BMA Magazine 459 - 18 March 2015 by BMA Magazine

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RAW COMEDY: A COMPETITION THAT POKES FUN AT RAW FOOD VEGANS (NOT REALLY)

If someday we all go to prison for downloading music, I hope they split us by music genre. #459MARCH18 Fax: (02) 6257 4361 Mail: PO Box 713 Civic Square, ACT 2608 Publisher Scott Layne Allan Sko General Manager Allan Sko T: (02) 6257 4360 E: advertising@bmamag.com

Editor Tatjana Clancy T: (02) 6257 4456 E: editorial@bmamag.com

Accounts Manager Julie Ruttle T: (02) 6247 4816 E: accounts@bmamag.com

Sub-Editor & Social Media Manager Chiara Grassia Graphic Design Marley

Award-winning UK comedy duo Max & Ivan will MC the ACT RAWComedy State Final on Thursday March 19. The competitor who takes home the title will then head to Melbourne next month to compete in the National Grand Final as part of this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Join Max & Ivan along with the brave finalists in this two-hour display of hilarity to check out the ACT’s most promising funny new faces of comedy. The winner will be announced at the end of the show and then go on to compete in the National Grand Final that could see them take the top prize that includes a trip to Edinburgh Festival Fringe to compete in So You Think You’re Funny? in August. ACT State Final is on Thursday March 19 at 8:30pm (doors 8:10pm) ANU Arts Centre, Union Square. Tix $26. For further details and a list of all remaining heats go to rawcomedy.com.au.

SAFE SHELTER FOR MEN SEEKS VOLUNTEERS Safe Shelter, which provides overnight shelter for homeless men during winter, is looking for volunteers to undergo training and to staff the shelters this coming winter. Volunteers must be at least 18 years old, have completed the two night training course, hold a Working With Vulnerable

People (WWVP) card and be willing to spend a minimum of one night per month staffing a shelter between Mon–Thu Apr–Oct. Training for potential volunteers will start on March 31. There will be six training courses available to choose from before Monday April 27, all run in Braddon. Each training evening starts at 7pm and finishes at 9pm. For more details, please e-mail safeshelteract@gmail.com

WISE IDEA: YWCA GRANT FOR GREAT WOMENS’ IDEAS YWCA Canberra is inviting Canberra women and girls to follow their dreams and aspirations and apply for a Great Ydeas grant. YWCA Canberra’s Great Ydeas small grants program provides grants of up to $2000 to local women and girls so that they can pursue a professional development opportunity, pilot a project or business idea, or address a need in the community. Previous grants include Country to Canberra, a program that brings rural girls to Canberra to meet female political leaders; Martial Women, a martial arts program for women and girls; and participation in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The program is open to YWCA Canberra members and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Young women under 30 are particularly encouraged to apply. Women who are interested but not yet a YWCA Canberra member can join online at ywca-canberra.org. au/get-involved/become-amember.

WINNERS CORNER Who needs hilarious youtube funnies when we have you, dear readers, to amuse us on a weekly basis with your competition entries. In our Cult Cinema Classics at Dendy comp we asked whatever happened to Christian Slater? Kirk Hone came up with the goods: “Hi, Allan, I heard some months back that Christian Slater is in Canberra (my understanding is that he was traveling through with Ashton’s Circus) and has since been employed as a shopping trolley collection contractor at Belco Mall. I personally find this very hard to believe, as I am pretty sure he served me at Dickson Maccas drive-through about a fortnight ago... Unless he is working two jobs, which, given his renowned professionalism and work ethic, is altogether possible.” Then in the Black Diggers comp we asked you to name a little known fact about your heritage. Ian James went one step further by identifying something that no one really believes at family gatherings: “My father has always claimed that he brought the Second World War to an end. At about the time he entered basic training in Ballarat, the Japanese surrendered. His view was that when they heard he was coming, they gave up. Most historians would probably not agree.” Top story though Ian, and who are we to argue, eh?

Not sure that Sir Mix Alot will work out as our jingle writer

Film Editor Melissa Wellham NEXT ISSUE 460 OUT April 1 EDITORIAL DEADLINE March 25 ADVERTISING DEADLINE March 26 Published by Radar Media Pty Ltd 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.

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FROM THE BOSSMAN I Love Art Not Apart, But We Need To Talk About The N-Word As I stood inside a shipping container at 9pm of a twinkling Canberra evening, aloft 20 feet in the air on the Westside precinct along Lake Burley Griffin for one of Art Not Apart’s after parties, staring out at the softly undulating Canberra landscape below, sharing a beer with some of my best mates as well as people I had just met that day, watching Skyfire’s technicolour explosions burst overhead with costly brilliance while friends below - part of the epic Too Many DJs set - were rinsing out some pulse-pounding drum ‘n’ bass, I could think of only one thing…

YOU PISSED ME OFF! Care to immortalise your hatred in print? Send an email to editorial@bmamag.com and see your malicious bile circulated to thousands. [All entries contain original spellings.] Doing 70 in an 80 zone isn’t safe. It’s the height of rudeness when I’m in a hurry. I’m the most important person on the road and I can’t believe you don’t know that. Then when I drove past trying to give you the finger, you turned out to be old and sweet looking. You pissed me off as you highlighted my failings as a human being.

Fuck, I Love Canberra.* It’s been good. We’ve enjoyed the revitalisation of Braddon and the Kingston Foreshore; seen the revered New York Times declare us the most livable city in the world; had Guy Pearce calling himself a dickhead about bagging Canberra on Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show. And now we have Dave Caffery’s ever-expanding multi-arts celebration Art Not Apart synching up with Skyfire to see Lake Burley Griffin erupt in a celebration of music, art and things-that-explode-to-the-sounds-of-pop-music. But I have to sour this love-in for a moment by talking about The N Word. I am, of course, referring to… Noise-Complaints.

I don’t like you asking me if I’m enjoying my meal while I’m eating. It annoyed me the first time. Also the second time. What can you do for me? Please leave me alone. Worse still, you know my name as you took it at the cash register so now I look like an asshole ignoring a frined when you come up for the third time. You don’t get paid enough to be this friendly, and I don’t get enough time to myself to engage with you when my mouth is full. You and your new age customer service strategies that defy normal social conventions piss me off.

There are some people born into this world that don’t realise that life tends to make sounds. But they’ll be damned if they’re going to take it lying down. Oh-no. They will rant and rave that one of the five senses their God has given them is being brutalised for a few hours on one day in the calendar year. There were a group of people that tried to shut Art Not Apart down before it even started. Because nothing says, ‘I’m a sour-faced Miss Havisham-style prude that hates others’ joy’ as much as complaining about something before it’s even happened. Noise-Complaints have been the bugbear of the entertainment industry since Caveman Ugg first starting smashing a rock against a cave wall as part of his interpretative stone age piece, and Old Man Nnnngh down the way complained. Us humans comes in all shapes and sizes, creeds and colours (I saw most at Art Not Apart, all enjoying themselves together immeasurably) and as such we will have differences. But we also need to learn to live together. And complaining about an event that happens once a year isn’t doing that. Get me not wrong. Everyone is entitled to peace and a safe place to live (I might question why you decided to move right next to a venue known for music but hey… I can’t speak for the masochists out there). But to want something shut down that brings so many thousands of people joy on one day of the year is simply nasty, cynical and bitter. It says: “I don’t agree with your lifestyle and the way you gain joy, and I want it stopped.” But do you know what… As much as I want to feel righteous anger towards these people, I can’t. I just feel sorry for them. With all the war and death erupting around us, what I saw on Saturday was the essence of what makes life beautiful. Humans baring their soul and sharing both their personality and art with other humans. And these poor Noise-Complainers are too busy conjuring up bile and vitriol towards this wonderful thing instead of just chilling out for a few hours, grabbing a wine and sharing the bounteous spoils that this crazy thing called the human race has to offer. When the next Art Not Apart rolls around I urge them to put down the complainy-pen, pick up a drink and join in. Fun awaits. And they’ll be welcomed with open arms. ALLAN SKO - allan@bmamag.com *I urge CBR to take this up as their new slogan.

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WHO: BRASS KNUCKLE BRASS BAND WHAT: ALBUM LAUNCH WHEN: FRI MAR 27 WHERE: TRANSIT

Image credit: Jade Martin

WHO: WINTERBOURNE WHAT: EP LAUNCH WHEN: SAT MAR 28 WHERE: THE FRONT GALLERY & CAFE

WHO: JEFF MARTIN WHAT: TOUR WHEN: SUN MAR 29 WHERE: TRANSIT

Image: Nomad Photography

WHO: NATIONAL FOLK FESTIVAL WHAT: FOLK WHEN: THU–MON APR 2–6 WHERE: EXHIBITION PARK

Brass Knuckle Brass Band are lighting up Transit bar with the sounds of their debut and long awaited album, Split Lip. Supported by Beneath Benetta, a special mystery guest and a huge lineup of guest appearances, the band promises that the Canberra launch will certainly be something to see. “The Canberra launch will be pretty special. Not just because it’s our hometown, but it might be the only time we’ll get so many of the albums’ featured artists together at once. You should probably just come.” 8pm; $10 at the door. Fresh from their killer performance at The Rocks Australia Day Festival in Sydney and not quite ready to take a break, folk rockers Winterbourne have decided to kick off a headliner tour of Australia. The All But The Sun tour is kicking off to support the release of upcoming single ‘Steady My Bones’ from the duo’s critically acclaimed EP. The pair are no strangers to live shows and know how to rock an energetic performance that will set you up for a night of awesome tunes and good fun. Doors at 8pm. Tickets are $15.30 and are available at oztix.com.au. After a huge year of recording and touring in Canada and Australia, teaming up with Sarah McLeod and releasing a debut album for his side project, front man of The Tea Party, Jeff Martin, is returning to Canberra for what is undoubtedly to be a stellar tour. Armed with an arsenal of new material, Martin is bound to surprise and entertain for his Canberra leg of the tour with fantastically delectable acoustic tunes. So join Martin and his guitar for a night of fun, drinks and good music. Show starts at 6pm. Tickets are $38.90 at moshtix. As Canberra’s longest running folk festival, there’s no doubt that the National Folk Festival will always be a good time for everyone involved. Running this year over the Easter long weekend, the festival celebrates its 49th festival and features over 23 international and 180 Australian artists from a myriad of excellent genres including the obvious folk, but also acoustic, Celtic, country and more. Get ready to experience an awesome five-day festival of music, dance, markets, circus acts and immersive arts. Tickets and information are available at folkfestival.org.au. Kicks off 6.30pm Thursday April 6.

WHO: NIGHT TRAIN WHAT: ALBUM LAUNCH WHEN: SAT APR 11 WHERE: ANU BAR

With special guests TONK and Alex Gibson, Night Train are ready to excite and entertain with a special gig to launch their upcoming album MK-VI. Says the band, “This is a call to arms, we’re really excited about this gig. We’re going as all out as possible on this one... you could even end up in the film clip for the first single!” So get ready to rock and grab your friends to head out for an awesome night with good music, good drinks and good fun. Tickets are available from moshtix and are $15. The gig begins at 8pm. (Ed Note: Check out Scotty’s brooding eyeliner).

WHO: KIDGEERIDGE MUSIC FESTIVAL WHAT: FESTIVAL WHEN: FRI–SAT MAY 1–2 WHERE: MILTON SHOWGROUNDS, NSW

Grab your festival gear, head down to the South Coast and prepare yourself for what is arguably the best boutique musical festival in Australia. After playing host to numerous acclaimed musicians, Kidgeeridge Festival is back with a great lineup that includes rockers You Am I, songwriter Lior, the iconic Mark Seymour and a load more. With an impressive annual run of nine years, the festival has outgrown its previous venue of Kidgeeridge farm and is now making its way to the historic Milton showground. Tix $77 (Friday), $127 (Saturday) or you can grab a weekend pass for $177. Camping tickets are $60. Tickets via kidgeeridge.com.au.

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PETER O’ROURKE For five days in March, the boarded up, literally underground ex-Impact Records/JB HiFi shop will again play host as a nexus to an experimental arts festival which has become very much part of Canberra’s vibrant arts scene, YOU ARE HERE. What started as a project backed by the Canberra Centenary arts curator Robyn Archer has matured and become a staple of theatre, installation art, performance art, visual art and music; albeit art of the eccentric kind.

Another event which is set to return this year is the Neon Community Bike Ride, which will see riders meeting at Lake Burley Griffin, covering their bikes in glowing neon embellishments and creating a stream of light from bridge to bridge. There’ll be pitstops on the way with drama performances and music. Following the popular ride will be a You Are Here special of No Lights, No Lycra, where participants dance to music however they please in total darkness.

“Basically, it’s an emerging and experimental arts festival, which showcases the best of Canberra’s arts and culture,” says Vanessa Wright, one of the festival’s producers.

You Are Here receives funding from artsACT, as well as sponsorship from Canberra CBD ltd, who assist with finding performance spaces in the city centre. Wright says that they’re grateful for the support, especially in the provision of unique spaces which they can use – both traditional venues and also less obvious places like shops and public spaces.

“One of the main aims of the festival is to give artists a space to be a little bit more experimental in their art and try out new projects,” says Wright. “That was part of our call-out for submissions – we asked artists are they willing to try something different. Many artists use the festival as way of testing out a new idea, and many will then take that to other festivals. Of course, plenty of the performances are also one-offs and will only be shown at the festival.” You Are Here is a little different to other styles of art festivals (such as the Fringe Festival model) in that it’s specifically curated with explicit ideas and themes in mind. According to Wright, this year had up to a hundred applications – the most they’d ever had – from Canberra and beyond.

It’s that hazy part where you’re back at home, watching Rage and everything is a bit surreal

“For You Are Here, it’s a mixture of us coming up with the main concepts and building an event and then finding the art to fit that,” says Wright. One of those concepts is a set of performances under the title Dangerous Territories, which takes live theatre out of the usual black boxes of a performance space and into the wider world, with short pieces to be performed in laneways, parks, shops, cafes and what seems to be very Canberran – opposite the offices of an NGO. Another event with a Canberra touch is the now infamous overnight sleep-over event, which is in its third year. “It’s called You Are Here’s Ill Advised Night Out,” says Wright enthusiastically. “It’s based on the idea of a Canberra Saturday night out. There’ll be a party aspect between twelve and three AM with bands and performance art. Later on from three until six AM things change where it’s that hazy part where you’re back at home, watching Rage and everything is a bit surreal. It’s all based around the audience member participation with installation art and interactive performances (including something called Cruel Karaoke). The overnight event sold out last year, so if you want to catch it it’s worth getting in early.”

“It’s important that there is continued support for arts in Canberra and that there’s spaces which are affordable for both emerging and established artists to use,” says Wright. The festival also pays for the artists and its staff. “It’s not a lot, almost tokenistic in some ways, but it’s really important to pay for art and start that stepping stone that sets up a culture of paying for art,” says Wright. “You wouldn’t want to work at your job for nothing, so why should artists be expected to?”

