RECRUITMENT HIVE TECH SPECIALISTS
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[CONTENTS]
[Canberra’s
Guide]
Entertainment
#513
Feb/Mar
The ACT isn’t just a territory, The ACT is a state... of mind
ART, NOT APART FESTIVAL 10TH ANNIVERSARY
p. 16
Mail: 36/97 Eastern Valley Way Belconnen, ACT 2617 Publisher Radar Media Pty Ltd General Manager Allan Sko T: (02) 6257 4360 E: advertising@bmamag.com Editor Allan Sko E: editorial@bmamag.com Accounts Manager Ashish Doshi T: (02) 6247 4816 E: accounts@bmamag.com Graphic Designer/Cover Design Tracy Ng
TEEN JESUS & THE JEAN TEASERS
p. 15
OKILLY DOKILLY
NEW SHORT STORY BY CAT COTSELL
p. 26
FRANKIE MCNAIR
p. 23
Film Columnist Cam Williams Entertainment Guide Editor John Harvey Social Media Manager Allan Sko Columnists Ruth O’Brien, Josh Nixon, Niamh McCool, Allan Sko Contributors Frankie McNair, Rory McCartney, Cara Lennon, Ruth O’Brien, Cody Atkinson, Alice Worley, John P Harvey, Niamh McCool, Josh Nixon, Allan Sko NEXT ISSUE #514 OUT Thursday, 5 March
p. 28
EDITORIAL DEADLINE Friday, 21 February ADVERTISING DEADLINE Wednesday, 26 February 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.
EMMA HOLLAND
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MADDY WEEKS
p. 31
DAVEY LANE
p. 29
GREG KIMBALL
p. 30
TIM FERGUSON
ES 199 T 2 PAGE 10
ANTHONY TOMIC
p. 36
AMANDA PALMER @bmamag p.44
FROM THE BOSSMAN BY ALLAN SKO [ALLAN@BMAMAG.COM]
Well, it seems that last issue’s From The Bossman, with its little drops of wisdom dashed into the fetid cesspool of Life, went down a treat. And so, keeping ahead of popular demand as I am wont to do, I have lovingly assembled Part 2. I suppose now there’s more than one, we should come up with a name. Ahhh, I’ve got it. So without further ado, let’s feast upon another serving of Allan’s Nuggets™, a continued collection of little chunks of meaty idioms accumulated over my questionable existence: - Envy is the projection of your unrealised potential onto somebody else. - I’m a slow learner; but at least I’m a learner. - Health is more than the absence of illness. - We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone. - Team work is important; it helps to put the blame on someone else. - Learn to listen, and listen to learn. - You’re not better than anyone else. But nor are you worse. - Let Life itself be your teacher. Be it something pleasant, or something unpleasant. - A healthy sleep not only makes your life longer, but also shortens the workday. - When the pain of being the same becomes greater than the pain of being different, you change. - Our so-called enemies are our greatest teachers. - I have never failed. I have merely tried a number of things that have exploded - The only real security in life lies in relishing life’s insecurity. - You can make a water-bed more bouncy by using spring water. - The world we see does nothing in itself. It simply represents our thoughts. - Spirituality derives from spirit, the Latin for which is spiritus, which means to breath. - When we water a plant, we do not have to figure out how to make it grow. We do not even need to understand anything of the mechanisms of its ability to grow. When a plant receives the required attention, its growth is an automatic consequence. And so it is with the mind - A conclusion is the part where you get tired of thinking. Humusste Day, my cosmic chickens. Venture into the world, and lay the egg of peace in the coop of your life.
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[HOT TIX]
UPCOMING EVENTS
Psychedelic Realism by Reg Mombassa / Exhibition/ Until 20 Feb / aMBUSH Gallery
No Mandate & Agency Dub Collective / Atmospheric dub scapes / Fri, 7 Feb / Polish White Eagle Club
Psychedelic Realism is a dreamlike journey through landscapes, absurdity, and the sheer magic of art – documenting decades of works from one of Australia’s most loved and renowned artists, the inimitable Reg Mombassa (aka Chris O’Doherty). Showcasing over 70 of Reg’s diverse pieces, the solo exhibition consists of his favoured forms and themes – suburban and rural landscapes, graphic works, and absurd allegorical narratives. Self-portraits (including the Archibald-nominated high pants), and recognisable Mambo characters (incl. Australian Jesus). Free entry, showing daily 10am-6pm weekdays, 12pm-5pm on weekends
Sydney’s Desert Rock power trio No Mandate, armed with heavy desert riffs and short bursts of angular punk, connect with the heavyweight rhythms and spacious atmospherics of Canberra’s own Agency Dub Collective for a night of delicious dub scapes with emphasis on urgent electrified guitar riffs and charging rhythmic energy. Assisted by Melbourne turntable and pyrotechnic genius The Master on the wheels of steel, it is sure to be a huge night of multi-genre, interstate cooperation. From 8pm, tix $10 @ http:// bit.ly/Desert_Dub
Fred Smith / “Domestic” album launch/ Fri, 14 Feb / Kambri Cultural Centre Beloved CBR singer-songwriter Fred Smith is back with the launch of Domestic, turning his wry observational humour to modern Oz, from drought to digital overload, bushfires to Bondi. It’s the first album in eight years not exploring warzone conflicts, with renowned travelogue albums Dust of Uruzgan and Bagarap Empires. With Kinks-like Britpop to country and fingerpicking folk, it portrays a couple overwhelmed by life in the digital era... real and relatable. From 8pm, tix $38 ($25 for U21s) from www. trybooking.com/586250
Dog Trumpet/ “Great South Road” album launch / Polish White Eagle Club/ Fri, 28 Feb Spearheaded by brothers Peter O’Doherty and Reg Mombassa, Dog Trumpet have been creating music since the early ‘90s with first album Two Heads One Brain. Boasting an inventive body of work distinguished by an offbeat harmonic warmth and melodic drive propelled by Reg’s distinctive slide guitar and Peter’s elegant acoustic guitar and mandolin; their poetic, at times absurdist lyrics are set against a sonic backdrop of rock ‘n’ roll, psych folk, country, and semi-abstract blues. They’re here to play new songs and Dog Trumpet classics with a nod to their careers in Mental As Anything. 8pm, tix $25 from trybooking.com PAGE 12
Tracy McNeil & The GoodLife / “You Be The Lightning” album launch/ Fri, 14 Feb / Transit Bar Within the broad strokes of Americana music, Tracy McNeil & The GoodLife celebrate the release of their new album, described by Double J as, “one of the most promising local releases of 2020... Pulling in some very heavy Fleetwood Mac vibes, adding a tiny dose of Gillian Welch-style song-craft, but sounding like no one but themselves.” Picking up at full speed from where they left off with the award-winning Thieves (Best Country Album, Music Victoria Awards 2016), their live show is described as “fully realized, worldclass country rock”. Doors 8pm, tix $13.50 from Moshtix
Ben UFO / Canberra House Social Par-tey! Sun, 8 Mar / UC Hub Co-founder of the legendary Hessle Audio label, presenter of the longstanding Hessle Audio show on Rinse FM, and universally praised selector, the disgustingly young Ben UFO comes to rave up the cavern at UC Hub with a very special sound-system and production to boot. Described as having “the combination of a diminutive demanour and tender manner, but ruthless, encyclopaedic artillery of UK bass music”, the Canberra House Social crew are set once again to bring the noise in the best way possible. 10pm - 3am, tix $29-39 via Moshtix
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LOCALITY
[THE WORD ON LOCAL MUSIC] WITH RUTH O’BRIEN. SEND YOUR GIGS AND INFO TO: [RUTHMVOBRIEN@GMAIL.COM]
Hello! If you’re reading this it means you’ve survived what is arguably some of the most dramatic weather events our little Canberra has ever seen. All the feels to anyone affected by the fires, smoke, hail, and crazy winds we’ve experienced. Wild times we’re living in. Climate change = real. But I remain hopeful. Though it may feel like Mother Nature is well and truly (and understandably) fed-up with us humans, with the right action we can move towards a brighter future. And we can start by attending brilliant events that support brilliant people and causes! On Monday, 10 February, local artist-of-words Gemma Nethercote-Way will read alongside Sydney poet, teacher, editor, and event organiser, Toby Fitch. That Poetry Thing That is On At Smith’s Every Monday Night is at the title suggests. From 7-9pm! It includes an open mic and is a wonderful chance for poets of all backgrounds and levels to share their love of poems. Cost is $5 conc. and $10 full price.
productivity’, it is a space for people to group together to overcome common blocks including procrastination, fear, and busyness to find routine, accountability, community, and focus. Whether it’s writing a novel or a resignation letter, starting an illustration series or sending one scary email, SPS welcomes any project, big or small! Coffee, tea, and snacks will be provided to ensure you maintain your energy and focus on whatever you’ve been putting off. Tickets are only $12 and can be bought via Eventbrite. For more info go to www.sideprojectsessions.com If you want to keep the creative juices flowing on 16 February, and music is your thing, consider heading to Smith’s Alternative from 1-3pm for Music ACT’s first professional development event of the year. Join four of Canberra’s most interesting and successful songwriters and musicians (Kojo Owusu-Ansah aka Citizen Kay, Lisa Richards, Bryn Evans and Lucy Sugerman) for their take on a songwriter’s journey. There will be live performances, a Q&A session, and networking drinks.
Canberra-based artist Ham Darroch opens the ANU Drill Hall Gallery’s 2020 exhibition program with a dynamic ensemble of colour, geometry, and object-based form. In his paintings and sculptures, Darroch investigates the visual tradition of hard edge abstraction of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The opening of his exhibition, Propellor, is on Thursday, 13 February from 6-8pm. For more info go to https://dhg.anu.edu.au
Ham Darroch
For something a bit different, if you’re single and looking for a meaningful way to meet people, consider heading over to the Trash Gather Valentine’s Day Clean Up. On Saturday, 15 February, from 3pm, people from all gender expressions, sexualities, abilities, and walks of life are welcome to meet for a social gathering at John Knight Memorial Park. The initial meeting place will be at the BBQs near the playground. The afternoon will begin with ice-breakers to get to know each other, followed by a clean up. Then the group will reconvene for a picnic with cheese, crackers, and beverages. Just bring yourself, a hat, sunscreen, protective gloves, and a cup for complimentary drinks. Everything else will be provided. For more details head over to www.trashgather.org On Sunday, 16 February, Keep Co. CBR will be hosting the monthly Side Project Sessions (SPS). From 10am-1pm, SPS is a regular event series designed to help people put their projects – and themselves – first. Offering a unique format of ‘peer-pressured PAGE 14
On Saturday, 29 February, CBR’s best DJs and 2XX FM presenters come out for a huge night of music ranging from funk, soul, disco, Latin, D&B, and house as part of the event DJ Mixtape, a fundraiser for 2XX FM - Canberra’s community radio station. The night will include tracks by Superbreak, Liquid Sunshine Sound System, Tidy and Samwise, Pigeon Pretz, Cultura Clandestino, Dede Da Cruz, Ash Brady, Mista Nige and DJ Kicks. After a very successful first and second edition of this event, DJ Mixtape is sure to go off. Everything kicks off from 5pm at Beruit Bunker Bar at Garema Place. Tickets are $5 and can be bought online via Eventbrite, or snaffled at the door. Moving into next month, make sure you keep Sunday, 8 March free for the first ever International Women’s Day Concert, headlined by Sarah Blasko, Holly Throsby, and Sally Seltmann as Seeker Lover Keeper as well as Kaitt, Moaning Lisa and Shoeb Ahmad! With genres spanning indie, grunge, jazz and pop, this worldpremiere, Canberra-exclusive concert promises to celebrate the best of Australian music. The full International Women’s Day daytime program will feature speakers, thinkers, artists, and performers all exploring and challenging the concept of “woman” and engaging with this year’s theme of #EachforEqual. For tickets and more information go to the Canberra Theatre Centre website. See, so much Canberra brilliance! That should keep ya topped up for a bit! Thanks for reading, and see you in March.
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BMA ARTIST PROFILE Dream Wife, Press Club and VOIID. Our lifestyle influences however include Michelle Obama, Greta Thunberg and @ dumpedwifesrevenge on Instagram. What are some of the most memorable experiences you’ve had?
Band name and origins: Teen Jesus began one night in year 10 at a sleepover at Neve’s house where we watched School of Rock and decided to form a band the next morning. Jaida and Scarlett had never played their instruments before, but we looked up the chords to Big Jet Plane by Angus and Julia Stone and somehow kept it going for the next four-ish years! Group members: Anna is the sing-song girl with a cheeky yellow guitar. Jaida has big hands and plays bass with an occasional shout. Scarlett’s guitar is more beautiful than any of us will ever be; also dabbles in harmonies. Neve pounds the buckets and also has an occasional shout. Describe your sound: Our sound is a mixture of every teenage phase we have gone through as a group. We started off trying to play super classic grunge, then a confusing power pop techno-inspired phase, many different strange combos of those two things, then eventually landed the sound that we have now. It’s honestly still a strange combo of those things but it seems to work for us finally; we like to describe it as indie boppy rocky spicy we-love-Nirvana tasty creamy grungey alt rock.
Some of our best times as an epic friendship dream team have happened over the past year when we started touring and playing lots of interstate shows. Playing Falls Festival was definitely a huge highlight for our entire lives, the whole time was hectic and so surreal. Other good times have been when any of us have to “tactical” vom at our accommodation or when Jaida applies her deodorant paste in public places. Tell us about one of your proudest moments? Our Byron show for Falls Festival was definitely our proudest moment both as a band and as indie-viduals. We’d never played such a big festival before and we were gearing up to play to an empty room, but Byron pulled through massively!! The tent we were playing in was packed and there were tanned strangers singing the words which was lovely. We all had a big cry when we got off stage. What are your plans for the future? We have so many plans for the future, oh my. First step is for all of us to turn 19, then we wanna keep having a lovely wholesome time playing bangerz with our best gals. We have a huge plan for 2020, starting off with a headline tour for our new single Desk Chair. Everything else is still being prepared but we promise it’ll be epic!! What makes you laugh? Novelty socks and farts. What pisses you off?
