be revealed), will also feature four exclusive tracks. [secretsounds. com]
Alliance Francaise French Film Festival / Film Festival / March 1-28 / Palace Cinemas The Alliance Française French Film Festival will return to Palace Cinemas in 2018 with an exceptional array of contemporary French cinema guaranteed to delight, stimulate and indulge. If you’re keen to experience the latest sophisticated, vibrant and daring films from France, the Alliance
Française French Film Festival is the place to do it. You can enjoy the films in a number of cinemas around the country, including our long-term exhibition partner, Palace Cinemas, over 7 weeks in 7 cities. [palacecinemas.com.au]
No Front Fences 2 / DIY Music Festival / Fri-Sun March 16-18 / Mulgara, Various Locations One city, two backyards, three days. Mulgara presents No Front Fences 2 – an ACT weekender. You’re going to want to save the date for No Front Fences 2. The first lineup announcement includes Carb on Carb (NZ), Lincoln Levre, Marlon Bando, Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, Sportsbra and PAGE 16
The Flying So High-Os with many more to come. All ages events on the Friday and Sunday. Three day presale passes available now. Seriously, don’t miss out. [nff2. brownpapertickets.com]
National Folk Festival / Music Festival / March 29-April 2 / Exhibition Park With more than 200 international and national acts, Canberra’s awardwinning National Folk Festival is set to be a five-day celebration of music, song and dance plus circus, spoken word and film. It’s held in an idyllic village setting with roving entertainers, street circus, stages of all sizes, a special KidzFest zone, market stalls, food vans, shopping
precincts, cafes, themed bars and arts and craft activities for all. Offering ‘five days in a perfect world’, the 52nd National Folk Festival runs throughout Easter at Exhibition Park. Early bird discounts are available for tickets purchased before January 31. [folkfestival. org.au]
Themes on “broken-binary brown” / Cross-media Art / February 9 / Canberra Contemporary Artspace Expanding on her installation work currently in exhibition at CCAS, Shoeb Ahmad leads her “brokenbinary-brown” collaborators through a series of improvised pieces that reflect the various musical and textural themes written for this work. Featured is a wealth of talented musicians, including Rhys
Butler (saxophones), Hannah De Feyter (violin, pedals), Evan Dorrian (cymbals, percussion), Tom Fell (saxophones), Kellie Lloyd (electric guitar) and Ben Marston (trumpet, laptop). Not to be missed for fans of multimedia collaboration. [6:30pm / $10 on the door ccas.com.au]
Camp Cope / Live Music / Wed March 21 / The Basement Currently ascending to ‘biggest band ever of all time’ status, Camp Cope are set to head out on tour once again, this time on the back of their new video for ‘The Opener’. After selling out two shows as part of Vivid LIVE, the band returned back under the iconic Sails to film their new single ‘The Opener’ live
in the stunning Utzon Room. This is the first time a punk band, and a band of only female members, has been filmed live at the House.[7pm / $39.80 via kingdomsounds. oztix.com.au]
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CAPITAL YOUNGSTER [THE WORD ON ALL AGES MUSIC] PIP GAZARD & NEVE VAN BOXSEL FROM TEEN JESUS AND THE JEAN TEASERS [JEAN.TEASERS@GMAIL.COM]
Howdy and happy new year friends!!! I can’t even begin to fathom what this year will bring us but we are SO EXCITED!!! A big month of young music is underway (the best possible way to begin 2018!) and I am delighted, as always, to be able to give you all the juicy deets!!! I can tell that this year is going to be a phenomenal year for some of Canberra’s local acts. Expect to see homegrown Canberra bands and musicians like Moaning Lisa, Dalmacia, Sodium Sunday, Lucy Sugarman, Salad Buoy, Bleach It Clean and Slow Turismo absolutely everywhere. Our beautiful city is home to some of the best up-andcoming acts and if you want to be able to claim that you knew them before they got famous, seriously, give them a listen now. To really start your year right, check out Googfest on Saturday February 3, the legendary allages music festival that has brought the likes of Sneaky Sound System and Eskimo Joe to Googong. While the full lineup has not yet been released, it has been confirmed that Mikah Freeman and Vance Musgrove of The Aston Shuffle will kick the
night off with some funky dance music, but be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the local acts that are yet to be announced. A hugely important gig to us and much of the Canberra music community is the Marky Fundraiser Show. While this gig is at The Goulburn Club, it is super important to share this event, as it is to raise money for Marky McCool, a treasured member of the Goulburn community and a passionate music fan whose health has unfortunately deteriorated to the point that he needs life altering surgery. So it would definitely be worth the drive to support him. Bands and musicians including (but not limited to!!!) Canberra’s own, always beautiful h., Sketch Method, Semen and Garfuckel and Jim Dusty will be taking to the stage. This monster gig starts at 3pm and ends at midnight on Saturday January 20 and is definitely not one to miss. If metal is your passion, be sure to head over to Lyneham, to The Front Gallery and Cafe on Saturday January 27 to see Melbourne bands Defenestration and Wrong come to bless our little city with their punishing, hardcore
sounds. The touring bands will be joined by local acts Blight Worms and CHUD as well as Newcastle’s John Howard. The night kicks off at 8pm, be sure to bring $10 entry plus money for merch. Another promising under-18friendly show is coming up on Wednesday February 7, where Ben Folds will be hitting the Canberra Theatre Centre with his paper airplane request solo piano show. The internationally recognised and acclaimed singersongwriter will be playing through all his greatest hits before the audience will write song requests on paper, to be folded into paper airplanes and thrown on stage which will, in turn, be performed. So, if you love Folds and folding this is not a night to miss. Thanks for tuning in y’all, so much love to every last one of you!!! I’ll be back next month, same bat time, same bat channel. Love, Pip xox
[Sodium Sunday]
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NOT THE FINAL CHAPTER BY ALICE WORLEY
PHOTO BY PIPER FERGUSON
If you, like me, were a slave to the 90s grunge girl band wave, you most likely listened to Hole, Garbage, and VERUCA SALT. The Chicago-based band formed in 1992, hitting the ground running with their debut album, American Thighs, in 1994, which sported the single ‘Seether’. 1997’s Eight Arms To Hold You, containing tracks like ‘Volcano Girls’ and ‘Shutterbug’, would be their, way too soon, last album before the split. The following year, drummer Jim Shapiro quit the band, flicking over the domino effect of both Nina Gordon and bassist Steve Lack’s abandonment of the Veruca Salt name, leaving Louise Post as the last member standing. Gordon and Post never really went into depth publically about why their friendship ended and would scarcely correspond for the next 14 years. But as the two got older and their lives evolved, the desire to reconnect became strong enough to finally make contact. After their friendship was rekindled, the original Veruca Salt members got back together, their reconnection resulting in the 2015 album Ghost Notes. Now they’re coming to Australia, touring nationally with A Day On The Green, and playing the ACT’s Canberra Theatre Centre with another band boasting a story of fruitful reunion, The Lemonheads. I spoke with Louise Post about the band’s revival and their upcoming Australian tour. We briefly talked about the splitting of the band in the late 90s. Gordon stated to the Village Voice in 2015 that their time apart was a necessity, and Post certainly
agrees: “Things were so fast and furious with American Thighs that by the time Eight Arms To Hold You and the touring came around, we had to seperate, and we did that in the form of this big, acrimonious friendship implosion … We were also really surprised by the success that we had. We didn’t anticipate any of that. Sort of got the best of us, to be blunt and simplistic about it.”
more music left to be made. I think we broke up prematurely in terms of our creative arc.” Post has had some musical experience being separated from the band. She recorded a few tracks with her then-partner, Dave Grohl, and released two albums after the band’s breakup under the Veruca Salt moniker. However, it just doesn’t seem to compare as she happily exclaims that her time making Ghost Notes was “pure joy.” “Now we get to come back together and make this third album that we never made as a band. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. I was on cloud nine the entire time we were making Ghost Notes. To have told our story in an album is really cathartic and healing.”
The good news is that we all really like the people we’ve turned into When asked if the band felt different having been reunited 14 years later, she laughed and gladly said that it felt exactly the same. “The good news is that we all really like the people we’ve turned into and it’s this big celebration of coming back together having had all this time apart to, y’know, get over our shit, achieve our personal dreams; whether it’s marriage, children, having a bevy of cats, learning to surf. We’ve had a chance to spread our wings without one another, although I can say for myself I always felt that she [Gordon] was missing because we weren’t at peace with one another and we had
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In tracks like ‘The Museum of Broken Relationships’ and ‘Empty Bottle’, the band goes into all the gory details about their split and their eventual reunion. And luckily for us Veruca fans, it doesn’t look like it’ll be their final chapter. “It would be easy to go ‘Okay, that’s that. All good now!’” she laughs. “But no, we have more to do together. We are currently talking about and playing with a yearning to make a record that is just really beautiful. Not necessarily full on rock, we just wanted to grasp that itch of making an album that we never made in the beginning before we were a full rock band. It was just
me and Nina and acoustic guitars, then electric and foot pedals, and now drums. I don’t know what it’s going to sound like or be like but that’s what we’ve got our heart set on next.” I asked Post about pairing with The Lemonheads for their Canberra show and, though the two bands don’t really have any ties to one another (apart from being huge in the same era), Post has fond memories of frontman Evan Dando from playing the festival circuit back in the day. “We knew Evan just from playing shows in Australia and in Europe. He would tell us all the fun things to do in Australia. He’s written a list of everything to do in Australia because he’s spent so much time there. He was hilarious, he made us laugh, he had us in stitches. We thought he was charming and sweet and funny and talented. I’m sure we still do.” If you’re planning on going to the show, I would highly recommend that you’ve listened to Ghost Notes prior so you have a full appreciation for the emotions the band will be projecting towards you that night. I’ve got my tickets stuck on the fridge, how about you? VERUCA SALT are playing with THE LEMONHEADS on Wednesday February 28 at the Canberra Theatre Centre. Tickets are $75+bf, get them at canberratheatrecentre.com.au
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PHOTO BY BOB KING
SUNNYBOYS SHINING BRIGHTER THAN EVER BY RORY MCCARTNEY
When it comes to Aussie bands and checkered careers, SUNNYBOYS are right up there. After startling initial success with their self-titled debut album in 1981, they collapsed due to internal band issues in 1984. There have been assorted reruns of the band, with original member Jeremy Oxley in the lineup, with limited success. Somehow, the punters who grew up with the band have never stopped appreciating the Sunnyboys’ songs and the response to a series of shows featuring the original lineup has been phenomenal. Now the Sunnyboys are returning to Canberra for their first gig here since 1983 and BMA spoke to bassist Peter Oxley in advance of the early 2018 show.
1998 saw the band reform for the Mushroom 25 Concert, celebrating a quarter century of that record label. There was another big gap until 2012, when the Sunnyboys were asked by the Hoodoo Gurus to play during the Dig It Up show at the Enmore Theatre.
“I formed a band with my sister, Mel, called The Sparklers. Richard [Burgman] went on to play with Chris Bailey’s Saints and also Weddings Parties Anything. Jeremy always had a guitar with him, wherever he was.” Jeremy Oxley’s battle with mental illness was a key feature of the band’s original demise. It was ironic that, while his illness was the reason behind the Sunnyboys folding, Jeremy Oxley still led the push with alternative lineups before all the original members reformed. “He put together a version of Sunnyboys in the late 80s. It didn’t work out so well as he was not in a good place mentally at that time. So, it didn’t last for a great deal of time.”
The vibe of the band has come a long way since their original formation, as the whole dynamic of performing has changed. “We play better now than we did when we were 21 or 22. You play with a little more swagger, and definitely sing better, as you’ve been practicing singing all those years.” Oxley cites Keith Richards as an example because, while people might look first at his age, Oxley believes he is probably playing better these days and having more fun doing it. There is less pressure on the band compared to the heady days of 1979-84.
We play better now than we did when we were 21 or 22
It is remarkable that the complete original lineup has regrouped for a run of shows, such a long time after the band first broke up. Oxley agrees. “Yeah, it is amazing. We got on with our lives and didn’t think we’d ever actually play again, due to the circumstances of Jeremy. But, if you start playing music, it’s always in you.” Various band members followed on with their own musical interest when Sunnyboys split.
***
“We thought, ‘let’s get together and see how we go, and see if we enjoy playing and if anybody likes us’.” They were billed under the name Kids In Dust, a moniker the band had used in the 80s when they wanted to play secret shows, on the QT. “Word got out that we were playing, so we had a full house at the theatre. It was a great set. We played for 45 minutes and had a great response. Apparently, grown men were crying, so moved by the fact that we were playing after such a long time.” The show inspired the band to keep going, and the members were happy to oblige, playing shows since that time. If it had not ben such a success, the band had a fallback plan. “We thought we’d better play under Kids In Dust so if it was a total disaster, if people said ‘We saw you guys at the Enmore and it was terrible’, then we could say ‘that wasn’t us, that was Kids In Dust’.”
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“When we were young and signed to a record label, you make an album, tour that album and do film clips. You hoped that people would buy it. There was pressure to play a lot, so we used to travel in little mini vans with our gear, up and down the Hume Highway. Now, there is no pressure on us whatsoever.” The band can concentrate on putting on a good show, which is more of a celebration of their music, than part of the serious business of promoting its latest release. There is a different interaction with the audience too, compared with the agro days of youth. “Gigs are so calm now, everyone is smiling. Friends have told me ‘Your audience is so polite’.” The band loves it when parents bring along their 20-year-old children to show then them the actual band that made the records the parents have been playing all these years. Oxley also appreciates that people cannot smoke in venues anymore. “It’s
much more pleasant. Sometimes in the early 80s, your eyes would be watering in the room because of all the cigarette smoke.” As to what he attributes the response of the fans, that has seen shows sell out so quickly, Oxley sees nostalgia as a factor. “They want to relive the memories and the times. I think that’s a beautiful thing. Also, the fact that the band had a short initial life of about four years, and because the band had not played for such a long time.” However, Sunnyboys songs continued to be played on the radio and the TV documentary about Jeremy Oxley’s battle with schizophrenia also kept the band in the public mind. “People understood what happened with the band, and there is a lot of good will and love for the band. We were not sure if we were remembered, but we have been and there has been such a great response at all the shows we have played.” The Sunnyboys do intend to record some new songs in 2018 – “We’re not trying to set the world on fire; it’s just something for our fans.” However, that is not the main game as Oxley is cognizant of the truth of the Regurgitator lyrics: “I like your old stuff better than your new stuff.” As to whether Sunnyboys will play any new material at the 2018 shows, Oxley is coy, stating it depends how they sound when they are rehearsed. One thing that will not be in the setlist, which will concentrate on the first three Sunnyboys records, will be any tracks from the album Wildcat which was made in 1989 with a different band lineup. SUNNYBOYS, supported by UPS AND DOWNS, play at CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE from 7:30pm on Thursday February 22. Tickets $70.50-$88.50 +bf through canberratheatrecentre. com.au
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ART, ACHIEVMENT AND ADAPTATION BY KASHMIRA MOHAMED ZAGOR
Reflection upon one’s past work is, for any creative, a multi-layered experience. Australian singer-songwriter KATE MILLER-HEIDKE, who has a plethora of musical achievements under her belt, found this process of contemplation to be challenging. Miller-Heidke has recently released a ‘Best Of’ album, a compilation of music that she, along with a team of close advisors, felt best represented her accomplishments over the years. When asked how she found this endeavour, her response was understandably mixed. “[It was] weirdly confronting and reductive in a way, but also I’m grateful that my career has taken me on such an interesting and varied path,” says Miller-Heidke. It is a diverse album, which includes recent releases, although plenty of songs were chosen from earlier compositions, such as her debut studio album, Little Eve (2007). “I guess I feel a bit distant from it too. After you write a song and record it, and it’s out there in the ether, it stops being yours, somehow. I can’t say it was entirely pleasant to put together. I left a lot of
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the big decisions to other people.” Over the years, Miller-Heidke’s creative process has been fluid; something she hopes will sustain for the remainder of her career. “When I was younger, I had this notion about authenticity in songwriting as a kind of pure expression, a hangover from the 90s and from grunge,” she says. “That kind of thing was still very much accepted as gospel. As I get older I realise that’s not the only one way to do it, there are other ways.” Most recently, Miller-Heidke has been integral to a handful of projects that have proved somewhat different to her usual fair. In 2015, she was commissioned by Opera Australia to compose the music for their stage production of the graphic novel The Rabbits (John Marsden and Shaun Tan), and last year wrote the score for the musical adaptation
of P.J. Hogan’s 1994 film, Muriel’s Wedding. “Collaborating with other people, like the director and scriptwriter, writing songs to a specific brief, for other people to sing, to tell somebody else’s story; I don’t see the process as being any easier or less valuable than the tortured artist, alone in a room model,” says MillerHeidke. “It’s all valid.” Writing the score for Muriel’s Wedding could be considered a cornerstone of Miller-Heidke’s career. A piece close to her heart, she was honoured to help grow it into its new life as a stage musical. “Going into Muriel’s Wedding, where it was very much more of an equal collaboration between Keir [Nuttall] and P.J. Hogan the scriptwriter, that was humbling, but also great to find ourselves collaborating with some of the cleverest, most talented people in Australia,” she says. “I couldn’t have dreamed of better subject material, I love the film so much; there is so much in there that is so funny, so heartbreaking, so Australian. It was a dream project. The show has a distinctly Australian flavour, and I don’t think it could’ve been any other way.” Perhaps a timely piece, Muriel’s Wedding is an uplifting tale about
overcoming adversity, with a noticeably feminist undertone. As one of Australia’s most acclaimed female artists, Miller-Heidke is taking her role as pioneer in her stride. “I think as a woman, you just have to take the opportunities as they come. I’m not going to over-analyse it too much. I still talk about the inequalities that are there, that are still entrenched, but in terms of my career, if I can be the beneficiary of affirmative action, fuck yeah, I’ll take it.” Last year’s groundswell of female empowerment within the entertainment industry is spilling into this year, and Miller-Heidke is a strong proponent of this uprising. “It really does feel like we are on the cusp of some sort of change. It feels like women are rising up and supporting each other, and I think that’s the key.” Miller-Heidke will soon begin her national tour, and is in the early stages of writing a new album. She laughs, and says: “It’s been a while.” KATE MILLER-HEIDKE performs at BY THE WATER at the National Museum of Australia on Saturday February 10. Gates at 6pm. SOLD OUT.
PHOTO BY JO DUCK
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WE LOVE CANBERRA MUSIC [LOCAL TUNES WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF ]
‘Spineless’ - Ash Grimley
‘Carrie’ - Moaning Lisa
‘Alone’ - Neko Pink
‘Fallen From Grace’ - Lani
‘Birds & The Bees’ - Arrowmatiks
‘Truck Fights (feat. Samuel Baeurmeister)’ - Elk Locker ‘There Are Voices Out There’ - Pheno
‘Cold Hands’ - The Gypsy Scholars
‘Sunday Sesh’ - Turquoise Prince
Stream the playlist – bmamag.com
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OPTIMISTICALLY CYNICAL BY RYAN CURRAN What is the appropriate reaction to our societal malaise in a world that’s looking more and more different from the one in which most of us were formed? The answer, it seems, is not simple. “We’re sort of... nuanced anger,” says Luke, the bassist for Melbourne trio FACE FACE. “Because we do have angry songs but we also have softer songs. We’re playful”. He’s right. While the bedrock of their self-titled debut is a defiant rejection of the status quo, Face Face do not appear to take themselves any more seriously than they do society. This album is a reply to the façade and frustrations of modern living – one which is candid, genuine and irreverent. While the more troubling aspects of our society can seem
Face Face have a unique, yet familiar sound. It is a fusion of different emotions and style that may not have been executed so effectively by a lesser group. Their distinct vibe is anchored by the grungy authenticity of their distorted guitar and crashing, relentless drums. This is in combination with the sorrowful lament and disaffected rage of Lauren Perkins vocals which more than evokes the best qualities of the late Dolores O’Riordan. While this illustration is seemingly intense, I think the key element to their style is that, at its heart, it is fun. “It’s been really great playing these songs. I think it’s a testament to how fun they are that we’ve been playing them for two years and haven’t gotten sick of them yet.”