Paying for art and artistic spaces – along with other topics surrounding the arts community in Canberra – will be discussed in series of essays curated by Grace Blake, with pieces by ANU School of Art academics Martyn Jolly and Kate Murphy as part of the festival. “It’s a chance to explore those topics that aren’t spoken about much in public, but are important to acknowledge,” says Wright. Other highlights in the festival program include the launch of Primal Scream ‘the hottest new social network’ (who’s only catch is that its offline, made of cardboard and only exists in the Phoenix Pub), an Indie Games Showcase and Forum held at the Canberra Museum and Gallery and a performance entitled Finger Your Friends – a sex-positive music project that is part performanceart, part rock concert and part punk political activism. Wright says that Canberra’s always had a really good art scene, however people haven’t always known where to look, or art is created and explored in smaller groups.”There’s lots of great things happening in Canberra, but it’s a bit hard for people in one area of the arts scene get involved in another area – it’s often very siloed. When You Are Here was founded we wanted to bring those smaller communities together in one space for a short period of time and show what Canberra is capable of – that’s something we feel very strongly about.” You Are Here festival runs from Wed–Sun March 18–22 in various venues around the city. Majority of the events are free and all ages. For full details and program, check out youareherecanberra. com.au.

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LOCALITY

Holy smokes. You Are Here 2015 is finally, you know, here, with local music making a big splash in their pool of wonderful events which runs Wed–Sun Mar 18–22. Some highlights you should definitely consider include the 10 Years of hellosQuare featuring Paul Heslin, Lawrence English and the launch of Cracked Actor’s debut album Iconoclast; Inflorescence, a joint work between improvisational musician Reuben Lewis and visual artist Dianne Fogwell; a bunch of new songs from Ruth O’Brien, performed under the show titled of Rainbow Helter Skelter; the Slowtunes lecture from Reuben Ingall about the wonders of slowed down music in popular culture complete with live demonstrations. It’s impossible to fit in all the details, so get up and go and get a program! You can find more details at facebook.com/YouAreHereCanberra. If you just can’t wait for the aforementioned events, Art Not Apart Acton has got you covered, Saturday March 14 from 1pm. From its ancestral home in New Acton all the way to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, there’s plenty to see and do, but the real icing on the cake is the Acton Beach Party, featuring Rufino and the Coconuts, Moochers Inc, The Fuelers, Dan McLean’s Hot Six, Jumptown Swing Dancers, Raio Del Sol and The Great Paddle Boat Race (which apparently isn’t a band, but an actual boat race, which is also pretty cool). It’s completely and utterly free, so grab your favourite bikini/speedos/boardies/swimsuit/whatever and get ready for a slip slop slappin’ good time. You can find more info about the beach party and other Art Not Apart events at artnotapart.com. Moving away from the festivals, The Bootleg Sessions at The Phoenix have got a killer couple of line-ups this fortnight. On Monday March 16, you’ll be able to catch Fricker, Helena Pop, Azim Zain and His Lovely Bones and Maggie Jeffs, while Monday March 23 brings you Raus, Eadie and the Doodles, California Girls and Parks. Both nights are free and kick off at 8pm.

In other all-round gig news, Time and Weight will take to the stage on Saturday March 14 at Smith’s Alternative, kicking off the broody rock sounds at 8pm. Entry will cost you $10, with support from Wesley and the Crushers. On Friday March 13, head to Transit Bar for the final round of their Battle of the Bands competition from 8pm, giving you the chance to see who will be crowned victorious and you won’t even have to pay a cent for entry! Then there’s Fire on the Hill, who’ll be playing their laid back roots-rock at The Phoenix on Saturday March 21 from 9:30pm for $5. The Canberra Musicians Club will again be hosting Smith’s Soapbox at Smith’s Alternative on Wednesday March 18, with a yet-to-be-announced line up of local artists playing political songs to rouse the masses. Entry is $10 and it kicks off at 7:30pm. And finally, Coda Conduct’s EP launch is at Transit Bar on Saturday March 21 from 8pm. Entry will set you back $10, unless you were one of the awesome people (ahem, like me) who pre-purchased through their Pozible. And that’s your bloomin’ lot. NONI DOLL NONIJDOLL@GMAIL.COM/@NONIJDOLL

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I was just following this breadcrumb trail that was leading me to the end result of this album

WHERE DID YOU GO? baz ruddick With five years since the last Darren Hanlon record, it is little wonder that so many people were wondering what happened to the rural Queensland singer-songwriter. Quoted as saying that if you write too much you just end up writing about “life in a van”, Hanlon embarked on a different type of journey to create his new record Where Did You Come From. With a brief writing sojourn in Broken Hill and months on the American train network, Hanlon hopped from studio to studio, simulta-neously writing and recording. Originally an economic decision, Hanlon’s trip to the U.S morphed into a spontaneous free-spirited journey. Driven by an obsession on finding little analog recording studios, Hanlon would hop the Amtrak following word of mouth from town to town. “I was just following this breadcrumb trail that was leading me to the end result of this album,” Hanlon states. “Sometimes it would double back on itself and I would find out that there was something there that I missed in the town before.” Not only did this journey take Hanlon from studio to studio and town to town,but it also led him to collaborate with artists he was often meeting for the first time. “Often I didn’t know who I was

recording with,” he says. “Sometimes I would know which musicians I would be working with, so if I had met them a week before I could tailor the songs for them.” Many of the stories that make the songs came from these chance meetings. The song ‘The Will of the River’, was written as a “non-committal” love song from a female per-spective. Sung by Elle King, the girl living upstairs from Hanlon in Nashville (who happened to be the daughter of Hollywood actor Rob Schneider), perfectly exemplifies Hanlon’s ability to take a common story and put it in song. “There are a lot of quotes and stuff from people I met in the lyrics”, Hanlon tells me. “I spent a month on the train so I met lots of people and heard lots of stories. There are still lots of stories bubbling away in my head!” Hanlon shares with me an anecdote of another chance meeting. While waiting in the dark in his van, a ‘security guard’ opened the door to ‘have a look’. “This man’s just standing there staring at me and I thought ‘oh no I’m being mugged.” The man said he was as a musician himself and that he wasn’t trying to break in. “I thought if I am really going to do this I really should follow every lead,” says Hanlon. The man, who turned out to be a proficient funk bass player and the grandson of De-Ford Bailey, joined Hanlon in the studio for a recording session. With extensive journeys around America’s south, Hanlon’s new album showcases a distinctly southern rhythmic quality. “It is something else, that American feel!” he says. “I think I respond to drummers the most… For the song ‘Chattanooga’ I specifically went to a town to record with this drummer I had seen play with all these old blues bands. He was a young guy which I think had the best drum feel I had ever seen.” Darren Hanlon will play The Street Theatre on Friday March 27, 8pm. Tix $30/$28 from thestreet.org.au

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Image credit: Alexander Dickson

SEEING RED NICOLA SHEVILLE Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and RAY DICKSON. One of these names isn’t like the other, but with any luck it soon will be.

Cracking something like the Billboard charts is no easy feat and it’s certainly never been done at this level before, but Dickson is hoping to not only get into the chart once, oh no, he’s going for the big 100. A seasoned Canberra musician, Dickson has worked with an array of Australian artists including Australian Kingswood Factory and Julia and the Deep Sea Sirens. So working with serious talent is nothing new to him, he’s just decided to take it up a notch.

I really want to make sure I’m putting Canberra on the map

“100 songs in the top 100 has a nice ring to it,” says Dickson, as if the challenge is nothing more than a picnic, although in reality Dickson is aware of the barriers that may stand between him and the Billboard Charts but he won’t let that stop him. “Some people might say it’s better to aim low and hit than aim high and miss. That statement for me is completely inaccurate. If you aim high you’ve got a much better chance of reaching huge goals than someone who is aiming low.” Dickson is gearing up to use his company, 18RED MUSIC to collaborate with a huge number of artists, particularly vocalists and release a bunch of entertaining, quality music that will have your ears singing with happiness for days afterwards. Dickson says that along with his music being entertaining, he’s taking this project 100% seriously. “I really want to entertain, but the purpose behind that approach is to put my name out there and to say ‘look this is what I’m doing, this is what I’m capable of. If you want to work with me this level of quality, passion and belief is what you’re going to get.’” Sticking with Australian vocalists and artists, Dickson hopes to represent Australia nationwide, but most of all wants to bring Canberra into the spotlight. “I’m talking about reaching success in a chart which is in the US, so I will be flying the flag for Australia in doing that therefore using Australian artists working with Australian engineers, studios, wherever possible, but further to that I really want to make sure that I am putting Canberra on the map.” Putting out the call for all sorts of musicians and vocalists, Dickson has utter confidence in his project and can’t wait to collaborate with some of Australia’s most incredible talent. And if the goal isn’t achieved? The experience is bound to make up for it. “I suppose I don’t have a backup plan and if it doesn’t happen I am enjoying at the moment every step of the journey.” Ray Dickson’s 18RED Music has been officially launched. Check out their website 18redmusic.com or get involved by e-mailing via 18redmusic@ gmail.com

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I never want to write another fucking song about a girl

experience to be akin to “getting punched in the face”, adding that the band most influential upon Lost Forever//Lost Together was probably New York five-piece Every Time I Die.

ARCHITECTS IN HELSINKI gus mccubbing Metalcore is something most people find somewhat inaccessible. On the other hand, environmentalism is something almost any young person who isn’t a Young Liberal is passionate about. So when I had twenty minutes to chat with Sam Carter, vocalist of British fivepiece ARCHITECTS, proud vegan and UK Ambassador for the Sea Shepherd, the conversation naturally gravitated towards the band’s political bent. Hailing from the English seaside town of Brighton, Carter and his bandmates have released six albums in slightly over a decade. Their latest, Lost Forever//Lost Together, was released in 2014 on Epitaph Records. This album marked something of a turning point for the band, in that it was their first album they recorded outside of Britain or the United States. Instead, Architects chose Sweden’s Fredrik Nordstrom, Henrik Udd and their Studio Fredman to record and produce the album.Officially categorised as ‘metalcore’, Carter describes his band’s latest effort as a “massive sounding” work fitted out with “uncompromising aggression”. He expects the listening

Carter’s interest in the work of Paul Watson, founder and spiritual leader of the Sea Shepherd, began after he watched the Canadian documentary Sharkwater on a plane in 2007. Instantly enamoured by Watson’s “hands-on” approach to activism, it dawned upon Carter, who can frequently be seen donning the Sea Shepherd’s iconic skull and trident logo while playing sets, just how “important our oceans are to us”. While on this note, Carter also took time to decry the oil rigs off Australia’s northwest Kimberly coast as “outrageous”. More significant in the band’s overall political development, however, were the London riots in August 2011. This, says Carter, lit a “fire inside all of us”, driving him and his bandmates to “look at the bigger picture”. They had realised that “politics is everything”, and consequently endeavoured to never again just write “another fucking song about a girl”. This newfound worldview has been present in Architects’ music, says Carter, since they released the single ‘Devil’s Island’ in December 2011. With this in mind, I see no other logical way of concluding the interview than firing at Carter something along the lines of “Russell Brand. Discuss”. This elicits a bout of enthusiasm from the Architects frontman. Heaping praise upon Brand for his work in “riling up the youth” and trying to “promote peace and love”, Carter calls the comedian-come-revolutionary a “fucking legend”. Architects play at ANU Bar on Wednesday 15 April alongside special guests Stick to Your Guns. Tickets are $50.50.

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DANCE THE DROP

What do you say when you’re given the power responsibility to take over one of Canberra’s premier music columns to say whatever you like about dance music? It’s big shoes to fill, especially with a DJ as tall as Tim Galvin (man I feel short standing next to him) leaves the spot free for a few weeks. This week, I have just one message – it’s an exciting time in dance music. There’s a huge soup of creativity bubbling away, especially in the underground scene. So many new artists, fantastic parties and cutting edge sounds to get lost in. Get off the couch, wear some comfortable shoes and reach for the lasers. Go on, get out there. Up for some big room, festival sized sounds? Head along to large flashy dance floor which is Academy Nightclub for the Clubber’s Guide to 2015 tour on Friday March 20. Adelaide selector Krunk! will have you dancing and with support from Exposure, Harper and Runamark, big drops are guaranteed. $10 before 11pm.

Hot new nightspot Mr Wolf (and yes, it’s very nice place with good decor and decent tunes) plays host to Triple J favourite Paces that same Friday (March 20). Nick Riviera, Hudak and Cheese in support. Presale tickets are $10. Chillin’ and Tree Thuggaz Massive bring the duggas (psytrance to the uninitiated) to Digress Bar and Lounge in the city on Saturday March 21 with Flipknot/Kerosene Club from India for only $15. Supports include Tarik and the master of psychedelic radness Loose Cannon. Canberra’s favourite house music crew Thank You Ma’am are putting on a dirty Easter Basement Rave the following weekend at The Basement in Belco. With Sweat It Out’s Go Freek and Melbourne’s Torren Foot, it’s set to be large! Local support include Skin & Bones, Hello Hallo, Drew’s Lost Boys, Veneris, Mulkmulk, Flynn and Mossi. Entry is $15 – bargain! In the meantime, here’s some tunes you should definitely be blasting on your stereo this fortnight: Basement Jaxx – ‘Angel is Coming’. A definite return to form, with Rasta vibes and solid bass and kick combo. This will be huge. Pettra – ‘Middle East’. What it says on the box. Some trippy psytrance with a distinct Arabic flavour from Up Records. Get this for free at Ektoplazm.com Tekdiffeye – ‘Everlasting Essence’. Merkaba Music has put out proper four to the floor compilation, here’s one of the highlights with chilled progressive sounds. Operon – ‘Don’t Dream Tonight’. Tune’s nearly a year old, but I heard this a few weekends ago at Regrowth Festival. This Brisbane DnB DJ absolutely rocked it on the Acacia Stage. Null – Almost EP. Some very fine ’90s rave inspired electronica from Melbourne producer Null. You MUST check out his trippy website to accompany the music as well at nullelectronics.com. PETER ‘KAZUKI’ O’ROURKE

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cody atkinson Ethics – invisible to the naked eye like oxygen, but still important. Well, maybe not as important as oxygen which quite frankly is the thing that’s keeping us alive, but important nonetheless. So, is there a place for ethics is the rough and ready world of music? I don’t know yet, but I guess Cody Atkinson will find out over the course of this column. Wait, are there actually ethics in music journalism? Of course there are ! Why the fuck wouldn’t there be? I just thought it was people writing whatever they felt about music? Why would that need to be guided by a code of ethics, like a serious journalist would be? MUSIC WRITERS ARE JOURNALISTS TOO! Other than their own sense of moral righteousness, a cultural industry without ethical boundaries and guidelines is probably not of any real value. I mean, if every writer in BMA went around shouting from the rooftops that every CD was the best thing ever, you’d probably stop reading tomorrow. Ethics are important, even in the heady world of music, to make sure that what’s being read is worth being read. No one wants to waste their time reading dreck straight from the pens of PR hacks. I think. So music journos get stuff for free? Yep. Most music writers and broadcasters get boatloads of freebies, from singles to albums to gig tickets and a whole lot more. Actually, there aren’t many things more. Damn. And surely they have to do something in exchange for those things?