Who/What are your influences, musical or otherwise?
Novelty socks and farts.
Our list of musical influences is ridiculously big but we can always name a few. Some of our favourite bands/artists at the moment are WAAX, Amyl and The Sniffers, Wolf Alice, Courtney Barnett,
Anything else you’d like to add?
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Love y’all xx
PAGE 15 Teen Jesus and The Jean Teasers launch new single Desk Chair on Friday, 21 February at Transit Bar!
With a new decade brings new promise, and so in this spirit I took it as a good sign that Michael Liu and Dave Caffery of Art, Not Apart (ANA) reached out for a frothy coffee catch up at Mochan and Green Grout, near/on one of the many future sites of the long-established multi-arts festival over which they preside. Ten rich, dazzling years long, in fact. Well, not quite, as Dave explained. “It’s actually the festival’s ninth year, but as we ran two ANAs in the first, this is the tenth one.” And boy howdy, do they have a three-day, many-venued, multi-medium spectacular planned for the March event. An enthusiastic Michael Liu - the very epitome of bright-eyed and bushy tailed, replete with tortoise shell framed glasses that looked similar to mine and yet annoyingly better - laid out the 2020 vision for the big one-oh of ANA. “The music projects being presented at this year’s festival are more diverse and varied than ever,” said he. “I’m remaining tight-lipped about the program at the moment, but I can say it’s a great mix of emerging and established musicians, some of whom will be returning to the festival, and to Canberra, for the first time in quite a while.” At this point, a triumphant light bursts forth from Dave Caffery as he begins to speak. “For our 10th anniversary we’re celebrating with three beautiful events in Albert Hall,” he says. “Melting Pot is one of the best music sessions I’ve ever seen, with true jazz masters improvising under live projection mapping; Sound and Fury is an unmissable performance art party directed by the amazing Chenoeh Miller straight after the main festival on Saturday; and then we’re dancing with some of the country’s leading producers and DJs on the Sunday.” It’s a potent festival that’s radically changed the region for the better, and it resonates at both a community level, and a personal one too. “The festival is special in my eyes because of its truly wide range of artists and works,” Dave says. “Our six curators work in traditional ways with some artists and then in wildly unique ways with others. ANA has carefully designed programs for cinemas, stages, exhibitions, and street walls, and, at the same time, moat dancing, political installations, bin chickens, and two rocking parties.” “It’s been an incredible journey to have been part of Art, Not Apart since its very first event,“ Michael pipes in. “First as a musician, and then behind the scenes running the communications, and now also its music curation. I’m proud to see it grow and flourish with every year, speaking truth to power and presenting art that matters.” I broke from the meeting, belly sloshing with coffee and mind ablaze. I yearned for more. Nay, demanded more! So, sharpening my pseudo-journalistic quill, and donning my beloved and well worn gumshoes, I reached out to the rest of the Curators and Managers (eight - count ‘em - EIGHT in number) to learn what the festival meant to them, their highlights of past ANAs, and what they had in store this year. While some had fled the country temporarily, most were forthcoming.
Lavanna Neal - Events Manager What’s so special about Art, Not Apart: That it’s free, inclusive, and has so MUCH going on. There’s a great saying from a Monty Python skit, where the Pope is being consulted about the Sistine Chapel ceiling (after Michelangelo has painted The Last Supper with kangaroos, plates of jelly, and 28 disciples), and he says, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like”. I feel like Art, Not Apart gives opportunity for everyone to find something that you like, or that speaks to you. Personal highlight: Being the only person admitted to the first aid tent! Hahaha – classic. Actually, seeing the moat of the Shine Dome full of The Australian Dance Party dancers on a 34-degree day dancing up a storm and telling a story through movement about how we treat our environment.
Photos this side by Caitlin Welch
What have you got prepared for this year: An EXPLOSION of human experience – the theme is Today I, Tomorrow You – and the artists all have such interesting interpretations of that phrase.
On a very special day in early 2020, BMA’s ALLAN SKO was invited to meet with DAVE CAFFERY and MICHAEL LIU to talk about the exciting, threeday, many-venued, multi-medium ART, NOT APART festival. He came away breathless, and it wasn’t just because he’s grossly unfit. This, is their story... Chloe Mandryk - Visual Art Curator What’s so special about Art, Not Apart: Its creative alchemy; every year we have the opportunity to see how new venues, artists, ideas, and people participating result in connection. Personal highlight: The enjoyment I get out of Art, Not Apart is always different but the same. The parties are extraordinary too! What have you got prepared for this year: A group exhibition in the Nishi Gallery with new work from nine artists who have responded to the festival provocation with distinct ideas and unique mediums but are united by a preoccupation with our environment and the contemporary and future impact of climate change.
Chenoeh Miller - Performance Arts Curator (Sound and Fury) What’s so special about Art, Not Apart: It is really beautiful how everyone comes together. Personal highlight: Christopher Samuel Carroll rolling down the Nishi Grand Stair in slow motion for hours and hours was one of my favourites (pictured second from top on the right, there). And Captain Ruin MCing the first Sound and Fury in a Nishi Basement was very cool. Too many to choose. What have you got prepared for this year: The body in space without technology, without too many materials - just good performances. And as it is our last one in New Acton, I was particularly keen to highlight the precinct that has been our home for so long. So lots of roving and pop up performances all over the place. SOUND AND FURY!!! We have our best programme EVER! As usual, we don’t like to give away too much. But we will be doing a ‘best of’ which will include some favourite works from over the years.
Sam Dignand - Film and Moving Image Curator What’s so special about Art, Not Apart: This festival was born from a collective desire to showcase incredible emerging and established Canberra artists in one of the region’s youngest precincts. We’ve seen emerging artists catapult themselves to a national and international level since their involvement in their first Art, Not Apart. But what I love the most is the collaborations that have been born from our festival. Personal highlight: A live-scored performance of the F. W. Murnau silent film Nosferatu by Tess Said So in 2017 at NFSA’s Arc Cinema which we’ll be fortunate to have as a venue again this year. What have you got prepared for this year: We have stunning projection-mapping and visuals from Sydney duo Tszuj Corp within Canberra’s beloved Albert Hall. We’re also lucky to have the Australian premiere of a powerful performance-art film, Text Messages From The Universe, which took out Best Feature at the Poland International Film Festival in 2019. There they are, the handsome devils. Dave Caffery on the left, and Michael Liu on the right. Without them, and Art, Not Apart, your life would be at least 17% less enriched according to a study.
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The big 10 Year ANA Anniversary is on this year from 13-15 March. We’ll have a big cover feature/calendar of the event next issue, but in the meantime you can get your fix at https://artnotapart.com/
Photos this side by Martin PAGE Ollman 17
DANCE - THE DROP [THE WORD ON DANCE MUSIC] WITH NIAMH “IL VAMPIRO” MCCOOL [NIAMH.DOLFI.MCCOOL@GMAIL.COM]
Recommended for you: Music and Algorithms
The quantity of music being published daily propels music forward at a rapid pace; there is more innovation, resourcefulness, pastiche. More growth. Genres become distilled. Genre tropes are continually used over and over, certain samples become genre shorthand; a soundbite of a couple of seconds can develop multi-layered meaning through all the prior work that it refers to. Referentiality is a key attribute of ‘internet music’. This referentiality, along with the internet being a music distribution system in and of itself, has led to the blossoming of niche genres, and decently ‘internet’ flavoured genres. The most obvious, and well-trodden ‘internet’ genre of this kind is, of course, vaporwave. Vaporwave is in a unique position, in that it’s a genre that we have observed coming out of, and living its course on, the internet. Forming in the ’90s, there is now a decent amount of well-researched literature on the matter. Musician and academic Laura Glitsos’s ‘Vaporwave, or Music optimised for abandoned Malls’ discussed the particular nostalgia that the genre evokes. A core part of vaporwave is its immersive world-building quality; world-building is a common thread in contemporary internet genres. On Bandcamp, the Sydney-formed label Eco Futurist Corporation focuses solely on ‘Eco Grime’, being an experimental multi-disciplinary genre focusing on a Utopian vision of ecological and digital symbiosis. It often features low humming frequencies, samples of water falling, insects chirping, and birdsong married with abrasive digital kicks and dirty basslines.
Edited image created by combining image of a Porcelain Vase from the Kangxi Period and Iris Van Herpen’s ‘Synatopia Dress’ in Machine learning program: ‘Deep Dream Generator’ The current state of piracy, mega-corporate streaming services, and algorithms that create pop stars have left some people apprehensive about how technology is affecting music. With any technological advancement comes positive and negative elements. I’ll be looking at two online audio platforms -Soundcloud and Bandcamp - that have dramatically changed music distribution and music itself.
The Eco Futurist Corporation coined ‘Eco Grime’. Bandcamp enables labels to curate music and carve out their own distinct genres and sub-genres. Tagging also encourages the development of extremely specific sounds and aesthetics. If you browse the breakbeat tag on Bandcamp you get hundreds of vastly different artists, which is a great way to find diverse sounds. Sorting through more niche tags like breakcore, digital tribalism, or Chernobyl, you’re likely to find music that focuses on a particular theme and/or aesthetic.
Recommended Mix: https://soundcloud.com/thickowens/iforgot-my-mantra I grew up using Soundcloud, so I feel a warm nostalgia towards the platform, and amongst other things, it has shaped my relationship with music and in particular my interest in electronic dance and experimental music. The biggest appeal of both Soundcloud and Bandcamp is the feature that any artist can publish music which is instantly accessible all around the world. You don’t need an agent, record label, expensive recording studio or production gear. All you need is a laptop (even just a phone) to publish music. This led to a democratisation of music production and publication. Music is more diverse than ever. Now, this newfound ability for your 6-year-old cousin to publish mumble rap covers has led to some preaching ‘oversaturation’. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the ‘oversaturation’ stance. The more people there are to produce and publish music, the more diverse it becomes. PAGE 18
Image from Beauty_Gan, an AI algorithm that creates artificial images using photos of make-up as its input information @bmamag
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There is, however, a side to SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and music distribution as a whole that is out of our control; namely the algorithms that suggest and promote music to listeners. Soundcloud has recommended artists, ‘radio stations’ composed of songs in the same vein of songs you have liked, and a weekly playlist based on what you listen to. All this is created by computer algorithms. The fact is that every time we listen to music now, we are sending off a stream of data straight into a computer system to be analysed, which then feeds back what it thinks you like. It can feel… strange. It does have a slight neo liberal, AI-fuelled dystopia feel, and it does raise questions on privacy and what rights we have surrounding data. Is it wrong that a machine learning system is telling us what music we should listen to? Perhaps it’s because I grew up on the internet, but seeing what the Soundcloud algorithm brings out of the odd recesses of the internet is fascinating rather than frightening to me. I have found some of my favourite music this way. Algorithms have changed the way music is made, how it is promoted and distributed. While some people may find this concerning, I don’t find there to be much difference from a friend suggesting a song to me.
Continuing the amorous vibes, on Friday, 6 March Fleetmac Wood present the Sea of Love Disco at Mr Wolf – a plasticfree party with a dollar of every ticket going towards the Sea Shepherd Global. Then on Friday, 13 March, Kinetics & Mr Wolf present Quebecbased Project Pablo, a man who oversees a string of labels including ASL Singles Club, SOBO, and Verdicchio Music Publishing. At Fiction, prolific house and disco producer Folamour comes to Canberra on Sunday, 8 March (who solidified his name in 2019 with a viral video of him dropping some ABBA, doncha know), and will be joined by Cloonee replete with his tech house slammers. And last but by no means least, also on Sunday, 8 March, cofounder of the legendary Hessle Audio label, presenter of the longstanding Hessle Audio show on Rinse FM, and universally praised selector, Ben UFO comes to rave up the cavern at UC Hub with a very special sound-system and production to boot. Described as having “the combination a diminutive demanour and tender manner, but ruthless, encyclopaedic artillery of UK bass music”, the Canberra House Social crew are set once again to bring the noise in the best way possible. DJ of the Month: Hei Zhi Ma
Sociologist John Law’s ‘Actor-Network Theory’ suggests that non-human objects (like the Soundcloud Algorithm) can be considered equally relevant to humans in a communication network. In other words, you can view interacting with hardware and software the same as two humans communicating together. Maybe Law’s theory is a bit out there, but the future of algorithms and advancements in communication technology is sure to have an interesting effect on music. Recommend for you: playlist: https://soundcloud.com/niamhmccool/sets/recommended-for-you-a-playlist Speaking of the future, the immediate future of Canberra holds some pretty delightful electronic music events. Infamous internet icon Partiboi69 lands on Sideway’s dancefloor on Thursday, 13 February, featuring the ’90s visuals, sexual innuendo, and ghetto house that gained him is acclaim in the Aussie underground scene.
Hei Zhi Ma is a master of building emotion and narrative in her sets, weaving spoken word, poetry, and film samples into breakbeat, techno, trance, and jungle. I find her radio show Tian Dian on Nomand Radio a particularly fascinating listen.
Partiboi69 giving it to us on the recorder On Valentine’s Day – which, of course, is on Friday, 14 February – It’s a London Thing shows us some love with UK-based grime and garage DJ Barely Legal. On Friday, 21 February Queer party THROB returns to Sideway with dynamic techno duo Tama Sumo and Lakuti, having earned their DJing stripes at no Berlin’s Berghain no less. PAGE 20
Recently playing with experimental group Tactic, supporting Rainbow Chan, spinning at HICCUP sustainability party, graduating FBi Radio Dance Class 2019 and featuring on Radio Show Bleus, Hei Zhi Ma is intimately involved in underground scenes that keep the culture moving. Plenty to check out in the month ahead, so be sure to get your headphones on, and your dance feet a-shufflin’.