…we do have angry songs but we also have softer songs. We’re playful insurmountable, Face Face take a fresh approach to these issues. Yes, they’re angry, but they also seem to be thinking... “this is so bad it’s funny.” With an album that is intermittently thrashing and lamenting and pleading and screaming, there is room for that irreverence and playfulness that comes with having been through the ringer enough times. The penultimate track ‘Mars’ is a great example of this. After wading through “the broad spectrum of human emotion”, ‘Mars’ is an exhausted but fun song that is as simple as it’s chorus refrain “maybe we should move to Mars”. They’re saying “Fuck it, let’s just pack our bags and get out of here. Don’t worry about it.” Maybe we should move to Mars.
Face Face is an album (and band) for the discontented. Those who can see a time and place when music and life was as simple as three friends in a garage with well-loved instruments venting their frustration to the world and having a blast doing it. “We call ourselves a Nostalgia 90s Band,” says Luke. “We want to describe ourselves with as few adjectives as possible. We’re something candid but not too serious. I would say we’re... optimistically cynical? Yeah.” FACE FACE, along with HELENA POP, LADY DENMAN and AZIM ZAIN will hit Transit on Thursday January 25. Doors from 8pm. Tickets $10 at the door.
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PHOTO BY JO ELLIE MITCHELL
FREAKS OF MOTHER NATURE BY ANDREW MYERS
IN HEARTS WAKE are the young guns of metalcore hailing from Byron Bay. Akin to the current monarchs of Aussie metal Parkway Drive they have set the standard for many other homegrown talents. At first glance In Hearts Wake appear like tie dye shirt-sporting young men, but as soon as they hit the stage they are nothing like the placid type with singles like ‘Traveller (The Fool)’, ‘Badlands’, ‘Survival (The Chariot)’, and ‘Earthwalker’ that features The Amity Affliction vocalist Joel Birch spreading the word about a greener, more conscientious world. I spoke to lead vocalist Jake
“We got to put our own spin on it which was an interesting and fun path,” Jake says about the experience of recording Silverchair’s 1997 hit. Last July the band released the music video to ‘Nomad’ consisting purely of female moshers spin kicking, headbanging and generally having a good time to some pummelling tunes.
…we wanted to create a safe space for women to just tear it up and be free and do whatever they wanted to do Taylor amidst the band’s The Great Southern Land tour, hitting up such regional places like Cairns, Port Macquarie, Wollongong, Wagga Wagga, Ballarat, Alice Springs, amongst many others. The band covered Silverchair’s ‘Freak’ for a compilation cover album Spawn (Again) A Tribute To Silverchair that features other Aussie bands like Northlane, Tonight Alive, Hands Like Houses and Ocean Grove.
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“We wanted to do something different and something that has not been done in this scene, and it’s good when women really get into the music as well, as music is genderless. A lot of women feel like they are afraid that they’re going to get hit or groped because a lot of stories come out, in all genres. So with this music video we wanted to create a safe space for women to just tear it up and be free and
do whatever they wanted to do. In some regard they go a lot more crazy [in the pit] than men which is awesome. It was a really nice, beautiful experience.” As an avid concert attendee, I totally understood where Jake was coming from. Not many people may know but Jake runs an organisation named Earthwalker Tribe (that produces sustainable goods like hemp shirts and stainless steel water bottles. “I’m very passionate about the outdoors and I love an adventure whether it’s for an hour or a camping trip. I wanted a space where I can share my own adventures. It’s an interactive hub that people can be a part of.” In Jake’s parting words, he had this to say about the tour “Expect a few laughs, a few adventures. People often leave with big smiles on their faces, which is fantastic. It is not an aggressive, come-let-somesteam-off kind of thing, it’s quite a joyous event and we look forward to bringing it to Canberra.” IN HEARTS WAKE hit Academy on Wednesday January 31. TIickets $32 + bf through moshtix.com.au.
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It’s like a little holiday in your head. You’re not worrying about anything, you’re not thinking about what you did yesterday and what you’ve got to do tomorrow, you’re not thinking about your cat. And when it’s over you feel like you’ve run a marathon or meditated for two hours. – PAUL DEMPSEY
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PHOTO BY CYBELE MALINOWSKI
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PAUL DEMPSEY A TEN-MINUTE INTERVIEW THAT BECAME A 40-MINUTE CHAT BY JAYNE HOSCHKE
After we establish that he’s part-lizard and is loving Melbourne’s summer heat wave, PAUL DEMPSEY and I start talking all things music, Canberra and bobbleheads. While he’s been writing and performing with Something For Kate (or SFK) since the early 1990s, Dempsey’s solo career has taken off since the release of his debut album Everything is True in 2009. Since his 2016 album Strange Loop, he’s hardly stopped touring, whilst also balancing his SFK life with perceived ease. I ask him about the transition in becoming a solo musician and why he did it. “The answer is complete and utter self-indulgence.” We both laugh at his blunt honesty. “I love being in Something For Kate and I love what we do together. But sometimes you want to play drums, and the bass, and do it exactly the way you imagined it in your head. The only way to do that is to do that. But I don’t want to do that all the time because I’d get bored with myself.” “It’s lucky the way we’ve been able to juggle things. It keeps Something For Kate really fresh. We do it when we’re genuinely excited about it.” This amazes me, and I ask him how he’s managed to keep things interesting after performing together for over 20 years. “I love it as much as I ever did, even more so in fact. After such a long time, you get more relaxed about it. You can really enjoy it on a different level. And I feel like I’m a bit better at it than I used to be. Slowly, I’ve become a bit of a better singer and a bit of a better guitar player. Even ten years ago, I was just nervous and anxious, and I don’t think I feel that way anymore. I just don’t have bad shows anymore.” My only response to that is a quiet, “Wow.” He quickly adds, “By that I don’t mean, ‘every show I play is fantastic!’ I mean, in myself, I’m able to make any situation fun.”
Dempsey has expressed before that performing is his favourite part of the whole musical process, so I ask him what he gets out of it personally.
addicts, but everyone has their way of getting out of their head.” When asking if there are differences in performing in Australian and overseas venues, he has a lot of insight into our country as a beerlovin’ country. “Especially when you’re starting out as a young band, a lot of the time you’re playing to rooms full of people who, you’re really not sure if they’re there to hear a band or if they’re there to have a drink and catch up with their friends. Whereas overseas it’s much more defined. I find that over there people are absolutely there to see the music because there’s not any other reason you’d be in that venue. It’s just a cultural thing, I think, we kind of mix our drinking and socialising with watching bands and overseas they don’t so much.”
Play for a friend, play in pubs, in bars, in shopping centres
“It’s that interaction. Whether you’re playing to a huge crowd and everyone’s singing along, or if you’re playing to a handful of strange people in a strange place, and you don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who you are, and none of you know why you are there, you can start having fun with that.” “It’s like a little holiday in your head. You’re not worrying about anything, you’re not thinking about what you did yesterday and what you’ve got to do tomorrow, you’re not thinking about your cat. And when it’s over you feel like you’ve run a marathon or meditated for two hours. You’ve expended a whole lot of energy, and at the same time, you’ve been out of your head. Some people are gym junkies, or yoga freaks, or drug
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Dempsey is one of my favourite performers and lyricists. While this may be because SFK were the first band I ever saw live when I was a wee 12-year-old, I’ve always been struck by the raw honesty in Dempsey’s intricate lyrics. I ask him if performing such personal stuff can get draining. He responds, “I don’t know if draining is the right word. “There’s things I’m singing about that are not always fun things, but the act of singing about them makes it positive. What could be further from morose than singing about something? Even if it’s something troublesome, the very act of writing about it, and then getting up and singing about it, how is that not a positive thing?”
stand up and be honest with people. But it’s your expression and you’ve got to express it.” For Dempsey, being honest is something he values in his song writing. “I’d be short-changing myself if I was dishonest in my songs, because I’m the one that’s got to get up every night and sing them. With everything I write, I try and do it in such a way that it has layers and facets, so that every time I do sing it, I can sing it differently, and it’s not one-dimensional.” As we move on to Dempsey’s thoughts on our Canberra, I learn that Telstra Tower reminds him of Endor from Star Wars, that he didn’t know Questacon existed until recently and has never been, and that some of his favourite times in our capital were the small gigs at youth centres Something For Kate played as a young band. I also learn that the Paul Dempsey bobbleheads (yes, they do exist), were not his idea, but he went along with them so as to produce the most ridiculous merchandise possible. To leave us, I ask him if he has advice for young musicians entering the Australian music industry. “My first thing would be discard any idea of entering an industry. The thing you can do tomorrow without needing anyone’s help or permission is book a gig. Play for a friend, play in pubs, in bars, in shopping centres. Just play and write as often as you can, anywhere you can, and if it’s good, people will start talking about it.” Paul Dempsey will be swinging by Canberra Theatre Centre for an intimate solo performance on Saturday February 3 at 8pm. Tickets at canberratheatrecentre.com.au for $50+bf.
“It’s hard to be honest. It’s hard to
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DANCE THE DROP [THE WORD ON DANCE MUSIC] WITH PETER ‘KAZUKI’ O’ROURKE [CONTACT@KAZUKI.COM.AU]
Sad news about Kyte Nightclub over the summer. Due to the building above the club being sold to build a new hotel, the venue had to close. It’s disappointing that a change in one business can put another one of business, especially as they had spent the last year building up some regular nights with a solid following. Kyte also was the kind of place with a fairly open music policy and a bit of freedom to work with the club to create something unique. They reached out to different promoters and DJs regularly, allowing them to experiment with alternative sounds, and in turn support different crews with their own followings – and with a city that has such a small scene, this is really important. This leaves Mr Wolf as the only Canberra city-based nightclub dedicated to weekly underground electronic dance music. Of course, Transit Bar, Academy, Cube, La De Da, Bar Rochford and others have specific nights and events (and don’t think for a second that this column is doubting all the fantastic events these venues and their promoters run) but, for week in week out underground sounds, it can make it tricky without some regular healthy competition (the club is actually currently looking for newer DJs as well to join their (Wolf) pack – so if you’re a young DJ, it’s worth hitting them up and
seeing if you can get involved). For the rest of the underground, it’s probably going to be a case of venue hopping, warehouse parties, and other secret locations. And if you’re the type of person who does have a space – be it a warehouse, private basement or rural location – and you have a soft spot for the dance scene, let us know! Some of the most interesting events can take place in the most random of locations, so send me an email (at the top of the column). Speaking of warehouse parties and secret spaces, there’s a few things happening over the next month. First up, on Friday the 2nd of February, Department of Late Nights is throwing a sneaky rave with Troll Life II. It’s a bit of a farewell party too, as crew DJs B-tham and Super Marius are relocating to Melbourne – so they are on headline duties, supported by Fourthstate, Stav, Tyx, Eden Sinclair and myself. Check out our Facebook page for location details. Two weeks later on Saturday February 17 it’s a pretty massive one for Canberra! Escape Ferocity is bringing rising Brazilian techno superstar Victor Ruiz to our fine city with a proper warehouse party, with Doppel, Child (VIC) and Trilobite in support. If their infamous Boris Brejcha party is anything to go by, this will be
pretty darn cool! Tickets available online now. On the club front, there’s a bit happening over the coming month. Friday February 2 has bass music heavyweight Joyride hit Academy off the back of some big national exposure, while Friday February 9 sees Badrapper lay it down at Mr Wolf. Friday February 16 has Stephane 1993 playing some underground sounds at Mr Wolf. He’s recently signed some new music with Motorik after a stint at the German Boys Noize Records label – this is one to check out for sure. The next weekend on Friday February 23 iconic French DJ and producer Jennifer Cardini will be at the club with her unique blend of lush minimal techno and acid-washed nu-disco sounds. Oh, and Psyfari Jamboree is at the end of the February held in the ACT. With two stages of amazing music over three days, plus workshops, market stalls and camping you’d be mad to miss it if you’re around. Check out my write up of the festival next issue, but in the meantime I implore you to have a read of their website – www.psyfari.com . This is one of Australia’s best little alternative festivals hands down, and we’re pretty lucky to have them here in our neck of the woods!
JENNIFER CARDINI
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THE ULTIMATE SUNDAY SESH BY JACQUI DOUGLAS
COFFO RECORDS doesn’t exist in an office, or even a trendy ‘creative space’. Its founder, Digby Tomes, would be more comfortable on a mate’s backyard couch, talking about music and flipping through a crate of old LPs. Tomes has an aura of effortless nonchalance; he tells me the label doesn’t need to be “growth-oriented”, as he negotiates an overladen Christmas pudding waffle cone. Despite the casual manner, Tomes is nothing if not productive. Coffo Records celebrated its launch just a few months ago, with ‘Hello World 3000’ as the debut track. Tomes wasted no time kicking off a podcast series with the artist, Billy Erupto – known also as Pleased to Jive You frontman, Morgan Quinn. Tomes and Quinn delve into the influences and quirks of the music, albeit stopping for a burger break mid-transmission. “I don’t get to do that very often, to sit down and ask my friends why they wrote music. It’s an awkward conversation, unless you go off and do a podcast. Let’s talk about it, let’s go into your brain. It’s like, hectic, like, his music’s crazy, modally changing key centres, pop tunes, it’s cool to just talk to him about how the stuff gets written.” Tomes himself knows what to do with a mixing desk; he’s been a
longtime feature of the local scene, spinning reverberant soundscapes as Bottle Brush. However, the Coffo label reflects Tomes’ instinct for collaboration, and his brimming eagerness to share the music of his contemporaries.
stereo on the windowsill, half a crate of records, this little mixer, broken cables and stuff, a compact screen, half the screen’s dead, and it’s from ten years ago. Then he’s like, ‘here’s an hour of music I’ve written’. It’s just, like, huge. You didn’t have to have the best gear, or like anything, he just needed himself and some gear. There’s no limits to making good stuff, you can just do it. That’s the vibe I’m going for.” When it comes to arts management, Tomes takes cues from Canberra underground stalwart Sancho Murphy. Murphy was behind LoBrow Gallery & Bar, where the label launched, as well as Sancho’s Dirty Laundry. She also co-owned the crowdfunded Braddon pop-up The Chop Shop.
I just want to book shows that I want to see, does that make any sense? Among them is long-time friend James Hewson, a.k.a. First Gulf War. Hewson was on the bill at the Coffo Records launch – Tomes hints at an upcoming release. “My friend James, his stuff’s huge. The biggest inspiration for me to write music, ever. I went to his house when I was like, 20 or something, I walk into his studio, it’s like, Cash Converters speakers from an old
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looking for a middleman. “It kills all the fun, you don’t want to do the show after that man, it’s like, you book this dude from interstate, costs this much to get him, and you have to go put it at a club that you don’t want to be in, or you don’t want anyone to play at. The system kind of sucks but we’ve got this dude down, and gotta get enough people, and I lost like two hundred bucks on the show. Why don’t we just keep it how it was when we started? Let’s just play with our friends, have a bit of fun and do it because it’s good.” At its core, Coffo Records is an homage to a simpler time. “When we were kids, we used to just play gigs at the [Woden Youth Centre]... I just miss that, lowkey, guerilla shit, no budget, get it done, have some fun. I wanna play at my friends’ venues, I don’t want to deal with anyone that I don’t have to deal with, like, I just wanna do stuff that’s good.”
“You should go hang out with Sanch, man, she is a legend. Just like, real ethical, real nice person, and just hustles hard. I like that style of getting stuff done, just be really upfront and transparent about everything that’s going on. Don’t try to be like, ‘I’m going to step on the back of other people to get where something needs to be’.” Independence is central: Tomes isn’t
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SHUFFLE ON HOME BY ANDREW NARDI
Over ten years ago, Canberra-based Mikah Freeman and Vance Musgrove discovered their passion for producing and playing fresh dancefloor hits to a hometown crowd. Under the moniker THE ASTON SHUFFLE, Mikah and Vance came out with ‘For Everyone’ in 2007. ‘EDM’ was The Aston Shuffle grew a following on the back of their remix work – not uncommon for the baby-faced producers of the day. Finding their home on the Ministry of Sound compilations, the Shuffle remixed everything from PNAU’s ‘Baby’, to the explosive Calvin Harris and Dizzee Rascal collab, ‘Dance Wiv Me’, and even London Grammar’s ‘Wasting My Young Years’. “We have done a few remixes over the years, but lately it’s like we’re knocking back three out of five,” Mikah tells me. “It’s gotta be something that we’re really especially into, from a personal point of view, to throw our heart and soul at a remix.” Their latest rework is for none other than UK big beat powerhouse, Fatboy Slim. Invited to showcase ‘the Australian sound’ against Fatboy’s PAGE 30
classic singles, The Aston Shuffle’s remix of ‘Sunset (Bird of Prey)’ will appear on the upcoming Fatboy Slim vs Australia compilation. Mikah tells me it’s exciting to be among the chosen few to exhibit ‘the Australian sound’ to the world. “I just remember how into that song I was when it dropped – and the fact that it had sampled Jim Morrison from The Doors – I was really, really psyched on doing that remix. And it came together so quick, we’re really happy with the outcome. It’s pretty different and quirky from the original,” says Mikah. I have to pick at Mikah for information about a new album – it’s been four years since their glistening house masterpiece Photographs, and seven years since their dirty electro debut Seventeen Past Midnight. When is the next
chapter in The Aston Shuffle hitting our headphones? “It’s kind of weird. After we did Photographs, we just wanted to clean the slate for a while. We wanted to focus on doing single by single,” Mikah tells me, noting their work on their recent singles ‘Pass You By’ and ‘Alpha Love’. “And then funnily enough, Vance was back in the country over the Christmas period, and we were just talking about how we’re sitting on so much music. And I say, ‘man, should we do another album?’
think it’s something that could be doable. But I guess we just gotta work out if that’s the path we want to go down in 2018.” Aside from their prolific careers as producers, Mikah and Vance are also known for their longstanding residence on triple j’s Friday Night Shuffle. In charge of the national broadcaster’s end-of-week dance party, the radio show affirms the duo’s wide knowledge of the Australian dance scene. With his finger on the pulse, I have to ask Mikah if he’s excited about where the Aussie scene is going in 2018.
It’s really, really exciting to be an up-and-coming producer or just a producer in general at the moment “We haven’t spoken about it in so long and then the word just came up. It’s like, whoa – it’s a weird word to say, ‘album’,” Mikah laughs. “It was the first time it’d come up in a couple of years. So, we’re certainly not saying it, but with the amount of music we’re sitting on, I definitely
“There’s so many scenes, sounds and genres popping up all over the place, it’s hard to keep your finger on what’s happening,” he says. “I think house music has blown up again, there’s all these really dope up-and-coming house producers; and then also the whole Aussie @bmamag
beats scene and the trap scene is absolutely huge as well.” But Mikah agrees that the dance industry isn’t the same as it was ten or even five years ago. What’s his advice for young producers looking to make their mark on the industry? “When I first got into it, to have your music known, you almost had to have a big international remix on your single packages. Now it’s like, with the power of technology, everything’s so instant and it doesn’t matter where you’re from anymore. “For the first time in a very long time, a lot of overseas labels, festivals and touring agencies are looking to see what we’re doing over here [in Australia],” Mikah explains. “I think it’s really, really exciting to be an up-and-coming producer or just a producer in general at the moment – everyone’s looking for that next big thing! So, if you’re concentrating on your sound and trying to make it unique to what everyone else is doing, you’ll definitely stand out!”
town, so you need to try and develop your sound as a producer but also as a DJ. The signal to noise ratio is out of control – everyone’s a producer, everyone’s a DJ – so if you really want to stand out, it’s all about taking the time necessary to really develop your own sound and be as unique as possible.” Mikah of The Aston Shuffle will be returning to Canberra in February to play at Googfest. Needless to say, he thinks it will make for a special homecoming. “I’ve heard really, really good things about this Googfest. The SAFIA dudes did it [in 2017], and from what they said it’s a pretty dope festival. It’s the first time I can bring my whole family to a show as well so it should be fun!”
GOOGFEST 2018 ALSO APPEARING: SOPHIE EDWARDS
MONDECREEN
NED PHILPOT
THE BAKER BOYS BAND
GOOGFEST is on at the Rockley Oval from 5pm–9pm on Saturday February 3. Entry is free.