Fair point. What about other types of media critics – do they get freebies too? Generally, yes. Movie critics get free cinema tickets, theatre critics get on the door to shows. All of these people, however, are usually there for one reason – to write about said show. Most critics, regardless of specific industry, usually get some form of early access to what they are reviewing, in order to critically evaluate it for a wider audience. No one gets involved in writing about any of these things just for the freebies – depending on how you value your time, it usually comes as a net loss given the time it takes to develop your critical viewpoint. In fact, I would suggest that nearly all critics are critics for one main reason: they really love the area that they are reviewing. How about friendships with members of bands, could that affect the objectivity of music writing? Absolutely. It’s often hard to disclose the interpersonal relationships between artists and writers, especially as column space is limited. Especially in a scene as small as Canberra’s, there is some inevitable overlap between bands and the critics of said bands. Ultimately, if you can’t be honest with a friend, what’s the point of hanging out with them? Often, any sort of relationship with an artist drives a more in-depth knowledge of both the flaws and the strengths of their work and can create a deeper exposure to the methods and motives behind the work. Although I get around the whole ‘friendships clouding my judgement of people’ by being a curmudgeonly fuck who struggles to hold a conversation with people.

You can’t even buy a carton of beer with $20 to try to hide the new lack of selfesteem

Yeah, usually they’re provided for “review purposes”, but sometimes they are given for promotional reasons or just to continue a good relationship between the music press and the promoters. But wouldn’t the provision of these things for free provide an implicit agreement to provide a positive review, or favourable coverage for, the items gifted?

Each to their own I guess... Yeah, that approach might not work for everyone. Takes years of work to become that bitter. So what would be your loose code of ethics when writing about music? •Don’t take benefits from artists/labels to write about something unless the relationship is clear;

In theory you can see how that would work, but in practice it differs a little.

•Don’t let personal relationships (both positive and negative) affect your writing unnecessarily; and most importantly

How so?

•Believe in what you write.

For one, positive coverage is rarely, if ever, asked for by labels/ promoters and if it is it would be rejected by the media in question. It’s not really worth the cost of a $20 CD to provide an “independent” PR service for shitty bands. I hate to speak for all music journalists out there, but $20 is a pretty low price for your sense of morality and self-esteem. You can’t even buy a carton of beer with $20 to try to hide the new lack of self-esteem.

Nothing more or less complex then that – be trustworthy and don’t be corrupt. Pretty barebones basic for any writer, regardless of medium or genres, to be honest.

Most music journalists are relatively independent thinkers who get really enthusiastic about the things they like and really negative about things that they don’t. It’s great to receive stuff for free, but it’s kinda morally bankrupting to shill for something that you hate. Music writers are almost always fans first and foremost and writers second. What if you are morally bankrupt to begin with? Then you’re a terrible person I guess?

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And when reading about it? When you’re reading what someone’s written, make sure you realise that they might have been given what they’re reviewing for free. Always keep in mind that critics don’t live in a plastic bubble and that they love the occasional beer or two with all people, including the artists they sometimes write about. And if they’ve written about your favourite band or album just remember their view is unique and subjective and it’s okay if they don’t agree with your point of view. So basically read everything, then completely throw any value away? Yep, pretty much.

I can say these awful things because I know he’ll never read them. “Reading is for pansies,” is what he would probably say. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jye use the word “pansy,” but you get the point. Do you get the point? I’m not even sure I get the point anymore. Perhaps we should all just move along.

Here we are again. Jye has yet to mention anything about the last column to me which leads me to believe he hasn’t read it. Potentially thousands of people (if you’ll allow me to flatter myself) have read his name repeatedly and he doesn’t have the slightest clue. What a knobhead. That’s probably why he has such a large bright red Mohawk, to distract from the large phallic object sprouting from the top of his head.

New Zealand’s Carb on Carb will be in the capital on Thursday March 12. You can catch them at Transit Bar with support from Wives, Agency and the debut of power-poppers Hospital Pass. Entry to this one will cost you just $5 before 9pm or $10 after. On Saturday March 14 you can catch beloved locals Primary Colours and Honey as they kick off a joint mini-tour. They’ll be at The Phoenix with support from Newcastle’s Bare Gryllz. Ulladulla’s punk protégé’s Raised As Wolves will be at The Magpies City Club on Friday March 20. Joining them will be Sydney’s Nerdlinger along with locals Revellers and Adventure Sunday. This one will also be all ages. Sydney’s Corpus are headed to Canberra again. This time you can catch them at the Magpies City Club on Thursday March 26 for an all ages affair. They’ll be supported by Wollongong’s Nothing Rhymes With Dead along with locals Lost Coast and Purity. On Wednesday April 1, Melbourne’s Laura Palmer will be at The Phoenix with New Zealand’s Nowhere. Local support will come from Yoko Oh No, Rather Be Dead and Helena Pop. Entry to this one will cost you just $5 on the door. Local ex-pats Super Best Friends are headed back to the homeland on Friday April 10 as part of their Status Updates Tour. They’ll be at Transit Bar with support from WA’s Pat Chow and Foam, along with Queensland’s Release The Hounds. $10 presale tickets are available through Oztix. The lineup for the second annual Dansonfest has been announced. Established to remember the life of the Ginger Ninja, this years festival, which will take place at The Basement on Saturday April 25, will host a great lineup of local and interstate acts including Bagster, Local Resident Failure, Ebolagoldfish, Revellers, Topnovil, Wolfpack, Nerdlinger and more. Tickets are set at $20+bf through Oztix. That’s it until the next feature. Let’s all hope for my sake that Jye doesn’t actually read this one… IAN McCARTHY PUNK.BMA@GMAIL.COM

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Club Friday May 29 which will be the perfect sized room to feel the full force of their low end assault.

METALISE The Basement announced the lineup for their popular Metal Fiesta show coming up on April Saturday 11 out in Belco’s heaviest venue. The fifth instalment of the evening sees the fresh from the studio Melbournites Witchgrinder and Darkc3ll in the midst of doing an Australian tour throughout April join New Zealand thrashers 8 Foot Sativa, Melbourne regulars Frankenbok, Deprivation, Na Maza, Law of the Tongue, Inhuman Remnants, Eyes to the Sky and The Murdering. Big lineup of acts and going to be a BIG night!

Speaking of EHG, Heathen Skulls main man Robert McManus had a bit to say about that cancellation, however his Facebook post asking for six cheap flights to Australia does not bode well for the upcoming and previously mentioned Red Fang tour, lets hope this gets sorted. Opeth don’t mind a bit of an Oz tour. That said it’s been a couple of years since the beloved Swede’s toured their Heritage record. Metropolis Touring are bringing them out for five shows to spruce their latest offering and studio album number eleven Pale Communion. You can get along to the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on Sunday May 3 for the show, supports announced soon. JOSH NIXON doomtildeath@hotmail.com-

The Base-o has a couple of cool shows in March with a show on Friday 20 featuring Kollaps, Marc Robertson, Leisure Suit Lenny, Alisons Disease and Cockbelch. Then on Wednesday 25 there’s a good excuse for a midweek bangover with Psycroptic doing their self titled album launch tour with New Orlean’s Goatwhore and Aussie supports Disentomb, Ourobouros and I Exist. Friday 27 features Sydonia, Barrel of Monkeys I Am Duckeye and Knights of the Spatchcock, so riffs aplenty in the coming weeks in Belco. On Thursday March 19, The Phoenix plays host to that great doom tour I told you about last issue with Adelaide lords Space Bong, Melbourne lads Horsehunter and locals Machina Genova which I am really looking forward too. Fans of Canadian band The Tea Party might be keen to catch front man Jeff Martin doing a massive Australian solo acoustic tour at the Transit Bar in the city on Sunday March 29. When I say huge, 23 dates is a pretty hefty schedule. I remember in 1995 (Christ I’m old) when The Tea Party played a new years show at the ANU Bar Jeff sitting in the beer garden strumming out some alternate tuning Zeppelinesque goodness. Memories… lifeisnoise have bounced back from the disappointment of the Eyehategod cancellation with the announcement for another visit from Japanese sludge lords and lasses Boris. The five show tour again omits Canberra and gives Adelaide a show. That’s something I’m going to have to take the promoter to task on, but you can catch them at the Newtown Social

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E X H I B I T I O N I S T ARTS | ACT

DIGGING FOR FIRE baz ruddick Australia’s proud yet often controversial relationship with its armed forces has a very white history in the consciousness of society. BLACK DIGGERS is a stage production that gives the Australian digger it’s real face. The culmination of months of meticulous historical research and a humanising writing process, Black Diggers is a celebration and portrayal of Aboriginal Australia’s involvement in the First World War that tells the story of a group of men who escaped racial prejudice in their own country to find ‘acceptance’ in the violence and brutality of a foreign war. I spoke to writer Tom Wright about how Black Diggers came to be, it’s importance to the Anzac legend and where the story lay in the historical consciousness of modern day Australia. The idea for Black Diggers came about when Sydney Festival director Lieven Bertels approached Wesley Enoch, artistic director of the Queensland Theatre Company, with the knowledge that Aboriginal soldiers were buried in war graves not far from his home in Belgium. “White Australians often aren’t aware of black servicemen, but within black communities it has never been a secret. In fact it has been a source of great pride,” writer Wright shares with me. “Mainstream history may not have been aware of it, but it was actually no secret at all in black communities.” In the early 20th century, in a newly constructed and unified nation, the racial tension that divided white and black Australia could not have been larger. The army formed a bastion of freedom from oppression. “The army by definition can’t really afford to worry about the colour of your skin so once you are in the uniform it tended to be pretty free of the type of racial tensions that existed in mainstream society,” says Wright. For this reason Aboriginal men flocked to join the armed forces. In researching for the production, the team found it wasn’t as much a case of ‘digging for the hidden’, as one may think, but rather using skills of deduction. “The War Memorial in Canberra has a fantastic resource with a full time Indigenous liaison officers who have done a great deal of research,” Wright says. “So a lot of the work has been done beforehand and the rest of the work was just sifting through the existing research and working out who was white and who was black.” While it was technically illegal for Aboriginal men to join the army in 1914, having to be of ‘substantial European heritage’ under legislation, most Aboriginal servicemen managed to find their way in through loopholes or simple tales. “A lot of these blokes would try and pass as different races. They might say they were a Maori or they had a Chinese grandparent to explain their skin,” says Wright. “On your army forms there was nothing that said what race you were… Often the

only way to do it was to actually just find a photo of them and there they are – plainly Koori or plainly Murri – you can see it in their face.” With a cast of nine Koori, Noongar and Murri actors, Black Diggers offers a varied narrative to the experience of Aboriginal soldiers. “Aboriginal people often had very different experiences of the war from one another,” Wright says. “Some of the blokes had a ball, survived and came home, some had an absolute hell of an experience and some died within a couple of days of hitting the front.” Wright doesn’t want to suggest that their was a unified way that Aboriginal men responded to the war. “Some of those who did survive came back with a really positive view of Australia and the army, while others came back despairing and wanting to have nothing to do with white society at all.” The production, which broadly runs chronologically, spans a time period from the 1880s, with a massacre that leaves a future digger orphaned as a baby, to the 1960s as the returned soldiers begin to age and die. With an ensemble cast of nine, most of the Black Diggers actors have connections to the armed forces themselves. “Every one of the blokes has relatives and ancestors who have in some ways been hit by the war,” says Wright. “So they are wearing their families stories on their sleeve.” Of these actors, Murri Elder George Rostock actually served first hand as a soldier in Vietnam, Malaya and Indonesia. “He served for many many years in the army and when he wears his medals on stage you can see him wearing that Aboriginal experience,” says Wright. Other cast members include Luke Carroll, famed for his wok on Play School and in the television series Redfern Now and Central Australian Trevor Jamison, star of the stage production Namatjira. Telling the story of the black diggers, puts the true face under the slouch hat that exists in the consciousness of every Australian. Tom states that the experience of Aboriginals in the Arts often seems to lend itself as a ‘reminder’ or a cultural embodiment of a community as a whole. “They are telling the story of the play in question but also of their entire community. They are trying to communicate that story and keep it alive,” says Wright. “Quite possibly a thousand Aboriginal men served in World War One and while this might come as a surprise to many people, it has long been a source of great pride to Aboriginal communities… Fundamentally, the experience of an Aboriginal digger was much the same as a white digger when they were under the slouch hat and they had a very similar experience.” Catch Black Diggers at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Wed-Sat Mar 25-28, 8pm. Morning performance Thu Mar 26 at 11am and matinee Sat Mar 28 at 2pm. Tickets start from $65/$55.

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Image credit: Martin Ollman

OPEN MIC DREAMS JAY SULLIVAN I watched Delirious with Eddie Murphy when I was nine. It was the best thing ever. You might say that’s bad parenting, but the thing about those taboo things you aren’t meant to watch or listen to, or do as a kid, they become defining moments and are often cited by artists in moments of triumph later as a significant moment. For comedians, it’s the listening to or seeing someone amazing at the art form before you were “supposed to.” The next week, because I’d enjoyed Delirious so much and hadn’t gotten expelled from school for repeating it to my classmates, Dad came home with two video tapes Comedy’s Dirtiest Dozen and Richard Pryor’s Live in Concert. I didn’t mind the first one – it featured Bill Hicks and Chris Rock and Tim Allen before Home Improvement was a show. Rock is really young and he is funny, but with both Rock and Hicks, short sets in a line-up show aren’t how you want to see them. I liked Hicks’ smoking jokes and was already a one or two cigarettes-a-week kid. Live in Concert was a revelation. I don’t want to give the idea that I immediately absorbed the genius of Pryor and the heavens opened. But I remember the Heart Attack bit, the extended deer hunting piece and how in that joke,Pryor used his mastery of comedy performance to create the entire scene through the audience and how he was making the crowd laugh, just him and a microphone. I thought, ‘this is the best thing ever – isn’t it amazing that people can do that?’ But here is what I wanted to say: it wasn’t watching the greats of the comedy game that made me decide to do stand-up comedy. The comedy they were doing was so far beyond anything my brain was capable of, there was no way I ever thought a little fat kid from Tumut could ever do anything as amazing as that. It was being invited to a comedy show when I was 27, sitting and watching 15 of the worst sets of comedy I had ever seen in my life that inspired me to try it. I don’t ever think of them as worst comedians, but the night I went, there were a few funny jokes, but it was hard work for everyone. Some sets were excruciating, but

after that night that I first had the idea of doing stand up. I realised that you didn’t need to be Richard Pryor to do it. Sure, it’d help, but Richard Pryor wasn’t even Richard Pryor as I had seen him back when he first started to do it. I often hear people rubbish a comedian or artist who has a bad set, or who isn’t really that funny but seems to be working through some issues or demons in front of an unsuspecting audience. But then I remember that everyone sucks some of the time, everyone sucks when they start out at comedy and while it might seem tempting, after a while, to pull someone aside and say, ‘Hey, comedy isn’t for everyone, that’s why they invented impro and the chorus in musical theatre!’ But don’t think it’s anyone’s right to do that. Performers figure it out for themselves eventually. But also, someone might see that sucky, vapid hack and say, ‘Well, if that guy can get a turn, maybe I can do it!’ or ‘I think that I have more of an idea about how jokes work than that other guy did so I’m gonna try and write some.’ Open mic nights are the good, the bad, the okay, the ugly and the really unfortunate looking. But if you are someone who really likes comedy and at some level wants to do it, go to a local open mic and see what it’s like, decide what you’re going to do and just do it. Even if you suck, you might inspire someone else to get up to the mic. It might sound cliché, but it’s those people who get up and keep getting up that win the game. Otherwise, you could end up as the 60 year-old office jokester stuck next to the comedian at a corporate function, telling joke book jokes and saying how you love Billy Connolly, but have never been near the stage yourself. The reason usually amounts to “no limo came to my house on that day when all the planets aligned perfectly to red carpet welcome me to my life’s passion,” or “my visiting muse, or Lenny Bruce apparition, didn’t specifically guide me in the ‘if you build it, they will come’ way I wanted.” But make no mistake, life didn’t get in the way of you doing comedy. Your life is comedy and you are getting in the way. If you want to keep up with Open Mic Nights and comedy shows in Canberra, join Stand-up Comedy in Canberra on Facebook and comedyact.com.au

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LITERATURE IN REVIEW The Grapple Annual No. 1 Duncan Felton (Editor) [Grapple Publishing; 2014]

Grapple Publishing is a small Canberra based independent publisher that has only been in operation since 2013. For their efforts in producing the exciting The Grapple Annual No.1 Grapple Publishing was awarded the Express Media Most Innovative New Project or Work by Young People 2014 award. This is quite an achievement and testament to how special this annual really is.