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?
Questioning
So “urban”... sounds like an odd term? Yeah, it sounds...like something. But to get a picture of what it actually is, let’s stroll through a brief history of the term. OK, where does it originally come from? We have to go back - waaay back - to segregationist America. The early days of the recording industry were heavily skewed towards white audiences. In the 1920s - we have to clarify that, now we’re in the 2020s MY GOD WHERE DID THE TIME GO - record labels started to realise that the African American audience wanted to buy records - and hear African American culture on record. So one label - Okeh started marketing their music as “race records”. As success came to Okeh for realising the obvious, most other labels followed suit. But doesn’t “race records”sound a bit off? That’s one of those things where time has evolved the meaning and understanding of words. Back in the early parts of the 20th century, “race” was used as a reclaimed word/point of pride for African Americans. Cool. So what does this have to do with “urban”? I’ll get there. Anyway, “race records” went from a record label marketing term to a big thing. Billboard even instituted the “Race Record Chart” for a period in the ‘40s. Then, a journalist at Billboard - Jerry Wexler - worked out that as the world evolved, the term “race records” didn’t sit well. So, he came up with the term Rhythm and Blues. It’s also worth noting that Wexler was not African American. It’s also worth noting that to this point, the basis for both genres was the blues, which predominantly emerged from rural areas. facebook.com/bmamagazine
Urban Music
???
with Cody Atkinson
I feel you haven’t finished yet? NO I HAVEN’T. Anyway, RnB in the ‘40s and ‘50s was very, very different that the genre we know now - it primarily referred to just blues records. But as music evolved, so did the meaning of the term - first to electric blues, then gospel, maybe some early rock ‘n’ roll, then soul and funk, then pretty much pop. It was less a genre but instead a signifier - one that evolved as broader music trends changed. For a period in the ‘60s, the RnB charts even stopped in the USA and were subsumed by the pop charts, given the popularity of Motown and their rivals. And then onto urban? Not quite. In between, it became the soul chart and the black music chart. Urban, RnB contemporary, and urban contemporary came out of various splits, but still have the same base origins. “Urban” is most often traced back to a New York radio DJ named Frankie Crocker, who came up with the term to describe what he was playing. But there’s a pretty clear line from “race records” to “urban”? Yeah - language evolves and changes over time, but it seems somewhat clear that the links between the original term and the current urban is clearly there. It follows that the meaning is still somewhat attached - which may not be appropriate considering the widespread popularity of music that are considered to be in the categories above. As Billboard stated in 2018, the term still is used as an antiquated shorthand for “music by black artists”. Surely people have wanted to change this for a while already? Indeed, in several pieces in print and online - including that 2018 Billboard piece - several industry executives suggest that the term, much like the names of
the past, has reached it’s used by date. However, the dissent isn’t universal, and there lacks consensus on what a replacement term - if any - should be. Why are you only thinking about this now? Now’s better than never? I mean it’s not a new problem, but it’s got recent prominence. THIS IS A TIMELY COLUMN. But really, it was the speech by Tyler, the Creator on the weekend. At the Grammys of all places. The Grammys still exist? Apparently so. Anyway, Tyler, the Creator - founder of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and once banned from entering New Zealand - used his post-award speech to unleash on “urban”. Yeah? You know what, let’s let him take it away: “I’m very grateful that what I made could just be acknowledged in a world like this, but also it sucks that whenever we — and I mean guys that look like me — do anything that’s genre-bending, or anything, they always put it in a rap or urban category. I don’t like that urban word, it’s just a politically correct way to say the N-word to me. When I hear that, I’m just like, why can’t we just be in pop? Half of me feels like the rap nomination was a backhanded compliment. “Like my little cousin wants to play the game, ‘let’s give him the unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it’. That’s what it felt like to me. But the other half of me is very grateful that the art that I make can be acknowledged on a level like this, when I don’t do the radio stuff. I’m not played in Target. I’m in a whole different world from what people here listen to, so I’m grateful and I’m like eh.”
!!!
???
So what does it mean here in Australia? According to ARIA, the “urban”category covers RnB, hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, and dancehall. Which, yep, is a total grab bag, even less cohesive than what exists in the USA. The bigger issue is that it is pretty much divorced from all the cultural and contextual meaning that the long history in America provides to the term. Indigenous Australians have a long relationship with a variety of music genres, from country to metal and all stops in between, and the experience of other migrants is far from homogenized into one type of music. That seems obvious. What we get here is a lazy grab bag that exists as a catch all for artists across a variety of areas that aren’t quite popular enough for pop. As per the ARIA Award guidelines, you can only be nominated for the Urban award if you aren’t nominated in another top line category. It leaves results like The Cat Empire being called “urban” which is like when BBC Radio 1Xtra called Ed Sheeran, “the most important act in black and urban music”. Yikes. So what’s the solution? Maybe don’t use terms like “urban”. Maybe get rid of awards and charts that cause arbitrary division? Maybe have achievement based on merit in more defined areas in which they actually create their art? Recognition for local acts like Koolism and Citizen Kay - a previous winner and nominee in the “urban” category respectively - is a good thing, but there’s probably a better way to do it. But both make hip-hop primarily, not some outdated borrowed phrase. There’s no easy answer, and I’m probably not the right person to come up with solutions, but there are plenty of people outPAGE 21 there who are in the right spot.
METALISE
[THE WORD ON METAL] WITH JOSH NIXON Happy new year! Can’t blab on, there’s too much to share.
Pod People return - I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly Artillery bring their 38-year history to town Danish thrashers Artillery are taking a break from European winter and hitting The Basement on the Thursday, 6 February along with Mattersphere and Taliesin. Guitarist Michael Stutzer has been with the band since the beginning of their 38-year, nine album career, and no doubt a classic or two from Fear of Tomorrow will hit the setlist alongside tracks from 2018’s The Face of Fear. Our varying 75-50% locals Mental Cavity finished 2019 strong with their second album Neuro Siege. It’s received warm reviews around the web and even a flattering review in high profile metal rag Decibel. Their local launch takes place on Friday, 7 February at Tranist Bar and along for the ride is Newcastle’s Post Truth and local grind warriors Blight Worms. Shananigans 13 (number’s gonna hit triple figures one day) is at The Basement on Saturday, 8 February with the usual extensive line-up – deep breath now – Our Last Enemy, DepriVation, The Levitation Hex, From Love to Violence, Hence the Testbed, Renegade Peacock, Idiot Dog Brain, Blissphorus, Beta Blockers, Tsunami Puncher, and a new band from ex Na Maza members.
approved acts such as Blood Duster, The Kill, Fuck…I’m Dead, The Day Everything Became Nothing, Captain Cleanoff, and King. Hekate will bring their own peculiar brand of stoner doom stylings and Point 17 shall shake the ceiling with their thrash for a welcome spectrum of riffs from all colours of the metal rainbow. German heavy psych rockers and wielders of some of the most impressive beards in music, Kadavar, are coming back to Oz on the Wednesday, 1 April off the back of their seemingly never ending tour which currently finds them in Japan for their latest album For The Dead Travels Fast. This one’s at The Basement. Thursday, 9 April at The Basement is a big night for the old school with the double bill of DRI looking to further calcify the hips and joints of the ageing old school mosh pop of Canberra. Hirax are also on board for maximum ’80s crossover and thrashing delight. Friday, April 10 at The Basement is a night of epic Australian metal with Melbourne 7-piece Valhalore, Eye of the Enemy, Carmeria, and Triple Kill in celebration of new single Legacy.
It’s a full night of The Simpsons worship on Wednesday, 12 February with USA Ned Flanders themed outfit Okilly Dokilly joining the robed delights of Dr Colossus at The Basement for all the Springfield you can pack into a can of Duff. Sunday, 16 February at The Basement loses the mirth and replaces it with skull grinding brutality in the form of Cattle Decapitation, Revocation, and locals Wretch. The latest Cat Decap Death Atlas was a standout in last year’s long list of killer releases and the band a must-see. They always make the effort to come to Canberra so make sure you attend. Wednesday, 26 February brings a big ol’ dose of ’80s classic thrash with Sacred Reich and for the first time in Australia, Violence. Prepare the circle pit Basement folks; it’s gonna get rowdy. On Thursday, 5 March another two USA bands come to visit The Basement with the very brutal Sulfuric Cautery and Girth joining local grind fiends Blight Worms and the carnist flaying Bloodmouth. Friday, 13 March sees the return of Canberra’s old Belco stoners Pod People at the Transit Bar. The occasion is marked for celebration with the addition of a new Melbourne grind supergroup Remains, who feature members of Melbourne grind syndicate PAGE 22
Rock like an Egyptian - Nile roars into Canberra Egyptian-themed death metalers Nile put out a killer album last year with Vile Nitolic Rites and Thursday, 23 April at The Basement is a chance to catch the new material live. They’re doing a full run of Australian dates with Manchester death metalers Ingested and I’ll update you on local supports next issue. To those that hold the heathen hammer high, Tyr announced their first ever Aus visit, and news of a gig at The Basement on Thursday, 14 May with Valkore is welcome. That’s yer lot for this month. See you next. @bmamag
Cara Lennon talks to the Ned Flanders themed metalerinos about their new album and upcoming Canberra show. Diddly Hens love roosters. Geese love ganders. What’s more metal than Ned Flanders?
When you played your first shows did the viral attention translate to bodies in the mosh pit?
Not much, actually, but Okilly Dokilly are headed down under to scream about it.
It did, and it was very strange. The first tour that we ever went on, we were the opener for two headliners; a band called Mac Sabbath, which is McDonalds character-themed Black Sabbath covers. They’re phenomenal. The other band was called Metalachi, which is a heavy metal mariachi band. Full mariachi instruments but they’re playing AC/DC and Metallica covers [I want to go to there - BOSSMAN AL].
Head Ned, Shred Ned, Zed Ned, Dread Ned, and Bed Ned hail from Arizona and are spreading the good word about heavy Nedal, a two-band genre of metal shrieking, green sweaters, and loving thy neighborino. Head Ned calls BMA to talk viral fame, albums, and an Australian tour with Melbourne’s own Simpsons metal group, Dr Colossus. You’re touring with local boys Dr Colossus. How do Simpsonsthemed hardcore bands find each other? Is there a newsletter? I wish! That would make it soooo much easier to find openers and things. Dr Colossus—so back in 2015 when we first put our press photos online and ended up getting this weird viral boost, we discovered Dr Colossus. There were a lot of news articles that said like, ‘Oh, Simpsons band? Well there’s already this band in Melbourne…’ and that’s when I became aware of them. To date I haven’t really found many other Simpsons bands. There was one in Canada called The Be Sharps that did covers of actual songs from The Simpsons. Other than that there haven’t been a ton. So finding a Simpsons-themed doom metal band was excellent. As far as bands on the planet that are perfect bands for us to play with, Dr Colossus is easily that band. When we first announced the Australia tour they were the first band that I reached out to with promoters and agents. As far as openers went, I was like ‘No! Only this band! If they can do it, only them,’ and everybody was on board, so it’s great.
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Having never toured before and being the opener on the tour was crazy; to go to these places and end up running out of merch. A lot of people were there and said they came for us and that was very cool. We’ve always had an appreciation for bands that go on tour; it’s gruelling when there’s just a couple of people in the room each night, but then when they come back there’s more and more. We had this viral skip to the middle level of a band, and that was really cool to be able to just drop our jobs and tour and come back not ten times as broke as we were. I can’t begin to imagine the crowd that kind of tour would draw. Oh, it was wild. People were weirded out and having a blast. When you started out, was the plan to tour, release demos, build a fanbase? Or was it just, ‘Hey, this’ll be funny,’? Entirely the second one! We never intended on touring. The whole idea was, ‘Let’s form this band, and maybe play, like, two local shows’. There’s a couple of venues [in Phoenix] that notoriously put on shows with far too many bands; it would be like seven or eight bands on a Tuesday night. And we were like, ‘Let’s be one of those bands and get
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a logo that’s so illegible, like one of those super metal logos. It’ll say Okilly Dokilly but nobody will be able to tell and then we’ll go onstage and we’ll be in the Flanders outfits and all the songs will be Flanders quotes’. Just very tongue-in-cheek. And then we put our press photos and the demo online and ended up with 20,000 Facebook fans in a week. That kinda changed our plans of being this unknown Tuesday night comedy thing. Now we’re heading to places and they’re filled with people who are showing us Simpsons tattoos and referencing episodes. We’re like this tiny travelling Simpsons convention. It’s very cool. What’s it like having this character that you threw together for two gigs that’s now a proper stage persona? Are you consciously getting in character before you go onstage? Yeah, definitely. One thing we did on our latest US tour; the van had a DVD player. So we grabbed our copies of The Simpsons and watched nothing but that while driving from place to place. That was a great way to get in character and live in this wild Simpsons world. Any time Ned appears I’m picking up tips and quotes and things like that. And once you get into the sweater the mentality comes out and it’s easy to get into that heavy Nedal headspace. You had a total line-up changeover between albums. How do you recruit for a metal band with a sweater and collared-shirt dress code? It’s funny how gung-ho and open to being in this band people have been. Even at the start, this was just to be something fun; the songs will be simple and heavy and that’s how we ended up with the synth in the band, ’cos it was just a friend of mine. Since then we did some touring, but because the band never intended to tour none of the guys really were set up for that. Our drummer had already had a family and the other guys had jobs. Thus the change over with musicians who were set up for touring. And yeah, asking all of them you kinda present this crazy idea, ‘Hey do you wanna be Ned, and you know, wear a sweater on stage?’ At the onset of it everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, that sounds fun’. Then we toured in Texas and Florida during the hottest months of the year and now everyone’s like, ‘Alright, it was a little less fun than I thought it’d be. But still fun’. Was it challenging recording your new album, Howdilly Twodilly, with a whole new line-up? No, not terribly challenging. We approached it differently. All our songs are primarily direct Ned Flanders quotes—the first album was songs from quotes that I already knew or were more popular: Nothing At All, and White Wine Spritzer, and things like that. For the second album I actually had more of a process. I sat down and watched the first ten seasons of The Simpsons over the course of a month and picked quotes. I wrote about 20 songs and then we did it piece by piece, and I would set up a structure, then we would add drums, and we would add bass and add synth.