As for the Canberra scene, Mikah says that it’s healthier than ever – the ideal environment for an upand-comer to start out. “There’s some decent nightclubs around facebook.com/bmamagazine
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METALISE
[THE WORD ON METAL] WITH JOSH NIXON [DOOMTILDEATH@HOTMAIL.COM]
Greetings 2018 . Hope you had a good Festivus, if you spent it in the wilds of Victoria at the UNIFY Gathering, or something bit more traditionally heavy. Maybe you are gearing up for the Thrashville on Saturday January 20 in the bush at Dashville in NSW. If you didn’t know, the lineup features Frenzal Rhomb, King Parrot, Batpiss, Frankenbok, Gay Paris, Throldhaugen, The Australian Beefweek Show, Void, Post Truth, Paper Thin, Rort Menace, Jones the Cat and a new band called Dashville Progress Society. Australia Day has become contentious for a bunch of well-worn reasons, so it’s interesting that the 27th is becoming the day of choice to celebrate with the Triple J Hottest 100 moving a day later and there’s a Bangers & Mosh show on at The Basement on the same day for those seeking something a bit heavier. Lions Of the Underground, Kitten Hurricane, Scavenger, The Maybe List, Prophecies, Reliqa and “secret band” will be out in force for your entertainment. Mental Cavity had a big 2017 with their debut album and have played a
bunch of shows toward the end of last year which sees them in fine form for their show at the Basement on Friday February 2 with Gvrlls, No Haven, Potion and Disavow. Ne Obliviscaris bring romantic metal violin fittingly on Valentine’s Day at the Basement as I mentioned last issue, but announced in the interim is a show sure to wipe any semblance of romance on Thursday February 15 with the rerun of uber brutal Cattle Decapitation. On a national tour with Psycroptic, and joined by locals Inhuman Remnants and Wretch, it’s a great international show to have without having to head to Sydney so make sure you get along and support it. Another welcome international show announced for The Basement on Thursday February 8 is the USA’s thrashin’ Lich King bringing their new album The Oniclasm to the country for a 12-date tour. In tow for the Canberra show is the evergreen Reign of Terror and Terravorous. If black metal is your bag and you feel like a drive though, Mayhem doing
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in full this weekend in Melbourne might be for you. Also on the blackened front, Ihsahn, he of the legendary Emperor announced a one off show at Max Watts in Melbourne on Monday May 7. Only Aussie tour show, which makes me suspect he’s out doing some production work – it will be interesting to see how that pans out. So we begin the year acknowledging the passing of Edward Allen Clarke, otherwise known as Fast Eddie Clarke, and farewell the last surviving member of OG Motorhead. When people say you can’t be heavy playing a Fender strat, you can slap them with Motorhead, Overkill, Bomber, Ace of Spades, No Sleep Til Hammersmith and Iron Fist. The Fastway catalogue to be fair too. If it were possible that the afterlife could run out of JD & wiz, then it happened on Wednesday January 10. Vale Eddie, science will struggle to come up with a measurement for how cool the original Motorhead lineup was.
MOTORHEAD
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@bmamag
GURGE UNDERGROUND
BY HAYLEY MANWARING
REGURGITATOR are the boys from Brissy that just keep on giving. Even after a slew of Australian shows celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album Unit, they’re hitting the road again, this time taking us on a whole new journey – performing iconic album The Velvet Underground & Nico in its entirety. I’m speaking to bassist Ben Ely from my bed, sniffling into the phone at the height of a nasty summer cold. But even if the details are a bit hazy, the idea for the show seems wild. “The gig came about because our manager books music for Up Late at GOMA [the Gallery of Modern Art] and the NGV [National Gallery of Victoria],” says Ely. “He’s been doing this for about 10 years but he’s never had us play there. Finally, he says, ‘Hey I’ve been thinking about you guys playing at the NGV. If you were going to do a gig at the Ai Wei Wei and Andy Warhol exhibition, what would you do?’. The first thing that came into my mind was that album, the Velvet Underground and Nico.” If you know the album, you can expect to hear all of the songs treated exceptionally close to their original form, but swap out the violins for a guzheng – a traditional Chinese instrument – performed by Mindy Meng Wang. “The idea was to collaborate with this friend of mine, Mindy Wang, who worked with my wife. She plays this instrument called the
guzheng and has played for some contemporary dance performances so I thought it would be great to get her involved. The Gallery thought it was a really good idea and we had a lot of fun doing it. Eventually word got around and since then we’ve done the show a few more times in Tassie at MONA FOMA, Brisbane
work on the Canberra show as well. Either him of one of his off-siders will come and do that for us. It definitely goes with the 1960s New York, Andy Warhol vibe but in a modern setting and with modern technology which is quite interesting for us. Because a lot of the A/V stuff is improvised it’s different every time as well.” For those of us who are long-time fans of Regurgitator, we know that they’re approach to music has always been changeable and unexpected with each new project. With their first album Tu-Plang they showed us their pop/rock sensibilities on tracks like ‘Blubber Boy’ and ‘I Sucked A Lot of Cock To Get Where I Am’.
There’s a sense of inventiveness with it but in quite a minimal way, which I guess is what we’ve always done too Festival, Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival and Sydney Festival.” You can also expect enthralling visuals by Ken West, making this show not just a feast for the ears but one for the eyes. “He just happened to be working on the MONA FOMA festival and on stage we spent a lot of time just watching all of the visuals around us like wow. His stuff is very dark and psychedelic and mostly a live improvisation. We were lucky enough to get him for a couple more shows and we’re hoping he’ll come
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Off the same album, ‘Kung-Fu Sing and Miffy’s Simplicity’ reminds us that Gurge is a punk band with boundless energy and presence on stage, but since then we have learned that to be a fan of Regurgitator is to commit yourself to the hybridity of their sound with each new project they dive into. Ely tells me a little about their pop songs, which take on a more palatable and manufactured sound, yet to mix the musical content with the markedly unpalatable lyrical content, hails back to the very era they are tributing with their Velvet
Underground set. I asked him how much the VU album has inspired Regurgitator in the past. “I think it has over the years, but generally it’s more a feeling. There’s a sense of inventiveness with it but in quite a minimal way, which I guess is what we’ve always done too. I remember the first time I heard it I was at my really good friend’s house who used to turn me on to really great music. I think he first played ‘Herion Song’ and he was like “just listen to how crazy this is!”. That song just builds and builds in intensity and it has these lulls in between and it has no real traditional structure to it. Hearing it for the first time I thought ‘oh wow you can actually do anything with music and you don’t need to follow the rules with music’. I guess it set this idea in a lot of people’s heads, that you can really do anything you want with music. If you grow up in the suburbs and all you hear is Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ or Metallica songs on the radio, and that is the spectrum you are working from, then you hear the Velvet Underground and it’s a whole new concept of approaching music. In saying that, it is still very much pop music.” REGURGITATOR bring The Velvet Underground & Nico to the Canberra Theatre Centre on Friday February 2. Tickets from $69.00+bf through canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
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PUNK & DISORDERLY [THE WORD ON PUNK] WITH ALICE WORLEY [ALICE.WORLEY@OUTLOOK.COM]
First off, I hope everyone had a very punk Christmas and New Year, like I did. Listened nearly non-stop to the Alternative Christmas playlist on Spotify (it disappointed me when I found no trace of No Doubt’s punk Christmas track ‘Oi To The World’), and just had a quiet-ish evening with some beautiful people, eating dhal, drinking some very powerful eggnog (labelled ‘Fight Milk’), and creating a circle of milk crates around the only ashtray in the backyard. The Home Brew Records New Year’s bash was fantastic. Thank you to Joel and Jack for hosting it so well and providing us all with such a lovely (and loving) environment in which to say “Sayonara, 2017”. I did run away to The Phoenix to ring in the actual New Year, requesting that the bar staff play The Darkness for me, and being pleasantly surprised to have near the entirety of Permission To Land being cranked up and heartily sung to by many of the Phoenix’s occupants. Speaking of our beloved Phoenix, its doors are under threat of permanent closure yet again. I’ve been going to gigs at The Phoenix for nearly eight years now, my entire drinking-age life. I can say without any hint of hesitation that there is just nowhere else like it in the ACT. It’s estimated to have hosted over 10,000 gigs and 15,000 bands in its 25 years as a live music venue. It is
where I have made most of my friends and had some of the most memorable and enjoyable nights of my life. If I’m ever stuck wondering what to do in the evenings, my first reaction is the check out what’s happening at Phoeno. Nowhere feels like home quite like this place, and we need it to keep operating if the Canberra music scene wishes to continue to grow. The bar is in some very frightening debt that needs paying if it has any hope of resurrecting itself. There is currently a GoFundMe in the works that’s been looking promising, but if it loses its momentum, it will not succeed in its goal to raise $75,000. If you have any fond memories of this place, I implore you to donate. If it’s still open by the time this issue is printed, show your support by walking through the doors and buying a pint. Every little bit helps. When the news about Phoenix’s debt and consequently its closure was still fresh, it seemed the Lazertits/ Swim Team gig was to be its last. We know now that was not the case, but it made for a very packed pub, everyone stepping out to support the place as much as they could. The night started with beloved locals Slagatha Christie. This was the best set they’ve ever played, in my opinion. They were a tight, well-oiled machine. They’ve made little tweaks here and there to their older songs that have perfected them, plus introduced
some new tracks to the repertoire, such as ‘Seinfeels’ and a new, very short and sweet track called ‘Retail Rascals’. Thanks again for the tunes, you beautiful eggs. Nice sunnies, by the way. Swim Team had a very Californian Punk thing going on. The heavy use of toms on the kit was reminding me of Dead Kennedys. And props to the bass player making her Swim Team debut gig to us humble Canberrans, we were happy to be your first. Lazertits kicked off with a bang (a feminist bang to be precise). This was one of those bands you watch and think, “I wanna be in a band,” because they make it look like so much fun. You could see how much they enjoyed sharing the stage with one another. I keep being so blown away by these Melbourne punk bands (I say this thinking back on seeing Cable Ties, Destrends, and Wet Lips) and it makes me really annoyed that I didn’t know how amazing this scene was when I lived in Melbourne. So many missed opportunities to see these punks hitting up venues such as Yah Yah’s and The Tote. And speaking of, the girls dedicated their song about “crying in The Tote” to our struggling Phoenix, as The Tote has notoriously faced closure many times and still managed to carry on. They know our feels, peeps. Thank you for the heartfelt sentiment.
The Punk Gig Guide Thu Jan 25 – FACE FACE w/ Helena Pop, Lady Denman + Azim Zain & His Lovely Bones @ Transit Bar Sat Jan 27 – Defenestration + WRONG @ The Front Gallery & Cafe Sat Jan 27 – Elk Locker Hollowing EP Launch w/ Snakepit + Blue Velvet @ Transit Bar Fri Feb 2 – Mental Cavity w/ Gvrlls, No Haven, Potion + Disavow @ The Basement Fri Feb 9 – Fun Machine: Canberra Icons Party @ The Phoenix
LAZERTITS – PHOTO BY ALICE WORLEY
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Wed Feb 28 – Veruca Salt + The Lemonheads @ Canberra Theatre Centre
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BMA BAND
PROFILE [LOCAL ACTS TO WATCH]
FROM TIMES SQUARE TO CANBERRA
BY RORY MCCARTNEY
LANI Group members: Alex Unikowski (piano), Brendan Keller-Tuberg (bass) and Malcolm Newland (drums) are the squad who played on my debut EP Fallen from Grace.
people) which was surreal. We also recorded two songs in one go (track three and four – you’ll understand why when you hear it) which meant that Brendan had to switch between electric and double bass silently. It was lit AF.
What would your band be called if it wasn’t called Lani?
Of what are you proudest so far?
If I could live up to the name (and if Tahlia Makunde hadn’t already claimed it), we would be called The Sixth Dimension.
I’ve grown a lot as a person and musician over the past few years. I went through a difficult transition moving from Newcastle to Canberra but applying myself has caused me to fall so hard in love with music. It sounds so corny but I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, especially the CD!
Describe your sound. I hoped that by creating an EP, I would know how to answer such a question as this but I still find it difficult. The album has ended up as a sort of compilation of music that I like and am proud of and that most appropriately captures the journey I’ve been on in the past 12 months. Overall it is a jazz/ neo-soul aesthetic with a lot of variety for listeners and each song consistently offers a chance for the instrumentalists and/or I to show off a little... hehe all that jazz you know. There are also some very vulnerable and raw moments too. Who are your influences, musical or otherwise? I listened to a lot of Hiatus Kaiyote, Esperanza Spalding, Solange, Anderson Paak, Chance the Rapper, Bon Iver and Zaz in 2017. I used to sing a lot of Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and Christina Aguilera. I love Peter Gabriel and I’m inspired by many jazz vocalists whom I continue to discover. What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had as a band? Recording the EP has definitely been the most memorable experience thus far. I feel incredibly lucky that the first thing I get to put out into world was created in the state of the art recording studio at the ANU School of Music and with such incredible musos! We got to record with an orchestra (about 20
What are your plans for the future? I’m going to finish my BMus and do honours. Otherwise I hope to continue what I’m doing: composing, recording and performing my music. What makes you laugh? My grandma. What pisses you off? Sexism. What about the Canberra scene would you change? I wish there were more live music venues and more of a jazz scene!!! What are your upcoming gigs? Canberra: Saturday Feb 10 @ Smith’s Alternatives, 9:30pm Canberra: Thursday Feb 15 @ ANU School of Music (outside Llewellyn Hall), 7:30pm Newcastle:Tuesday Feb 20 @ The Underground, 8pm Sydney: Tuesday Mar 13 @ Lazybones, 8:30pm Melbourne: Thursday Apr 19 @ Paris Cat Jazz Club, 8pm Contact info: lanismusic.com facebook.com/Lanismusic @lanis_music
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Folk artist ELEANOR MCEVOY is credited with having the highest selling Irish LP in the history of the Emerald Isle. No mean boast, considering how gifted that nation is when it comes to singing. BMA caught up with McEvoy after her Woodford Folk Festival appearances and ahead of her return to Canberra as part of the Naked …Live tour McEvoy’s early experiences included four months of busking in New York City. It sounds glamorous, but it had its frightening moments. “You think it’s so romantic and so great, but it was a foul experience to be honest. I was busking in Times Square as I was broke. I had people trying to steal my money, rob me and convert me to weird religions. I wouldn’t repeat it.” A ‘busker’s code’ meant that other street performers didn’t present an issue for McEvoy, and the situation was helped by police on horseback and the vigilante group The Guardian Angels, patrolling the area with their red berets. McEvoy’s twelfth album Naked Music is a minimalist work. Asked whether the title comes from the minimalist style, or whether it relates to laying her soul bare through the songs, McEvoy says: “It’s a little bit of both but, to be honest, it’s more the arrangements with one instrument and one voice, kind of how I perform live.” There seem to be a number of spiritual hooks in the songs, but this was not because McEvoy is overly spiritual herself.
aviation disaster-themed track ‘Land in The Water’. However, there is a lot more to the song than first appears. “It was inspired by space travel, but using it as a metaphor for fame. On the way up, everyone wants to know you, but then you come crashing down. It’s about the X Factor things of the world.” The show will include songs from McEvoy’s latest album The Thomas Moore Project. She had a mixed feeling about the songs, as she loved singing them in a choir, but hated the arrangements and their connotations “associated with your aunt singing in the parlour, or a bad tenor in a pub, singing while drunk.” Done in the manner of her own songs, with an electric guitar, Hammond organ and a modern setting, McEvoy found they worked really well. McEvoy’s albums have been notable for significant shifts in style, moving between folk, rock, jazz and blues influences. “I’m a nightmare when it comes to record shops putting me in a category. I change as I see fit. But what I realise now is, there are elements of all my albums that remain the same; my songwriting and my voice. Those two things never change. There’s a personality in my songwriting that comes through, that doesn’t change, and I colour it with different genres. I’m very comfortable with that.” ELEANOR MCEVOY performs at the CANBERRA IRISH CLUB from 8pm on Thursday January 18. Tickets $32 + bf through trybooking.com.
“Music is kind of my religion. I love it and it has always been there for me. I feel something otherworldly about music.” Naked Music includes the apparently
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PLANET OF SOUND Planet of Sound is our column celebrating the wide history of music. In this month’s entry, Dan Bigna takes us through music’s immediate PAST AND FUTURE. The previous 12 months can be placed in a ‘good but not great’ category that hopefully didn’t set a precedent for 2018 – that is a personal observation, of course – even though I have nothing really significant to whinge about as I somehow managed to keep the machine on the road while dodging a few obstacles along the way. One musical highlight was another first rate instalment of David Bowie box sets, this time focusing on the Berlin years of the late 1970s when even the stark bleakness of the East/West divide could not bring down a major songwriting talent. Also happening was BMA magazine marking a major achievement as 2017 drew to a close with its 500th issue in December, and I did a great job to celebrate that by misspelling Jus Oborn’s name in a review of the superb Electric Wizard album Wizard Bloody Wizard that was nothing short of disgraceful for one of the standout albums of the year. But I did get to enjoy a description of Metallica’s thrash metal classic Master of Puppets as the work of an ‘acutely sensitive songwriter’ that could be apt for the acutely sensitive songwriting on
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atmospheric instrumental ‘Orion’. Also worthy of note in the magazine was mention that local free music advocate and performer, Shoeb Ahmad, has a new album due out this year, and to help celebrate the big 500 we also got a few pages reproduced from the very first BMA issue all the way back in 1992 with a
the next issue titled ‘And Canberra – a café society?’ It is true that for many years before Braddon became the hippest place in the universe Gus’s was the only outdoor café in Canberra, but I guess for many local residents over those many decades one outdoor eatery was better than none. It should also be mentioned that in the pre-hip Braddon days Canberra did have the City Pub at a time when Lonsdale Street resembled a bomb site. Anyway, that was then and so was 2017, so I figure we can draw a line in the sand. But given I’ve recently been listening to The Smiths a lot,
Listen to that stuff and the future suddenly seems all the brighter.
humble mailing address somewhere in quaint Weston Creek. Of particular note were a few photos from that wild February 1992 Nirvana gig at the ANU and a preview of a story for
in particular the first rate reissue of the band’s jewel in the crown, the 1986 album The Queen is Dead, and have also been consuming copious amounts of vodka and orange that mostly brings on unwanted bouts of self pity, I don’t seem to have crawled out of the hole just yet. Some of it is trivial like who the hell am I going to take to the Slowdive show in Sydney at the end of the month now that a spare ticket has come about? But other disconcerting news like the financial trouble currently experienced by the Phoenix Pub is cause for broader social concern. The Canberra Times has run a number of stories in recent weeks that detail strength sapping landlord issues, which seem to be bleeding the Phoenix dry – and that sucks. will never forget travelling into the city one sultry Sunday afternoon in 2009 (I think that was when it happened) to check out US psych freaks Thee Oh Sees at the
Phoenix. That was one wild show in a small, packed venue described by former BMA editor Peter Krbavac as having, “condensation dripping from the walls,” which created just the right amount of punk rock atmosphere in a city location that was otherwise so quiet you could hear a pin drop. One can only hope that sanity prevails and the Phoenix can keep going until Thee Oh Sees finally crack the code with their 50th album going to number one in the charts and the band returns to the Phoenix in a limousine to rock out with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard as support act. But now let’s revisit the personal for a moment and it must be said that solace from the experience of a ‘so-so’ year did arrive in the form of a collection of Creedence Clearwater Revival singles in their original mono mixes. I have had the lovely 1970 single, ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ on repeat while considering that sometimes innermost thoughts can rise to the surface in the simplest ways. Another jolt to the system that has made me want to leap from the couch to re-engage with the world is the Velvet Underground’s ‘I Heard Her Call My Name,’ (mono mix of course) played repeatedly at ear destroying volume. It is from the band’s White Light/White Heat album that has always managed to be both hilarious and mindblowingly intense at the same – Lou Reed’s wildly free guitar solo on this song pretty much kickstarted the music career of Sonic Youth. It does sound a bit like a power-drill entering the skull but the sheer aural audacity of it, the sheer fuck you to anyone who recoils at guitars dripping with attitude and annoyance and the utterly brazen self-confidence to even attempt such a thing in 1967 simply demands the utmost respect. Listen to that stuff and the future suddenly seems all the brighter.