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT INDIGO TRAIL Consider this: teens in Cooma. It sounds like some kind of high school band naming catastrophe, but it is in fact the basis for Canberra-born director SEAN KRUCK’s new short film, SNOWBLIND. Set in the 1970s, Snowblind follows a teenage boy over one weekend as he navigates love, family and admiration for his ultimate idol, Ace Frehley. For Kruck, who wrote the script and then directed the film, Snowblind is the culmination of several years of work. “It was a long process for a short film,” he says pensively over the phone. “I mean, the story really started with the characters but… the writing process was a bit all over the place.” The idea came when Kruck got into a program run by Screen Australia, which sees participants go on a “retreat thing and at the end, you basically write a short film and they choose a few to go ahead and be made and they picked Snowblind.” Once they were in production, along came the snags – the 1970s setting proved to be a little challenging. “We didn’t have a heap of money to spend on sets, so I knew I had to choose somewhere that looked ‘70s-ish.” After considering several locations – including Canberra, where Kruck had shot another short film in 2007 – he eventually settled on Cooma for its mid-20th century vibe. “The house we shot in, it was like it was stuck [in the ‘70s]. We dressed it a little, but the essence of it was there already.” Casting was a different story. “I had just been working on Puberty Blues before we shot this, so I knew Ashleigh Cummings [who plays the main character’s next door neighbour in Snowblind] and a couple of other actors, so there were people on set I’d worked with before. But Michael Stewart, our lead – he’d never done anything until this. I saw a picture of him on this huge wall of potential extras for Puberty Blues and he had such a striking face and look that he sort of stuck out from this bunch of kids.” Kruck took a risk and asked him to audition. “He had a real authenticity to him. Even though he was really nervous, we were able to try some scenes out and he was great, actually. Then, on set, he couldn’t have been better. It was – yeah, I was a bit worried, but he was fantastic.” Kruck’s tenacity and willingness to take a risk paid off; the moment they began shooting, everything started to come together. “As soon as we started getting into the environment, I was like ‘wow. This is it, this is exactly what I imagined.’ Obviously, we had some difficulties, but the world we created – I was really, really happy with it.” Now, with the finished product having just premiered in Berlin, it’s poised for a sure-fire festival run, but Kruck just hopes the film’s core message will resonate. “At its heart, it’s really just about being a teenager,” he says rather bashfully. “It’s just – I wanted to capture that time, that wonderful … sense of possibility. Hopefully, we did that.”

The Grapple Annual No.1 is “a calendar based anthology”. Editor Duncan Felton writes, “Dates, years, time – just as these things structure our lives, so too do they structure this publication.” So what is so exciting about it? For a start, there are no less than 45 individual pieces ranging from artworks to a short novelette length story that all relate to a date in the calendar in some way. Each contributor, both new and experienced, has created a piece with their own interpretation of the brief. Each piece has its own focus, tone and pace but all reference back to dates, years and time. In the mix there is love, death, family life, politics and climate change and even the annual cycle that touches us all, the dreaded tax return. I don’t want to single any individual piece out as being more worthy of mention than others because I think they should all be judged on their merits. I found more pieces engrossed me than not, some I just didn’t get, but that probably means I need to read them over again, while a number left me with annoyingly unanswered questions. Did they get out of the building in Shanghai? Did they get that tax return completed after their tryst on the dining table? Or more sadly, did the baby die? I can’t be sure so I will definitely have to re-read that particularly haunting poem. As with anything that is diverse in both form and topic there is something for everyone including humour, candour and the odd poignant expose on how we take each other’s measure and get it wrong. The broad differences in the interpretation of the theme is what I most appreciate about the content. As far as magazines and collections are concerned, I have a habit of starting at the back and in this case I discovered a neat listing of the contents that has the date each is anchored to and a short bio of the writers, poets and artists that contributed to it. The layout also satisfies my habit of randomly flipping pages until something catches my eye. To secure your own copy you can buy it online at grapplepublishing.com or there are a number of local stockists also listed on the website. I am looking forward to the release later this year of The Grapple Annual No.2 alsey ann condie

Snowblind will play at Flickerfest on Thursday March 19 at Dendy Cinemas

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A R T | C O M E DY | D A N C E | L I T E R AT U R E | T H E AT R E

ARTISTPROFILE: Wendy Sharpe

until Sunday April 12. These portraits are drawn entirely from life. It is an attempt to readdress the fact that we never see Asylum Seekers or hear their stories and reminds us that these are people, not statistics.

What do you do? Painting, drawing in all forms.

What are your plans for the future? My future plans are to continue what I’m doing, working and travelling.

When, how and why did you get into it? I’ve always drawn and painted. I was the illustrator for the school magazine and drama productions. I went to straight to art school and was a student for many years. I’ve never worked in any other area. I have also been an artist model and have taught part-time at all levels from hobby classes in community centres to PhD students at universities. I work everyday. I’m always in my studio, which is a wonderful warehouse in inner Sydney. At the moment I am working on a number of projects. Who or what influences you as an artist? I was an only child and something of an outsider. Always lived partly in my imagination. I had very supportive parents. I’m influenced by an incredibly wide range of artists, most obviously those that are figurative and expressionist.

What makes you laugh? Many things, I laugh a lot, often at myself. What pisses you off? Cruelty, greed and lack of empathy. What about the local scene would you change? The state of Australian politics. Treatment of refugees. And Sydney’s terrible public transport. Upcoming exhibitions? I have an exhibition called Painting for Antarctica at The Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney until Sunday August 9. In April and May I have a residency in China near Shanghai. In October I will have an exhibition in Berlin and will also be leading a group of artists to Morocco. Contact Info: wendysharpe.com. Am also on Facebook as Wendy Sharpe.

Of what are you proudest so far? I have been lucky enough to have many major career highlights, including winning the Archibald and a commission as an official artist from the Australian War Memorial. I am excited about the exhibition I have on at the Belconnen Art Centre Seeking Humanity – Portraits and stories of Asylum Seekers,

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bit PARTS CULT CLASSICS CINEMA WHAT: Retro cinema WHEN: Mon Mar–May 16–25 WHERE: Dendy Cinema This years’ Cult Classics theme is A Season of Badass Films, so it’s no surprise that the fantastic films showing over three months live up to that claim a hundred percent. The season features a bunch of awesome, funny, badass movies that are definitely worth grabbing a ticket for. Films include Zoolander, Clueless, Cabin in the Woods, True Romance and more, so get your paws on a couple of tickets and catch those old favourites on the big screen. Every Monday from March16 until May 25; 10am and 6pm sessions. Tickets are $12 at dendy.com.au.

CANBERRA HARVEST FESTIVAL WHAT: Food festival WHEN: Sat Mar 28 WHERE: Canberra Environment Centre Treat the foodie in you with some awesome local food and produce like you’ve never tasted before. Eat homegrown food, enjoy a glass of local wine, listen to some awesome live music and bring the kids to take part in an exciting veggie growing competition. Celebrate Canberra’s local producers and their goods with likeminded people and learn some backyard skills in a free workshop whilst indulging yourself one of the delicious local produce burgers that will be on offer. Entry is only a $2 donation and the event runs from 2–6pm. More info at ecoaction. com.au. AS YOU LIKE IT WHAT: Theatre WHEN: Tue–Sat Apr 7–18 WHERE: The Playhouse Opening their 2015 season with a bang, Bell Shakespeare is here to celebrate their 25th anniversary with one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and utterly charming comedies, As You Like It. With Rosalind, one of Shakespeare’s most dynamic heroines, Rosalind, taking the reins and a cast of talented actors and an incredibly experienced and artistic crew, As You Like It is a fantastically brilliant production that theatre lovers will not want to miss. So if you’ve ever wanted to experience Shakespeare as it should be done, now’s your chance. Tickets start from $32.50 to $79, available at canberratheatrecentre.com.au. THE CARVED LINE WHAT: Art exhibition WHEN: Fri–Sun Mar–Apr 20–12 WHERE: Belconnen Arts Centre Using her creativity to respond to the beauty of nature and her experiences in life, artist Christine Upton invites art lovers everywhere to partake on a journey of exploration into different and rather unique artistic techniques. “The work in this exhibition has evolved from exploring ways to create lino block prints using everyday materials and without a printing press,” she says. Meet the artist on Sun 29 Mar at 3pm or participate in a series of creative workshops on Sat Mar 8 and Sun Apr 12 from 11am–3pm. All the details at belconnenartscentre. com.au.

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the word

on albums

many of the biggest hits to issue forth from Oz in the eighties and you can almost feel that direct line to greatness pulsing through every utterance the record belches forth. Many bands in Tonk’s position face an agonising choice when divvying up where the money is spent when the time comes to record an album, but the extra coin shovelled in Mr Didia’s direction was, I can reveal, money well spent as the aural soundscape presented on Ruby Voodoo is quite literally sounding to these ears at least like the work of a man with the midas touch. Tonk have never sounded this HUGE before.

album of the issue Tonk Ruby Voodoo [MelodicRock Records] Local hero hard rockers Tonk know a thing or two about riffs. They also know more than a little about stick-in-yourears-for-days melodies and hooks. The upshot of this pleasing conjugation of knowledges is Ruby Voodoo, the band’s second release, a release that is an utter delight to listen to. There’s nothing revelatory about Tonk. The band produces eminently solid, hard-hitting heavy rock in the vein of compadres such as The Screaming Jets – Aussie hard rock instantly recognisable but, gratifyingly, light years ahead of the lumpen oaf rock purveyed by many of their more revered countrymen, whose names I shall not give the oxygen of publicity here... The key here is soul. This isn’t music made to order by trend-obsessed automatons for brain dead consumer kicks – it’s living, breathing, screaming heavy metal rock n’roll dripping with sass n’attitide for sure, but most importantly running rivers of sincerity from every pore. Tonk make this music because they love it and, by extension, if you love it too then they make this music for you. Ruby Voodoo comprises eleven tracks, recorded in Byron Bay by legendary knob twiddler Nick Didia (Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine) on the same mixing console that birthed

Of course, you want some evidence to back up all this blathering, don’t you? Well, Final track ‘Over the Edge’ mixes Zeppelin riffage and off-kilter Van Halen melodies but actually sounds like neither of those two bands thanks to the heart on sleeve vocalising of lead throat Jinks. At the other end of the album opening track ‘Pleasure and Pain’ is a bobbing, weaving leviathan of a track, propelled by the serpentine riffage of guitarists Steve and Ben whose stop-start six string syncopation steams out of the speakers in screamingly sensational style, threatening to level anything in it’s way through sheer weight of tsunami-esque riff hysteria. In between these two audial landmarks you’ll find nine other tracks utterly worthy of your attention, each one marshalled by the rock solid engine room of Matt (drums) and bassist Mikey, each one possessing enough hooks, soloing and general brilliance to last most bands labouring in this field a lifetime. Don’t ask me to pick out a favourite because it’s too damn hard for a mere human brain such as mine to sift through the gold on offer. Suffice to say that fans of eightiesflavoured hard rock shot through with a serious nineties sensibility will gobble up everything Tonk has to offer on Ruby Voodoo – but why stop there? Honestly, if you’ve any interest in hard driving, well played rock n’roll from any era – you need this album. scott adams

Pearls Pretend You’re Mine [Remote Control] Pearls’ Pretend You’re Mine is an album filled with dark, brooding glam-inspired pop gems. Pearls create textural downbeat soundscapes, lushly layered under rich harmonies, electronic beats and warm guitars. The sound is reminiscent of the 1980s with the use of vintage guitar effects and synthesisers, making the album feel familiar and enticing. The lyrics tend towards romanticism, but I feel that the real storytelling is through the music, with the lyrics only part of the full picture. The music is melody-laden, with guitar riffs and synth lines weaving over each other at every turn. Pulsing synths and jagged guitars drive ‘Big Shot’, as the broken-sounding vocals of Ryan Caesar are offset by the smooth pipes of Cass Kiely. ‘Straight Through The Heart’ is a perfect moment of pop bliss, culminating to a dreamy, climatic chorus. ‘Baby’ is uncomplicated, with meandering guitars providing a fresh counter melody to the sweet vocals, but with just enough shredding to stop it becoming too pretty. I may be going crazy, but I also get a slight Springsteen vibe from this song. I’m a huge fan of when bands make use of both male and female vocalists to add extra depth and texture. Pearls are no exception, as demonstrated on the title track, ‘Pretend You’re Mine’, with call and response vocals cloaked under a thick layer of distortion. Crunchy guitars punctuate throughout, closing the album on a high note. The collection of tracks on Pretend You’re Mine is diverse, with each song individually engaging. An album with ‘glam’ and ‘80s’ in its description could easily sound clichéd, but Pearls pare it back enough that it works beautifully. MEGAN LEAHY

@bmamag

Various Artists Get On Up: The James Brown Story [Universal] Not assembling a collection of songs that covered James Brown’s entire career was a smart move. The compilers (overseen by none other than Mick Jagger) have instead focused more intently on the decisive mid 1960s to early 1970s period when some of the more visceral soul trimmings had been stripped away, resulting in rhythm heavy music that was lean and mean. This was when the horn driven opulence of earlier soul nugget, ‘Please, Please, Please’ gave way to the stripped back, tightly wound funk of ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine’ with a bass line that strokes all the pleasure spots. The body-shaking momentum Brown hit upon in the late 1960s is revealed on raveups like ‘Cold Sweat’, ‘Mother Popcorn Pt 1’ and ‘Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud’, with each one injected with a maximum dose of hard-hitting funk. The collection features both studio and live recordings with the live stuff something that would have been mindblowing to witness because the sugar hit from seeing a highly energised band locking into a solid, tasty groove would have simply doubled the pleasure. James Brown music in the late 1960s was a massive game changer as raw soul and r&b was swiftly transformed into raw funk leaving little doubt that soul brother number one was a master craftsman with a focus and commitment that is incredible to consider. This soundtrack does an excellent job of surveying Brown at the peak of his powers and raises hopes that the movie it soundtracks will be just as good. DAN BIGNA

The Crossbones Deadman’s Curve [Independent Release]

Scott Walker & Sunn O))) Soused [4AD]

There’s a small but steady following of old time rock n’ roll in Canberra, seen in such bands as The King Hits and Little Mac and the Monster Men. A third outfit, The Crossbones, was formed in 2013 and has released its debut LP. Using the favoured rockabilly set-up of guitar, drums and upright bass, they play songs full of iconic images of the ‘50s such as aliens, motorcycles and leather rackets.