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Yeah definitely. I wanted to do a lot more melody, a lot more difference between choruses and verses and make it just a little bit more technical. That was the mentality. It shifted a lot because we plucked and picked the best of the 20 and the ten we picked ended up being those more melodic songs. One of my favourite songs on the record we weren’t able to use because I found out I misquoted Ned, which doesn’t fly. I was double-checking the record and I’d misquoted him so we pulled the full song and went back, re-recorded all the vocals. That song is called Slaughterhouse and we’ll actually be releasing it ahead of our Australian tour. It’ll come out on the 31st [January] so I’m excited to get the correct Ned-quoted version of that out for everyone to hear. That’s a phenomenal level of attention to detail. Part of it is. There’s a process where within the liner notes of the album I note the season and episode that the quotes came from. I was going back through my notes, pulling that and rewatching some of the stuff. I was like ‘Ahhh, I misquoted it’. So I called our engineer. We were touring at the time and called him. ‘You gotta pull the record; it’s not direct Ned’. Can you still relax and enjoy The Simpsons or are you automatically Ned-quote-compiling in your head? I’m still compiling quotes. Like even when I’m not writing songs. But I can absolutely relax and watch The Simpsons, but I have noticed I’ll be in the kitchen trying to put something away and then I hear Ned Flanders’ voice and then I just shove whatever’s to hand in the dishwasher and get back to the TV - ‘What if I’m missing a quote that somebody quizzes me on at a show or somebody mentions later? If I don’t know I’ll lose my Ned cred!’. The pressure! Yeah. It’s fun though. It’s very fun. You went to the first ten seasons for material for Howdilly Twodilly. Is that because it’s the golden age of The Simpsons or was that about keeping it to quotes that people would know already? Definitely a mix. I do think those early episodes are part of the golden age and there’s definitely more recognisable quotes and things from there. Part of it was that. Part of it was just starting from the beginning and if there is a Howdilly Threedilly then I’ve got seasons 11 through 20 to pull from. But yeah, it was those three factors. This is the golden age; these are the quotes that people recognise; and this works chronologically. And finally, you’re the band’s mandolin player. How did that come about, and what inspired you to bring it to metal? When I was first learning instruments it became a weird addiction. I learnt how to play guitar first and then got bored with it. I notoriously have a pretty short attention span, which has helped and hindered with many things. But I played guitar for about six months and then wanted to learn a new instrument.
So I found it a little bit easier to do the second record, just ’cos we had learned a little bit, we knew a little bit more what we wanted to do. We knew how we wanted to set up some of the songs for live shows too. Like I Can’t, It’s a Geo was built to be a live song because we point at the crowd and ask them to shout ‘faster!’ between every break, and just play the song faster and faster.
I played bass for about six months and then ended up getting a drum kit six months later. Every few months I would snag a new instrument and mandolin was one of them.
Would it be fair to say Howdilly Twodilly has kind of a slower, dark melodic Nedal sound than your first album Howdilly Doodilly?
We’ve brought it on tour and played it live as well. It’s fun to bring that out. People kinda cheer for the little tiny guitar.
In fact, death metal screaming was one of the instruments that I was like, ‘Hey let’s try this; this’ll be fun to learn,’. So yeah, mandolin was one of the instruments that was attainable and I was able to learn and then we thought it would add some humour on a death metal record, where there’s all this metal to bring out mandolin, which is traditionally one of the most un-metal instruments—or at least fairly un-metal. On our songs Folkilly Dokilly and then on Panic Room on the first record I’ve always done the mandolin parts.
Okilly Dokilly are playing at The Basement on Wednesday, 12 @bmamag February at 7pm. Tix are $45.15 from https://tickets.oztix.com.au
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Exhibitionist | Arts in the ACT
HIPPOCAMPUS
BY CAT COTSELL
is rigid. Even if you look inside and see a boy, you look down and you’ve got girl parts, that’s that. Gender is not the beach which changes every season, one year the water reaching up to the stairs, the next seeing you walk on sand you used to be unable to touch treading the shallow end. Gender is the rocks, sometimes hidden under silt, sometimes sharp in the sun, but always there. A little girl looking up to Steve Irwin, that’s normal. It’s not like she’s a little boy looking up to Monica Trapaga. That would be weird.
I grew up on the coast. Not the fancy one. My childhood was spent in a small town on the pointy end of Victoria, sloshing through slimy sand, walking barefoot up the middle of the main road, and sharing chicken nuggets with seagulls. We could smell the wharf from our backyard. It’s hard to think of yourself as being different from everyone else when “everyone else” is constantly changing. Contrary to what you’d expect from a small town, I was surrounded by strangers. In summer, the population doubled when absentee proprietors came to stay for a few weeks. People would holiday in the B’n’Bs and the caravan park and motel and give the boat hire its yearly income. The huge stretches of grass by the docks would be packed tight with 4x4s and family tents. The local economy was, I think still is, abalone and tourism. The richer locals would go away for the holidays, but most people never left unless they were moving away. For most of the year, Easter festival excepted, it was a small quiet place waiting for the outside world to come back. We were poor, and mum was a single parent, so I was an uncommon latchkey millennial. It’s a stereotype that country kids are unsupervised and feral, but in my case it’s an accurate one. I wore my older brother’s hand-me-downs and read his books and played with his toys, and spent most of my time out of the house doing what I wanted. In this way I got a lot of breaks from dysphoria even before I knew the word. Back then, I didn’t know “queer”. I knew “gay”, and that it was something no-one wanted to be. My introduction to queer people was through the telly, and in the ‘90s that was a narrow lens held at an unflattering angle. That scene from Crocodile Dundee. You know the one. ‘She’s a man.’ Grab. Cheer. As a child, you don’t identify with the object of scorn. You identify with what you recognise, and I didn’t know how. I recognised that the Crocodile Hunter was my role model, and maybe if I knew how to make the connection that I had more in common with him than with Monica from Play School, it would have saved me time. But in a small town where everyone runs around in their togs and towels, gender PAGE 26
Even after moving to the city, I was small town on the inside. In high school I made friends with a girl who comfortably called herself bi, and the light bulb didn’t go on but it flickered a little. It’s hard to locate your buried self when the language you’ve been taught doesn’t contain the necessary words. It didn’t help that my narrative is not the standard narrative. I didn’t claim with certainty “I am a boy” from early childhood. My dysphoria didn’t skyrocket when I hit puberty. I didn’t believe myself. My bewildered soul was just a different shape to my body. I talked myself out of being a boy in so many embarrassing ways. The discomfort was mitigated by access to boy’s clothes and being allowed to have short hair. I knew I wasn’t a girl, but I also knew that I had Girl Parts and as far as the world was concerned, I was either a girl or insane. There was a closed-off world that I glimpsed as I sped past on the crowded Normal bus, and my heart was blue, but I knew what colour I’d been painted at birth. The closest things to me on TV weren’t me. Even when I vaguely knew that gender non-conforming people existed, at my core I was unlikely and alone. I was the only one I knew, and if I was the only one, then I wasn’t one. This was my “aha” moment: I read that male seahorses get pregnant. The unscaleable, massive hurdle in my brain suddenly had a door in it. Return to the beach metaphor. Gender is the rocks. But the rocks are part of the beach. And the beach changes, even if the rocks don’t. For the first time, gender became an amorphous idea. I could see myself in a seahorse. The male with his belly designed for babies. I could see the taxonomy for what it was: a cataloguing device, one the seahorse himself doesn’t need. I looked at the transgender character in Silence of the Lambs, the characters in Priscilla and Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wondered where the boys were, the actual boys, not the strawmanned boys-in-dresses but the boys forced into dresses. Where was I? I felt cheated, and lucky. I wouldn’t want the people who wrote Dundee to write about me. There are some things you just need to unlearn and figure out on your own. My inner voice still has a judgemental, nasal small-town twang. Sometimes it asks helpful questions. Sometimes it speaks from once a month, from every voice
@bmamag
Exhibitionist | Arts in the ACT around me growing up that called me “girl”, “daughter”, “sister”, “darl”, “young lady”, “bitch”, “slut”. I share an upbringing with the women steeped in Australia’s brand of femininity in direct opposition with masculinity. There are experiences I share only with them. Am I a turncoat for rejecting this shared identity? Is my body the traitor? Should I cut myself in half to fit a box built by dead people? I bet Steve Irwin never had to ask himself that question. My whole life I have been repetitively instructed of my given role. I’m used to it, the way you get used to wearing a uniform. Makeup especially, it’s like face paint; there’s fun and artistry, and I can control my appearance. I’m like a child with a secret. Makeup has been used by men for decades to subvert and defy. On the outside I am trendy grunge; on the inside I am Bowie. It’s bittersweet. I like some feminine things but I’m constantly worried about whether it disqualifies me. Half of my trans friends still don’t know. I don’t always know where I am in this process or if there will ever be an end point. Self-doubt is valuable, but spending so long invisible makes it hard to let go of doubt. Is the unending bone-deep hum of, “I am not a girl” enough? I’m too feminist to believe femininity is a corrosive acid that eats masculinity, but nevertheless here I am, hesitating over whether to wear a fucking hairclip. I keep telling myself that these aspects of gender are constructs. And when it comes down to it, the things that I really want gone – the high voice, the hips, the boobs – are hard or impossible to change. Cheaper and easier to wear the costume of womanhood that has been stapled to me.
[A New Short Story by Cat Cotsell] Part of it is cowardice, too. The reality of being transgender is frightening. I call myself nonbinary and only to safe people who specifically ask. “Nonbinary” suits me accurately enough on an abstract, performative level, but deep down in my guts I know I am fence-sitting. I imagine myself with the body of a young man and it’s like coming home to a house I’ve never been to. Being nonbinary saves me from committing to the total restructuring of my social self within a society that demands you be One or The Other and has arbitrarily, sometimes brutally enforced rules for each. I know who I am, and who I am is a feminine man, not a masculine woman. But it’s easier on the outside to be the latter. I want a hiding place to retreat to. You can’t do that when you’re out. You must wear the target. Transitioning doesn’t just mean coming out of the closet. It means locking the door behind you with your rejected carapace inside and shoving the thing off a cliff. There is one person and one person alone to whom I owe coming out, and he’s not there yet. Maybe he won’t be for a while. But he’s in there, in the closet, getting ready. I have a body that is mine and isn’t mine. I nudge myself forward inch by inch with a weak and tiny fin, and I wrap my tail around the nearest stable object before needing to move on because change is inevitable and nothing is truly stable. If I ever go back to my hometown, I wonder if anyone will recognize me.
Cat is a fledgling science communicator and serial bookshop employee. Their short fiction and nonfiction can be found in FIVE:2:ONE, Everyday Fiction, Hashtag Queer Volume 2, Bent Street Volume 3 and a handful of University of Canberra publications. They also illustrate and make zines under Cat Hesarose.
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Exhibitionist | Comedy in the ACT
You pull over. You feel sick. Thoughts running through your mind… “Did I just make a cow feel uncomfortable for my own amusement? For my own pleasure? Did I demand the attention of that cow to boost my ego?” You grip the steering wheel. You catch your reflection in the rearview mirror. “I drink soy,” you whisper pathetically to yourself. You look away and hang your head. You begin drafting a public apology tweet. “Moo.” You look up. There is a cow in front of you crossing the road. You hold her gaze for what seems like an eternity, tears now streaming down your face. You say nothing. You nod. She crosses. You know what you must do.
COWS By Frankie McNair Cows. You love them. The day you found out they are scientifically proven to have best friends you cried tears of pure joy. You love them. When you drive by them you whisper “cow” to yourself. Heck, you might even roll down your window and give ‘em a bloody neighbourly “moooo” yourself.
up by just laughing way too hard, which, judging from his face, was a really weird reaction so then you just sprinted to the library and googled “ball to boobs kill you?” and read a lot of articles with no verified recourses about tissue damage and became convinced that you now had internal bleeding and an infection and were gonna die as a result of your titties actually falling off. The question hits you like that; out of fucking nowhere.
And after you’ve had that sweet sweet rush that can only come from locking eyes with a cow and screaming “mooo” at 110km/per hour, you roll the windows back up.
The question will haunt you for the rest of your days.
It’s quiet now.
You laugh at the thought. How absurd! You play a podcast, the tonic for your wandering mind. But, for some reason, the sound of three men laughing at their own jokes doesn’t soothe you as it usually does.
You smile to yourself as the memory of that sweet moo cow lingers. It’s very quiet. Your smile fades. And you just sit in the quiet. Then, the question comes. It hits you as suddenly and as forcefully as that basketball that hit you in the titties when you were walking through the quad in year 9. And even though it hurt so bad you threw it back and tried to pretend like you were fine, but when one of the boys asked if you were okay you started tearing up so tried to cover it PAGE 28
…Did I just cat call a cow?
Another? No use. The sweet song of two best friends discussing gruesome true crimes in vibrant detail does not relax you as it once did. The question floods back and fills your mind with the amount you always wished you could fill your shower by putting your feet and hands over the plug bit; to the goddamn brim. …Did I just cat call a cow?