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TEN QUESTIONS WITH:
FUN MACHINE So, it’s been a while. What have the Fun Machine clan been up to since we last heard from you? Jesus. Big question because we’re all scattered to the winds and all working hard. Something like: Bec is unstoppable. She’s started the Bec Taylor School of Music among other musical endeavours. Nick Peddle is obviously guided exclusively by his name and went from drums to road race cycling. I guess he’s also guided by his strong legs. I saw a photo of him on a podium. Impressive legs. Ramsay Nuthall fronts Hi New Lo down in Melbourne, they’re uniquely great and will be playing with us at the Phoenix. I’m Chris Endrey and I’ve been touring as a comedian a bit, but I suspect I’m not that funny so I’m still playing music and put out a solo album recently. And one with PAINTonPAINT. Two more coming too, can’t wait. This is like a pissweak version of the end credits where we get to montage where everyone is now. What song are you most looking forward to performing together again after such time apart? We don’t historically do set lists so it’s hard to know. The best ones are always just the right ones at the right time. I think a song Bec sings, ‘Ozymandias’, is the best we’ve ever done. It’s not recorded sadly, but it’s worth the price of admission
alone. There’s also a dumb song called ‘Dreamers’ which is honestly 1:1 just a Bruce Springsteen power ballad. We sometimes play it in encores, it’s got like, four key changes. Fingers crossed. Have you got any new tunes for us, have you been working on much new stuff? God no. I can’t speak for the others, but I am always writing songs that I would love to bring to the world via Fun Machine, but we’re spread across the country and it’s
projected Nintendo 64 and once two masseuses for the audience. But this time I’m just hoping we end up with more than one person coming as the MagnetMart guy.
I like that it’s big enough to have lots of people trying different things, and small enough to have everyone doing them in the same spaces together.
What has been Fun Machine’s favourite gig?
What about favourite?
We played with The Darkness which was pretty surreal but, as bands always say, the first ones when we were learning how much we loved to play were the best. Sweating in the packed old Phoenix or the Polo with your dearest blood
I hate how rare it is that any of the uniquely great music that’s made here is reflected in our public culture. Cafes, commercial radio, sports matches, whatever – all great places to celebrate what we have and almost always playing some seppo trash. Except for Smith’s, of course.
I reckon the name’s good. That said, ‘North Lyneham Shire’ has a fair ring to it too sad for me to hold them back when we play so rarely. I’m sure we’ll put some small bit of new stuff together for this show, but it’ll just be done on the day. Which, in fairness, is how we worked new stuff when we played all the time. So who knows. Do you consider yourselves a Canberra Icon? (Re. the name of the event) Of course not. No. We just always have themes for our shows and I like to think of opportunities to do things you don’t get to see elsewhere. This has led to a lot of paint, nudity, painted nudity, a
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friends by your side and a sea of smiling faces all singing along are memories that are so joyous they make me feel grave-ready. Who is your stylist? I remember learning that a Canberra band had a manager who was telling them what to wear and I spat my weet bix onto the back of my disgusted hands. They’re rich now. Good for them. Do you think we would be so uniformly tasteless if we had a god damn stylist. What is your favourite thing about the Canberra music scene (or Canberra in general)?
your
least
If we were to start calling ‘Canberra’ something else, what should we call it? I reckon the name’s good. That said, ‘North Lyneham Shire’ has a fair ring to it. Anything you feel the need tto add? I feel like it’s not everyday you get a world grade athlete from Watson and I hope Nick Kyrgios reads this and comes to the gig. Or at least his mum. Dress as your Canberra icon for FUN MACHINE’s CANBERRA ICONS PARTY. Friday February 9 from 8pm at The Phoenix. Tickets through trybooking. com (SOLD OUT)
SoundOut 2018 |
BEHIND THE SCENES places to come to. And I think we may have done that. “I used to go to Sydney and listen to music, or put on things with people like Jim Denley and he’s a really good friend – improviser, major talent in Sydney. But he’d been touring with some Argentinians and they’d come here and he called me up and said ‘why don’t you put on these guys’. And we thought, well why not make it a festival. And that’s what we did, we got a little bit of funding from the Norwegian government, because there were a couple of Norwegians coming, and it got started.
I can get people to come and collaborate in their own right as a principle of the festival, then that’s a good thing. I mean it’s a free improvisation, free jazz, experimental music festival. Some people are interested in the genre but don’t want to do that. It’s very hard. “More people have gravitated towards it, more people are experimenting. I think that’s one of the good things, the healthy competition between the various schools of thought. Putting SoundOut on has garnered a bit of competitive spirit between the different disciplines, between classical, this and that. But more
There’s nothing like coming the festival and experiencing first hand
GIVE AND TAKE BY HAYDEN FRITZLAFF
Free improvisation. Free jazz. Experimental music. Still with me? I thought I’d get the scary stuff out of the way straight up. If you’re not already embedded in the experimental scene, the music associated with SOUNDOUT, Canberra’s hidden gem of a music festival, can seem anything from foreign to outright impenetrable. But like so many things, it labours under unfair assumptions, and taking the plunge into the unknown can deliver breathtaking results. “It’s a hard question,” says Richard Johnson when I ask him about communicating exactly what the festival is. “How do you get it across to them what it is? It’s so visceral and exciting when it’s there in front of you. Because these things are kind of give and take. Sometimes you get a brilliant improv or a free jazz record and sometimes it’s not so great.” PAGE 38
Johnson is SoundOut’s founder and director, currently putting together the ninth iteration of the festival. Nearly a decade after its inception, he’s now booking artists up to two years in advance. “It started off with an attitude towards starting a touring circuit where we would mix with all of these international artists and we would make Canberra one of the
As well as ingraining itself as part of the touring circuit for Austalian improvisers, SoundOut has garnered a strong reputation in the international experimental scene. “Our friend Joe Dolezal was over in Berlin and he mentioned the SoundOut Festival and they had heard about it. A lot of people know about it, just because so many of the artists are amazing musicians. Sofia Jernberg and Mette Rasmussen are coming in on the 21st [of January], and I’m putting them on at Smith’s as a kind of adjunct to the festival, simply because they had to leave the country before the fest started, and they wanted to come. They said, ‘why don’t we do it early?’ and I said, ‘yeah it sounds like a good idea’.” Johnson is also mindful of the work being done to foster improvisers and experimental musicians in Canberra, booking locals like Ben Drury and Amelia Watson on this year’s lineup. However, dedicating a portion of the bill to local talent comes with unexpected challenges. “There are people doing great work here, but what I find is that a lot of the people are doing their own things. The principal notion of the festival is one of collaboration, and if
things have started to pop up.” “There’s nothing like coming the festival and experiencing first hand. It’s one thing looking at the poster and thinking ‘oh I mightn’t come, its sounds kind of, um, new or something, I want to listen to tunes’. But if you come and listen to it, then you tend to get it. That’s what happened to me. I gravitated from jazz, I listened to a lot of jazz, and playing music with people.” Approaching the tenth anniversary of the festival in 2019, I ask Johnson about his plans for the future. “I wouldn’t mind just focusing on the Australians that started it off,” he says. “And bring out the ones that came in that first year – some of them.” SOUNDOUT 2018 takes place at the Drill Hall Gallery on February 3 and 4. There are two sessions each day, at 1pm and 5pm. See eventbrite.com. au for tickets and lineup details. The first two people to email vortexrec@gmail.com with the name of the Austrian trumpeter coming to SoundOut festival, will recieve a free season ticket to the festival.
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SoundOut 2018 |
Sten Sandell (Sweden) – pianist Sten is in a greater context a Composer / musician / producer – piano, organ, voice, electronics Artist. He has cooperated with musicians/composers including Emil Strandberg, Paal Nilssen-Love, Sverrir Gudjonsson, Johan Berthling, Evan Parker, Sven-Åke Johansson, Chris Cutler, Mats Persson, Sofia Jernberg, Carl-Axel Dominique, Mats Gustafsson, Nina de Heney and Raymond Strid. Sten Sandell was awarded the Royal Academy of Music’s Jazz Award in 2012 with the motivation: “The pianist Sten Sandell is one of Swedish improvised music’s most brilliant, captivating and independent voices. His musical activities are characterized by a strong artistic integrity, and he has with great consistency developed a characteristic aesthetic attitude that inspires countless musicians.”
THE PERFORMERS
Franz Hautzinger (Austria) – trumpet Franz Hautzinger has taken long and bendy detours and turned to many dead ends. Born in Seewinkel, Burgenland, a Hannibal Marvin Peterson concert at jazz gallery Nickelsdorf was the young trumpeter’s “awakening experience”. He studied at the University of Graz, Austria, from 1981 to 1983. After moving to Vienna in 1986 he started in 1989 to explore the trumpet in his very own and un-academic way. He is a globetrotter whose unmistakable musical signature is known from Vienna to Berlin, London to Beirut, or in Tokyo, New York, and Chicago. Franz Hautzinger has shown that even in times where postmodernism is history.ZAIN Azim Zain & His
Paal Nilssen-Love (Norway) – drummer Millie Watson (Canberra) – toy piano/ Is a seminal musician in the new wave of artists percussion that play in many contexts. Today Paal’s portfolio Millie is a classically trained pianist from the ANU includes Atomic, School Days, The Thing, Frode School of Music and a member of the Canberra Gjerstad Trio, Sten Sandell Trio, Scorch Trio, Experimental Music Studio. She performs Territory Band, FME, and various duo projects such around Canberra, composing sets comprising of as with reedmen Ken Vandermark, John Butcher, found sound recordings that in turn inspire live Mats Gustafsson, organist Nils Henrik Asheim, improvisation. Inspired by Feldman and Cage, noise wizard Lasse Marhaug, and not to forget Amelia’s style draws upon classical forms yet is the recently now defunct but nevertheless brilliant rooted in a desire to explore the quality of sound Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet. Before turning and Improvise. She performs regularly around 30 Paal has stated his position as one of the most CanberraBROW GALLERY & BAR profiled drummers in Europe today, he has made THE BASEMENT numberless performances at festivals and clubs in Europe and USA and participated on more than 50 recordings. ROW SEE THE FULL SOUNDOUT LINEUP ON PAGE 67 GALLERY & BAR facebook.com/bmamagazine
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LOVE THE PHOENIX The location is so important, it’s a portal away from the weekend chaos of East Row for musicians, artists, weirdos, curious public servants, out of towners and locals. The Phoenix is our little version of The Tote in Melbourne, or the now closed Annandale in Sydney. We can’t lose it! – Josh Leyshon, Hoodlum Shouts PHOTO BY PATRICK COX facebook.com/bmamagazine
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SAVE THE PHOENIX PHOTOGRAPHY BY MEGAN LEAHY
BY CODY ATKINSON
Even on a Tuesday afternoon the room was full; likely fuller than it had been on a Tuesday in years. Even with the short notice, people were keen to come out of the woodwork for this. Even if there was a whiteboard prominently involved at the front of the room. “The Phoenix is more than just around 30 square metres of space – it’s essential to the cultural capital of Canberra,” said Chris Endrey, summing up why around a hundred people were packed into a pub on a sunny Tuesday arvo. It’s absolutely no secret now, but The Phoenix has hit harder times in recent years. From the more outwardly noticeable events such as the Sydney Building fire of 2013, the eviction notice placed on the old half of the pub and the temporary closure of the venue late last year, to the little things, like stopping running trivia last year, or not always having beers on tap during gigs, the Pheonix has shown some signs of trouble. This reached breaking point when The Phoenix posted on their Facebook page that the pub was in serious trouble. The community response was immediate, and offers to help save the Phoenix occurred immediately. Donations flowed, but a more concerted push would likely be needed. Ad-hoc emergency community groups are a fascinating beast, unlike many other organisations. Status and structure are fluid, with only the end goal fixed (in this case saving the pub). The Tuesday in question was the Save The Phoenix Brigade meeting, an event designed to get people who gave a shit about the pub to do something about it. Ideas flowed from all corners of the room, and support offered from various parts. The Green Shed had PAGE 42
already kicked in $5k; a generous gift for anyone. A raffle of band merch was suggested (which ended raising more than $1k) along with a mini film fest focused on the pub, amongst others. Not all ideas were good, and even fewer seem to have been implemented, but there seemed to be momentum in the room that something could be done. In almost no time various news outlets were covering the crisis, which is rare for (what to outsiders is) a small pub. Bands who haven’t hit the stage in a while have put their names down to hit the stage, as have punters who haven’t been back in a while. People have a habit of supporting something when they might lose it, as either a sign that they cared or as a last goodbye. When BMA tried to go the Slow Turismo gig the following Saturday night, we were met with a line of 50+ people, that just wouldn’t budge. Every night of the following week seemed to be getting busier, as people were trying to keep the damn thing alive. Or to reclaim bits of their past, which they might lose a link to forever. There even seems to have been an uptick of those going to the Phoenix for the first time, to check out what they were missing before it disappeared. As long as they pay, the Phoenix will take their cash. And hopefully them coming down will help keep the place open going forward. Fred Smith, now nationally acclaimed for his gritty songwriting, played a week and a half after
the news broke. During his early Wednesday night set, in front of a now customarily busy Phoenix, Smith shared his history with the venue, dating back to the early to mid 90s where it was one of the few refuges for creative types in Canberra. More than two decades on, it is still that place, used by many to escape from work, study, reality or other. In true Phoenix fashion, Smith finished with a song about swinging dicks (albeit in a warzone). It’s not just the Phoenix that is in the firing line; it’s the broader cultural identity of Canberra. The potential closure of the Phoenix goes beyond just one venue; it is starting to become emblematic of a wider threat to live music and performance in Canberra, especially at the grassroots level. Venues may come and go over time, but a whole lot more seem to be going (Zierholz@UC, ANU Bar to name just two) than starting, with rumours circulating that other venues might be going soon too.
not be enough. A note sits on the fundraising page saying that: “An additional $75,000+ would help us revitalise the current venue, with a view to daytime trade and increasing of capacity to keep the property a long term viable live music venue and pub.” It’s impossible to predict the future, but also impossible to root against a venue that has put on over 10,000 shows and 15,000 bands over the years. If you have a free night or two over the next couple of weeks, go down a check out a show and grab a sneaky drink or two – otherwise you might not get the opportunity to in the future. The Save The Phoenix GoFundMe page can be found at gofundme. com/save-the-phoenix. The Phoenix Pub can be found at East Row, Civic, opposite from the IGA. It’s where the music will be coming from.
On Facebook, local legends Hoodlum Shouts surmised the situation simply: “An example (of) how important the Phoenix is to the health of Canberra music – think of it as our own little Tote from Melbourne, or Annandale in Sydney. One of them survived because people voted with their feet and one of them didn’t. You can help decide on the future of the Phoenix!” The goal is extremely high, and the mood has been cautiously optimistic from those I have spoken to. While the Save The Phoenix GoFundMe page is more than half way to its stated goal of $75,000 in just under two weeks of operation, the timelines are tight and it still might @bmamag
Jenny McKechnie – Cable Ties
Josh Leyshon – Hoodlum Shouts
We had an incredible time time playing at The Phoenix. It was one of the best shows of the tour. We felt like we were welcomed into the hub of a lovely, tight knit music community.
I was barely a teenager when my family moved to Canberra 25 years ago, the same time The Phoenix opened in the Sydney building. It became the home ground venue for Hoodlum Shouts (pictured) and we’ve played some of our best gigs there on the tiny stage next to the urinal, our singer Sam walking across the furniture, swinging around the mic stand. The location is so important, it’s a portal away from the weekend chaos of East Row for musicians, artists, weirdos, curious public servants, out of towners and locals. The Phoenix is our little version of The Tote in Melbourne, or the now closed Annandale in Sydney. We can’t lose it!
Dave McCarthy – Laundry Echo
RISE AGAIN ONCE AGAIN Our beloved pub is at risk of closure once again. THE PHOENIX has a rich 25-year history as a proving ground, nursery, and home for so many of Canberra’s creatives. In recent times it’s hosted the likes of Camp Cope, Cable Ties, The Smith Street Band, and Jess Locke as well as arts ventures like BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT!, Jumpcuts, Roll For Intelligence, stand-up comedy and Canbera’s most decidedly punk karaoke night. There is so much love for the place floating around at the moment. We decided to get to the bottom of it, and asked some friends of The Phoenix for their personal stories.
Augustine Bamberry – artist, serial gig-goer One of the best experiences I had at Phoenix was the gig outside on the street after The Phoenix was potentially closing last time. I was having a really bad day and just wanted to stay in bed, but I went anyway. I felt terrible until my mood suddenly lifted when Helena Pop started playing. I was in a crowd of my best friends and a bunch of other people that The Phoenix is important to, singing along on the street and thinking, ‘The Canberra music scene really is special and The Phoenix is a massive part of making that happen’.
My favourite memory of The Phoenix is simply the very first time I walked into the place. I was in my first year of uni and I loathed Canberra; I’d made plenty of friends in the city but I’d never really felt at home here. I was on the brink of changing degrees and changing cities when I was invited to my first Bootlegs Session. I walked in to find The Trivs tearing through one of the tightest sets I’d ever witnessed, I
…it’s a portal away from the weekend chaos of East Row found Guinness on tap and a place for my creative heart to flourish on the urinal’s chalkboards… I finally found a place I felt I wanted to stay and it made me want to stay in Canberra. nine years later and I still proudly call Canberra home with all thanks to The Phoenix.
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THE ART OF BISON
WORDS BY TEGAN GARNETT PHOTOGRAPHY BY HANNAH AXELSON
Art has many facets and functions. While artistic tendencies can be trained and cultivated, the propensity to observe, to analyse, and the desire to express is a fundamental aspect of our nature. Functionally, art brings people together, illuminating our capacity for connection. Art draws us in as a family, as a society, and acts across time and space as a prime marker of our species. Brian Tunks, the Canberra designer behind Bison, has known this for a long time. Bison, famous for its ceramics and glass, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and Tunks sat down with me to discuss PAGE 44
his art, and how a once personal vision has grown and now affects so many. Listening to Tunks you immediately get a sense of Bison’s values and
philosophies. Style, harmonious with functionality. Beauty, but not at the expense of humanity. Materials of elegant fragility, albeit charged with a dignified endurance. Design and production that captures hearts, and pulls in the eager eyes and hands of buyers and creatives all around the globe. At its core, Bison celebrates life. These pieces are created to be versatile, to be put to use in everyday situations. My mother bought some Bison glass votifs to give as a Christmas present last year and Tunks enthuses “Use them as shot glasses! Or put condiments in them on the breakfast table! For
BRIAN TUNKS IN BISON, BRADDON God’s sake, don’t keep them sitting idle in the good room.” Bison has 20-30 colours that it works with and, as is the inescapable truth for all artists, through his colours and designs Tunks allows us a glimpse into his mind. His art is inspired by aspects of his life, such as childhood memories, or elements of the everyday that have left an impression. “They are colours that evoke response, or a reflection.” Bison is continuously built on by Tunks’ memories, whether it be the colour of a flower that was in his kitchen, or the memory of his grandfather’s orchard in the Blue Mountains.