When news first started to leak out early last year about a potential collaboration between Los Angeles drone metal kings Sunn O))) and art rock’s renaissance man Scott Walker, most people didn’t believe it would happen, least of all Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson themselves. Twelve months on and this debut collaborative album Soused finally sees the rumours becoming reality. Curiously though, the five expansive tracks that make up the track-listing here pretty much offer up exactly what you’d expect from this creative union on paper – Walker’s hyper-literate, cryptic and almost choirvoiced lyrics backed by dense, swirling backdrops of sludgy guitars and electronic drones, with regular Walker production collaborator Peter Walsh contributing synths and programmed rhythms.

The EP title draws on a theme reflected in another classic 1960s song and even in the film Grease 2. However, there are no soppy teen romance ballads here, just plenty of high pitched licks and lots of nimble finger plucking. Rather than a bunch of toughs, the band paints themselves more as a bunch of losers, with plenty of self-deprecating humour in the opener ‘Your Car Ain’t Cool’ (“…and you look like a tool”) and ‘Unlucky’ (“I broke every mirror in the tunnel of love”). Elsewhere there are tones reminiscent of The Shadows in ‘Casino Hell’ and a touch of psychobilly in ‘That’s Weird’. Frontman George Jakovceski has just the right deep tones for the genre, although he’s probably right on the edge of his vocal envelope in ‘Sonic Caffeine’. The music is mostly fast and furious, in just the right mode needed for swing dancing (another popular local pastime), although there are strutting songs too, such as ‘Unlucky’. Some of the best licks appear in the shout-out song ‘Big Mumma Bop’ and the closer ‘Splinters and Teeth’ is an album highlight. The close-knit nature of the Canberran scene is reflected in the bands, venues and radio station listed in the ‘thanks’ section of the CD cover. RORY McCARTNEY

Throughout there’s a continual sense of ominous foreboding, with the sense of often claustrophobic tension never really being released. ‘Brando’ opens proceedings with an almost angelic wash of operatic vocals and glittering electronics that sudden descends down into a stygian pit of churning overdriven guitar feedback and bullwhip strikes. Here, Walker intones the closest thing to a chorus, “A beating would do me a world of good”, against cold howling electronic drones and sudden bursts of tortured fretwork, his clear-throated vocal presence offering up the only anchor amidst the roiling black seas. It’s hard to work out exactly what Walker is singing about on the eleven minute long ‘Herod 2014’, though it’s definitely about child murder, as his repeated almost chorale-style intonations of “she’s hidden her babies away” rise in intensity against squalling horn bursts, toxic droning powerchords and a distant howl of pitched down textures. Extremely heavy going stuff (and no pun intended). chris downton

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album in focus

Sleater-Kinney No Cities to Love [Sub Pop] When Sleater-Kinney went on ‘indefinite hiatus’ in 2006 there was a sense of finality about it. It seemed as if the band was fraying at the edges. Even though their then-swansong The Woods was a massive critical success, it was the sound of a band tearing each other apart. Dave Fridmann’s brickwalled, ultra-compressed production added to the sense of impending doom and claustrophobia. It was a feedbacksaturated, assault on the senses. After a decade of incendiary live shows and string of stellar albums, their collective heart was still in it (as the tour that supported The Woods proved amply) but it did feel like a natural end point was upon Sleater-Kinney. Of course they still managed to be the best rock band in the world, but genius is a curse like that, as is going out with all guns blazing. Soon after guitarist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss wound up in Wild Flag, a great one-off one-album band. Brownstein pushed her indie-cred to the max in the hit TV show Portlandia, which she co-created, co-wrote and costared in with Fred Armisen. It’s about to wrap up its fifth season – not bad for a side gig. Corin Tucker, meanwhile, made a couple of self-described soccer mom records. She’s too harsh on herself – 1,000 Years is a brilliant album with some of her best writing, even if it was 1,000 miles from Sleater-Kinney. Everything seemed to be going along fine and reunion rumours believably brushed aside.

Then late last year, the band’s celebrated their 20th anniversary with the obligatory vinyl re-release box set and soon after out of nowhere came the announcement they had a brand new album completed and were ready to tour. Wait, what? But Sleater-Kinney isn’t exactly a band known for ceremony, preferring to get the job done and moving on to the next target. Though not careerist, they always seemed very goal orientated. If the goal of their comeback album, No Cities To Love, was to prove they still had new songs in the tank and a reason to play them, it’s a blow-down success. It sounds like collaboration in the truest sense of the word; collective pronouns are everywhere. ‘Surface Envy’ gets straight to the point – “We win, we lose, only together do we break the rules.” Brownstein and Tucker have an even tighter grasp on guitar interplay. As great as they are individually – and both phenomenally talented and underrated guitarists – they achieve something close to sonic transcendence together. Their riffs are back to front and drop in at odd places. The chords look familiar but sound new, obscure. The solos were always gonzo, but are closer to Gary Lucas and Zoot Horn Rollo than ever before. ‘No Anthems’ is one of the many distillations of this relentlessly creative aesthetic, pushing themselves beyond the obvious. It’s a crunchy, staccato anthem.

Seasick Steve Sonic Soul Surfer [There’s a Dead Skunk Records] Sonic Soul Surfer is the seventh LP from eccentric US blues phenomenon Steven Wold, widely known as Seasick Steve (because he doesn’t go well with moving watercraft). Wold made a name for himself using homemade instruments such as the one stringed diddley bow, which consists of just baling wire, nails, a wooden board and a glass bottle. Made at his farmhouse with drummer Dan Magnusson, the album included little in the way of production but (reportedly) a bit of drinking.

It’s a much cleaner record as well, closer to One Beat than The Woods – a blessed relief to these ears – although the stomping ‘Bury Our Friends’ makes a stab at the overdriven. Assertive rather than aggressive, but still suffused with plentiful pop-ish melodies and sweet harmonies. Amazingly, nothing has changed in the time away: Tucker’s shattering controlled scream, Brownstein’s last-gasp vocals and Weiss holds together the weird inter-cutting rhythms effortlessly. Sleater-Kinney never took the easy path and No Cities To Love is exactly the album we needed. Sometimes immediate, other times slow burning, always essential.

There’s an impressive variation in the character of the songs, demonstrating that calling Wold a blues man undersells the scope of his music. While early song themes revolved around Wold’s non-musical work life, the breadth of song topics has increased over time. The album is equal parts raw power and gentle, subtlety crafted tunes. Opener ‘Roy’s Gang’ starts with otherworldly sounds and booming strings, before it develops into an irresistible blues riff with rockabilly overtones. ‘Right on Time’ is a beguiling acoustic ballad that’s so light in touch, it’s almost ephemeral. The fiddle of Georgina Leach adds a special touch to ‘In Peaceful Dreams’ while the jaw harp of Ben Miller provides a rural edge to the rock riffs in ‘Summertime Boy’. ‘Swamp Dog’ starts with a lonely wail like Epicure’s ‘Life Sentence’, but the DNA of this murky curb crawler of a song has more in common with the bump and grind of ‘Vampire’ by Black Joe Lewis. While there are a lot of tracks vying for the title of disk highlight, the fast and complex infectious foot tapper ‘Bring it On’ stands out in the ‘loud track’ category, while the plucked ballad ‘Heart Full of Scars’ is the ‘soft track’ winner

JUSTIN HOOK

RORY McCARTNEY

@bmamag

singles in focus by cody atkinson Chook Race ‘Time’

Various Artists Balance Presents Kolsch [Balance Music]

Super Raelene Brothers Revolution Day [Independent Release]

Danish electronic producer Rune Reilly Kolsch first emerged way back in 1995 with his drum and bass-tinged debut 12” Zone One and since then he’s proven to be an extremely prolific artist, with an intimidatingly large back-catalogue of releases as Kolsch, Rune RK and as one half of the duo Artificial Funk alongside his brother. He’s also ended up in an enviable position, one where he’s maintained his links with the underground techno scene (aided by his longterm association with the ultra-credible Kompakt label), yet is also ‘mainstream’ enough to be part of this year’s Stereosonic Festival line-up. A year on from Kolsch’s impressive debut album 1977, this latest mix compilation in Balance’s ongoing series sees him throwing the emphasis upon colourful melodies and rich, lustrous synthetic textures, resulting in a collection that’s equally suited to the dancefloor and late night driving.

Artists with a conscience and a strong sense of using their music for a purpose, the Super Raelene Brothers from the Northern Territory made a name for themselves with the anti-uranium mine song ‘Wiya Angela Pamela’. Following their success on triple j Unearthed and the release of the EP Nuclear Kop, brothers Basil and Derek have landed their debut LP Revolution Day.

From the very outset things pretty much dive straight into deep shimmering synthscapes and crisp, streamlined snares, with the sheeny opulence of Galaxy 2 Galaxy’s ‘Journey Of The Dragons’ being tightly followed by the haunted vocal soul of Pional’s ‘It’s All Over’, before the jittering drum machines of Henrik Schwarz’s ‘Lockstep’ signals a turn into dark, more mecahnistic grooves. After Radiohead’s ‘Videotape’ gets expertly weaved into the rolling kickdrums of Dhuman’s ‘No More’, Adrian Hour’s punching ‘Chordgression’ arrives to drag things away from melancholia, ushering in a spectacular peaktime section nice topped off by a segue between the squelchy analogue acid bends and rattling 808s of Kenny Larkin’s ‘Plankton’ and Mano Le Tough’s snare-laden reworking of Caribou’s ‘Can’t Do Without You.’ All up, this is damned classy stuff. chris downton

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Armed with a fiddle, kick drum, acoustic guitar and tambourine, the style is folk with tropical flair and a pop/rock edge. There’s a lot of gusto in the delivery, with chunky guitar strums and vocals consistently emitted with an almost punk rock intensity. Track rhythms are fast enough to dance to, especially when that fiddle gets going. Listening to the opening pair of songs may give the impression that the brothers only write songs that rhyme ending in a big bold ‘A’. However, the title track disposes of that notion. Besides their own material, the album features traditional music including ‘Love Divine’ (lyrics by Charles Wesley in 1747) and ‘Blessing Song’ which draws on an Irish blessing for part of its inspiration. A less successful cover is a version of AC/ DC’s ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’. Just a repetition of the chorus, this is a tiresome filler. The band’s activist streak comes out both in the title track, dedicated to peace activist Robert Simpson and ‘Movin’, a song about freedom and thinking of the future for one world. There’s a spiritual thread flowing through the tracks, exemplified by the gospel tune ‘Down in the River’ and humorous lyrics too, as in ‘Never been to Brazil, but I’ve been down at the dog race at Morphetville’ in the track ‘Cuba’. rory mccartney

‘Time’ seems to sit within an increasing canon of jangle-heavy Oz rock, powered by the sound of rattling cymbals and bright guitars. The boy-girl vocals on the hook is the saviour here and damn well holds the entire track together. ‘Time’ is a good use of it, to be a bit lazy.

Bob Dylan ‘The Night We Called It A Day’ Did you know that Dylan released an album of Frank Sinatra covers? Well, he did and it’s not half bad. Dylan’s voice has aged like a fine whiskey and on “The Night We Called It A Day” he gives it plenty of room to move over the relatively sparse instrumentation. Wouldn’t be out of place in the soundtrack of a ‘50s noir film.

Cannibal Ox ‘Harlem Knights’ Fourteen years after the ridiculous masterpiece The Cold Vein dropped, Cannibal Ox is finally back, minus El-P’s production. ‘Harlem Knights’ sees Cannibal Ox at their best, creating stream-ofconsciousness galaxies, as real as they are fanciful, with a flow that’s both confounding and catchy. It may not be the on-trend sound, but it probably is one of the best hip hop tracks of the year.

Iggy Azalea feat. Jennifer Hudson ‘Trouble’ This isn’t a good song. I mean, you’re probably most likely to hear this at 4am after, like, ten Bundy & Colas and you might say “Ugh, this is so GOOD! This like speaks to me!” But at 4am nearly everything speaks to you. In the sober light of day ‘Trouble’ is lyrically weak and painfully underdone. Remember, at 4am you’re nearly always wrong.

the word

on films

WITH MELISSA WELLHAM

I’ll say one thing for Will Smith… Okay, I’ll say many things. Including that he rocked the Fresh Prince style, he appears not to have aged in twenty years and that he’s been in more than his fair share of kick-ass sci-fi movies. But the thing that I was going to say originally, is that no matter how low he goes (like After Earth) he still remains likeable enough to carry a film almost entirely on his own (like Focus).

quote of the issue “It’s about distraction. It’s about focus. The brain is slow and it can’t multitask. Tap him here, take from there.” – Nicky (Will Smith), Focus

Focus

Wyrmwood

Jupiter Ascending

Focus is a slick, fun film with excellent production values. Plus, you know, it has two charismatic lead actors you may have heard of? They go by the names Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Just don’t focus too hard on the story or script. Focus is clever, but it’s not quite clever enough.

Buckets of fake blood, over-thetop violence and a budget of about 50 bucks – one thing that can be said for Wyrmwood is that it doesn’t try to be anything that it’s not. That said, it is never quite sure just what it wanted to be.

The latest film from the Wachowski siblings is exactly what one would expect given what they’ve created since the first Matrix: a visually stunning film that is ridiculously light on coherent, believable plot and full of characters you want to punch in the mouth.