You put the phone down. You breathe. You begin to drive. You don’t know where you are going, but what you do know is that change is a long, long road. __________________________________________________________________ I once made eye contact with a cow. I think about that a lot. It was a nice moment atop the hill of my friend’s property. I was taking in the morning as my headphone fed me Hercules’ “I can go the distance”. “I can go the distance,” I thought, profoundly. I heard a wire fence rattle to my left. I turned to see her. She was, with little to no regard, walking straight through the fence. She had the hunger and determination of a drunk girl, craving a hot chippie, pounding on the closed doors of Kebaba at 5am. Nothing. Would. Stop. Her. Soon, the fence post fell and she clumsily climbed over the former barrier. She could not be tamed. She walked to a patch of grass near me and started eating. She stopped. She looked at me. I looked at her. “You are very powerful,” I said. And then she put her tongue up her nose. Frankie McNair’s new comedy show Big Dumb Idiot is on Friday, 20 March at 9:30pm The Courtyard Studio at The Canberra Theatre Centre. Tix are $22 + bf from https://canberratheatrecentre.com.au/ show/frankie-mcnair/ @bmamag
Exhibitionist | Comedy in the ACT
[Canberra Comedy Q&As With Frankie McNair]
[FRANKE McNAIR] Your show… Hit me. [FRANKE McNAIR] Your show… Give us a bloody run down. I spent three years of my life and roughly $50,000 studying a visual arts degree only to pursue a career in comedy. This show is my attempt to utilize everything I learned in the landscape of a ‘90s children’s television show. You studied art. Do you think you’re better than everyone? Only men. You have a very powerful energy. Explore this. If you have to ask you’re not ready to know. Do you have a defining moment where you thought, ‘Yep. I want to try comedy’? I think so, but it was about four years before I actually tried it. I decided on my first open mic in 2017 while at an airport, drinking a boost juice at seven in the morning and thinking ‘surley this isn’t it’. You are an incredible photographer as well as comedian. Did you always envision you would be able to do both? Or did you ever think you could only persue one option?
This show WILL make you gay, so if you’re coming make sure you’re prepared to become one of the 10%. It’s about climate change, eco anxiety, and how to overthrow the government. But when I named it, it was just about butter! I‘ve grown a lot as a comedian and I’m really excited about this show. It’s $20 worth of fun that you won’t regret! There was a brief period in your life where you owned 23 swords…are you still obsessed with mastering the blade? I only own 7 swords. I had to sell them to fund my new addiction: P2 masks. I’ve deferred blade studies. Very sad. The end of an era. I’ll always have the memories and the scars from when I played fruit ninja IRL in my backyard. Favourite thing to put butter on? Bread. Butter. Sprinkles. Need I say more? Do you have any goals for what you’d like to do in comedy? It started as an elaborate way to meet Kate McKinnon and get her to fall in love with me. I have a girlfriend now who I love a lot so I’ll settle for Kate pining over me. Hardest thing about comedy?
Honestly, I always thought one would have to be a hobby and one a career. The great news is, because they’re both in the arts, they’re both hobbies now! :)
Hearing other comics’ jokes 10,000 times and looking them in the eye afterwards to say, ‘Wow, great set man; I see you’ve changed one word in your masturbation joke! Cool!”
Hardest thing about comedy?
Also, all the terrible gigs. I can’t say no to a gig. It sucks so much arriving to a gig and realising it’s going to be terrible but it’s too late to back out now. My next gig is in a caravan for some retirees. Can’t wait to cry after!
Explaining jokes to relatives at family gatherings after they’ve seen me on the youtube. Best thing about comedy? The people. Parting words of wisdom? I’m 24 and know nothing about the world. I’m still angry at people with money. If you’re going to do a visual arts degree don’t try and cram five subjects into one semester. PLUG YOUR SHOW: I’ll be at the Canberra Theatre’s Courtyard Studio on March 18th and 19th at 7pm. All jokes aside, I’ve worked incredibly hard on this show and am really excited to perform it in my hometown and am so appreciative of anyone buying tickets. Thanks for supporting the arts.
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Best thing about comedy? I’ve met the best people in the world through comedy. Hanging out at gigs and seeing them grow as performers is great. Also, whenever anything terrible happens in my life I’m 50% sad about it, 50% excited at new material. It’s a great coping mechanism. Give me that content baby! Parting words of wisdom? To avoid public embarrassment: if you push or pull a door hard enough, you’ll be right either way. PLUG YOUR SHOW: Butter Boi is on Thursday, 17 March at 7pm at the Civic Pub. Tix can be found on the Canberra Comedy Festival website. For the price of four mediocre coffees you can get one hour of GREAT comedy. I’ll even make you four instant coffees PAGE 29 during the show if you want. Please.
Exhibitionist | Comedy in the ACT What was your most recent gig like? My most recent gig was the Civic Pub Comedy Club Christmas Show which is probably my favourite show in my favourite room. The CP is usually a standard show format: headliner, MC and supports. But the Christmas Show has a showcase of great Canberra comics just letting loose. It’s always packed and the crowd is really close to the stage and always up for it so it’s an awesome night. Everyone on that line-up absolutely smashed it and it demonstrates that there is a heap of talent in the Canberra comedy scene. The Civic Pub is the longest continuously running comedy room in Canberra and they continually get the best acts from around Australia (and lately some overseas ones too). They have worked so hard at building their room that punters come along regardless of if they know the headliner or not, because they know they are guaranteed a night of elite level comedy. Hardest thing about comedy?
[FRANKE McNAIR] Your show… Give us a bloody run down. There have been many many times in my life when I would do something dumb and someone (usually Mum) would say, ‘What what going on in your head?’ So the show is kind of about that. It’s about what goes on in there in certain situations which I find myself in with annoying regularity. Your show is called Head; do you feel like you’ve alienated audience members without heads? I know, it’s a pretty blatant attempt to find the most basic of common ground with other humans isn’t it? ‘Do you have a head? ME TOO! This must be the show for you!’ But you’re right, I’ll have to do some target marketing to single cell organisms like sponges or amoeba to make sure I don’t miss out on that sweet sweet ocean caaash. I’ve always had a fairly prominent melon to the point where my brothers gave me the nickname Head Grog Grog Wog when I was growing up. I’m still not sure what it means or why “Grog” is prominent enough to be repeated, but having that name yelled at you like a drill sergeant probably has a bit to do with being the way I am. What was your first gig like? My first gig was at an open mic at The Front Café and Gallery in Lyneham just over ten years ago and it was great. The Front is such a warm, welcoming crowd and it’s probably the reason I’m still doing it because my second gig sucked. It was the very next night at a workshop performance after I had completed a four-week comedy course. I was on a high after doing okay at The Front and so I got cocky and tried to improvise and it boy did it not work at all. Also, my Dad heckled the MC (and teacher of the class) and got a bigger laugh than I did in my five-minute set. Thanks Dad. He’s dead now.
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That’s a good question. My first reaction is to say creating content, because I find it really hard to find a routine or rhythm to sit down and regularly work on material. When you have material that you have worked on and refined and are confident in, performing becomes much easier and if you’re really in your groove it let’s you really let go and have fun. But there’s a lot of work that has to go into that before you get there, and it’s often hard for me to get started. All that being said, there’s no worse feeling than having a bad gig. So I should probably turn the cricket off. Best thing about comedy? Laughter. There’s nothing better than it. It’s genuinely therapeutic; it releases stress and increases the level of endorphins in the brain. With little kids these days I don’t get the chance to go to as many gigs as I used to as a punter, but I always lock in and engage with other acts that I’m on a line-up with because it’s my chance to have a good laugh too. Parting words of wisdom? The Canberra Comedy Festival has been growing every year and it is so good to see so many people at the shows. But there is comedy in Canberra all year round, from open mic to professional standard shows. I would love to see the success of the festival transfer more to the local scene, because there is no down side. More people at shows means that the comics, the material, and the shows get better; more rooms open up and local businesses do better. So come to the festival, but then the week after come to The Front or the Civic Pub or any other of the rooms across Canberra and help build the local scene. PLUG YOUR SHOW: I’m a story-teller, so my style is better suited to a longerform. I like to be pretty honest in my shows, they are usually pretty personal and the material is always based on real personal experience. I think people will have a great night, and a lot of laughs and maybe learn a few surprising things too. It’s on Friday, 18 March at The Street Theatre.
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Exhibitionist | Comedy in the ACT
[Canberra Comedy Q&As With Frankie McNair]
[FRANKE McNAIR] Your show… Whassit about? I called my show Otherwise Private because my material draws very closely on my experiences, so most observers would understandably consider me an over-sharer or an open book. Truth is, I’d love to be a completely enigmatic comic that’s choc-full of pure observations that give no insight into who I am as a person, but I’m not creative enough for that. I think it’s because I was born two months premature.
Why do you like doing comedy? To answer this I need to think about why I like comedy. I like comedy because I think of it as this challenging and dynamic contract between two parties where one of the parties, the performer, is trying to be funny but deep down has no idea how it’s going to pan out. When it comes off, far out, what a high! When it doesn’t, you order your meal and hope for a different waiter next time. As for performance, I guess I like doing comedy because the moment I realised I could use humour to defuse or add light to a situation, I was addicted. I also think that being able to make others comfortable and help them get into a fun mindset is a really cool and privileged place to occupy. I don’t take the responsibility lightly or for granted, and I really appreciate the people in my life that make me laugh. No jokes here, just being earnest.
What sparks inspiration for you? Life and boredom are probably the main ingredients for me. Nearly everything I come up with is based on an experience or a reaction I’ve had to something, and for whatever reason I’ve identified it as funny after the fact, often while doing something boring like a long drive, showering, or working. If I was confident I could go live in the woods and come up with jokes I was happy with, I would, but I realise I very much need to keep operating within, and reacting to, society and all the boring day to day things I wouldn’t do if I had four million dollars. I think four million dollars is enough to live off in today’s low interest environment. For what it’s worth, I’m about four million and twenty thousand dollars off this goal (HECS debt and a bad investment in a graphite mine).
Hardest thing about comedy? I have four: waiting between gigs; when to consider a joke ready or a finished product; staying true to yourself; identifying next steps to progress your career. If I had to pick a hardest one from the above list, it’s when to consider a joke ready or a finished product. I have a bit at the moment that is currently a one-liner but it started it’s life as a five minute story. I also have a bit that’s a story right now but it used to be a short observation. Basically, it’s a constant challenge deciding when to go long or short on a topic. On a related note, I have no idea how musicians ever finish a song, let alone an album. I’d never be able to finish a song. I’d constantly add or subtract strings; solos, key changes, bandmates, everything. Far out, I’m stressed now just thinking about it.
Best thing about comedy? I have three: instant gratification; the cool people you meet (other performers and audience members); and the smug-as-hell feeling that you’re doing what you love on a regular basis. facebook.com/bmamagazine
It pains me to admit this but the main one for me is probably the instant gratification. I love performance. If someone told me to choose between writing a book that a million people read and enjoy, or performing a joke to a cumulative million people over 40 years, I’d choose the latter. Unless and until books/kindles can capture and relay to me where the reader laughs or what they most enjoy, it’s the stage for me.
Parting words of wisdom? Nah not really. Just enjoy yourself and don’t willingly or recklessly bring harm to others.
PLUG YOUR SHOW: Oh damn, the spruiking part. I take back what I said about the hardest part earlier. The hardest part is spruiking. Look, I don’t know. Come along because all the bits have passed my onerous creative process and I enjoy performing them. I’ll try my best on the night and I’m confident my show is full of fun, variety, and stimuli that will cater to a wide audience. I also think that privacy is a topical issue and I’ll touch on it throughout my show, such as whether society even has any anymore. What with social media and being invited to do a survey for 50 Flybuys points every time you duck off to the Coles Express for some Nesquik. Nobody needs to know about my Nesquik habit let alone how the transaction went. If you must know, the store is always well presented and the clerk courteous, but I’m always sheepish and ashamed. Are you happy now? What’s 50 points worth anyway? 25 cents? 25 cents and now you know one of my weaknesses in life? How’s that fair?
You know you could just not swipe your FlyBuys card yeah? No comment. Anthony Tomic is playing on Saturday, 21 March at 8:45pm at The Hilarium at The Festival Square. Tix from the CCF website.
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Exhibitionist | Arts in the ACT
LITERATURE IN REVIEW WITH CARA LENNON Janis: Her Life and Music Holly George-Warren [Simon & Schuster]
and the West Coast. Her adult life was a mess of hard work, self-destruction, ambition, and a black hole craving for love and attention that was never filled by fans, partners, or the occasional reserved hint of parental approval.
Janis Joplin. If you don’t know her, hit up YouTube, because her voice is one of those things that can’t be translated into print.
George-Warren walks a fine line, not glossing over any of the behaviour that made Joplin a difficult person to be close to, but writing with sympathy and good humour. Joplin on the page is vulnerable, and easy to like; perhaps more accessible than she was in real life.
Joplin was the female face of Woodstock and the summer of love, a beatnik-cum-hippie who wanted to live like Jack Kerouac, sing the blues like Otis Redding, and hold court among San Francisco long-hairs.
While it’s a story that’s been told before, George-Warren spent four years gathering new material, going to some trouble to distinguish fact from the mythology around Joplin.