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[art + design] | ceramics | Bison “There are stories behind what I do, like my milk bottles, and the Fågel pitchers. Fågel is the Swedish word for bird, and the reason the pitchers came in to being is that as a kid I used to ride to school in Sweden on the bike path and what would happen is that these birds have the right of way as they are the state bird. They were evil things and they would all pull up in front of you on a black ice path and twenty kids would go down looking like contemporary art in a big pile, and they would just keep waddling! The neck profile, or the spout, is the angle of their heads as they walked on in front of me and kept going! “So there are stories behind what I do, and what I love is when people come in and they pick pieces up and they love it but they’re not quite sure why. And the moment you explain it to them they just go, ‘got it’.” On the Bison home page you will find the words “Where will your Bison be in 1000 years?” Tunks stresses the design of his pieces and the manner in which he draws on the past, with colour and form, is brimming with references. In his words, Brian takes a “global approach to design, with an appreciation of history and the use and reuse of iconography through art, and how that also spills through design. See some of my glassware references back to the 30s and the 40s; industrial ware meets French flacone and the beautiful glass that perfumers used 80 years ago. So it’s about mixing those elements together; drawing on life and something that’s beautiful and then marrying it with another thing, and before you
BRADDON STORE accountable for cultural landfill that I see all the time with the seasonality of fashion and design, its criminal. We should be saying to ourselves, this is the legacy we are leaving for future generations.” If you look closely, finely raised or engraved in all the Bison pieces is a line drawing of a bison. The Bison symbol was hand-drawn by Tunks, and originated from his appreciation of the beauty of the Bronze Age cave paintings in Altamira. “To me they were so powerful because they were simple line drawings but they conveyed movement, fear, emotion.” Even the details of the Bison brand resonate a sense of connectedness, celebrating that which lasts, and the
So there are stories behind what I do, and what I love is when people come in and they pick pieces up and they love it but they’re not quite sure why know it you’ve got something that’s unique to you that is referenced and nuanced.” Tunks seeks to create lasting items that withstand the test of time, both steadfast through fashion seasons, but also physically enduring. “I want them to bring it out and use it for generations. I do not want to be
manner in which art can call out to us over the centuries; the powerful way an ancient civilization’s art can still move us today. And where might you ask, does Bison’s social and environmental conscience stem from? Well it seemed fairly apparent after learning of Tunks’ education in history and archaeology.
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CURVE PLATE AND EDO BOWL Archaeology took him to Syria to search for the remains of ancient civilizations. “I would dig pieces up that were second century, or earlier, and to think that that had a place and a value for a person, or something would have a piece of graffiti written on it, and it shows our connection, and it shows that these pieces lasted. We [Bison] don’t want to have the dubious reputation of having plastic that people are digging up in 2000 years, it just makes my skin crawl. But the thing about this period of history was that these pieces where quite often used and reused.” Excavating out on the field in Syria, near Aleppo, Tunks worked with the local Bedouin people. “It gave
me a very different perspective on a sense of time, and the sense of cultural permeation, how things flow into each other. It’s quite phenomenal.” It appears that with this social conscience, comes Tunks’ understanding that art is for everyone, and it is uniting. He also understands that Bison is a mechanism with which to do that, to bring about a collective, a family of creatives who connect and thrive through their work. “We are a global community”, says Tunks who went to school in Sweden, grew up in rural NSW, went to university in Canberra, dug artifacts in Syria, and is inspiration by the beauty of the Asian cultures. Due to a life of travel, and an PAGE 45
[art + design] | ceramics | Bison expansive take on the world, Tunks has a global sense of perspective. Whether it’s glass, ceramics or linen, he seeks to create connection through the most innately human element of humanity, art. And Bison is his bronze-age tool to do this. “I want to improve conditions for people. I don’t want it to be about profitability at all costs. That’s a business model that was applied by a number of people for quite a while, and I see that changing very quickly, and I don’t want to be a part of that.” *** Tunks spent 16 years producing Bison pieces in Canberra, first in his father’s shed (“He asked me to get out because I rusted all the tools because I wasn’t venting the kiln properly”), then in a studio in Queanbeyan before moving to the Bison studio in Pialligo. With its increasing popularity, the evergrowing Bison realised it needed to expand its horizons and seek artists from outside of Canberra to assist with production. While that is a difficult step for any artist, to put your vision in the hands of another, Tunks took it in his stride and travelled the world to select artists whose skills he has nurtured and harbored. He now shares a Bison family with artists he believes in. And in that act alone, of distributing the production of Bison over cultures and locations, Tunks has done something very special. He has connected people through his art.
close to our DNA, and I want it to be a win-win for everyone that’s involved with Bison!” On the Bison website and in conversation, Tunks promotes his multicultural Bison family, and proudly regales me with stories of his overseas artists whom he trains, but also learns from. He tells me how excited he is to be heading overseas soon, and laughs that the studios are “so often much cleaner than mine ever was!” Bison works with a woman in India on a line in linen, and a third-generation family of glass blowers in Thailand, and a family business in the Philippines working with porcelain and bone china. And all these artists, who have generations of specialty within their field of production, Tunks knows personally. “I go and spend time in studios showing artists how to form spouts, how to attach handles, how to do the glazing so that it’s seamless across all of them, but still feels incredibly artisanal. There’s got to be humans behind these processes.” His Bison team in Canberra also gets a lot of love. For example, Tunks has named some of his glass pieces after his nieces, Eve and Isla, and after his great friend across the road, Lou Lou, co-owner of Moxom + Whitney. The staff in the Canberra stores (Annabel Vickers pictured) also feel very much a part of this Bison community, as Brian creates a family, local and international. Tunks has such a sense of perspective on the world, and sees art as tying people together. “It is
One area where they don’t regulate is how you see the world, and how you express that “I adore them,” he says. “And I’m going over soon and I can’t wait because its laughter, and I’m learning new techniques from people, and I’m sharing my knowledge with them. It’s how art should be. It’s collegial, it’s about an exchange, whether it’s information or technology or technique, it’s multilayered, it’s interactive, it’s about evolving design but sticking PAGE 46
a unifying factor, in a time of great instability. And I think we should be celebrating it, and grabbing it with both hands.” Tunks’ artistic success also stands as proof that art is inherent within the human spirit, as he is completely self-taught in all areas of his artistic pursuits. Considering the writing and producing he has done for Vogue, the styling for restaurants, hotels
ANNABEL VICKERS IN BISON, BRADDON STORE and Californian eco spas, and his success in ceramics, Tunks laughs in bemusement when he reflects on the absence of any formal training. When I asked his perspective on art, Tunks replied, “I find some of the art that’s out there bewildering to me too. But the potential and the ability to express yourself has never been stronger. And I think there’s a reason for that; people want a voice in a period where they’re increasingly denied one, a period where we’ve got overregulation
in our community, and in our government, and so many areas of our live. One area where they don’t regulate is how you see the world, and how you express that.” BISON has stores in Pialligo and the Nibu building in Braddon. Brian Tunks is currently releasing his newest range, ORI, a Japanese inspired line based on origami, but reinterpreted. Keep your eyes on their Instagram page: @bisonhome @bmamag
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[Comedy]
Exhibitionist | Arts in the ACT
JUST PRETEND YOU’RE FAMOUS, YEAH? BY ELLIE WINDRED The Canberra Comedy Festival is known for importing gigantic names from all around the country and the world, with sold out shows giving plenty of opportunity for out-of-town gigglechefs to preface their award-winning hours with hastily written material about roundabouts and The Government. But the festival also books a bunch of cool local acts who are much cheaper on the carbon miles and much less likely to awkwardly mispronounce Manuka. I caught up with two shows worth of these local, organically grown free-range jesters and asked them to plug themselves and their shows. SCENIC ROUTE Hi Anthony Tomic, you are doing your first solo show at the festival this year – but what was your first experience of comedy as an audience member? [Anthony Tomic]: The first time I saw live comedy I went to an open mic with my best mate. I remember being blown away by the quality of the 12 or so performers that night (not taking the piss) but also how raw and positive the energy was. You could see they were having a great time (especially if there were laughs) and, even though a lot of the material may have been new or untested, if any of them were afraid or anxious I couldn’t tell at all. My love affair with live comedy was planted then, and I got into performing it myself a few months later. Where do you do your comedy writing? [Tomic]: I create almost entirely in my head. I find it really difficult and intimidating to open a blank page and create from a standing start. Whenever I try to, and no ideas come out, I think to myself “why is it that I can write and perform anything I want, I can draw from infinity, and I still have no ideas?” Instead, I’m more or less always thinking about jokes and once I think something is fully formed or close to it, only then do I kind of put it down on a page as dot points. Pitch your show to my Nan. [Tomic]: I’m a good boy!
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No but seriously I think it’s important to support local comedy and comedians who are trying to make that leap to festival shows and the like (and I feel particularly passionate about this when it coincides with supporting me)! As for my actual show, I mainly tell true stories, so I hope there will be a variety of parts that resonate or cater to most. Why are you the creative visionary that Canberra needs? [Tomic]: I don’t think Canberra needs me specifically, but it does need comedy (all places do)! If I can contribute to the craft and people dig it, that’s all I can ask for! You can see SCENIC ROUTE with ANTHONY TOMIC at Civic Pub on March 21 from 7pm.
LOOK AT NOW MUM!
ME
Betsy Bailetti, Frances McNair and Maddy Weeks, you are doing a showcase performance called LOOK AT ME NOW MUM! at the festival, but how about you Answer My Questions Now, Friends! instead? Answer my questions if you agree. Tell us about your first experience of comedy as an audience member. [Maddy Weeks]: I first saw live stand-up comedy when I was 16 years old. I was sitting in the front row, and a comedy duo called Elbowskin kept picking on me for my age. They sang a song directly to me, that was exclusively about how all Mums have heaps of sex. I
was sitting next to my mum. From that moment I knew that I must take my revenge by infiltrating the very industry that these two boys thrived in. And thus my journey into stand up begun. [Frances McNair]: The first time I saw any kind of comedy I was five. It was a Hooly Doolies tribute band. They were terrible. They actually made some kids cry because they got frustrated they weren’t clapping in time. It was fucked. I think it’s shaped me to be the comedian and woman I am today. [Betsy Bailetti]: First experience of live comedy was in a little club in Melbourne. It was a small room and very packed. Headliner was Ronny Chieng who was hilarious of course but the one who killed me was Oliver Clark wearing this vintage 70s suit and delivering every joke like he was crooning the crowd. He did like five minutes where he was just double-taking the audience and I cried. Where do you do your comedy writing? [Bailetti]: I’m usually super last minute so most of it is on my laptop on the way to an open mic, which is why I love open mics so much! They light a little fire under your butt and get you moving. [McNair]: When I started I tried writing in cafes and parks because I thought it was kind of romantic and... I dunno... French? All the good stuff comes when I’m at home alone and I’ve got the freedom to say things out loud and be a goose without the fear of being asked to leave because I’m disturbing the other patrons or geese.
Pitch your show to my nan. [Weeks]: We will be singing songs exclusively about how all Nan’s have heaps of sex. [McNair]: Young Bert Reynolds will be there and will scream your Nan’s name in place of “STELLA!” if she comes. [Bailetti]: Dear Nanna, I have a recipe for vegan jam drops that will make you Instagram famous. You might not know what Instagram is, but come to the show and Instagram will know who you are. Why are you the creative visionaries that Canberra needs? [Weeks]: We are the creative visionaries Canberra deserves, but not the ones it needs right now. So The show is cancelled I guess sorry everyone” [McNair]: Canberra. You need us. If you didn’t, you would have already killed us. So what’s it gonna be? Do we have a deal? [Bailetti]: Look at Me Now Mum is a show that just takes a really stark, hard, honest look at who we have turned into as a people. Mostly hot-ass bitches with a sick sense of humour. You can see LOOK AT ME NOW MUM! At Street 2 on March 22 and 23 from 7pm.
[Weeks]: Inspiration strikes me at the most inopportune moments. Usually whilst I’m driving 111kmph down the Hume Highway. So I do most of it on the side of the road. Or at the wheel (Don’t tell mum or the cops). But right now I’m typing this on the side of the road safely my car is off hey Mum.
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I think to myself “why is it that I can write and perform anything I want, I can draw from infinity, and I still have no ideas?”
We are the creative visionaries Canberra deserves, but not the ones it needs right now
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ABOVE: ANTHONY TOMIC – PHOTO BY RORY GILLEN BELOW: LOOK AT ME NOW MUM! – PHOTO BY EMMA HOLLAND
Exhibitionist | Arts in the ACT
IN REVIEW
LOLCOL [Embarrassing True Story: Kobe, Japan] BY LUKE BERNIE
Late December 2009:
another beer.
It was of one of the last nights of my Japan holiday before heading home for Christmas. I was out bar hopping with some friends I had made at the hotel. As time went on and drinks were drunk, these friends dropped off one by one until I was the last man standing.
“How do you know her?’’
Not content to call it a night, I wandered from obscure bar to obscure bar moving further and further away from the main city district. I saw a venue draped with lights, heard a karaoke machine and lively banter. I decided this would be the place to finish my last night of drinking in Japan. So I walk in and go to the bar, ask for an Asahi which the bar tender happily handed me. I wasn’t charged per drink so I assumed the bill would come at the end of the night (as was common). I enthusiastically belted out ‘Ice Ice Baby’ on the karaoke machine with a few Japanese locals. I had another five Asahis and was having a blast. After a few hours, I noticed the bar tender, and the locals were all very friendly and seemed to know each other well. I asked the bar tender, ‘’How do you know him?” ‘’He’s my brother.’’ The bar tender said as he grabbed me PAGE 50
“She’s my neice,” he answered. This was peculiar. “And that is my mother and father, my whole family has come to my house this year for Christmas.” That’s right. I had not walked into a bar. I had walked into somebody’s house who was hosting a family Christmas gathering. The lights outside? Christmas lights for his house. The music? He had rented a karaoke machine for his family reunion. The beers? The resident (not bartender) was too polite to ask this westerner to leave and just gave him his beers. And they were all too polite to make me feel like an invading western stereotype who had invaded their family reunion. Instead they fed me, boozed me up, and let me sing karaoke with them. Despite my embarrassment, I stayed there for another two hours having a great time at this family reunion. LUKE BERNIE
COMEDY AT LA DE DA LA DE DA THURSDAY JAN 11
The comedy night held monthly at Belconnen’s La De Da might be Canberra’s newest room, but it bustles with an energy so lively that few can compete with it. Entering the bar, you see the sun setting, Lake Ginninderra glistening, and a crowd packed with people ready to laugh. And laugh we did. Performing were some of Canberra’s best comedians, who expertly read the room and made all of us feel right at home. The MC, Emma Holland, reeled us in and got us hooked on surrealist bits and convoluted stories, complete with a number of props. She somehow managed to make crowd work fun for everyone in the audience, despite how uncomfortable the man she asked about his menstrual cycle appeared to be. She set the tone for a night of comedy that felt fresh in all the best ways. Josh Glass, the first act, has clearly mastered his awkward yet endearing stage persona. He talked about having a kid, but instead of boring stories about his child’s shenanigans, he shared with us the experience of his life changing unexpectedly, in a way that was original and bordered on absurdist. When he moved onto the mess that is Australian politics, it became clear that, while he finds the names of our political parties confusing, on stage he definitely knows what he is doing. Following on from Glass was Bill Makin, who was a lot like the dude at every party who can’t help but
FRANCES MCNAIR PHOTO BY ADAM THOMAS
share all of his opinions. However, unlike that dude, Makin is funny, and isn’t afraid to make fun of himself. It isn’t at every comedy night that you hear someone claiming that gymnastics isn’t a sport, or imagining what his Italian ancestors would act like showing up at a Scottish battle (you really had to be there). Makin’s set was a rollercoaster, but one that at no point went downhill. The third act, Harris Stuckey, had the air of a man who has been doing this for a while. His set was polished to perfection, every word carefully considered. Just as importantly, it was incredibly relatable. Stuckey took insecurities we all share and turned them into comedic genius, stopping along the way to point out the idiocies of life. The night finished on Frances McNair, who brought a youthful energy to the room as she stepped onto the stage, incorporating in her set not only bits about BDSM parties and nudist beaches, but also a hilarious, yet somehow beautiful, song about fuckboys on Tinder. Her routine was tied together masterfully and its end left the audience wanting more. Thankfully, all the comedians featured are in shows during the upcoming Canberra Comedy Festival. And as for comedy at La De Da, it runs every month, so there are sure to be many more unforgettable nights. AGATA NABAGLO
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[Comedy]
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HARRIS STUCKEY, JOSH GLASS, BILL MAKIN, EMMA HOLLAND PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM THOMAS PATREON.COM/DEVDSP
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GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY | Media
B O S S Y NOT
JUST
ANOTHER
YEAR
IN
FEMINISM
BY HAYDEN FRITZLAFF
It’s late October 2017, and the café where Bronte McHenry and I are meeting is full of students hunched over books and laptops. At least one of them is on the verge of quite literally pulling their hair out ahead of next week’s exams. McHenry is upbeat though. She’s the Editor-in-Chief of the ANU Women’s Department’s magazine, BOSSY. Putting it together is a year-long project, and the team have just launched their 2017 edition. “We tried to build a lot of momentum prior to the magazine,” she says. “Bossy had kind of become something where no one really knew what it was. So we sort of reformed it. There was a small foundation but we were able to build. It meant we were kind of able to do whatever we wanted with it, which was pretty exciting, but also a bit nerve-wracking, because there was nothing there – no handover, no institutional knowledge, just give it your best shot and see what happens.”
got to end on a good note – which is kind of like the uplifting, look to the future, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, positive sort of section.”
McHenry has a dozen or so copies of the magazine with her. She takes one out to show me. It’s beautifully designed, full of collages and photography, with the words ‘A Year in Feminism’ in white lettering on the cover.
Each of the four sections, as well as being lovingly crafted, is full of stories, poetry and investigative journalism with titles like ‘Mansplaining: Sexism in Miniature’, ‘The Art of Non-Gendered Insults’ and ‘A Transfeminine Experience with Toxic Masculinity’. With such a breadth of knowledge and perspectives represented, I ask McHenry what she feels needs to happen with the magazine in future.
“The magazine has four sections,” she explains, opening it up and flicking through. “We have ‘Ablaze’, which is kind of like the angry section; angry feminist rants, like ‘fuck the world’ kind of thing. It’s up front, right out there. Then we have ‘Gather’, which is the kind of the educational, learning, inspirational section, looking at feminists who have come before us; lots of theories and memoirs, that kind of stuff. “Then we have ‘Endure’. This is the really grim, dark, helpless section. Lots of people talking about mental illness and eating disorders and body image and war and the patriarchy and all these sorts of things. And we finish off with ‘Bloom’ – you’ve PAGE 52
more comfortable with Bossy as a publication, I’m hoping it turns more heads, and people kind of say what they’re thinking and we can have a real stab at the administration if they continue to not act on the results of the survey.” McHenry is referring to the Human Rights Commission’s survey on university sexual assaults. It’s something that’s intrinsically linked to Bossy as a publication, and will no doubt play a big role in the magazine’s future iterations. “We’ve had a lot of content published about sexual assault and how it’s a
…it would be good if Bossy can kind of take no shit
“I kind of want it to be more radical. It’s really good. There are a lot of thought provoking things in there. It’s very intersectional. But it’s not really that radical. And I would like a little bit more kind of ‘woa’.” For a moment I’m in disbelief that a magazine populated by student voices would ever be considered lacking in radical ideas. “Well they’re not putting their radical thoughts on paper with bylines for everyone to see,” says McHenry. “So once people get a little bit
problem, which we’ve known for fifty years. And we’ve had some critiques, but if the administration continues to push back deadlines and be really flaky and give excuses and kick the women’s officers off the steering committee, it would be good if Bossy can kind of take no shit. “Sexual assault – sexual violence is a more all-encompassing term – has become very topical. But I still think the university are doing as little about it as they ever have. They’ll give a timeline, but then not consult survivors on certain things and then they’ll claim they can’t do certain things because they haven’t consulted survivors yet. It’s all quite ridiculous. So we know, 100 percent for certain, that in three months or six months they still will have done nothing. So we’re going into next year, appointing a team with the thought in mind that we’re going to have to stir the pot quite a bit and have a loud voice.”
Leap forward a few months, and the biggest news stories of the new year, particularly in music and the arts, are to do with feminist causes. What with Camp Cope calling out a sexist music industry in the wake of female and non-binary underrepresentation at Falls Festival, and Golden Globes ceremony-goers issuing a reminder that gender inequality and sexual violence are not issues that Hollywood can sweep away in the new year, it seems that now more than ever is the time for Bossy to further assert itself as a vital voice for Australian students. “If you read my letter [from the Editor], you’ll see that I say that there’s never really been a social movement, ever, that hasn’t had a publication or media source supporting it. There always is something to spread ideas to the masses and empower people. And I think if ANU is going to have a sort of mini women’s movement, it kind of needed Bossy to be revamped, to give it that sense of identity and that anchor. And I think Australia also needs that.” Given this, I ask McHenry whether the magazine is for every woman, every non-binary person, every gender non-conforming person. “With Bossy, it’s sort of for everyone actually. It’s for everyone. We had a lot of men come to our launch party which was really good. I suppose the product that Bossy produces is supposed to be for everyone, but Bossy itself, as a safe haven and a place of opportunity, is supposed to be for women and nonbinary students, staff and alumni. We try to really follow women as they go off into the world and allow them to keep contributing.” BOSSY is available on ANU campus in the Pop-Up Village, the Brian Kenyon Student Space, and each hall of residence. You can also find it around town in cafes and bookstores.