Con artist Nicky (Will Smith) is the best in the game. He’s so good, in fact, that he runs something of a con syndicate, where all the other con artists in New Orleans are working for him. He’s the Con King – which might explain why when he takes inexperienced apprentice Jess (Margot Robbie) under his wing, he ends up conning her. Years later the duo meet again and this time it’s not clear who’s lying to who – or who’s lying to themselves. Focus is a little bit heist thriller, a little bit comedy caper and a little bit romance all mixed together. It’s quite an appealing combination, even if sometimes it feels like the movie doesn’t know what notes it’s trying to hit. The major plot twist is a hard con to believe, but there are a few minor reveals that still surprise – and more than make up for it. Perhaps the biggest flaw is the pacing. Focus is fun, but it’s not quite fast enough – and with too much time to analyse the plot it becomes harder and harder to suspend disbelief. melissa wellham

After a meteor storm triggers a zombie apocalypse Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains (yep, this is an Australian zombie movie), a rag-tag bunch of Aussie no-name stereotypes and a Hilux team up to do what it takes to survive. I wanted to like this film. For what it’s worth, it does depart from the usual formula of depressing outback sagas with the same half-a-dozen actors and does go for something fairly original, at least as far as Australian cinema over the past few decades goes. Some decent and coarsely genuine dialogue is interspersed with a few actually harrowing moments. The trouble is there’s not enough of anything to make it that worthwhile. Part zombie survival, part chase movie and part action-comedy, Wyrmwood doesn’t really live up to any of the genres it is so clearly trying to pay homage to. Props to the Roache-Turne brothers for trying though – too few do or are given the opportunity to. Fans of the likes of Grindhouse, Hobo With a Shotgun and the later Mad Max films may enjoy. As for everyone else, see it for the sake of supporting indie Aussie film. patrick bell

Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones, a young woman living a life of tedium and repetitiveness as a cleaning woman. Little does she know her ancestry dictates her pivotal role in an interplanetary conflict of epic proportions. In swoops Channing Tatum as Caine Wise, a kind of intergalactic warrior to protect the mostly helpless Jupiter. Sean Bean and Eddie Remayne join the cast of seasoned actors (both Tatum and Kunis well and truly proved their acting chops in Foxcatcher and The Black Swan, respectively) as baddies with their own agendas. Themes around over-indulgence and massive consumption are touched on but not well explored (actually, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs did a better job of that). Basically, I watched Jupiter be carted around from one disastrous scenario to the next whilst showing no interest in contributing to her own destiny apart from trying to bone Caine. Aren’t we well past weak female leads in sci-fi and fantasy? We had Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor back in the 1980s. This film is all ogle, no substance. I switched off when a swarm of bees circling Jupiter explained her inherent royalty. Don’t bother. EMMA ROBINSON

@bmamag

Inherent Vice

Project Almanac

“Don’t worry, the thinking comes later”, P.I Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) says in the haze of a freshly lit joint at the beginning of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice (adapted from the Thomas Pynchon novel). Take Doc’s advice – tune in, drop out and let this superb hippy noir wash over you. In 1970s Los Angeles, Doc Sportello takes on a case surrounding the disappearance of a shady billionaire. Running interference with Doc’s investigation are gangs, government officials and Lieutenant Detective Christian F. ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornsen (Josh Brolin).

Look, Project Almanac may not be the worst film about timetravelling teenagers ever made. But it’s no Back To The Future.

In an age when people approach a film like an accountant – ensuring a screenplay adheres to the three act structure and certifying the film’s logic is watertight – it’s refreshing to see Anderson flex his filmmaking muscles with the free-flowing approach of a beat poet on a conspiracy theory binge. Instant gratification is off the table and Anderson weaves a tale that lingers and illuminates long after the credits roll. It’s all wrapped in an oddball blanket, thanks to the work of an incredible cast, which complements the mist of narcotics hanging over the 1970s setting. There’s also a twinge of darkness present between the power struggle of the free thinking hippie movement and the White Anglo Saxon Protestant’s trying to maintain their control. But that’s just one reading of a film that’s packed with layers. Your guess is as good as mine. What a trip.

In Project Almanac, a brilliant high school student David (Jonny Weston) and a group of his friends discover blueprints for a ‘temporal relocation device’ – that is, a time machine. They decide to build it, obviously, because what could possibly go wrong? At first, the students use the time machine to fix their problems and for personal gain – but as the future starts falling apart, they realise they need to travel back to the past to make sure they never invent the machine in the first place. Please imagine a ‘racing against time’ pun here if you so wish. The storyline is thin, the plot twists sparse and you are never surprised by events as they unfold because so much of the story is foreshadowed. The real flaw of Project Almanac, however, is its ‘found footage’ style. Rather than adding a sense of immediacy or artistry to the story, it quickly comes irritating. You kind of want to travel back in time and tell Blair Witch Project creators Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez to never popularize the style. The group chemistry and the cast make this film more likeable than it would be otherwise, but it’s still not worth the brain cells you’ll have to kill in order to go along with the time travel paradoxes. MELISSA WELLHAM

CAMERON WILLIAMS

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the word on dvds

The Fall – Series 2 [Madman]

Whiplash [Universal Sony]

Finding Fela [Madman]

There’s nothing quite so disappointing as a TV show returning for a second series and failing to live up to the standard of the first. Nordic crime thriller The Killing is a prime recent example; the debut season was a phenomenon but season two was rubbish. The Fall – a show so obviously created by BBC Ireland in the shadow of their North Sea neighbours that it almost aches – suffers no such problem, because it was never that good to begin with. For some unfathomable reason, swathes of viewers and critics anointed The Fall as the natural heir to the Nordic crime throne despite there being very little beneath the surface. Sure it had great production values, but what doesn’t these days? And yes, the gimmick of the audience knowing the killer form the very beginning was a great touch, but that’s not enough to sustain an entire show. And for all the talk of Gillian Anderson’s (The X Files) star turn as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, her performance was nothing but measured cadence as a shortcut for gravitas.

As good as Whiplash is – and it’s a very good film – it actively promotes the theory that greatness is a function of agony and pain. The final shot of the film is as unambiguous; the blood, tears, angst, belittling, abuse and anger was all worth, it is saying. It was all worth it because a true musician had been born. One of the greats, possibly, as Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) the musician in question, thinks he can be. And Whiplash is a film obsessed with authenticity and the mythology of paying your dues. It was most likely conceived as a love letter to jazz, but it comes across as indifferent to the genre. Legendary drummer Buddy Rich is a motif, the Charlie Parker vs. Jo Jones vs. flying cymbal story is wheeled out to excuse abhorrent behaviour and Wynton Marsalis is referenced in surname only and even then only briefly. But beyond that this film about a jazz drummer achieving greatness is notably light on any larger context or explanation of jazz.

Fela Kuti is justifiably one of the most important figures in modern music. He pioneered afrobeat and made the genre a worldwide commodity, becoming its unofficial figurehead. Afrobeat was the first truly global version of ‘world music’ – a genre that is easily ghettoised and equally slippery. Without him there’d be no Vampire Weekend. Kuti was a man of extraordinary talent and brutal determination. But he was also an incendiary and divisive public figure in his homeland, Nigeria, where he flirted with political more than once. He was a rebel through and through and was beaten by security forces for his trouble. In the mid-70s he changed his name to include Anikulapo – or ‘death is in my pocket’. He was complicated, to say the least. So if you think capturing Fela Kuti’s life on film sounds like a fools errand, you’d be right. Which explains why the filmmakers of Finding Fela have adopted the easier and far less impressive approach of focussing on the behind the scenes drama of Fela! (the musical).

The first season ended with the already-revealed killerrapist Paul Specter (the Fifty Shades of Grey guy) calling Gibson telling her to stop looking for him. It was over. His killing spree was done. Read a book. Well, funny thing about that – seems he may have been lying. And besides you could hardly have a second series if it didn’t involve the Plod slowly closing the net around the creepy Specter, which is exactly how circumstances proceed. Along the way, a very dodgy teenager fan/victim is thrown into the mix (the babysitter from the first season) with zero explanation and credibility is consistently stretched as viewers are exposed to some of the slowest police investigation in human history. By the time it winds up, you get the feeling everyone is glad to be done of it.

justin hook

Maybe that’s because it’s more of a hostile battle of wills than a love letter to a complex and challenging style of music. Terence Fletcher (J.K Simmons) is a fearsome conductor at prestigious musical school, who often resorts to psychological torture to get his band to hit the right notes. And when they don’t, they run the risk of getting hit by anything within Fletcher’s reach. He adopts the ‘we had to burn the village to save the village’ approach to teaching. In his mind it achieves results. But it breaks the kids. They clearly hate him, possibly respect him, although it’s hard to tell. Anyone beyond Neiman and Fletcher is superfluous, expendable. And despite the compelling central performances, this arm wrestles get tedious after a while – but the film never slows down enough for that to be a major problem. Speed and forward momentum saves the day. justin hook

That’s right, the story of one of the most controversial figures in modern African history is reduced to a bunch of theatre dweebs talking about a stage show intercut with archival footage and talking head interviews. It doesn’t quite capture the raw energy of Fela and often becomes a confusing blancmange. There might not be a surfeit of live Fela footage available, but that doesn’t excuse their replacement by extended live scenes from the stage show. And even if there isn’t, surely scratchy old reel-to-reels would be better than glossy modern stage song and dance numbers. One day there will be a comprehensive doco about Fela Kuti’s life. It will capture his vitality and serpentine energy and explain his complicated revolutionary stance, but it’ll unlikely be anything close to resembling Finding Fela.

justin hook@bmamag

the word

on gigs

J Mascis, Peter Black The Street Theatre Wednesday February 18 Dinosaur Jr founder/guitarist J Mascis had apparently shuffled into Landspeed Records earlier in the afternoon and casually perused the shelves before mumbling a few words to owner Blake. He scrawled a signature on a vinyl copy of Dinosaur Jr’s raucous 1988 album Bug and then quietly walked out into the frenetic throng of Garema Place – a destination spot to match the likes of Times Square in New York and Trafalgar Square in London. Well, maybe not a destination of quite that magnitude but there is nevertheless something quite appealing about picturing one of the great guitarists of the modern age walking the humble streets of Canberra. Mascis has never been much of an attention seeker, much rather saying everything that needs to be said through his music which is often highly intimate even when coated in ear-splitting distortion. Given that he was performing this gig in quiet mode with little more than an acoustic guitar and a few effects pedals, The Street Theatre was an ideal venue. This is because The Street’s management look to accentuating the cosiness of the performance space by carefully taking into account what kind of music is best suited to it. But it came as a pleasant surprise that the noisier aspects of the guitarist’s creativity were also given an airing so that at times it seemed as if the sounds conjured on stage were the work of more than one person. A multi-instrumental effect came about when Mascis casually tapped the right pedal to briefly transform his acoustic guitar into an electric played at raised volume. This was an economy of scale that was highly effective. At times it was as if ‘rock god’ Jimmy Page had taken time-Ons. Following Black’s short, entertaining set headliner Mascis announced himself by shuffling on to the stage like he had at Landspeed Records earlier that day. The sound rewired my ears but in a less painful way than the time Dinosaur Jr performed at the UC Bar in front of an imposing stack of Marshall amps. The most recent Mascis solo record Tied to a Star is very quiet, yet engaging and involved; somewhat like top shelf British folkrock from the likes of Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. I was therefore expecting a gentle strum which he delivered with a level of relaxed restraint similar to the solo records. But Mascis has US hardcore in his genes which resulted in intense sonic assaults in earlier days that would strip the paint from walls. The punk ethos has remained but revealed in a different setting. This was also true for low-key opening act Peter Black, better known as a core member of The Hard-Ons, who had blasted out the good stuff at high volume in The Transit Bar a week earlier. I could hardly believe this was the same person who now casually bantered with the audience and played tasty acoustic nuggets that placed everyday observations in a sparse setting and were just as appealing as the somewhat noisier tastes of The Hardugged in the acoustic, arranged a few pedals and delivered a set in that familiar weathered Neil Young drawl comprised of songs from the solo albums and a smattering of Dinosaur classics like ‘Little Fury Things’ and ‘Get Me’ which sounded great as I slouched in my comfy theatre seat with beer in hand. A suitably ragged take on The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ was simply the icing on the cake. dan bigna

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Shameem, Cherie Kotek Lane The Basement Friday February 20

on gigs

Been to The Basement lately? The venue’s makeover is gobsmacking, with the old décor, including the big spider, replaced by a flash look with autographed guitars and LPs on the walls. While still supporting metal fans, the venue now embraces a wider range of genres. Instead of bone crushing beats and ragged screams, tonight’s show engulfed us in a wave of funk. Local singer Cherie Lane bathed the small crowd in her blues/soul brand of observational songs about life. Losing herself in the moment, head back, eyes closed and swaying rapidly side to side, she either thrashed out four-to-the-floor strumming or used the body of her small guitar for percussion. Her highlight was an extended cover of ‘Fever’, with some blue metal in the vocals. Lane fed off the energy of the audience, engaging them in mini sing-alongs and singing her heart out. Shameem bounced us back to the 80s with a cover of ‘Message in a Bottle’, before bursting into her signature soul/jazz sound. Her voice trickling down like warm honey, she accompanied the songs with either fine arm and hand movements or a jerky little dance. A real presence, her LED bright show featured songs about family, her birthmark and wishing there was time for a bubble bath. ‘Beautiful Soul’ showed off the many facets of her voice while swapping roles with backing vocalist Astrid Ripepi in ‘Other Half of My Heart’ turned that song into a creamy duet. Acknowledging her Iranian roots in both story and language, ‘Chill in the Fire’ opened with words in Persian, haunting like a muezzin’s call against a backdrop of shimmering cymbals. There was audience participation in the closer ‘Under One Sun’, with help on the chorus from one punter (go Carlo!). RORY McCARTNEY

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Blindness The Street Theatre Sunday February 22

on gigs

Often when you look back at a gig you reduce your appraisal to whether something was good or bad, an entirely value-based qualitative judgement of whatever you saw. “Oh yeah, that was pretty shit” is a common example of this type of thinking. Sometimes, however, it is more useful to look at not the quality of the gig but instead what the gig actually was.

PHOTO BY MEGAN LEAHY

For Blindness, the imposing Theatre 3 at The Street Theatre was enveloped in darkness. As complete a darkness as could be mustered with music still able to be produced. This challenges many of the standard constructs of going to a gig – of seeing a band without seeing a band. Eventually, eyes adjusted and the shapes on stage slowly revealed themselves, to become people, barely. Shoeb Ahmed kicked off proceedings with off-kilter electronica, at times fragile, at others powerful. Raus knocked it up a gear, with four to the floor kick drums making their first (but not last) appearance and with the room being enveloped in ever-changing plays on similar melodic themes. Alphamale’s processed violin drones followed shortly, a by-product of sampling and altering a short loop over the process of a longer period of time, which created a cacophony of noise that slowly enveloped and escaped the room. Ben Andrews’ ASSAD was notionally the headliner on the night and given said billing he tried to make the place shake. Literally shake. Loud rhythms and synths pummelled the room into submission, making the lack of sight a fair swap for the abundance of sound. J.Amir, also from Melbourne, hit the stage last and played what was probably the most conventional set of the afternoon. Playing a set of houseinspired dance music, Amir got the crowd onto their feet, albeit carefully so given the conditions. CODY ATKINSON

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on gigs

PHOTO BY MARK TURNER

Cold Chisel The Royal Theatre Thursday February 26 Their first gig in three years was billed as Cold Chisel’s warm up show for their new tour. Canberra fans, whose enthusiastic response resulted in tickets being sold out within 30 minutes of going on sale, were rewarded with two long sets. The well-loved opener ‘Standing on the Outside’ was followed with some unknown songs. The impression that these were newbies was reinforced by Jimmy Barnes’ admission that the band was looking forward to returning to the studio to lay down a new album. “Cutting their teeth” on a few new songs, as he put it. There was a long, lazy intro to ‘Saturday Night’, with the song boosted by underbelly sax from a guest instrumentalist, while a specialist harmonica player added some blast furnace quality flare to ‘Shipping Steel’. Barnes was constantly pacing the stage, doing his caged tiger moves and shaking hands with punters the whole show through. However, Chisel benefited from having two stars: Barnes with his controlled screech and his compatriot Ian Moss. Moss added not only his dazzling lead guitar, but his mellower tones either complemented Barnes so well, or took the lead in several songs. While Chisel crowds tend to be seated these days, those on the flat area of the venue jumped up at song one and stayed that way. The band’s music had this irrepressible dance vibe, with punters reliving their youth. Even a security guy was getting into it, with the lighting technical bopping along too. Caught in the magnetic pull of this iconic band, the tiered seats were full of smiling faces, singing along to ‘Flame Trees’, ‘When the War is Over’ and ‘Breakfast at Sweethearts’. Classic gold! RORY McCARTNEY

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on gigs

Zeahorse, Primary Colours, Agency The Phoenix Pub Thursday February 26 After getting pelted by rain on the way in, I suffer the penalty of missing openers Agency. This is a bad thing, because Agency is a good band, one that’s worth catching where possible. Primary Colours have been around for about a year now, playing their first gig at You Are Here last year. In that time, they’ve matured into one of the more exciting live bands in town. At times they blur the gap between metronomic and messy, the fringes of dance and postpunk, which are some pretty good areas to be working in. Jordan Rodger gets some very interesting sounds from his six-string and the contrast between Rodger’s and Gus McGrath’s vocals seems to work just right. I’ll throw it here, for want of a better place: what’s the go with punters leaving before the touring headliner plays these days? The last few gigs I’ve been to have had people leave before the final band even hits the stage. Is it a lateness of show thing, or CBR pride, or an Action Buses problem? Send your answers to ihonestlycoudnotgiveafuckyoushouldstayforthewholeshow@gmail. com.