Infamously one of the 27 club, she stands with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Brian Jones; those legends of the ‘60s that died aged 27. Janis is a pretty dense character portrait, told from up close and extremely personal. As written by George-Warren and remembered by her friends, Joplin had a need for acceptance, and an egalitarian nature, that set her up for damage in the socially conservative, pre’60s Texas of her high school years. Mercilessly bullied as a ‘nigger-lover’ for being anti-segregation, it was a warped and erratic Joplin that escaped into music, drugs,
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This is no mean feat as Joplin spread half the mythology herself; her habit of spinning exaggerated tales to journalists about her delinquency and troubled family life eventually causing a rift with her parents. It’s with patience and insight that GeorgeWarren unwinds the tales Joplin wrapped around herself. Janis includes stories and lore from everyone from bandmates to family members and childhood friends. It’s about as complete a picture as you can get from anecdotes and old interviews. God, I was rooting for Joplin, even knowing how it ends. When she rounded her 27th birthday the 30 pages left were the saddest, slimmest body of prose I ever wanted to be longer. She tried so hard and made it so far and she so nearly got it together at the end. How beautiful and unremarkable it would have been to have her here with Jagger and Cher and McCartney and every other sagging popstar that made it out of the ‘60s and got to live their whole lives. She just wanted to be happy, man.
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[ SINGLES, AND LOVIN’ IT - SINGLE REVIEWS] CRY CLUB ROBERT SMITH [
]
Wollongong-spawned indie-poppunk duo Cry Club won a place on the Lorne leg of the Falls Festival, courtesy of JJJ Unearthed [which was sadly cancelled due to the fires – BOSSMAN AL]. The self-described ‘queer bubblegum punk’ band kicked off in 2018 with the single Walk Away which matched Jonathan Tooke’s grungy guitar with big, big vocals from Heather Riley.
Cry Club have leapt back to rock with their new single, which pays homage to the larger-than-life front man of The Cure. This egotistical fantasy explores self-image and the desire to appear as others want you to be, rather than your true self. From the very first note, the song smashes through with huge, angular guitar bursts from Jono, who maintains the rage all the way through the track. Heather’s huge vocals paint a powerful picture of self-obsession and paranoia about others’ opinions, projecting a false self-image of drive-in screen proportions. Every word just drips with desperation. There is a momentary descent to spooky, echoed vocals in the bridge, before the explosive finale.
Song themes have jumped from romantic disasters, to the importance of consent in physical relationships, to falling recklessly in love.
Cry Club like to deliver their music with a theatrical panache, and the new single is no different (just look at the video). If you were excited by the duo’s earlier work, you will love this catchy, totally over-the-top release.
However, they all include elements of being mad, and gay.
RORY McCARTNEY
The band’s musical repertoire ranges from the sweet pop of Two Hearts to the electro dance track DFTM, to garage rock.
FOXIE BALBOA AIN’T GOT TIME [
]
Ain’t Got Time is the debut single for Australian artist Foxie Balboa. The track is an interesting mix of dance, pop, and rap with a tonguein-cheek lyric that Foxie performs in a measured yet determined tone. Musically speaking, the production borrows from tropical house, adding Latin-infused rhythms to an otherwise straight dance feel.
The melodic elements are here purely at the service of the lyric, which is just fine. So no breaking new ground and no superbly crafted musical phrases.
Babe for another term that hits home a little harder but we won’t repeat that here—pitting herself against the controlling actions of a loser partner and reasserting her individualism and, of course, expressing her freedom, with a sense of self-belief that is quite liberating, even for the listener. You hear this said every day: I ain’t got time for this. No, no one has time for it. This is what Foxie is really saying. No one should have time for the kind of menace Foxie outlines in the narrative. This is a self-defence semi-anthem. An airy dance floor anomaly that contains some uncomfortable truths nestled within the fun belligerence and candid declarations. It’s a stance that, of course, is beyond reproach. Using a comedic tint to drive home the message is the best way for that message to reach the ears of those who will benefit the most from it.
But there is a certain kind of muted charm to it all despite the intrinsically confronting nature of the attitude.
What’s the message? Don’t give those abject, controlling loser partners any time. Send them this track. And you might not even have to do that; they may have already heard it.
And there is plenty of that on this track. Foxie even refers to herself as Boss Babe—in the explicit version Foxie exchanges
VINCE LEIGH
JANET ODANI MOUNTAIN CLIMBER [
]
Australian singer-songwriter Janet Odani has released three albums – Transparency, Mismatched Planets, and Valiant Warrior – and this new track is a preview of her fourth.
Her previous albums were a mix of inspirational, gospel, and pop, and with Mountain Climber, Janet has managed to draw once again on these genres. As a result, the song doesn’t lean too far one way or another. This is uplifting folk-pop performed with a joyful earnestness that reveals just the right amount of vulnerability. For most of the track, Janet’s voice is measured and controlled yet it can also sound refreshingly powerful when pushed, especially in the choruses, when delicate edged tones filter out around the more robust notes and assured cadences.
Utilizing all the asymmetries of a live band, whether that is simulated or not here, creates the right backdrop not only for Janet’s performance but for the intrinsic urgency of the lyric. The appropriation of an organic-sounding ambience, i.e., guitars, live drums, and vocal layers, reinforces the inspirational content, imbuing the track with a sense of tangible human electricity. And let’s not forget the song; it’s a good one. As well as the very efficient metaphoric title, there are many other aspects of delight and charm about this release, one of which is the intelligent melodic structure of the chorus; the choice of notes here abide by the lyric’s emotional directives, and help urge on the feeling of aspired transcendence. Not only that, the hook will keep you humming along way after you’ve stopped streaming. There’s also something memorable about the groove of the song too, its pulse seemingly at one with the positivity of the song’s sentiment. This an unquestionably commendable track, performed with optimum energy and doubtless talent and one that is poised to advance Janet Odani’s musical career. VINCE LEIGH
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CABLE TIES SANDCASTLES [
]
Cable Ties are a three-piece punk outfit which laid its credentials down in 2016 with the appealing rhythms of the single Same For Me, followed by the a self-titled long player in 2017. Then came the smashing, oh-so impressive song Cut Me Down. The Melbourne homed artists proudly claim strong links to the nonbinary community.
And now comes Sandcastles, the title of which calls up diverse possible images of childhood holidays, creative wonder, fantasy constructions, or the just plain destructive aim of smashing them to bits. This track is all about the latter, with a condemnation of conservative sandcastle crushers who either do nothing or just
LACHY DOLEY NO KEY LEFT UNBROKEN [
]
The Lachy Doley Group is quite unlike any other blues band. The signature sound comes from the incredible wave of music that harks of impressive guitar playing, but is actually flowing from a Hohner D6 Whammy Clavinet. It is band front man Lachy Doley’s manipulation of the huge whammy bar which morphs the tone of the clavinet keys. The band also features the rich sound of a Hammond organ.
criticise and refuse to understand. It is an angry, righteous go at people who cannot accept diversity. Taken from their forthcoming album Far Enough (due out in March), Sandcastles launches with strong, grungy guitars, and a solid rally (yes, it was Australian Open time) between guitar and bass. The music is penetrated by the raucous singing of frontwoman Jenny McKenchie which grows increasingly rabid as the song progresses. The interplay between guitars is matched by a call and response in the vocals. Combined, they build a tower of energy and indignation. It is all fire and fury until a softer break in the bridge, before the tsunami of ferocity rises irresistibly again to a feverish climax, before ending in a mix of feedback and reverberation. The lyrics get a little samey through repetition; however, there is no denying the catchiness, and message, of this frenetic song. RORY McCARTNEY
While Doley’s forte is full throated blues, the new single has powerful soul overtones. There are psychedelic influences too, in the way the track opens with swelling, expanding auras of sound. The music builds in a succession of peaks, with a funky break down in the bridge. Doley wails along in harmony with his keyboard work, as the band joins in with a call-and-response feature in the chorus. You could say that the single has a strong ‘70s vibe; but then again, soul has a timeless quality that transcends decades. No Key Left Unbroken lives up to its title, with a full-on soul extravaganza from start to finish. RORY McCARTNEY
Live performances are the band’s raison d’être, and its discography includes two live albums. It is this love of stage shows, and the passionate desire to put every last drop of blood and sweat into them, that inspired the band’s latest single, No Key Left Unbroken (with the keys being the organ/clavinet type, not the door variety).
ALEX THE ASTRONAUT I THINK YOU’RE GREAT [
]
Do you believe that light can be emitted by imploding bubbles when they are excited by sound? Sydney’s Alexandra Lynn, AKA Alex the Astronaut, does. She even studied it while doing science and soccer at a New York uni. Oh, also while making original music at the same time.
With two EPs launched in 2017, Lynn’s music demonstrated a slightly quirky but very down-toearth approach, with lyrics that avoided the usual clichéd relationship themes.
health, and of the importance of asking people if they are OK. In I Think You’re Great Lynn takes it to the next step, offering non-judgmental, positive reinforcement to people’s damaged self-esteem. The song retains the informal kitchen-table-chat-over-coffee style of her debut EP To Whom It May Concern. Grabbing attention with a determined drum beat and a simple yet catchy guitar intro, Lynn provides some simple comfort to those struggling against life’s tides. Words pour out quickly as she always has a lot to say, and there is a homely touch, with Lynn singing along ‘do do de do do do’ in time with her guitar feature. So, if you are feeling down in these times of fire, smoke, storms, dust, politics, and viruses, have a little listen to Alex the Astronaut’s latest offering, because she thinks you are just great! RORY McCARTNEY
Her songs, filled with observations about everyday life, are closer to the style of Courtney Barnett in their straightforward, conversational approach. We all know of the threat that the trials of life present to mental facebook.com/bmamagazine
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Australian Rock Collective Walks Along Abbey Road Once More By Alice Worley Davey Lane of You Am I, Kram of Spiderbait, Mark Wilson of Jet, and Darren Middleton of Powderfinger. These are the four Aussie rock legends that make up supergroup Australian Rock Collective (ARC), and what a supergroup it is. Fresh off their highly successful Abbey Road tour of 2019, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the iconic Beatles album, the boys are back for round two. How does a band like this come together in the first place? I had the pleasure of chatting to Davey Lane about how the guys got started. “Darren got an offer to put a band together for the World Cup in 2014. We were hanging out and he asked if I was around to join him for this show in Brazil, and as if I’m gonna knock back an opportunity like that! Mark Wilson from Jet and Kram were super keen too. So we went and played at the World Cup and then not too much after that.” But word-of-mouth was bringing people’s attention to ARC, and they simply needed to do another project together. “Abbey Road came up. Kram and I were just talking around the end of 2018 and I was like, ‘Well, the 50th anniversary is near,” and Kram is, in a lot of ways, the motivating force behind the band. He’s a ball of positive energy. So he’s like, ‘Yep, we gotta do this! We gotta do this!’ so he was all gung-ho and got the ball rolling. The tour was immensely popular and critically heralded, so the guys wanted to keep it going. “It all came together and went well and the offer came up to do another little lap around, maybe to go through a few more regional places. And our sights are set on doing a different kind of show later this year too.” The Beatles themselves had quite an impact on musicians from their era and onwards. I wondered if Davey and the rest of the band felt that they shaped their own musical styles, and why bringing this album to the forefront was so important to them. “I think I can speak for all of us and say The Beatles were a pretty fundamental influence on all of us. We all knew the 50th anniversary was rolling around, and for me it’s a landmark record in their career because it was the last one they recorded. There’s something kinda magical about that record, we’re always up for a challenge, and there’s pretty challenging material to replicate live on that album. The Beatles never played it live, obviously. We figured we might as well give it a crack.”
“The ‘60s were an era of breakthrough experimentation where things were done for the first time. From about the ‘80s everyone was doing different versions of things that have been done before. When you listen to pop radio nowadays, everything’s just so formulaic; you can predict what chord is coming next in the song and what the hook’s gonna be. Not to say there isn’t amazing music being made out there, but what’s on pop radio isn’t that challenging. That’s what’s exciting about The Beatles; it is challenging. Not watered down by any means.” Aussie music fans may remember Davey and Kram’s other project together: The Wrights. Along with other legends such as Bernard Fanning (Powderfinger) and Phil Jameson (Grinspoon), they were a tribute to former Easybeats frontman Stevie Wright, and their 11-minute cover of his hit Evie became popular all over again when they performed it for the first time at the 2004 ARIAs. But Davey makes you realise that ARC is something much bigger. “We only really did that one single and that was it. There wasn’t a plan to do more. We don’t really have too much of a plan with what we’re doing now, per se, but we’re keeping the ball rolling. There’s rumblings of recording our own stuff but nothing’s set in stone. As long as we’re all enjoying each other’s company and having fun doing this. We’ve all got other bands as well, but we’ll take each opportunity as it comes.” So while the supergroup doesn’t have any cemented plans after Abbey Road, they’re not calling it quits any time soon. I, for one, am very interested to see what this gathering of iconic music masters are going to show us next. Abbey Road Live featuring Davey Lane, Kram, Mark Wilson, and Darren Middleton is at Canberra Theatre on Saturday, 22 February. Tickets on sale at canberratheatrecentre.com.au
Despite the album’s half-century age, the songs exhibited were well before their time and absolutely deserve a 21st century reimagining. Davey spoke of where this masterpiece could be taken, and where it was taking him and the other members of ARC as they performed it. “The technology to replicate that stuff live wasn’t around in 1969 anyway. There’s something magical about playing those songs; it’s something that, once you have the parts in your head, you just lean into it and let the music propel itself. It’s a feeling like no other.” The Beatles came at a time when pop music didn’t really have a structure or a formula. There weren’t any rules, as such, as to what a pop song was supposed to sound like. It’s because of this that their music is so attractive to such accomplished musicians, like the members of ARC. It’s given them some intriguing material to PAGE 36 interpret, as Davey elaborates.
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Part Beast, Part Scientist, Part Surrealist. All Salmon. By Cody Atkinson “I maybe suggested ‘Kim Salmon: How I Invented Grunge’. Because I thought that would really annoy the fuck out of people. Particularly some of the people that are the practitioners of it.” Summing up Kim Salmon in a sentence or two is a hard task - nay an impossible one. The former art school dropout from Perth has probably influenced your favourite band’s favourite band, and is still putting great stuff today. A better summary, and a longer one, is contained within Douglas Copeland’s new biography of the Perth music veteran called Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand: Kim Salmon and the Formula for Grunge - a book that Salmon is launching on the 20th of February at Smith’s Alternative.