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Media
Literature
WE LOVE CBR MEDIA
LITERATURE IN REVIEW
LOCAL PLATFORMS WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF
WITH CARA LENNON
As it turns out, BMA Mag isn’t the only hotbed of creative energy in town. Channelled towards writing, filming and chatting about the best in local music and arts, here are some of our favourite non-us platforms for spreading ‘the word’. LIVE ON A LOG – Live sessions Live on a Log (LOAL for short) is such a simple concept, and that’s exactly why it’s so perfect. Canberra has a truly unique setting in that nearly all of us live within five minutes of some kind of breathtaking natural wonder. LOAL takes this concept and walks contemplatively through the bush with it. Featuring live videos of Canberra musicians performing their songs in front of a fallen tree, amid the sounds of kookaburras and cicadas, this is a platform that communicates better than just about anything else the unique geographical and cultural landscape we inhabit. But the page isn’t just for locals. Run by Joel Caban (of Home Brew Records fame), high-profile acts such as AJJ have graced ‘the log’ and more exciting artists are in the works. LOAL also takes the cake in terms of production quality, with expertly mixed sound and a multicam video setup. Check out: AJJ’s Sean Bonnette finishing his acoustic performance of the song ‘Fuckboi’ by saying, “That song was called ‘Fuckboi’.” cbrbackline.com.au/blog twohandsonlyonemouth – YouTube Channel If you’re big into Canberra music, then you probably remember where you were and what you were doing when you first discovered this hidden gem of a YouTube channel. If you’re yet to stumble upon it, then suit up for the biggest video archive of live local music in existence.
Patrick Cox uses superhuman stealth powers to get incredible live footage of a smorgasbord of local bands and touring artists. Dating back five years, and updated with stunning regularity throughout 2016 and 2017, this is the kind of channel you’ll sink hours into. Expect to hear yourself saying things like: “Hey, I was at that gig,” and “Wait, no, that’s literally my elbow” as you scroll through eternally just one more video. Check out: the recent uploads for exclusive footage of unreleased Slow Turismo and Slagatha Christie (pictured) tunes. youtube.com/user/ twohandsonlyonemouth LAUNDRY ECHO – Blog Dave McCarthy’s escapades in the blogosphere have taken many forms over the years. Previous iterations Dirty Gal and Canberra Music Blog provided an indie platform for Canberra-based artists that simply did not exist anywhere else. His latest project Laundry Echo (the name being inspired by the distinctive reverb of the laundry in which McCarthy often records live sessions) has a more Australia-wide bent than the two aforementioned blogs, and all for the better. With a focus on DIY and independent artists, Laundry Echo sees Canberra favourites posted next to national treasures and the best Aussie underground music memes this side of the Bass Strait. Check out: ‘18 Predictions To Echo In 2018’ looking ahead to the continued rise of beloved Blue Mountains band, Antonia & The Lazy Suzans. laundryecho.com
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Deadly Kerfuffle Tony Martin [Affirm Press; 2017] Deadly Kerfuffle. The happy answer to the question no-one’s been asking – what’s Tony Martin up to these days? The latest comedy offering from Martin (of Martin/Molloy fame), Deadly Kerfuffle kicks off in 2006, in an Australia that’s settled uneasily into a post 9/11 rut of fear and suspicion. An impeccably nuclear Maori family moves into suburban Melbourne, to be immediately branded Muslim by some locals that have predictably shallow opinions about Muslims. The whole suburb is deftly sucked down in a swirling failstrom of paranoia, crossed wires and bad decisions. From the outset the characters aren’t just believable, they’re as recognisable as your own neighbours and co-workers. All the flavours of local nutbar are present – the fedora and greatcoated know-it-all, the reds-under-thebed Dad’s Army type, the stalwart neighbourhood watch crone whose position enables her to stickybeak and meddle. The festering pot of rumour and conspiracy is presided over by a shit-stirring shock jock, whose intelligence sits somewhere ambiguous between the affected idiocy that gets him ratings, and the estimation of his rather generous self-opinion. Less immediately recognisable but still welcome is the put-upon intelligence director who manages to be at the top of the food chain and the bottom of the shit heap simultaneously. While he’d be more at home in the pages of a Joseph Heller or Evelyn Waugh wartime romp, Leon Weekes’s determination to uncover terrorist plots whether or not they exist adds a sense of scale
to the escalating ridiculousness. Deadly Kerfuffle is good-natured and gentle in the way it teases out the threads of illogic that underpin casual racism. It also pokes fun at the players in the circular argument of media complicity. Who is more responsible? A shock jock that exploits the market for prejudice with misinformation crafted to outrage; or the audience so addicted to being whipped into a rabid froth that they ensure outrage is a sustainable business model? It’s funny, in a quiet nose-snort way, and it clips along at a mostly attention-holding pace, although it does dissolve into an oddly lingering, unhelpfully neat wrapup at the end (think J K Rowling’s awkward Potter epilogue). It is also disconcertingly accurate in its depiction of some of middle class Australia’s least inspiring phobias. Honestly, if you’ve just spent Christmas doing the dance—you know the one—of trying to preserve a shred of dignity whilst disentangling yourself from conversation with your lightly racist in-law/nana/uncle, and all without ruining lunch, maybe give yourself a couple of months before picking this one up.
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Exhibitionist | [Food & Drink]
FOOD JUNKY
[THE WORD ON LOCAL FOOD & DRINK] WITH SHARONA LIN [SHARONA@POPCULTURE-Y.COM]
It’s January, which means Canberra is rapidly filling with graduates and new uni students. Welcome, newbies! Welcome to Canberra, the land of roundabouts, public servants, and actually tons of delicious food. Yes, while Canberra might be looked down upon by my old drinking buddies back in Melbourne (and if you’re from a capital city on the east coast, your friends have probably already given you plenty of shit for moving here), it’s a wonderful place to get a good meal. You may have seen reporting lately that confirms what Canberrans have been feeling (that Canberra is the most expensive capital city in Australia to eat out in), but that’s why I’ve put forward a hopefully expansive list of restaurants to cater to everyone. A fun fact: I wrote a similar list only a year ago for the start of the year, but a whole lot of restaurants on the list weren’t around at that time – a great vote of confidence for Canberra’s constantly evolving food scene. Alright, let’s go. Let’s start with some great burgers – incidentally, the first thing I ate in Canberra was a burger at Sub-Urban, which has sadly closed its doors since I made the move two years ago. RIP. Moving on to happier times, Canberra institution Brodburger began its life in a red food truck and now is stationed permanently in Kingston. They do great burgers with your choice of cheese (brie, come at me). However, during peak hour, you can wait for well over an hour to get your food, so consider Grease Monkey, which delivers what you expect, greasy, perfect-for-hangover burgers, or
Mookie, which does a simple but great burger. If you do want some Brodburger, Capital Brewing Co. hosts Brodburger with limited, but still delicious, offerings. It’s also, obviously, a brewery – definitely one for the craft beer-lovers, along with Bentspoke and Pact Beer Co. Canberra also loves its brunch and coffee. Try Lonsdale St. Roasters, Double Shot in Deakin, Ona (international coffee competition winners!), and The Cupping Room. Chatterbox is my local – cheery, tasty and great value. If you’re after a great place for dinner, options abound. Akiba is always a great choice, and right opposite, Kokomo’s, which does excellent bar food. Lazy Su is new to the game but is already one of my favourite places in Canberra. And Mama’s Trattoria does wonderful, classic Italian. And finally, dessert. I’m running out of column space, so I’ll keep it short. Dobinsons for pastries, Frugii for artisan gelato, Ricardo’s for amazing, beautiful desserts including cronuts, Goodberry’s for frozen custard, and Sweetbones for great vegan treats. But my friends will attest that my all-time favourite thing to do on a weekend is hit up Patissez in Manuka and buy a five-pack of delicious donuts. They also do ridiculous freakshakes and great brunch. In short – Canberra is delicious. Go out and explore!
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SLOP OF THE POPS WITH JOSHUA MARTIN
Exploring the murkiest, most absurd and experimental corners of music, that you’ve probably never heard of, and may never want to hear of again. NO WAVE FOR NO YEAR It’s 2018. You’ve woken up to stifling heat, fatigued by irksome people making the ‘I haven’t showered since last year haha!’ joke and it doesn’t feel like much has changed. Has it? The new year is, at its core, a commercial abstraction of a minor celestial milestone; list making journalists are validated, the party shops go gangbusters, and BWS makes a revoltingly huge profit. Endless thinkpieces compartmentalise years with labels of activity like celebrity deaths, kombucha and Trump, but frankly, it’s all arbitrary partitioning. A certain sardonic folk singer said it best, noting, we’re all just specks on a speck on a speck; the new year doesn’t matter and nothing changes. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any practical means with which to deal with the ramifications of this eye-opening realisation, however I can recommend a soundtrack: No Wave. A delightfully psychotic musical movement that appeared for a brief ear wrenching moment in 70s New York, no wave continues to reverberate through experimental, industrial, dance and rock music to this day. No Wave sounds like nothing, is going nowhere and is made for no one. Pulled together from wretched scraps of punk, jazz, blues and infected funk, its warbled shouts pound over botched rhythms and unadulterated nihilism. Although it appeared concurrently with punk rock, it certainly wasn’t its companion; more a correction to its commercially restrained anarchic efforts failings and as the antithesis of the new wave co-opted by the corporate streams. The genre received its moment in the moonlight when synth luminary Brian Eno curated the compilation No New York in 1978, capturing four progenitors of the genre: The Contortions, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, Mars and D.N.A. These artists weren’t manifesto writers; the movement was a pure expression
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a kind of dance punk truer than anything of the Rapture-fueled craze of the 2000s. ‘Egomaniac’s Kiss’ is hellishly caustic and twitches nervously, constantly barring musical catharsis. Vocalist Arto Lindsay’s voice is excruciatingly enunciated and full of terrifying self-loathing, spitting dadaistic collage poetry (“Trying to eat that self real slow / less than awful, more than naked”). The guitar is frantically raked above the pegs, emulating
Few records beg your attention as much as Filth yet punish you as hard. of the apocalyptic loneliness that permeated a recessive, postVietnam New York. Each artist is granted four songs to caterwaul in order of written, getting progressively uglier, scattered, and broken as they continue. It is D.N.A. however that stick out the end of the compilation like a snapped thumb. A trio that never quite managed a full-length release ply
the sound of glass shattering over and over. ‘Not Moving’ is a stunning cacophony, the organ sounding like a demented cash register whilst guitars are bound by nothing more than the human hand. Sadly, No Wave faded out as quickly as it faded in, but its viral pessimism wore through to a multitude of later pliers
of musical nihilism like early Sonic Youth, the Lounge Lizards and most significantly Swans. Swans’ debut record Filth from 1983 is an essential epilogue to the no wave book, stretching its fatalistic qualities to anger, hate and revulsion. The lyrical and aural modus operandi is sadomasochism, its chillingly industrial production made to match. Opening track ‘Stay Here’ crunches a low dissonant bass drone below vocalist Michael Gira’s monotonous groans (“Be hard, be hard ... flex your muscles”). Few records beg your attention as much as Filth yet punish you as hard. Swans are a very different group now, but the enduring vein of No Wave hasn’t stopped pumping oil through their anti-art machine. Much has been romanticised of the No Wave moment since; yet No Wave was never an adoptable trend, neither was it fashionable; it took the aesthetic of punk, stomped and puked on it, and refused to be proud or do anything but make something they believe in, no matter how fucked up. Pain is timeless. Happy New Year! Takeaway Listens: No New York- – Various Artists (1978)
D.N.A on D.N.A. – D.N.A (2005, Compilation album) Filth – Swans(1981)
EXPERIMENTAL ROCK BAND, SWANS
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Questioning
?
The #AC100 with Cody Atkinson
With the Hottest 100 changing dates for 2018, a bunch of alternatives have raced to the bottom to attempt to take triple j’s place in the psyche of the nation. However, instead of the more conventional rivals to the national youth broadcaster, one competitor has stood out from the pack; a very small but vocal political party. Cody Atkinson investigates what the hell is going on. So what’s all this then? Well, Cory Bernardi and his microparty, the Australian Conservatives, in response to triple j changing the date that they broadcast the results of the Hottest 100, have created a playlist of Australian-only songs on Spotify, except for a few Kiwi and English songs. Wait, he couldn’t even get 100 Australian songs together? Nah, but he did find time to chuck in ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back’ by the English comedian Charlie Drake, which includes the line “I’ve waved the thing all over the place / practiced till I was black in the face / I’m a big disgrace to the Aborigine race,” which was considered to be too racist to be played on the radio in the 1960s, and the lyrics had to be changed. That non-Australian song is on an Australian-only playlist in 2018. He’s not the only one to ‘counter’ the move of the Hottest 100, is he? Not at all. Two major metropolitan commercial radio stations, Triple M and WSFM, have announced “allAustralian” playlists on Australia Day, with the former running an ‘Ozzest 100’ countdown which, um, seems like it got it’s inspiration from somewhere else. I wonder where... Anyway, the Ozzest 100 has already been denounced by even the employees of the very station that was meant to be running it. Regardless of your thoughts about whether Australia Day should be moved to another date (it should), and whether the Hottest 100 should stick with their very recent tradition of broadcasting on Australia Day, the move by Triple M is at the extremely cynical, publicity seeking, end of the radio scale. Which is saying a lot. So back to the Bernadi list... The list is... not as terrible as you would think. I mean if you were picking a list of culturally significant
Australian music from the past few decades, it ticks some of the must have boxes. I mean it’s very fucking dodgy in parts, and has the National Anthem in there as a #partystarter, but it has some choons. I would be willing to wager that the list is so good that it was made by someone other than Bernardi. Like who? Perhaps a staffer, or a staffer’s woke 30-something kid. There is some remarkably out there stuff for a playlist purporting to represent the most conservative political party in Australia. But a quick dig of the user who uploaded this list to Spotify, a ‘massagspace’, also has playlists of ‘Hit Rewind’, ‘Miley Cyrus – Party In The U.S.A.’ and ‘Today’s Top Hits’ up there. So what type of stuff is on the list? Well, let’s start with Midnight Oil’s ‘Power and the Passion’, a song sung by one of Bernardi’s former political rivals Peter Garrett, and is ostensibly about the decline of Australia due to conservatism and international military alliances, pretty much the opposite to many of the AC’s core beliefs. It also has a salute to the leadership of Gough Whitlam, something that Cory likely doesn’t agree with either. Alright... You’ve got several songs with very strong Indigenous messages – from ‘Djapana’ from Yothu Yindi to ‘Wiyathul’ from Gurrumul, ‘My Island Home’ by Christine Anu to Paul Kelly (and Kev Carmody’s) ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. In particular, Anu has come out in recent days and expressed her wishes for the date of Australia Day to be changed, which is DIRECTLY OPPOSITE to what this shitposting playlist was developed to support. And it’s hard to consider such a poigniant moment of Indigenous sovereignty such at the Gurindji Strike and the story of Vincent Lingiari (honestly, if you haven’t at least read about it on wikipedia drop this damn mag and read it now)
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to be consistent with a counterprotest to keep Australia Day on its present date. Either Bernardi (and co.) haven’t listened to the songs they’ve chucked in, or they have and can’t comprehend basic song and lyrical structures. BOTH OPTIONS ARE EQUALLY HILARIOUS.
Nope, just the words “go fuck yourself @corybernardi”.
Is that it?
Intensive research by our social media team at BMA has discovered, and I can now EXCLUSIVELY reveal, that the politician Cory Bernardi is purported to own the twitter account @corybernardi, and is thus the person told by the Hilltop Hoods to go fuck themselves.
Then you have the ‘loose unit and anarchist’ parts of the playlist. You’ve got a track about getting a blowjob and the tyranny of suburbia (‘The Boys Light Up’), a Kiwi song about moving to a Communist paradise because it has good weather (‘April Sun in Cuba’), a song about anarchist rebelling against ‘the man’ (‘Prisioner of Society’), a song describing a broken former Vietnam Vet suffering from PTSD and addiction who is travelling to Hong Kong for casual sex (‘Khe Sahn’). And the Conservatives seem to like the Divinyls’ ‘Pleasure and Pain’ so much that they’ve added it twice, which includes the repeated refrain “Please don’t ask me how I have been getting off”. I do not want to think about Cory Bernardi singing along to that... but here we are in 2018, hey. Let’s face it; the list more resembles a blend of Hottest 100 Volume 7 and Great Aussie BBQ Songs than the personal playlist of a conservative scion. So what was the reaction to the hotly anticipated list? Almost immediately, bands and musicians who were included in the list asked to be removed. Former Savage Garden member Darren Hayes was the first, threatening to invoke his moral rights in the copyright space. Tim Rogers went a step further, invoking a lawfirm to send a letter to Bernardi and his party threatening to seek a Federal Court injunction unless ‘Berlin Chair’ was removed from the list. Perhaps the most concise and cutting response was made by Australian hip hop royalty Hilltop Hoods, who simply said, via Twitter, “Go fuck yourself @corybernardi”. “Go fuck yourself @ corybernardi”? Nothing else?
Does the @corybernardi in the statement “go fuck yourself @corybernardi” refer to the politician and leader of the Australian Conservatives?
Fair enough. Indeed, Bernardi (from that Twitter account which the Hilltop Hoods told to go fuck yourself) started off having shots at Darren Hayes, who was the first musician to really have a crack at Bernardi over the playlist. It did not go well for him. I mean yeah... In fact, perhaps the most unifying movement in Australian music right now is how artists are uniting together to distance themselves from the Australian Conservatives, which is stunning considering the social, political and geographic divide between some of the artists involved. Surely some artists have come out and spoke in favour of the list? Well, at least one has. Former Nationals candidate and Rose Tattoo frontman Angry Anderson doesn’t know what the fuss is about, and he is “tired of the Left’s ridiculous antics”. It is worth noting that Rose Tattoo and Anderson did not make an appearance on the AC100. So the whole thing will be forgotten when the Hottest 100 kicks off on the 27th? If not before. The bad publicity stunts will go to their graves quietly, ready for another one to take its place the media cycle, somehow stupider than the last.
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[ALBUM REVIEWS]
SINGLES IN
FOCUS WITH CODY ATKINSON
TERRITORY ‘NC’ [
]
This one is definitely in the lo-fi basket, but there’s some really nice moments here from locals Territory on their first release since 2013. Shoegaze-y stuff tends to give a certain closeness to the track, and this one feels like everything is sitting right on top of each other – a little noisy at times, but nice nonetheless.
MT MOUNTAIN ‘CATHEDRAL’ [
]
Yeah, dial up the krautrock-y space psych straight to my veins. Juicy guitar licks, aired out vocals, decades of space to move and slow evolutions of melody that feel like they take decades to eventuate keep this one going. It still feels like it’s going, half an hour after I stopped listening. Good stuff.
SHOPPING ‘WILD CHILD’ [
]
This track is made by that hyperactive, nearly funky bassline, which ordinarily has no place in a driving post-punk tune. But you know what? English trio Shopping make it work, somehow. This is super direct, with every idea pushing the track forward until it comes to a halt.
HAILEE STEINFELD AND ALESSO FEAT. FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE AND WATT ‘LET ME GO’ [
]
This song could be cut in half and it would still be too long, but the song is only three minutes long to begin with. There is approximately eight trillion people featured here, including the now-ubiquitous Florida Georgia Line who seem to make a Florida Georgia mess of every fucking pop song song they touch. Ugh.