PHOTO BY MEGAN LEAHY

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Zeahorse are a big bunch of fun. It’s not like watching the public denouement of civilisation’s greatest achievements, but that’s a bit hard to do when you’re wielding a guitar or drumsticks. Instead, they play 90s inspired rock and they do it pretty well. At least well enough for a punter in the crowd to throw the rock hand-horn about two songs in. Zeahorse have pretty much all you’d want from a rock band: chunky guitar riffs, relatable influences, the odd guitar solo and catchy vocals. Perfect for a sneaky bit of pwnage on a rainy Thursday night. CODY ATKINSON

the word

on gigs

Soundwave Sydney Olympic Park Sat –Sun Feb –Mar 28 –1 This year Soundwave was spread over two days. Accordingly, timetable clashes were minimised, it was a more relaxed affair – quite a task given the amount of black denim and hair on display – but it also dragged a little. Nature threw its best in the form of torrential set-stopping storms and blistering heat, but Soundwave still came out on top. To say it was an eclectic line-up is an understatement, although it did stick pretty hard and fast to the – err – hard and fast. Recently reformed Faith No More owned the main stage on Saturday. With a new album (Sol Invictus) due in May, this was no nostalgia trip. They were tight and flexible – halting ‘Midlife Crisis’ for two minutes for the sweet lullaby ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ transformed form an okay hit into a joyous full throated anthem in the live setting. Beforehand, Soundgarden put in a proficient greatest hits type set – nothing more, nothing less. Though it touched on their recent King Animal comeback album (‘A Thousand Days Before’ is a great stutter-y drone track) the biggest cheers were reserved for the classics – ‘Spoonman’, ‘Black Hole Sun’, ‘Rusty Cage’ and ‘Birth Ritual’, a song in the cupboard since 1991. Earlier, Cedric and Omar (At The Drive In, The Mars Volta) roadtested their new band, Antemasque. Though it was fun seeing how far Cedric has now morphed into the late Rob Tyner (MC5) their undeniable energy wasn’t matched by memorable songs. Fear Factory suffered through a pretty tragic sound mix that accentuated percussion way too much. It splintered ears, in the bad way. Steel Panther’s “are they for real?” antics were an early highlight for especially for mammary-obsessed man-children. Of which there were plenty. That aside, their riotous non-PC winner take all approach to glam rock (‘Asian Hooker’, ‘Gloryhole’) was a welcome burst of colour on a pretty drab weekend, fashion-wise at least. Incubus excited a few but seemed well out of place. There were extended bongo solos. Nuff said. No danger of that happening at a Ministry set, where Al Jourgensen sang about his cock (‘Hail to His Majesty’). Though not as tantalisingly dangerous as they would like to be, Ministry can still lock in ferocious grooves as they did on ‘90s alt-rock anthems ’N.W.O’. and ‘Just One Fix’. Sunday promised 100% less bongo solos but delivered 100% more pathetic broken-beer bottle cutting antics. Swings, roundabouts. The cutting was courtesy of Marilyn Manson, as he tried in vain to draw blood on his wrist and shock “the kids”, who were having none of it. Pure pantomime is the best you could say about this bedraggled stale nostalgia. Nostalgia was also served up lumpy at the Billy Corgan Smashing Pumpkins Revival Bonanza. The hits came early (‘1979’, ‘Cherub Rock’) but it was a bland and empty set. Much like Slash and Myles Kennedy, who – though playing the part of Axl Rose on ‘Paradise City’, ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ and ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ – didn’t try to impersonate Indiana’s least-favourite son. As blistering as Slash is, we were just waiting for the riffs. It seemed meek.

PHOTOS BY MARK TURNER

Judas Priest on the other hand delivered exactly what we demanded. Though I speak from outside metal circles, they were a festival highlight. Now settled into a relatively stable line-up with Rob Halford, Ian Hill and Glenn Tipton as the remaining classic members, Judas Priest don’t mess around. New material from 2014’s Redeemer of Souls sat easily next British Steel classics like ‘Metal Gods’ and ‘Breaking the Law’. Unsurprisingly, Halford paraded a Harley during ‘Hell Bent for Leather’ by which time an eager– if minor stage – crowd needed little encouragement to go bonkers. JUSTIN HOOK

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The Necks The Street Theatre Saturday February 28 The Necks approach live performance with an intuitive sense of what they about to play. Their concerts are fully improvised which makes for an exciting experience that is enhanced by the element of surprise. The three piece comprising piano, bass and percussion promote a freedom of expression that transcends pre-existing shapes and structures thereby transforming the comfortably familiar. On this occasion The Necks began their first set with a loose combination of complementary sounds with a slow-building trajectory familiar to long term fans. Pianist Chris Abrahams worked through a small, repeating motif to which his band members gradually attached themselves. Bassist Lloyd Swanton caressed his instrument to conjure an evocative and haunting atmosphere that was embellished by Tony Buck’s cymbal shimmer. When absorbed in its entirety the effect was something akin to the kind of creepy music The Necks had conjured on the soundtrack to the equally creepy movie The Boys. Just when the audience had settled into an immersive combination of sounds that swirled throughout the room, the music slowly but determinedly increased in volume so that by the end of the piece, multiple instrumental abstractions coalesced into a frenetic clamour that reminded me a bit of the aural whiteout on the coda to Sonic Youth’s ‘Mote’. The intermission brought on the need for another drink which assisted in further opening up the senses for the second set which was a tad less elusive as Abrahams established an almost hummable melodic pattern on the piano at the onset and his companions embellished this with alluring washes of bass and percussion. . DAN BIGNA

the word

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Renegades of Rhythm Transit Bar Wednesday March 4 Saying Afrika Bambaataa is an imposing figure in the history of hip hop is like saying the sun sets in the west – it’s so well accepted that it barely registers upon hearing. Sometimes it takes a bit more effort to realise the true value of these accepted norms, like climbing up a mountain in the late afternoon to see the sun go down. For Bambaataa’s legacy, this show was his sunset on a mountaintop. Renegades of Rhythm was presented as part-historical document, part-underground party. It’s the rare show that encouraged you to both dance your arse off and get smarter. DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist have been doing mixes together for quite a while, over 15 years if memory serves. They are, to put it bluntly, very good at what they do. This showed immediately on the night – simultaneous mixing, beat juggling, on-point scratching. This wasn’t just two guys playing records, it was a transformative work in itself. It all kicked off with the key touchstones of Golden Era hip hop, the music of Parliament/Funkadelic and James Brown, soul and funk music hitting left, right and centre. Soul and funk gave way to African and Latin influences, which in turn ceded to flirtations with disco. Earlier electronic music, such as Kraftwerk, slowly came to the fore, showing one of Bambaataa’s key innovations to the world of hip hop. Shadow and Cut Chemist closed the show the only way that they truly could, with a look at the scene that Bambaataa himself was a part of and his own music.

PHOTO BY BEN DAVIES

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Bambaataa was on the ground floor of a cultural revolution and he was always determined to push it his way. With Renegades of Rhythm, Shadow and Chemist served vision and then some. CODY ATKINSON

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Wed Mar 18 - Thurs Mar 19 Listings are a free community service. Email editorial@bmamag.com to have your events appear each issue. wednesday march 18 Art Exhibitions Diplomacy: Translations in Glass

Opening hours 10am – 4pm. Wed Sun. Free. 11 Feb - 16 Apr. CANBERRA GLASSWORKS

Craft ACT Exhibition Openings

3 Art Exhibitions grand openings. Feb 12. 6pm. Exhibitions run from Feb 13 – 28 Mar. CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Taking Liberties

By Kai Wasikowska. 10am-4pm TuesFri. 12pm-4pm weekends. Free. 26 Feb-22 Mar. PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

Blaze Nine

Showcase of emerging Canberra Artists. Opening 6pm 20th Feb. Continues until March 28. Wed-Fri 11amCANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

China: Eighteen Days 1978

Seeking Humanity

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Freehand

Works by Ann Thomson. Free. Exhibition 20 Feb-4 Apr. Opening 19 Feb at 6pm. DRILL HALL GALLERY NISHI GALLERY

Comedy

Art exhibition. 14-29 Mar. 11am - 3pm.

Out West

By Stephen Best. 10am-4pm Tues-Fri. 12pm-4pm weekends. Free. 26 Feb-22 Mar. PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

Max & Ivan

Host Raw Comedy ACT State Final. 8.30pm. $26.

Passerine

With Mondecreen and EHRA. 8pm. $10 at the door. TRANSIT BAR

James Anthony

Live music. 6.30pm.

THE LOFT AT DUXTON

On The Town Playtime

Top 40, Dance, RnB. 10pm. Free entry. TREEHOUSE BAR

4some Thursdays Free entry.

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

ANU ARTS CENTRE

Live Music

Something Different

Film

CMC Wednesdays Presents Soapbox

You Are Here Festival

Flickerfest

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

DENDY CINEMA

8pm. $5/$7/$10.

Short films. 7pm. Tickets $16.50/$20. Info at 62218900.

18 – 22 March. Info at youareherecanberra.com.au. CIVIC SQUARE

Life Drawing Workshop

Something Different

Live Music

Every Thursday. 1pm. Price info 0414 271 311.

BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT!

Dos Locos

Tarot Card Reading

8pm.

Marcel Marceau “Out of silence”

CIVIC SQUARE

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE

Quick Fix

By Danny Wild. Opening 6pm, 19 Mar. Continues until 29 Mar. Wed-Sun. 11am-5pm. Free.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

By Bill Lucas. 10am-4pm Tues-Fri. 12pm-4pm weekends. Free. 26 Feb-22 Mar.

Opening 26th 7pm. Exhibition from 26th Feb to 19th Mar.

Art Exhibitions

Cool Combo

THE PHOENIX BAR

PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

thursday march 19

You Are Here Festival

18 – 22 March. Info at youareherecanberra.com.au.

Trivia Tranny Trivia

Questions with Glamour. 8pm. Free.

Live music. 9pm. Free.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Horsehunter

BELCONNEN COMMUNITY CENTRE

5pm-7pm. Free entry. Must book. Call Marisol on 0404 364 820 POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

With Space Bong & Machina Genova. 9pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

Thursday Jazz

Daniel Hunter Quartet. 7.30pm. $10/$15. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

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ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Fri Mar 20 - Tues Mar 24 friday march 20 Art Exhibitions The Carved Line

Art exhibition. Opens Fri Mar 20 at 5.30pm - Sun Apr 12. Meet the artist 29 Mar 3pm. Workshops Mar 8 BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Seeking Humanity

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Live Music Nik Rigby/The Surrogates

5pm afternoon session/10pm Band. Free. KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Slow Turismo/Tully on Tully 8pm. $10.

TRANSIT BAR

Kollaps

With Marc Robertson, Leisure Suit Lenny, Alison’s Disease & Cockbelch. $10. THE BASEMENT

Raised as Wolves Punk Rock. 8pm.

MAGPIES CITY CLUB

Caitlin Harnett/Josh RennieHynes/Liam Gerner

Taking Liberties

By Kai Wasikowska. 10am-4pm TuesFri. 12pm-4pm weekends. Free. 26 Feb-22 Mar. PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

Blaze Nine

Showcase of emerging Canberra Artists. Opening 6pm 20th Feb. Continues until March 28. Wed-Fri 11am-

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

China: Eighteen Days 1978

By Bill Lucas. 10am-4pm Tues-Fri. 12pm-4pm weekends. Free. 26 Feb-22 Mar. PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

Quick Fix

By Danny Wild. Opening 6pm, 19 Mar. Continues until 29 Mar. Wed-Sun. 11am-5pm. Free.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Freehand

Works by Ann Thomson. Free. Exhibition 20 Feb-4 Apr. Opening 19 Feb at 6pm.

Talks

You Are Here Festival’s ‘Noted’

Lecture on Australian Artists

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

ANU SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

Q&A with writing experts. Sat 1pm & 3.30pm. Sun 2.30pm.

sunday march 22 Live Music

Fairweather and Tuckson by Terence Maloon. 3pm. $5/$10.

You Are Here Festival’s ‘Noted’ Q&A with writing experts. Sat 1pm & 3.30pm. Sun 2.30pm. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Irish Jam Session

Traditional Irish musicians in the pub from late afternoon. Free. KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

You Are Here Presents Primal Screen. 8pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

Nick Rigby/Delaney’s Duo Live music. 3pm/6.30pm. THE DUXTON

On The Town Free Pool at Transit

monday march 23 Film Cult Classics: The Cabin in the Woods Tickets $12 at dendy.com.au. DENDY CINEMA

Live Music The Bootleg Sessions Live music. 8pm.

Free pool tables. From 2pm.

THE PHOENIX BAR

DRILL HALL GALLERY

TRANSIT BAR

Cool Combo

Something Different

NISHI GALLERY

You Are Here Festival

DJ Yella, The Alkaholiks, Spice 1, Curtis Young & Eazy-E3. 7pm. $56.10 from oztix.

Art exhibition. 14-29 Mar. 11am - 3pm.

Out West

By Stephen Best. 10am-4pm Tues-Fri. 12pm-4pm weekends. Free. 26 Feb-22 Mar.

18 – 22 March. Info at youareherecanberra.com.au.

Straight Outta Compton Tour

MONKEYBAR

tuesday march 24

CIVIC SQUARE

PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

Film

Paces

Live Music

Courtyard Cinema

MR WOLF

Special K

A. BAKER

Folk rock. 8pm. Tickets at oztix. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Live music.