“We’ve (the Scientists) decided to make an album. It’s really ill-advised of bands from the past when they reform to do that, because people don’t really give a rat’s about any new material from those sort of bands,” says Salmon. “And I know what to expect - whatever we do - people are going to say ‘yeah, but Swampland. Do that again.’ And if we do Swampland again, they’re just gonna say you’re just doing Swampland again,” adds Salmon. Despite this, Salmon still isn’t sitting still. There’s solo stuff on the run, time in the US, film clips underway, and projects on the go. The formula might be the basis, but the outputs are always changing. Kim Salmon will be launching Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand and his recent solo singles when he returns to Smith’s in Canberra on Thursday, 20 February. Tickets available on the Smith’s Alternative website.
Salmon even had a stint in one key grunge band; albeit a very brief one. “Steve (Turner, of Mudhoney) was going through a bit of a thing and wanted to leave the band. And our ticket to the US - the Surrealists - was to support Mudhoney,” states Salmon. “At that point I rang up Mark Arm, and he was like, ‘Steve’s being a dick, he’s leaving the band’. And I was like ‘I’ll join the band’, then we can support you as well. “But of course, Steve had a bit of time to think about it, and didn’t like the idea of being replaced.” Salmon’s ten-day stint with Mudhoney yielded an album - Kim Salmon and the Guys from Mudhoney. It’s somewhat emblematic of elements of his career - the first Beasts of Bourbon album (The Axeman’s Jazz) was recorded in just six hours. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” says Salmon. “As much as I wanted to have a career in visual art, I probably have more to say at the thing I have less ability at. Music wasn’t the thing that came naturally to me; it’s something I’ve been really passionate about. I’ve got things to say with it. Maybe it’s the exploration of this thing that I don’t fully get that’s made me much more prolific than I have been with visual art - I’ve often thought that,” surmises Salmon. The formula is a common theme throughout Salmon’s long career - from being the chorus, to The Scientists’ breakout single Swampland, to the title of their 2019 EP (9H2O.SiO2). Although the formula on the EP might not be exactly right. “I couldn’t get to the bottom of that. I asked real scientists. I had to guess what I thought it might be. Leon (Stackpole) from the Ooga Boogas - he’s a scientist in real life - he was amused by it. He was like, it’s not quite right but it’s too hard to figure it out.” But quicksand and swamps stay in constant motion, never staying at rest. Other than the split solo/ Scientists single that he is in town to launch - alongside the book - Salmon also reveals that something more substantial may be on the cards. facebook.com/bmamagazine
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[ALBUM REVIEWS] EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING ALL IN GOOD TIME [CASTLE FACE RECORDS] [
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Ten years is a long time. Especially in the world of music. A decade ago, give or take, Eddy Current Suppression Ring put out their third album - So Many Things - and at the time were heralded as perhaps the most critically acclaimed Australian band of the era; a garage rock force with the humble beginnings at a record factory party who ended in success. Then almost nothing. Until now.
continued to mellow, as things do over time. It’s still a bit rough and raw, but the grooves kick along, and the pace is more languid. Let’s put it this way - Suppression is no longer yelling about cool ice cream. There are some more frenetic moments here - such as Like a Comet, maybe the standout of the album - but the pace is a lot more varied. Take lead single Our Quiet Whisper, with a title that sort of gives it away. Rather than bursts of energy, everything feels more in balance rather than being rawkus. Or Voices, which builds on a solid groove from the rhythm section of Rob Solid and Danny Current, allowing Brendan Suppression to deliver over the top. This isn’t the Eddy Current Suppression Ring of 2010 - nor would you want it to be. What’s here instead represents a decade of life in between “then” and “now” - and, pleasingly and most importantly of all, still results in a damn fine album. CODY ATKINSON
In the intersecting years, they kept busy. Brendan Huntley/Suppression did stuff with Boomgates, and honed his craft as an artist. Mastered by Mikey Young (aka Eddy Current) has become the defacto symbol of the Australian underground - let alone the stuff he actually played on (like Total Control, Ooga Boogas, Eastlink, Green Child). All In Good Time, the fourth ECSR LP, isn’t a rehash of exactly where they’ve done before. The frantic nature of the first two records has
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Turner & Brown Wield The Sacred Steel With Zeal Back by popular demand, the March gig in Tuggeranong forms part of The Turner Brown Band’s seventh Australian tour and their first tour for 2020; and according to legendary Australian blues guitarist/vocalist, Dom Turner; “it is your chance to get a taste of music from the southern US African-American church traditions”. Since its inception in 2016, this joint venture between Australian slide guitarist Dom Turner (of Backsliders) and USA-based Sacred Steel lap-slide guitar and vocal sensation Nikki D Brown, has been gaining popularity and developing strong connections with Australian audiences. “Every time we play (and we live in different countries, so time together is limited) it sparks incredible creativity on both sides. Every gig feels different to the last and the band just keeps evolving,” Turner enthuses. Turner, recently hailed as “Australia’s darling of slide,” had been a huge fan of Sacred Steel lap-steel guitar music for a long time and, after spotting Nikki in a random internet search for current Sacred Steel players, decided to travel to the US to meet his soon-to-be musical partner.
of Amazing Grace and an interpretation of the Sam Cooke classic Change Gonna Come. Their charismatic stage presence together with their impeccable musicianship and outstanding vocal harmonies provides a taste of Jewell Dominion Church music tradition, but with added flamboyancy. And rounding out the evening is Tumit-based, 13-yearold Rory Phillips, an aspiring young guitarist/singer/ songwriter and two time graduate of the CMAA Junior Academy of Country Music, a graduate of Rock Academy Melbourne, and a music lover to his core. He released his debut EP, Cars and Guitars, in January 2017. Experience what happens when southern US Church-based Sacred Steel music crashes head on with blues-based sounds when The Turner Brown Band play Tuggeranong Arts Centre on Thursday, 5 March. Bar open from 7pm. Support act in the lodge from 7.15pm. Main show in the theatre from 8pm. Tickets: $45 General Admission, $35 Concession. Bookings: https://www.trybooking.com/BGPZY
“Nikki and I share a similar approach to playing guitar with a slide, and the musical synergy was immediate. We could both see and hear it and we became a band on the spot and recorded our first album the day after we met.” Joining Dom and Nikki to deliver an outfit that blends gospel and blues in a marriage made in musical heaven, are Gloria Brown on rhythm guitar and vocals, and Tomika Webb on drums and vocals. Their uplifting southern American gospel/blues repertoire has enough energy to rival a truckload of macronutrients – but far more entertaining, includes bluesy versions facebook.com/bmamagazine
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[MOVIE REVIEWS]
COLOR OUT OF SPACE
THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM
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In What is a “Lovecraftian” film? Not being an expert on the works of the before-his-time author HP Lovecraft, and yet being absolutely aware of the adjective as applied to the arts, I did a quick bit of research. Turns out it describes a form of horror where, a) the threat is elusive, unknown, even incomprehensible but very present, b) the characters feel very isolated, and often descend into insanity, and c) the creatures are their own level of grotesque, often with slime and other substances replacing blood and gore. That last characteristic is certainly what I recognised the adjective to refer to, in films such as Alien. But it’s the first two that aficionados hold dear to a true Lovecraftian story – think The Thing, It Follows, even Cloverfield to some extent. Actual direct Lovecraft adaptations are few and far between – 1985’s Re-Animator would be the most well-known. So I would imagine Color Out Of Space would be welcome for many fans. Based on a 1927 short story, the movie centres on the Gardner family – father Nathan (Nicolas Cage), mother Theresa (Joely Richardson), daughter Lavinia, and sons Benny and Jack. The family have moved to a remote farm, after Theresa underwent major surgery, to try and find a quieter approach to life. But instead the move has revealed strains in the relationships. Then they, and a whole bunch of supporting characters from the nearby town, have to deal with the repercussions of a meteor crash in their front yard… And no more shall be revealed here, as the remainder of this story is best left to play out for the viewer spoilerfree. Suffice to say that the aforementioned Lovecraftian characteristics are all in full effect: the slow burn of what is actually happening ticks off the a) box, and I guarantee that the visuals of the c) requisite, when they arrive, will leave you with mouth agape (if not skin crawling). And if there was ever an actor you wanted to employ for your b) isolation-into-insanity, then Cage will be on the top of your list. It takes a while, but he eventually engages in his trademark over-the-top-yet-brilliant method of acting, and we are once again all the better for it.
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When a promise to their rescue dog, Todd, that he was with his forever family leads filmmaking husband John Chester and foodie wife Molly to seek an outdoorsy new home, Molly’s lifelong love of making good food and the couple’s appreciation that good food begins with good farming leads them to a vision of farming in perfect harmony with nature. Their enthusiasm inspires their friends and acquaintances to invest in the purchase and remodelling of Apricot Lane Farms, a disused orchard an hour north of Los Angeles. Rapidly realising their need for guidance on farming in harmony with nature, they find a living treasure and lifelong friend in Alan York, whose expertise in biodynamic farming enables them to jointly envisage and slowly realise a remarkable transformation. In sharp contrast to the monoculture cropping practised all around them and formerly on Apricot Lane Farms, Alan’s recommendations, aiming for maximal biodiversity, lead to an enormous range of crops and a lovely range of farm animals. Although the Chesters’ raising animals to be eaten isn’t everybody’s idea of paradise, they give them a good life in the meantime. Practising farming more-or-less biodynamically, they learn to work with rather than against nature — and John’s expertise as a wildlife cinematographer provides us with amazing views of the evolving farm ecosystem and its occupants, inside and outside, by day and by night, on scales from very small to very large. Despite the setbacks, losses, and hard decisions inevitable in raising livestock, The Biggest Little Farm is above all a work of immense joy and exquisite appreciation, and offers a window on how we might learn not merely to get along with Mother Nature but to become best friends with her. JOHN P. HARVEY
The abstract nature of the film’s tone works well for the material, and director Richard Stanley (Hardware, The Island of Dr Moreau) evenly shifts the mood between comedy, horror, and drama. Color Out Of Space will mess with your head, but I am confident that Lovecraft would be proud of that (and this film). TRAVIS CRAGG PAGE 40
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JOJO RABBIT
FOR SAMA
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[The following review contains minor plot spoilers] In 1943 Germany, 10-year-old Jojo (newcomer Roman Griffin Davis) holds imaginary conversations with his idol, the nation’s dictator, one Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi). The values that Jojo’s membership in the Hitler Youth demand are not natural to him; beneath his need for recognition as a tough young man lies a latent sympathy with the virtues that his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), lives. Rosie herself suffers internal conflict, as a Resistance member compelled to keep from her young son a deadly secret: Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), the Jewish girl she has concealed in their home. Jojo’s eventual discovery of Rosie’s secret leads Elsa to have a humanising effect on him through the urbane observations with which she challenges the childish views he has uncritically adopted of Jews, and the imperviousness that a boy even of his tender years shows to Elsa’s gentle irony speaks volumes about the senselessness inherent in “adult” prejudices supported by the firmest of convenient evidence. It’s all the more interesting, then, that Jojo finds an unexpected mentor in the Hitler Youth trainer Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell). Taika Waititi is becoming familiar to many as a source of subversive cinematic humour with a serious intent. Through his direction of Jojo Rabbit, Waititi has pulled off a very neat achievement. It’s a film that demonstrates surprising understanding of the confusions that lead a youngster to embrace the values and violent ideals of racial hatred as well as showing the depth of humanity of the victims of such attitudes. It even suggests how the uber fascist himself could justify his position to himself. And naturally for Waititi it uses offbeat humour to demonstrate the hollowness of such justifications. First and foremost, though, the film uses five strong leads as vehicles for insight into the potential in all of us — even, at moments, the potential in the character of Jojo’s mostly affable imagined Hitler — to transcend our differences and become giants in spirit. JOHN P. HARVEY
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Journalist Waad al-Kateab was an economics student at Aleppo University at the start of the 2011 war President Assad waged upon his own people. She became a documenter, capturing the devastation on camera. In this time, she also met and married Hamza, a doctor who chose to stay in East Aleppo to assist with the humanitarian response to the crisis, and they had a child together (the Sama of the title). Waad met with an experienced documentary film-maker, Edward Watts, in 2016 and together they pieced the footage from Aleppo into a feature-length film, For Sama. Rather than addressing the audience with the story, Waad and Watts instead chose to change the format of the film into a letter to her infant child. The contrast, of reporting on world affairs (within a dangerous war zone) with the personal safety of the reporter, is drawn into a sharp ray of light when a child with no say in the matter is also a part of the situation. And this is the major catalyst for success in For Sama, as it immerses the viewer into the foreign situation in an empathetic fashion. The experiences presented are highly confrontational – in particular, the many scenes shot within the hospitals of Aleppo will have a major impact. At this stage of the review, I feel the need to be upfront about two things: 1) I am not a parent, and 2) in film festivals over the past decade, I have seen numerous documentaries immersed in Middle East war zones. The reason for my reveal is to quantify the main criticism I have for the film. The editing in some parts of the movie, particularly in the second half, left the movie feeling less important or urgent. It dwelled on some situations a little too long, and it felt like the director’s emotional attachment to the material conflicted with the need for a more consistent narrative. I was slightly removed from the film at times, whereas I found a more personal connection with many other recent movies I have seen about the conflict (again, those with children of their own may feel differently). Nevertheless, I am enthused that a documenting of the war experience in Syria is getting a cinema release in Canberra. Nominated for the Documentary Oscar (and, at the time of writing, a contender for the win), For Sama is a strong example of the power of cinema to bring awareness of global issues to a Western audience far removed. TRAVIS CRAGG
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The band is back with a smaller portion, but packing plenty of flavour as Cara Lennon found out... Electro-pop wizards Hot Chip are inbound with a trunk full of synthesisers and A Bath Full of Ecstasy. The seventh of their studio albums, is a trove of wibbley wobbley vibes; their classic pop and dance sensibilities get a more laidback treatment, with languid currents and bright moments that call back to the 8 and 16 bit gaming era. Some connect its title to recreational stimulants, but Felix Martin [drum machines, synth] elaborates. “It’s just a playful, slightly silly type of album title. We struggled with the title. We were desperate to not name it after one of the songs because that’s what we always do; it happens every single time. We were aware that it might have connotations to do with drugs, but it’s Alexis’s lyric and Alexis is the least druggy person ever. He’s very clean-living.” For a dreamy record spawned by the UK’s most hardcore indie-nerds, its roots are pretty far from what you’d expect. A song-writing session with Katy Perry for her album Witness (2017) resulted in the Perry song Into Me You See; and two others that Alexis Taylor [vocals, synth] and Joe Stoddard [vocals, synth] kept. The reworked Spell and Echo represent two of the albums more upbeat moments, with earwormy hooks and fizzy riffs. But how do you get from surplus pop songs to a full-blown Hot Chip bubble bath? “It’ll often be in methodology rather than the concept,” says Martin. It’s more we want to write an album where we record collaboratively with people, or that we want to try a production technique. It’s about the method.” The method this time was working with outside producers, not a typical move for Hot Chip. Producers Phillippe Zdar and Rodaidh McDonald were invited to bring fresh perspective and push Hot Chip develop to their sound.