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OR’S EDIT ICE CHO
LOCAL MUSIC
LANI FALLEN FROM GRACE EP [INDEPENDENT RELEASE]
[
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Fallen from Grace is the debut EP from local songstress Lani. A performance student of the ANU School of Music, Lani received both the Erika Haas Prize and Bill Hyslop Prize for voice in 2017, midway through the production of the record. The accolades are fitting; Fallen from Grace highlights Lani’s breathtaking vocal range and clarity of tone. The record explores piano-based singer-songwriting, infused with contemporary jazz. The purity in her sound resembles that of The Idea of North, paired with a vulnerability reminiscent of a young Brooke Fraser. Tasteful arrangements promote cohesiveness for the majority of the EP; the interplay between solo voice and ensemble serve to enrich rather than diminish the central place of the lyric. A soulful opening gives way to bold melody on the opening track, ‘Fire’. On ‘You’ and ‘Winter’, Lani weaves in pop and soul sounds, vocal layers mirrored in rolling piano ostinato. The latter draws on gospel elements in content and timbre – if the track comes just shy of its potential for intensity, it’s only something to look forward to in a live context. Lani also pays tribute to key historical influences, sensitive covers nodding to both Gabriel Faure and Duke Ellington. The EP’s closing track, French-language original ‘Il Faut Que Je M’en Aille’ is the peak, transporting the listener with a poignant, aching melody. Fallen from Grace is eclectic, but not unsure. Lani knows her versatility, and her thoughtfulness in exploring existing works amidst new compositions establish her well as an up-andcoming Australian voice. JACQUI DOUGLAS
THE WOMBATS BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE [WARNER]
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Since debuting in 2003, Liverpudlian band The Wombats have successfully released three studio albums, each depicting day-to-day life through honest lyrics and earth shattering guitars. Now with their upcoming fourth album, Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, The Wombats take a Dali-esque approach in naming songs and writing lyrics. As shown with their surreal and bizarre sounding lead single, ‘Lemon to a Knife Fight’, which gladly defies all laws of both food and cutlery. Like the albums before it, Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life gives the audience a full list of danceable and meaningful music. The album is a fast-paced explosion of love, life and numerous other trials of the human experience. Highlights, ‘Out Of My Head’ and ‘Only Wear Black’, are a set of earnest songs covering the darker sides of humanity and the mind. The lyrics are cleverly juxtaposed against fast and lively instrumentals. However, the instrumentals often come close to overshadowing the songs’ meaning, largely due to the gruff, urgency of the guitar or synthesiser that begs you to pay attention to it instead. What I find most when listening to The Wombats is that it often takes a number of visits with this band to really get into a song. This does not mean they make bad music, but the sort of music that needs no distractions. Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life requires your attention. At least until you’ve listened to it long enough for it to be happily rocking away in the deep canals of your ears for the rest of your life. Make no mistake, this album will ruin your life. ANNA FRANCESCHINI
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[ALBUM REVIEWS]
ALBUM IN
FOCUS
THE ROLLING STONES ON AIR [POLYDOR]
[
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It is relatively easy to take the piss out of the Stones these days, particularly as the last great original song from the band, ‘Start Me Up,’ came out in 1981. So unless any latest release from this band happens to be a reissue I don’t usually pay much attention, but there have been some notable exceptions. A surprise hit from 2016 was the album of covers Blue and Lonesome that dispensed with high end production crap and focused on what this band has always done best – plugging in the instruments and letting raw rocknroll flow free. On that album the band shelved original material, instead paying homage to outstanding electric blues exponents like Little Walter, Otis Rush and Howlin’ Wolf who influenced the band in earlier days, with Jagger turning out sordid harmonica solos as if The Stones were playing for whisky in some rundown shack in the American Deep South – that was a bit more like it. The band did this kind of thing very well from day one, revealed across the 32 live performances captured on On Air, an excellent collection from the BBC archives recorded between 1963 and 1965. This was a time when the group was immersed in the wild sexual energy of electric blues and the hormonal snarl on such an early classic as ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ was about to put in motion a thousand snotty garage punks. The Willie Dixon staple ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’ is performed by The Stones at the Saturday Club in 1964 as an unambiguous come on with enough sleaze to get the kids all riled up. The essential grit
embodying pretty much everything on the Chess label oozes from the Jay McShann penned ‘Confessin’ the Blues,’ helped along by saucy harmonica from Jagger that he would recreate all those years later on Blue and Lonesome. The band packed a wallop right from the start and by the time 1964 rolled around those early years hanging out at blues and jazz clubs and collecting Chess label imports with a fanatical devotion was starting to pay off. At this point the band was still predominantly playing covers including early single ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, penned by their good mates Lennon and McCartney in five minutes, but delivered here at another 1964 Saturday Club performance with a tad more sleaze than the mop tops would ever have intended. As Keith Richards later put it, the Beatles wore the white hat and The Stones most definitely wore the black. This meant that the best BBC performances were the ones that displayed the most attitude, while off stage the group would get busted pissing in public and telling the cops to get rooted. It all made for a desirable package that combined youthful defiance with hotwired rocknroll, but it is tempting to consider that the band might have turned out to be little more than a flash in the pan were it not for the introduction of original material that over time was stamped with the Chuck Berry seal of approval. The Stones pay tribute to numerous rocknroll and blues legends here but the few original songs on offer presage major songwriting talent that pretty much exploded in the latter 1960s. Early originals like ‘The Last Time’ aren’t yet dripping with sex, as would happen on soon to be written classics such as ‘Stray Cat Blues’, but a fiery 1965 performance of ‘Satisfaction’ hints at what’s to come. The Stones got the juices flowing by playing the blues tight and fast and this collection shows that achieving true musical decadence requires commitment and talent. Without this high octane BBC stuff, a desire to go even further might not have ignited the likes of The Stooges, the New York Dolls or Beasts of Bourbon and the world would be poorer without all of them. DAN BIGNA
VULFPECK MR. FINISH LINE [VULF RECORDS]
[
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Deep soul groove meets classic upbeat funk in Vulfpeck’s latest album, Mr. Finish Line. This is the band’s fourth studio album, adding to an impressively exhaustive repertoire, considering the band only formed in 2011. Expect to have your ears caressed by smooth, almost jazzy beats that can’t help but leave your head bopping. This Michigan-based quartet pride themselves on minimalism, a policy reflected in their composition; there are no flashy hooks, no overproduced synths, no domineering solos. Just earnest music-making. And good music, at that. The album’s opener, ‘Birds of a Feather, We Rock Together,’ carried by the vocals of Antwaun Stanley, glides all buttery and delicious. Theo Katzman provides dulcet beats, backed by Joe Dart’s effortless bass. This track epitomises ‘chill’ – for context, band founder Jack Stratton flips pancakes whilst mixing in the live video recording. Go figure. Two tracks later, we encounter a significant pace-change. The titular song, ‘Mr. Finish Line,’ is light, clever and catchy. Vulfpeck are reticent to mix takes, often releasing their first attempt as the final product, giving the whole album, and particularly this song, a very natural feel. Other standouts include instrumental ‘Hero Town,’ and ‘Vulf Pack,’ which push the envelope of modern funk with tight composition and layering of sound. There is a strong undertone of RnB, and whilst ultimately adding to the textural complexity, these hooks can become lacklustre, coming off as lazy rather than casual. Vulfpeck gained attention in 2014 when they capitalised on Spotify’s streaming service and released a silent album to fund their upcoming tour. Fans dutifully tuned in and the band ended up with roughly $20,000. It was a clever move, yet utterly uncomplicated. This ease and confidence carries through to Vulfpeck’s ‘Mr. Finish Line,’ making it a pleasurable listen, full of character to keep the listener wanting more. KASHMIRA MOHAMED ZAGOR
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THE CHURCH MAN WOMAN LIFE DEATH INFINITY [MGM/UNORTHODOX]
[
]
The Church seems to have taken inspiration from the 60s TV show Ben Casey for the title of its 26th album, with the record replacing ‘birth’ in the medical series’ opening titles with ‘life’. However, unlike the TV show where plots were blindingly obvious, the meaning of the band’s songs is far more mysterious. Musically, MWLDI (for short) is less appealing than Further/Deeper, which was full of tracks which each had striking features. Like its predecessor, the new release is a complex multi-layered work, and it takes several spins to get your teeth into it. ‘Mother Century’ opens with synths that glow and swoop, and its chorus is one of the finest moments in the album. A complex mix of electro effects dances with ringing guitars in the long instrumental intro to ‘Submarine’. The music creates a shadowy realm before Steve Kilbey begins his song of cities, desserts and the sea. The band states this is their ‘water record’ and the titles and lyrics make several references to water. The album brightens with the jangly sound of ‘For King Knife’, replaced by buzzedged guitars in ‘Undersea’ with its opaque opening line, “Fly makes a honeyman bee sorta.” The bright ringing sound of ‘Before the Deluge’ inherits the brilliance of closer ‘Miami’ from the last LP, while ‘I Don’t Know How I Don’t Know Why’ provides the sweetest melody, reminding me of The Panics’ ‘One Way Street’. The album finishes strongly with atmospheric closer “Dark Waltz’, with its narrative delivery style. As to the lyrics, their message is hard to fathom. Even Kilbey, the lyricist, admits that he may not appreciate the meaning until several years after he wrote a song. RORY MCCARTNEY
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[ALBUM REVIEW]
HOT DONNAS GREEK YOGURT
[INDEPENDENT RELEASE]
[
]
Hot Donnas are a progressive psychedelic fusion rock band hailing from Dunedin, New Zealand. They released their debut album, Greek Yogurt in July of 2017, and since then they have gained a significant local fan base. The band has charged full speed ahead into this early stage of their music careers, and they are planning to release more new music early this year. They have also landed a gig as one of the headlining acts for Otago University’s O-week events, and have been discussing the possibility of a national tour. Greek Yogurt is an album in which two major elements of Hot Donnas’ musical style come into conflict with one another. The first of these is their summery, psychedelic vibe which is emphasised by guitarist Mitchell Sizemore’s enthusiastic use of his wah pedal. In contrast to this, you can also expect to hear some more intense material with a decidedly heavier alt-rock feel to it. The third track on Greek Yogurt, ‘Brickhead,’ opens with a breezy first verse that is brimming with Sizemore’s typical wah-wahing. Then comes an abrupt change of pace, with the smooth and the psychedelic giving way to a raucously delivered punky chorus from vocalist, Jacob Sydney King. For the listener it’s a less-thancomfortable transition from relaxed to rattled. Following ‘Brickhead,’ in order is ‘Salt,’ arguably the strongest track on this album. It captures the feeling of a lazy summer’s day, with its easy-going, reggae-style beat and dreamy instrumentals which gives the impression of just wandering through the song. Although there is some clunky contrast to be found in this album, ‘Salt’ is a strong indicator of the stylistic direction that Hot Donnas are trying to take, and a promise of things they may be capable of producing in the future. JESSICA HOWARD
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MORRISSEY LOW IN HIGH SCHOOL [BMG/ETIENNE]
[
]
The cover art gives a good hint of the antiestablishment themes dominating Morrissey’s 11th solo LP. In the tradition of The Smiths, the overall mood of the album is depressing, with Morrissey lambasting authority, reserving special attention for his contempt for the military. The music is dramatic (at times melodramatic), with a theatrical vibe boosting the message of some tracks. The LP begins with a bang, with the elephant trumpeting sound, tribal drum roll and brass fanfare of ‘My Love, I’d Do Anything For You’. After anarchic, nihilistic messages about the pointlessness of jobs and society, the song ends with yells of despair. Another high-impact beginning launches ‘I Wish You Lonely’, before dropping down into the smooth, beguiling melody which makes it a disk highlight. That great Morrissey tone, so beloved by Smiths’ fans, comes across strongly in ‘Home Is A Question Mark’, a slower song beefed up with distorted guitars and military drum tattoo, with the ghostly jingle of bells as a backdrop. Another highlight ‘Spent the Day in Bed’, about the brainwashing power of the media, features a tricky, catchy keyboard intro. ‘The Girl From Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel’ stands out with its cool melody with a ritzy, Eastern European lilt and accordion sound. It features some of the album’s best lyrics, about the American way (‘Is to show lots of teeth, and talk loudly’) and the reasons for war (‘The land weeps oil’). ‘All the Young People Must Fall in Love’ discusses nuclear annihilation using a complex musical make-up, including a jazzy interlude, while beautiful closer ‘Israel’ beckons with its repeated piano pattern. Morrissey, the eternal protestor, shows no sign of putting down his banner yet!
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH A DECADE OF DESTRUCTION [ELEVEN SEVEN/SONY MUSIC AUSTRALIA]
[
]
Five Finger Death Punch is a band that, admittedly, I have not listened to since I was a teenager. The gruff, angsty lyrics, pummelling drums and kneerattling guitar solos were what I yearned for. But as an adult (apparently that’s what I am) this formula has worn thin. The Las Vegas-born band have been nicknamed ‘heavy Nickelback’ and the lead singer Ivan Moody, ironically living up to his surname, has had public meltdowns and internal band conflicts. This is also why I have intentionally missed their last few discs: the ego that has shadowed this band has taken centre stage instead of the music. This best of collection A Decade of Destruction offers two unreleased songs, including opener ‘Trouble’ that is classic Death Punch and a cover of The Offspring’s 1997 hit ‘Gone Away’. The latter being a decent tune. The chugging ‘Lift Me Up’ (featuring Rob Halford of Judas Priest fame) includes the lyrics “Better back the fuck up, better shut the fuck up,” that should come straight from the Fred Durst lyrical handbook of the late 90s. It takes ten songs to get to the emotionally charged ‘The Bleeding’ from their debut and arguably best album Year Of The Fist. With matured ears each song should transport me to being sixteen with baggy jeans and messy, long hair but instead they sound like sonic “This is not a phase, Mum!” memes for one hundred and three minutes. For a band I used to air guitar to in my bathroom their sound has not stood the test of time. Only for die-hard Death Punchies. ANDREW MYERS
RORY MCCARTNEY
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[THE WORD ON GIGS]
ELEANOR MCEVOY CANBERRA IRISH CLUB THURSDAY JAN 18
Local blues artist Alison Penny opened the evening with an impressive, dynamic blues piano instrumental, before delivering a package of her own songs. Real heart on your sleeve material, Penny was not shy about relating the personal history behind the lyrics. Cross this woman, and you are likely to find yourself starring in a song about your personal qualities, or lack of them!
JEREMY NEALE GETTING THE TEAM BACK TOGETHER [DOT DASH/REMOTE CONTROL]
[
]
Formerly with Brisbane garage poppers Velociraptor, Jeremy Neale has issued his debut solo album, made with the support of friends from bands various. Unsurprisingly, there are hints of similarities between his new music and Velociraptor, with both drawing on a retro sound for inspiration. There is even a nod to his Velociraptor heritage in the CD art for the new record.
Any Doubt’ (a song about a man not returning phone calls) unreeled with a casual humour. The clever weaving of legal terms into the lyrics exemplified McEvoy’s songwriting skills. The songs of Irish poet Thomas Moore were done to her own arrangements, a move that was not to the taste of at least one Moore purist in the crowd. There was a cover of ‘Alleluia’ performed in memory of the very recently departed Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan, based on a conversation the two women once shared on the art of Leonard Cohen. Impressive on keys and guitar, McEvoy showed her skills on the violin, offering first a classical piece, followed by a very lively ‘fiddle’ flavoured Irish dance tune. After closing the main set with her biggest hit ‘Only A Woman’s Heart’, she returned with further demonstrations of her flexibility, with an a capella song, followed by one sung in French.
The woman behind the biggest-selling Irish record in Ireland, Eleanor McEvoy, was visiting Canberra again, in support of her albums Naked Music and The Thomas Moore Project. McEvoy’s delivery was shaped to match the mood of her songs, with the serious ‘Sophie’ (about the scourge of anorexia) RORY MCCARTNEY delivered with passion and ‘For Avoidance of
The album follows the 2015 release of his EP Let Me Go Out In Style. However, the long player has taken a different direction from the EP’s smoother, 80s electro-keys vibe, which has been replaced by a stronger guitar/drums emphasis. Opener ‘Averse to Try It’, about glitches in the chemistry of romance, explodes in a burst of guitar. The fast, choppy rhythm is spiced with wild screams. Neale asks tentatively, “Are you the one?” in a heart on the sleeve themed album revolving around dramas with love, cash, career problems and mental health issues. It takes only a couple of spins to appreciate the catchy quality of the melody in tracks such as ‘Bad Company’, where beguiling tunes joust with harsh guitar strikes. Female vocalists add depth with Jaimee Fryer smoothing out the sound in ‘Small Talk’. ‘The Heartbeat of Life’ is one of Neale’s hybrid tracks, where 50s/60s sensibilities are matched with a more contemporary musical style. ‘Video’ also incorporates retro elements with the singing boosted by Katherine Dionysius. The synth powered ‘Loose Cannon’ is a CD highlight with its sweet melody and overlapping vocals, while closer ‘Light My Way’ is a more complex arrangement, complete with strings and prominent cowbell ‘toc’. It’s all good stuff in Neal’s sparkling debut; a solid album with no fillers. RORY MCCARTNEY PHOTO BY
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[FILM REVIEWS]
THE WORD ON FILM WITH MAJELLA CARMODY
With the Oscars just around the corner and the Hollywood awards season well underway, there is no better time to head to the cinema and beat that Canberra heat. Over the next month there’ll be some cracker releases, including the likes of indie darling Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, starring Saorise Ronan) and what will likely be DDL’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) final throw of the cinematic dice, Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson). QUOTE OF THE ISSUE “I DON’T WANT AN INTRICATE, BEAUTIFUL THING DESTROYED!” DR. ROBERT HOFFSTETLER (MICHAEL STUHLBARG), THE SHAPE OF WATER
WATCH OUT FOR... Sweet Country (2018) Award-winning outback western about an Aboriginal stockman who goes on the run when he kills a white station owner in self-defence. Dir. Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah). Released 25 Jan Molly’s Game (2017) Directorial debut of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network), based on a real-life high-stakes poker establisher (Jessica Chastain). Released 1 Feb Sweet Country (2018) Although a middle-class family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks, they pay little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home. Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Isabelle Huppert. Released 8 Feb American Express Open Air Cinema (Canberra) Make a night of it under the stars at American Express Openair Cinemas. Experience summer at its best with live music, sunset drinks, food, fun and flicks. More information at openaircinemas.com.au Until 25 Feb
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THE SHAPE OF WATER [
]
The latest (and Golden Globewinning) film from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water, centres around kind and caring daydreamer Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute who works as a janitor within a secret government research facility during the early 1960s. Elisa communicates entirely through sign-language and with the assistance of her colleague Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) and her best friend and neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins). After a supposed accident at the facility, Elisa and Zelda are tasked with cleaning one of the laboratories. Here, Elisa comes across a strange creature housed in a tank of water and a tentative relationship between the two begins to blossom. What follows is a kind of ‘heist’ film, where Elisa and her friends must extract the creature (the ‘asset’) from the facility before any irreversible harm can come to it. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, there is a terrible beauty to the The Shape of Water, including sporadic moments of brutality, which add a menacing undertone to the otherwise whimsical aesthetic. The film carries some highly topical themes – the importance of empathy, the intricacies and nuances of communication (not dissimilar to last year’s Arrival) – and explores depths of love, loneliness and heartbreak in unexpected ways. The cast is exceptional. Michael Shannon is despicable as ever as the sinister and ruthless Colonel Richard Strickland, while Hawkins emanates pure warmth and heart. Just as impressive is the production design and art direction – the design of the creature is breathtaking.
ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD [
t ]
Scott’s latest is a hostage drama recounting the 1973 kidnapping of the young heir to the Getty oil fortune. A well-paced, if at times mechanical thriller, Scott shoots in a gloomy slate grey palette of shadow and half-light emphasising that this is really a parable on the root of all evil and the murky moral compass guiding the Getty family. Abducted from the streets of Rome by a Red Brigade faction seeking a lucrative pay-off, 16-year-old John Paul Getty III, soon awakes in Calabria dawning to the reality that his family may be even more ruthless than his captors. The penny-pinching John Paul Getty Sr. (Christopher Plummer) is soon locked in battle with the boy’s mother Gail (Michelle Williams). Through lawyered-up face-offs and flashbacks we see the workings of a dysfunctional and broken family, as Gail, assisted by security adviser Fletcher Chace (Mark Wahlberg) find the tougher negotiation is with the bloody-minded patriarch resisting paying a ransom as he casually splashes millions on a Vermeer or two. While Plummer, replacing the disgraced Spacey, delivers a rightly acclaimed performance unpacking the fear, distrust and unquenchable greed driving the isolated Getty, credit is also due to Williams. Her performance as Gail is the heart of the film, doggedly pursuing the return of her son Paul, in the face of the stone-cold calculations of her ex-father-in-law and his praetorian guard of cynical legal advisors. AJP TAYLOR
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
[
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Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), is stony numb from grief; seven months after her daughter’s brutal murder, the town police are no closer to finding the killer. So she puts up three billboards on the road into town publicly confronting police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Willoughby, in turn, has other things on his mind. But the billboards anger one of his men, Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), who it turns out is angered by a lot of things. And so begins a series of events tragic enough to serve as the foundation for some very effective dark humour. These events attest to a sensitively-written plot, complemented by some of the best acting of the past twelve months. The result is a story ballasted with the weight of utterly believable human emotion. The consequence is that the jokes are very funny indeed. Maybe this is life smalltown America – so tragic that all you can do is laugh. Or maybe not. It’s not until a couple of hours after leaving the cinema that you notice the film’s weaknesses – the heavyhanded caricatures and simple jokes (although, admittedly, nobody does wounded dignity quite like Peter Dinklage). This is the trick that Martin McDonagh and the cast have pulled off – for 115 minutes these are simply real people and their real lives in what might well be a real town. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is, if nothing else, a masterclass in execution. JEONGHYUN KIM
A fairy-tale of a film unlike anything else currently showing in cinemas. MAJELLA CARMODY
@bmamag
BREATHE [
DOWNSIZING
]
It’s 1959. Newlyweds Robin and Diana Cavendish take a teabrokering expedition to Kenya, where, with Diana expecting their child, Robin is afflicted with a paralysis that stops him breathing for himself. Back in an English hospital, Robin despairs at the prospect of lifelong hospitalisation; Diana and their friends do what they can to free him. On its surface, the tale is of the couple’s strong will; the generosity of a clever friend, Professor Teddy Hall, in inventing the portable respirator; and their global leadership in granting patients indefinitely hospitalised with disabilities freedoms that most of us needn’t think about whose loss we’d find unbearable. It offers plenty of food for thought about that. More deeply, though, the film memorialises an unswerving love that for 35 years defied naysayers’ expectations that somebody in Robin’s position could survive for more than a year even inside a hospital. Produced in tribute to Robin and Diana by their son, Jonathan, this essentially true, beautifully written film meets its potential through painstaking direction and cinematography of heartbreakingly realistic performances, bleak hospitals, inspiring African and Spanish settings, and human nature at its vibrant best: courageous, communal, and generous. The settings and costumes perfectly represented their times, as did the reactions to Robin’s courage in the cause of setting himself and other iron-lung patients free again. Restrained performances all round make believable a deeply moving tale of an indomitable spirit nurtured by an indomitable love.
[
t ]
In an alternate future not far away, Norwegian scientists develop the technology to shrink humans down to size. All problems are a mere fraction when you’re six inches tall. Your bank balance that could barely afford a two-bedder now buys you a Mega (two-foot tall) McMansion with all the trimmings. It helps too, that downsizing your life downsizes your carbon footprint: a bourgeois dream come true. Into this Swiftian adventure steps Paul Safranek (Matt Damon), a slice of middle America right out of Omaha. For a small price, and a permanent commitment to staying small, Paul decides to make a fresh start. But on the other side of the shrink ray, all is not as promised. Paul’s Lilliputian Leisureland is comes at a cost, and ultimately, Paul discovers that going small is no true escape from the problems of real life. Alexander Payne’s seventh feature is a meandering sci-fi morality tale whose naive hero finally, through his experiences, grows wise. I’m doing you a solid by giving you this character arc upfront, because without it, it’s often quite unclear what exactly was going on. That’s not to say there isn’t much to enjoy. Christoph Waltz playing Christoph Waltz is an excellent distraction to any film, even when the purpose to his character isn’t entirely clear. Hong Chau’s Vietnamese refugee will ignite debates about whether she plays a racist caricature. Spoiler alert: she’s not. BEN YAN
JOHN P. HARVEY
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[ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE]
EXHIBITIONS AROUND TOWN
A Visit to the River Canberra ceramicist Cathy Franzi investigates “ways in which representations of Australian flora on ceramic vessels can express current botanical and environmental knowledge.” Originally trained in science, Cathy combines a botanical approach with relief printmaking methods to create her beautifully textural and colourful ceramics. From February 15. BEAVER GALLERIES Slow Boat Highly regarded printmaker David Frazer, explores complex emotional states of the human condition through his captivating narratives often tinged with melancholy. David’s intricately detailed woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs and etchings depict urban and rural environments and are distinctly Australian in character yet universal in theme. From February 15. BEAVER GALLERIES ‘Drawings’ by John Forrester Clack Drawing is a place where we can explore the incarnation of the word Amen – ‘So Be It’. Tues-Sun, 10am4pm. Free. February 16-March 29. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE In Transit Unframed Open Exhibition BAC is transforming in 2018; artists have been invited to explore change, unframed on A3 paper. Tues-Sun, 10am-4pm. Free. February 16-March 29. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE ‘Public Moments’ by Kira Godoroja-Prieckaerts A response to non-consensual touching of women in public spaces. Tues-Sun, 10am-4pm. Free. February 16-March 29. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE Urban Instabilities Phil Page & Katie Hayne. Info at www. anca.net.au. ANCA GALLERY Dombrovskis: Journeys Into the Wild See Peter Dombrovskis’ photographs of the Tasmanian wilderness, which changed the way we think about our environment. NATIONAL LIBRAY OF AUSTRALIA Hearts and Minds Including the first Australian exhibition of Penny Byrne’s Hurt Locker, from the Glasstress exhibition, Palazzo Franchetti, Venice Biennale 2015, and Harriet Schwarzrock’s innovative neon installation, between stillness and movement. Wed-Sun, 10am-4pm. Entry by donation. CANBERRA GLASSWORKS
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[ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE] WEDNESDAY JANUARY 24 LIVE MUSIC Vanishing Shapes
Eccentric folk featuring flute, clarinet, viola, guitar & double bass. 7-9pm. $10/7 CMC members smithsalternative.com.
Endrey’s Musical Singalong
Come and sing solo tunes from musicals or join the chorus. $10. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Lulu Swing
Swing/Hot Club/Latin acoustic jazz. 4:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Sunday Arvo Sessions
Cobargo Folk Festival Launch
Irish Jam Session. Traditional Irish musicians in the pub from late afternoon. 4pm
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Sunday Jazz Jam
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Free. 9:30pm
THURSDAY JANUARY 25 LIVE MUSIC Dan Walsh
Unique clawhammer-style banjo fusing folk with funk. $15/10 CMC members. 7pm smithsalternative.com SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Hinterlandt
Diverse, innovative & progressive indiechamber music. $15/10 CMC members smithsalternative.com 9:30pm
KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
A jazz jam, open to all, led by guest musicians. Free. 1:30pm
JAN 24 – FEB 7 SOMETHING DIFFERENT Smith’s Scribblers
Lunchtime life drawing. $15/10. 12:30pm
LIVE MUSIC
Sweet Belladonna
9th annual SoundOut festival, of explorative sonic arts event. This is the International Free Improvisational, Free Jazz and Experimental Music festival to will uplift tired ears, explore the unknown, see within the fabric of sound, unravel the threads of normative musical praxis, and question sonic hegemonies.
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Dr Sketchys is an inclusive intimate drawing session that involves cabaret, burlesque, competitions, and lots of sketching. Come along to one of the internationally renowned Dr Sketchys sessions and meet some new people and have fun! POLIT BAR
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
MONDAY JANUARY 29 LIVE MUSIC Lunchulele
Absolute Beginner’s Ukulele Fun Time. 12.30-1.30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4
LIVE MUSIC Such Is Life
Bushrangers, beards and bluster! Show us your beards and swing to the Black Mountain Band. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Mental Cavity/Gvrlls
SoundOut Festival 2018
DRILL HALL GALLERY
Sunday Jazz Jam
A jazz jam, open to all, led by guest musicians. Free. 1:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
The Ahern Brothers
Striking harmonies and careworn acoustic guitars. $25/20. 4:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
COMEDY
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
$10 entry. More info at thebasementcanberra.com.au 7pm
Comedy Open Mic
Face Face
That Poetry Thing
Wards Express
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
TRANSIT BAR
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Melbourne rock trio. With Helena Pop, Azim Zain and Lady Denman. 8pm
SOMETHING DIFFERENT Smith’s Scribblers
Lunchtime life drawing. $15/10. 12:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
FRIDAY JANUARY 26 LIVE MUSIC Variety Concert
A gathering of performers from local groups featuring dance, classical music and folk songs. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Featuring Shastra Deo (QLD) and Judith Crispin (ACT). $5. 7pm
TUESDAY JANUARY 30 LIVE MUSIC Bang!! Beng!! Bing!! Bong!! Bung!!
5 ‘Bungers’ play 5 songs each, followed by a set from a more experienced performer. $5. 7pm
LIVE MUSIC Snake Oil Preachers
Salvation boogie, redemption rock, godless gospel. $10/7 CMC members. 3pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
The Novellas
Songs inspired by contemporary works of fiction. $15/10 CMC members. 7pm smithsalternative.com SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Bangers and Mosh
7pm. Info at thebasementcanberra. com.au. THE BASEMENT
SUNDAY JANUARY 28 LIVE MUSIC The Dombrovskis Quartet
The Acacia Quartet perform the world premiere of Moya Henderson’s The Dombrovskis Quartet, followed by a late night viewing of the photographs that inspired its creation in the exhibition Dombrovskis: Journeys into the Wild. 6pm $60/$65. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
The ‘Xpress delivers a high energy show consisting of blues, rock, funk & soul, with some world music and jazz influences. 7pm HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB
SOMETHING DIFFERENT SoundOut Improvisation Workshops
With Europe’s leading improvisers. 10-12.30 and 2-4.30. Please register at Eventbrite. PETER KARMEL BUILDING
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Capital Punishment
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
POLIT BAR
Lunchtime Sing Fling
Lunchtime singing session for the shy and vocally challenged. $10. 12pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SATURDAY JANUARY 27
THE BASEMENT
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 31 LIVE MUSIC
Competitive pun slam. $10. 9:30pm
THEATRE Switched On – Body
Live, improvised theatre directed by you. $15/$10. 7:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 3
Come and try stand-up comedy or watch your friends perform. Free. 7pm
MONDAY FEBRUARY 5 LIVE MUSIC Lunchulele
Absolute Beginner’s Ukulele Fun Time. 12.30-1.30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SOMETHING DIFFERENT That Poetry Thing
Featuring Shastra Deo (QLD) and Judith Crispin (ACT). $5. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 6 LIVE MUSIC Byren
7pm Info at thebasementcanberra. com.au. THE BASEMENT
Baker Boys Showcase
LIVE MUSIC
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
THE BASEMENT
SoundOut Festival 2018
Lunchtime Sing Fling
Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au.
Classical Capers
Open mic for classical music. $5. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Solquemia Flamenco
Guitar and dance. $20/$15. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 1
9th annual SoundOut festival, of explorative sonic arts event. This is the International Free Improvisational, Free Jazz and Experimental Music festival to will uplift tired ears, explore the unknown, see within the fabric of sound, unravel the threads of normative musical praxis, and question sonic hegemonies. DRILL HALL GALLERY
LIVE MUSIC
Giffen
Silentia
Nu-folk ensemble present their debut album Hiding Places. $15/10. 4pm
THE BASEMENT
Googfest 2018
Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au.
Justin Yap and Jesse Valach Price TBA. 7pm
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Soundscapes #18
A monthly music night showcasing acts in the alternative / experimental / sound art / other / uncategorised zones. $10/7 CMC members. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
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SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Free event. Food stalls, fireworks and live music. Info at googong.net. 5pm
Lunchtime singing session for the shy and vocally challenged. $10. 12pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Old Time Tuesday
The fortnightly open jam where we party like it’s 1899. Free. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 7 LIVE MUSIC Dave Graney and Clare Moore
7pm Dave and Clare began their trip in 1978, still travelling. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
ROCKLEY OVAL
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
DANCE
Smith’s Varietal
Outer Rhythm
Dance for Muscular Dystrophy. Gold coin donation. 7pm THE BASEMENT
Explore the unexpected reaches of Canberra’s performing arts community. $10. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
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[ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE]
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 8
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 10
LIVE MUSIC
LIVE MUSIC
Linch King
Unlocking the Doors
Tix through Oztix. Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au. THE BASEMENT
Thursday Jazz: The Pratt/Price Collective
Guitarist & former head of ANU jazz Mike Price and Australia’s leading vibraphone player Daryl Pratt. $15/$10. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Brap Brap Vol. 1
Emcee 3oB (Agency Dub Collective) and Coolio Desgracias hip hop collaboration. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SOMETHING DIFFERENT Smith’s Scribblers
Lunchtime life drawing. $15/10. 12:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 9 LIVE MUSIC Musical Oddities #1
Two shows in one. Shenanigans 11 and Chrome. Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au. Tickets at Moshtix. THE BASEMENT
The Bushwackers – Bush Dance Australia’s best known, best loved Bush Band, The Bushwackers are coming to Canberra for a family friendly old style Bush Dance at the Harmonie German Club. 7pm HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB
The Crossbones
A rowdy night of rockabilly. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SOMETHING DIFFERENT Roll for Intelligence
L
Doors tribute. Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au. Tix at Moshtix. THE BASEMENT
Hi New Low & James Fahy
Unpredictable, melodious art rock/pop music. $10. 1:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Cookie Baker
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Treasures Dinner: Sister Suffragettes
Join us for a special dinner to celebrate the 100th anniversary of 8 million women being granted the right to vote in the United Kingdom. $90. 6pm NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
DANCE Somebody’s Aunt
Improvising Canberra women creating dance. 6pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
ON THE TOWN Putting on the Glitz
Lights! Glamour! Action! Australian Dance Party bring the moves and The Stilettos break out the tunes. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
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SOMETHING DIFFERENT
Sustainability Standup
Betty Grumble’s Love & Anger
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Showcase of the Sustainable Stand Up – Science Style course. 7pm
Lunchtime Sing Fling
Lunchtime singing session for the shy and vocally challenged. $10. 12pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 14
Ne Obliviscarus
Lani EP launch
THE BASEMENT
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Jazz with soul. $15/10. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
The Surrogates & DJ Free. 10:30pm
KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
Featuring Chris Endrey. $30/35. 9:30pm
GALLERY OPENINGS February Exhibition Openings ‘Drawings’, ‘Public Moments’ & ‘In Transit Unframed’. Free drinks & nibbles. Free. 5:30pm BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE
LIVE MUSIC
Deceivingly gentle melodies, cool wordsmithery, gritty vocals.7pm
Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au. Tickets at Eventbrite.7pm
Lisa Richards and Richard Gilewitz
Life songwriter meets fingerstyle guitar wizard. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17 LIVE MUSIC Snape Album Launch
Sydney sweethearts Snape are launching their first album, with Shoeb and Dogname. All Ages. $10 Message Mulgara facebook page for address. 6pm
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
MULGARA
Canberra Kids Market & Canberra Fashion Market
Smith’s Varietal
Free 10pm
EXHIBITION PARK
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Shopping, Food, Coffee, Great Day Out. Info available. 10am
Canberra Shanty Club
Sea Shanty singing sessions. Free. 4pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 11 LIVE MUSIC Sunday Jazz Jam
A jazz jam, open to all, led by guest musicians. Free. 1:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Sunday Arvo Sessions
Irish Jam Session. Traditional Irish musicians in the pub from late afternoon. 4pm KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
MONDAY FEBRUARY 12 LIVE MUSIC Lunchulele
Absolute Beginner’s Ukulele Fun Time. 12.30-1.30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
A live, improvised performance, based on everyone’s favourite tabletop RPGs. $15/$10. 7pm
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
Creatures at Leisure
Info at thebasementcanberra.com. au. 7pm THE BASEMENT
SOMETHING DIFFERENT That Poetry Thing
Featuring Shastra Deo (QLD) and Judith Crispin (ACT). $5. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 13 LIVE MUSIC #Apology10
Heal our past, build our future. Free all ages concert. Hosted by Myf Warhurst and Steven Oliver. 6pm FEDERATION MALL (LAWNS OF PARLIAMENT HOUSE)
Explore the unexpected reaches of Canberra’s performing arts community. $10. 9:30pm
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 15 LIVE MUSIC Chicago Charles & Danger Dave
Free.5pm
KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
Harry Jakamarra
4th Degree & DJ KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
ON THE TOWN Fancy Dress Party
Come one, come all to Canberra’s BIGGEST Fancy Dress Party! Dress Up and Have Fun as we celebrate the German Fasching Carnival! featuring Adult Face Painting, Magicians, DJs mixing up a Euro Dance Party, German Beer, Schnapps, Food and plenty more!7pm HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB
West African desert blues, old time Appalachian stomp and grungy rock stirred with a banjo. 9:30pm
Sweaty Pits Presents
Cattle Decapitation
Featuring Chris Endrey. $30/$25. 9:30pm
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au. Ticket info at bandsintown.com. 7pm THE BASEMENT
SOMETHING DIFFERENT Smith’s Scribblers
$20/$15. 7pm
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Betty Grumble’s Love & Anger SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 18 LIVE MUSIC
Lunchtime life drawing. $15/10. 12:30pm
Sunday Jazz Jam
ON THE TOWN
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Outer Rhythm
Dance for Muscular Dystrophy. Gold Coin donation. Info at thebasementcanberra.com.au. 7pm THE BASEMENT
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 16 LIVE MUSIC Special K/ Oscar & DJ
5pm/10pm. Free.
KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
George Washingmachine $35/30.7pm
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
New Savages
The New Savages play Melbourne Hill Country Blues. A very original mix between the deep delta blues sounds of Mississippi, the raw sexuality of The Doors and the storytelling of Johnny Cash. 7pm HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB
A jazz jam, open to all, led by guest musicians. Free. 1:30pm
Sunday Arvo Sessions
Irish Jam Session. Traditional Irish musicians in the pub from late afternoon. 4pm KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB
Endrey’s Musical Singalong
Come and sing solo tunes from musicals or join the chorus. $10.7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
February Blues Jam
Multi award winner Patou swings with kings and untouchables alike. With a career that spans over four decades and right across the globe, Pat Powell (Patou) is one of Australia’s most accomplished vocal talents. $3/$5. 7pm HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB
MONDAY FEBRUARY 19 LIVE MUSIC Lunchulele
Absolute Beginner’s Ukulele Fun Time. 12.30-1.30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
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[ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE]
FEB 8 – 25
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 20 LIVE MUSIC Vicera Trail
7pm nfo at thebasementcanberra. com.au. THE BASEMENT
SOMETHING DIFFERENT Old Time Tuesday
The fortnightly open jam where we party like it’s 1899. Free. 7pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Capital Ideas: Gonski 2.0 Review
A panel of experts and thinkers tackles some of Australia’s key policy issues, from cultural hot topics to pressing social concerns. 6pm NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
Lunchtime Sing Fling
Lunchtime singing session for the shy and vocally challenged. $10.12pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 21 SOMETHING DIFFERENT Feminartsy $10. 7pm
SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
Smith’s Varietal
Explore the unexpected reaches of Canberra’s performing arts community. $10. 9:30pm SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23 LIVE MUSIC Charlie A’Court
7pm. Canadian singer-songwriterguitarist Charlie A’Court is the proverbial force to be reckoned with. Planted at the crossroads of roots and soul, Charlie’s mighty voice, fierce guitar work and contemporary song writing have earned him an international following and a host of awards and accolades for his five solo albums, including his latest Dieselproduced offering, Come On Over, winner of the 2015 East Coast Music Award for Blues Recording of The Year. HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB
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