“It’s criticism of albums we’ve done before that they’ve maybe been a bit flabby,” says Martin. “That’s the thing about being an eclectic band; you have different kinds songs that appeal to different people. That can make the albums less focused.” At nine songs, A Bath... is Hot Chip’s shortest album and has been praised for being a sleek entry into their discography, Q Magazine calling it “A glorious concentration of HC’s skills”. “We always end up with far too many songs at the end of these sessions; we’ll have 20 or even 30 tracks. When you distil it to a much smaller number of songs it adds more focus. It’s just choosing what is cohesive and what seems to complement the other songs the best in that selection.” The extra songs don’t go to waste, though, whether they’re used for solo projects or make their way to fans in another format. “They usually see the light of day. We often release an EP after the album. [After] the last album there was the Separate EP that had four songs on it that a lot of people actually preferred to what was on the album—I think we messed up ’cos we kind of chose the wrong ones, so that can happen as well!” While it wouldn’t be a Hot Chip record without at least one banger, A Bath Full of Ecstasy overall is a slow-blooming nostalgia bomb. In translating it to a live show Hot Chip keep it faithful to the record—despite the challenges of almost every member being the synth player. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the band before but there’s seven people playing. We spend ages coming up with these parts and the details of how we’re going sound. When you’re using a lot of synthetic sounds then everything can overlap so you have to think carefully about the interactaction and what kind of frequencies they’re going to have, because the instrument is capable of producing a wide variety of sounds. It gets quite kind of orchestral. The rehearsals are intense.” With a 20-year career behind them, Hot Chip are veterans of the festival circuit, releasing albums at two or three year intervals and touring hard in between.
“Working with producers is a different way of working because it gives you another pair of ears into the equation that will have an opinion of things too. And it frees up Jay who normally does the production. He can focus on playing.”
“In 2019, we toured pretty much from March until December. It was the longest tour we’d ever been on. I was just exhausted. I was a broken man. It’s been nice to have a little break to be kept fresh, and then this year we should be a bit more relaxed.”
Zdar, half of the French duo Cassius, produced for acts like Phoenix and the Beastie Boys. Zdar sadly passed in an accidental fall from a window in July of 2019, only two days before A Bath... and Cassius’s own Dreems were released.
Hot Chip are touring from February, starting in India before hitting Australia to join the Farmer and The Owl festival as headliners. And then, dear Canberra.
Zdar’s influence can be heard clearly throughout. He leaned on the band to embrace the electronic elements more fully, and McDonald urged them keep the songs and album taught.
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“We’re looking forward to bringing the show to Australia, and to places like India where we haven’t ever been before.” Hot Chip are playing at the Kambri Precinct on Sunday, 1 March at 6pm. Tix are $79.90 from https://moshtix.com.au
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Photo by Eric Halvorsen
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Courter of Controversy, Bearer of Soul by Ruth O’Brien She says the songs, “were therapeutic to write and are also therapeutic to play every night.” When I asked whether she was nervous about sharing any of these songs live with her audience, given their intensely personal nature, her answer was a fairly confident, “not really”. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t go into my interview with Amanda Palmer knowing a whole heap about the performer. I knew she was in the Dresden Dolls, I knew that song Coin Operated Boy, I’d watched her TED talk about The Art of Asking (worth a watch if you’ve not seen it). And, to be honest, in a way I’m glad I left the majority of my research about Amanda Palmer until after the interview. While I didn’t really think she was the kind of person to “walk the line” so to speak, turns out there’s way more controversy surrounding Palmer than I realised. Her career, opinions, and some of the ways she approaches certain topics have been questioned and criticised by fans and haters alike. For example, reading about the show, Evelyn Evelyn, that she toured with collaborator Jason Webley in 2010, makes me question Palmer’s knowledge (or lack thereof) of ableism. There was a lot of controversy around that show and many criticised her for putting on a production about conjoined twins when she does not herself live with disability. I’m sure with the backlash that she endured after this show was produced, and in the decade since its debut, she’s probably more aware of this topic than she once was. Whether you agree or disagree with the actions of Amanda Palmer, however, one thing that’s unanimous is her ability to generate discussion around her art, and, around topics that that art relates to. Which is exactly what good art should do. Get tongues wagging. It gets important conversations happening. It shows the vulnerability of humanity and it evokes a response. I think the sign of an excellent artist is one who does cause controversy and who tasks risks around the possibility of putting their proverbial “foot in it”. Her most recent solo LP, There Will Be No Intermission, undoubtedly does all of these things. From 2012-2019, Palmer wrote songs about “some of the most difficult years” of her life. Addressing topics like abortion, losing a friend to cancer, and resilience in the face of criticism, Palmer says this work is her “most human and vulnerable stage show to date”. The album tells the story of Palmer’s life. If the songs weren’t “super personal” they were cut. “It was a concept decision”, she says. The stories she tells in the stage show, both in the form of song and generally talking to the audience, are “pretty gnarly”. “I took it upon myself to do something scary, [for example] talk openly about abortion, talk openly about childbirth, and having a miscarriage, and losing my friend to cancer. And it might sound like the show is really morose but it’s actually the funniest show… and I think it has to be because of the subject material,” laughs PAGE 44 Palmer.
“I have such a deep and trusting history with my audience that I actually just find it delightful, even though the subject material can be so difficult. Because it always feels wonderful to be among my community.” Starting her career as a street performer, mainly busking in the form of a character dubbed The Eight-Foot Bride, Palmer quickly learned the art of connecting with people around her. While some people yelled “get a job” from their car windows, others stood with her as she held their gaze and experienced a true and intimate moment of raw human connection. From this, Palmer realised a truism that has arguably been the backbone of her fanbase and a major key to her career success ever since. She realised that by giving people the opportunity to give by simply asking her fans for help if and when she needed it, she was able to connect with her supporters on a deeper level. Fans all over the world have offered her accomodation, homecooked meals, rehearsal space and more, simply by putting the word out. The community she’s created with her music continue to support her along the way. This method has not come without its criticisms. Particularly when it involves asking her more musical fans to contribute their talents to her shows in exchange for “beers and hugs”. However, I agree with her sentiment of asking. It gives people the opportunity to say yes or no. And while I don’t necessarily agree with Palmer not paying fellow artists, I do believe in artists being empowered to know their worth. I wonder how many of the artists who’ve performed at Palmer’s shows over the years have asked Amanda for payment? And if you’re worried about whether this show is for you or not because of the intensity of the material, Amanda says, “don’t be”. “I have never won over more random strangers,” she laughs, “being dragged into the show by their children or by their partners or whomever. I wanna remind people that even if you’re afraid to come to the show, just buy a ticket and come alone because you will probably leave with friends. That’s what’s been happening on this tour.” There Will Be No Intermission is on at the Canberra Theatre Centre on Friday, 7 February at 7:30pm. Tickets can be booked online via www. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or by phone on (02) 6275 2700. If you have any access requirements, just chat to the friendly staff.
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[POLL GUIDE [ENTERTAINMENT ] ]] ] GUIDE POSTER PRINT PAGE [ENTERTAINMENT ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE [POLL POSTER PRINT PAGE]
Thu 22 Aug
ARTS Metamorphosis Adapted by Steven Berkoff Featuring an all Canberra cast including Christopher Samuel Carroll, Ruth Pierloor, Dylan Van Den Berg, and Stefanie Lekkas. Shows until 31 Aug. Tix from venue website THE STREET THEATRE
The Missing Lincolns Lost Album launch From 7pm. $10 on the door SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE Girls Rock! Canberra fundraiser Featuring The Buoys, Cry Club, Lady Denman, Lucy Sugerman and Peach Lane. From 6pm UC HUB
MAY 27 – JUNE 2 MAY MORE EVENTS @ bmamag.com/entertainment-guide MAY1818– –MAY MAY2222 FOR MORE EVENTS HEAD TO bmamag.com/guide
Oztix THE BASEMENT Signs & Symbols Counting in Colours album launch 8pm - Tix at the door The Polo
DANCE
troupe plays out the stories as each scene is introduced. Runs until Sat 31 Aug. 7:30pm. Tix from stagecenta.com PERFORM AUSTRALIA STUDIOS
LIVE MUSIC
It’s a London Thing UK grime/garage/2-step covered with Big Ting Recordings (SYD) & MCs Dtech & Tukka D SIDEWAY BAR
Canberra DIG hosts Crop Up Sessions. For your mid-week dose of music head over to have a listen to Eloria, Neko Pink, LIV LI and Pheno from 8pm. Tix available at the door for $10/$5. SIDEWAY BAR
TALKS
Thursday August 29
Blanke Bass heavy house and EDM FICTION CLUB
Isaac Butterfield Why So Serious? Explores our changing world. With a fast-growing audience, Isaac’s commentary videos have had more than 60 million views. 7:30pm, tix from Moshtix KAMBRI PRECINCT
Saturday August 24
Wed Aug 28
DANCE
ARTS
AUTHOR TALK
Techno Thursdays Techno techno techno techno! FICTION CLUB
Blood on the Dance Floor by Jacob Boehme Through a powerful blend of theatre, image, text and choreography, Boehme pays homage to their ceremonies whilst dissecting the politics of gay, Blak and poz identities (recommended for age 15+). 5pm & 8pm. Check the website to book TUGGERANONG ARTS CENTRE
SoundOut Series #3 Featuring Mahagonny “Qrt” (revealing sonic places), Lena Czerniawksa (drawing; Poland) Emilio Gordoa (vibraphone; Mexico/Germany), Josten Myburgh (electronics; Perth) Laura Altman (clarinet; Sydney) TRIO Alexander Hunter (viola de gamba; Canberra), Tony Osborne (vocal/electronics; Sydney), and Richard Johnson (wind instruments; Canberra). 7:30pm, $10/$20, at the door DRILL HALL GALLERY
Annika Romeyn exhibition - Endurance Inspired by the personally significant site of Guerilla Bay, Yuin Country. Runs until 20 Sep MEGALO PRINT STUDIO & GALLERY Shakespeare in Love Comedic theatrical tell of the Oscar winning film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes. Running until 31 Aug with Saturday matinees. Tix from Canberra Theatre CANBERRA THEATRE
Section Seven: Martial Order SIDEWAY BAR FRIDAY AUGUST 23
COMEDY Tommy Little Self-Diagnosed Genius After completing the world’s most gruelling marathon in Antarctica (with no previous experience), Tommy’s got a cracking story to share. Two shows at 6:45pm, and another at 8:30pm THE PLAYHOUSE The Song Company Mind Over Matter A zany and toonful chamber opera about two lifts and a computer virus in a bed of 1980s pop gold served up by five singers, two speakers, and PAGE 46 four hands at one piano. 7:30pm. Tix from venue
DANCE Rising Stars New up-and-coming DJs hit the decks, featuring the might of Woody, Theo, Alex Allen, Vivace, Haylee Karmer, Nue Dae, Bouncii, and Take-Tu MR WOLF
LIVE MUSIC Powder Blue - Flower Town single launch With supports The Narcissists, The Dirty Sunflowers, and Hedy Blaazer. 7:30pm – 11:30pm, $10, at the door THE FRONT Smoke Stack Rhino Doom Boogie single tour Support by Muddy Wolfe and Local Horror. 8pm TRANSIT BAR Red Hot Chili Peppers Tribute Show Performed by Chilly Willy, with
Evie Farrell, author of Backyard to Backpack: A Solo Mum, a Six Year Old and a Lifechanging Adventure In conversation with Evie will be Amanda Whitley, of HerCanberra. 6pm. RSVP: books@ paperchainbookstore.com.au or (02) 6295 6723 PAPERCHAIN BOOKSTORE
THEATRE
Friday 30 Aug
LIVE MUSIC Precipice #24 Every year a diverse range of improvisers from around Australia gather to collaborate in
Listings are a free community service. Email editorial@bmamag.com to have your events appear each issue.
For up-to-date listings, visit bmamag.com/gigguide.
NEXT ISSUE: #494
OUT JUNE 7 The Good Doctor An adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short stories for the stage,
Canberra. Four opportunities to @bmamag see extraordinary improvisation artists live. Tickets at the door
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