Gib Jon

10.30pm. Free.

THE LOFT AT DUXTON

Coda Conduct

8pm.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

On The Town

Butter Side Up Canberra Launch. Doors 8pm. Tickets $10 at door.

Southside Soiree

Fire On The Hill

Board games. Silent trivia. Poetry readings. Local photographers. Free. Book online at politbar.co. POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

Ministry of Sound Clubbers Guide

Featuring Krunk! $10 before 11pm. ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

Surgin aka Steve Lising DJ. 9pm. Free Entry. TREEHOUSE BAR

Something Different You Are Here Festival

18 – 22 March. Info at youareherecanberra.com.au. CIVIC SQUARE

saturday march 21 Art Exhibitions Diplomacy: Translations in Glass

Opening hours 10am – 4pm. Wed Sun. Free. 11 Feb - 16 Apr. CANBERRA GLASSWORKS

Craft ACT Exhibition Openings

3 Art Exhibitions grand openings. Feb 12. 6pm. Exhibitions run from Feb 13 – 28 Mar. CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Film: Bringing Up Baby. 7.30pm.

TRANSIT BAR

Live music. 9.30pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

The Bon Scotts 8pm.

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

VAMP

With Kollaps, Sounds Like Winter & 3 DJs. Tickets TBA. Time TBA. MAGPIES CITY CLUB

Josh Veneris 8pm.

THE LOFT AT DUXTON

On The Town Love Saturdays

With Runamark. $10 before 12am. ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

Ladies Race Day Official After Party

Race day celebrations continue with SIC DJ’s. 6pm. $10 Entry. TREEHOUSE BAR

Something Different Fash N’ Treasure

10am - 3pm. 7 Feb, 21 Mar, 11 Apr, 9 May, 13 June, 8 Aug, 5 Sep & 7 Nov. Entry $3. EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

You Are Here Festival

18 – 22 March. Info at youareherecanberra.com.au. CIVIC SQUARE

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ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Tues Mar 24- Sun Mar 29 Freehand

Karaoke

Theatre

Live Music

Karaoke Love

Black Diggers

Finn

Works by Ann Thomson. Free. Exhibition 20 Feb-4 Apr. Opening 19 Feb at 6pm.

CHISHOLM TAVERN

Cool Combo

Karaoke. 9pm. Free entry. TRANSIT BAR

Karaoke on Demand

8pm. $5. Info at politbar.co. POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

Live Music Whiskey & Blues Tuesdays

With Key Grip & The Guitar Cases. 7.30pm. $10. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Trivia Twotonmurphy.com Presents

The Phoenix Quiz Night. Christo & Raph’s Lonely Hearts Trivia. 7.30pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

wednesday march 25

25-28 Mar. Bookings at canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700. CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Trivia Tranny Trivia

Questions with Glamour. 8pm. Free. POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

thursday march 26

Frambed by Laura Moore. Love Shack by Yiorgo Yiannopoulos. That Jumping Guy by Louise Baker. 6pm. PHOTOACCESS MANUKA

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

The Carved Line

Art exhibition. Opens Fri Mar 20 at 5.30pm - Sun Apr 12. Meet the artist 29 Mar 3pm. Workshops Mar 8 BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Blaze Nine

10.30pm. Free.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Ivoj Nob

With Yoyo & Mulkmulk, Mossi Vs. Flynn & Hello Hello Vs. 3verest. 9pm. $10

HELLENIC CLUB (WODEN)

BandJava

6pm. $10 entry.

DJ Speakerlove

Patrick Ryan

THE LOFT AT DUXTON

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

6.30pm.

THE LOFT AT DUXTON

8pm.

Flava R&B

Cocktails, Rhythm and Rhymes with DJ Nu, DJ Adam & DJ Nate. 9pm. Free Entry.

Psychroptic

With Goatwhore, Disentomb, Ouroboros, I Exist. Doors 8pm. $28.60 + bf. THE BASEMENT

CMC Wednesdays Presents The Bombadils

With Teddy Conrick & Briony Wills. 8pm. $5/$7/$10. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

8pm.

THE LOFT AT DUXTON

Skin & Bones Headline. Supported by Thank You MA’AM DJ’s. From 9pm. $10 Entry. TREEHOUSE BAR

Burlesque Idol

TREEHOUSE BAR

$30 for show. $75 for Gold Pass. $200 for Platinum. Details on theabbey.com. au. 6.30pm.

Top 40, Dance, RnB. 10pm. Free entry.

Theatre

Love Saturdays

4some Thursdays

Black Diggers

On The Town Playtime

TREEHOUSE BAR

Free entry.

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

Shaken & Stirred

Burlesque. 7.30pm. $20. Bookings at politbar.co.

25-28 Mar. Bookings at canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700. CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

saturday march 28 Art Exhibitions

CANBERRA GLASSWORKS

Live Music

DJ Norm

Thank You MA’AM

8pm. $15/$20.

Quick Fix

NISHI GALLERY

8pm. $18/$20.

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

$15 before 11pm.

Tarot Card Reading

Art exhibition. 14-29 Mar. 11am - 3pm.

THE PHOENIX BAR

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Diplomacy: Translations in Glass

Cool Combo

Live music. 9.30pm.

On The Town

Every Thursday. 1pm. Price info 0414 271 311.

DRILL HALL GALLERY

Sheriff

Jessica Stuart Few & Marta Pacek

Life Drawing Workshop

Works by Ann Thomson. Free. Exhibition 20 Feb-4 Apr. Opening 19 Feb at 6pm.

TREEHOUSE BAR

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

7pm.

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun.

Freehand

Skin & Bones

Tom Vincent Trio

POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Heuristic

On The Town

Seeking Humanity

By Danny Wild. Opening 6pm, 19 Mar. Continues until 29 Mar. Wed-Sun. 11am-5pm. Free.

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

UV Paint Rave #3

Something Different

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Winterbourne

With PJ Michael Band. 9pm.

Showcase of emerging Canberra Artists. Opening 6pm 20th Feb. Continues until March 28. Wed-Fri 11amCANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Live Music

8pm. $10.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA

THE PHOENIX BAR

NISHI GALLERY

Brass Knuckle Brass Band

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

The Timbers

Craft ACT Exhibition Openings

Art exhibition. 14-29 Mar. 11am - 3pm.

Live music. 8pm.

Night At The Museum: Joy

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

DRILL HALL GALLERY

5pm afternoon session/10pm Band. Free.

9pm. Free.

Opening hours 10am – 4pm. Wed Sun. Free. 11 Feb - 16 Apr.

Art exhibition. Opens Fri Mar 20 at 5.30pm - Sun Apr 12. Meet the artist 29 Mar 3pm. Workshops Mar 8

Fire & Ice/Oscar

Bon Jovi tribute band. With Deathcap Mushroom covering INXS. Tickets at moshtix.

Diplomacy: Translations in Glass

The Carved Line

THE BASEMENT

Exhibition Opening: Three Exhibitions

Charles & Dave

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

With I Am Duckeye & Knights of the Spatchcock. 8pm. $10 at oztix.com.au or $15 at door.

TRANSIT BAR

Live Music

3 Art Exhibitions grand openings. Feb 12. 6pm. Exhibitions run from Feb 13 – 28 Mar.

Sydonia & Barrel of Monkeys

Art Exhibitions

CANBERRA GLASSWORKS

Rhythm & Blues. 9pm. Free.

BELCONNEN COMMUNITY CENTRE

5pm-7pm. Free entry. Must book. Call Marisol on 0404 364 820 POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

Theatre

Opening hours 10am – 4pm. Wed Sun. Free. 11 Feb - 16 Apr.

Craft ACT Exhibition Openings

27 Mar 10am-2pm. 30 Mar-2 Apr 10am-4pm. 13 Apr-16 Mar 10am4pm. 17 Apr 10am. 27 Apr-30 Apr 10am-4pm. EMBASSY OF FINLAND

Poison Ivy

Amateur Pole Dancing Competition. $30. THE BASEMENT

Canberra Harvest Festival 2015

Entry is only a $2 donation, and the event runs from 2pm-6pm. For more information visit ecoaction.c CANBERRA ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY RESOURCE CENTRE

Theatre

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Arja Valimaki

Something Different

Blaze Nine

Showcase of emerging Canberra Artists. Opening 6pm 20th Feb. Continues until March 28. Wed-Fri 11am-

Art Exhibitions

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

Black Diggers

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

friday march 27

With Project M. $10 before 12am.

3 Art Exhibitions grand openings. Feb 12. 6pm. Exhibitions run from Feb 13 – 28 Mar.

Black Diggers

25-28 Mar. Bookings at canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.

THE ABBEY

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Seeking Humanity

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Quick Fix

By Danny Wild. Opening 6pm, 19 Mar. Continues until 29 Mar. Wed-Sun. 11am-5pm. Free.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

25-28 Mar. Bookings at canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.

sunday march 29 Live Music Ella Hunt/Matt Dent 3pm/6.30pm. THE DUXTON

Irish Jam Session

Traditional Irish musicians in the pub from late afternoon. Free. KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Jeff Martin

6pm. $38.90. TRANSIT BAR

Sunday Sangria & Sounds With Sacred Cow. 3pm. $10. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

@bmamag

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Mon Mar 30 - Wed Apr 8 monday march 30

wednesday april 1

Art Exhibitions

Arja Valimaki

Groundrush

National Folk Festival 2015

Nirvana Tribute Show

EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

THE BASEMENT

2-6 April. Early Bird tickets closing Jan 31. folkfestival.org.au.

Opens 6pm Apr 10 - May 16. Tues - Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 10am-4pm.

Film

Opening hours 10am – 4pm. Wed Sun. Free. 11 Feb - 16 Apr.

Tarot Card Reading

The Carved Line

POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

EMBASSY OF FINLAND

Cult Classics: True Romance Tickets $12 at dendy.com.au. DENDY CINEMA

Live Music CIT Presents The Bootleg Sessions

With Infinite Winter, Foreign Kings, Monster Piece & Jessica Horton. 8pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

tuesday march 31 Art Exhibitions The Carved Line

Art exhibition. Opens Fri Mar 20 at 5.30pm - Sun Apr 12. Meet the artist 29 Mar 3pm. Workshops Mar 8 BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Comedy Schnitz & Giggles 7.30pm. $10.

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Film

Diplomacy: Translations in Glass CANBERRA GLASSWORKS

Art exhibition. Opens Fri Mar 20 at 5.30pm - Sun Apr 12. Meet the artist 29 Mar 3pm. Workshops Mar 8 BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

8pm. $10.

SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Playtime

Top 40, Dance, RnB. 10pm. Free entry.

THE PHOENIX BAR

Something Different Perception Deception Exhibition

Hands-on exhibits to surprise your senses and challenge your mind. 9am5pm. Until May 2015. Admissio QUESTACON

thursday april 2

EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

Something Different Billie Holiday’s 100th Birthday

friday april 3

The Drill Hall Gallery celebrates Billie Holiday’s 100th Birthday. 12pm. Free. ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

2-6 April. Early Bird tickets closing Jan 31. folkfestival.org.au.

With Yoko Oh No & Rather Be Dead. 9pm. $5.

2-6 April. Early Bird tickets closing Jan 31. folkfestival.org.au.

5pm-7pm. Free entry. Must book. Call Marisol on 0404 364 820

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Lara Palmer

National Folk Festival 2015

Something Different

Live Music

sunday april 5

TREEHOUSE BAR

Seeking Humanity

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun.

The Somedays

On The Town

27 Mar 10am-2pm. 30 Mar-2 Apr 10am-4pm. 13 Apr-16 Mar 10am4pm. 17 Apr 10am. 27 Apr-30 Apr 10am-4pm.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Various bands performing covers of Nirvana classics. 8pm. $15.

monday april 6

National Folk Festival 2015

Live Music

EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

National Folk Festival 2015

saturday april 4

2-6 April. Early Bird tickets closing Jan 31. folkfestival.org.au. EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

Art Exhibitions Groundrush

Opens 6pm Apr 10 - May 16. Tues - Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 10am-4pm. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

tuesday april 7 Karaoke Karaoke Love

Diplomacy: Translations in Glass

Karaoke. 9pm. Free entry. TRANSIT BAR

Opening hours 10am – 4pm. Wed Sun. Free. 11 Feb - 16 Apr.

Karaoke on Demand

8pm. $5. Info at politbar.co.

CANBERRA GLASSWORKS

POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

Print By Numbers

By Daniel Savage. Opens 6pm Apr 2 Apr 12. Wed - Sun 11am-5pm.

Theatre

By Daniel Savage. Opens 6pm Apr 2 Apr 12. Wed - Sun 11am-5pm.

The Carved Line

Bell Shakespeare Company. 7-18 Apr. Tickets and information at canberratheatrecentre.com.au

Karaoke Love

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

TRANSIT BAR

Arja Valimaki

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Courtyard Cinema

Film: Ghostbusters. 7.30pm. A. BAKER

Karaoke Karaoke. 9pm. Free entry.

Art Exhibitions Print By Numbers

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Art exhibition. Opens Fri Mar 20 at 5.30pm - Sun Apr 12. Meet the artist 29 Mar 3pm. Workshops Mar 8

As You Like It

THE PLAYHOUSE

wednesday april 8

27 Mar 10am-2pm. 30 Mar-2 Apr 10am-4pm. 13 Apr-16 Mar 10am4pm. 17 Apr 10am. 27 Apr-30 Apr 10am-4pm.

Seeking Humanity

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun.

Art Exhibitions

Trivia

EMBASSY OF FINLAND

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Impact Comics Present Nerd Trivia

Live Music

18 Mar - 12 Apr. Meet the artist 20 Mar at 4pm. Opening hours 10am-4pm. Tues-Sun.

Wallflower

National Folk Festival 2015

THE PHOENIX BAR

With Mondecreen. 9pm. $5.

Karaoke on Demand

8pm. $5. Info at politbar.co. POLIT BAR & LOUNGE

With Joel and Ali. 7.30pm.

THE PHOENIX BAR

Seeking Humanity

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

2-6 April. Early Bird tickets closing Jan 31. folkfestival.org.au. EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

OUT

aPR 1

FRANK TURNER BETH AND BEN SUPER BEST FRIENDS STICK TO YOUR GUNS ...and more!

facebook.com/bmamagazine

FIRST CONTACT SIDE A: BMA band profile

Aaron Peacey 0410381306 band.afternoon.shift@ gmail.com.au Adam Hole 0421023226

Afternoon Shift 0402055314 Amphibian Sound PA Clare 0410308288 Annie & The Armadillos Annie (02) 61611078/ 0422076313 Aria Stone sax/flute/lute/ harmonica, singer-songwriter Aria 0411803343

Sparrow-Folk Where did your band name come from? We’re named after those annoying little birds that get in everywhere…and they are always watching. And the folk bit is to make sure people know we are not actually real birds. Group members? Cathy Crowley (vocals and ukulele) and Juliet Moody (vocals, ukulele, banana shaker, false moustache and general beats). Describe your sound: It’s Madonna meets John Denver meets Flight of The Conchords. Who are your influences, musical or otherwise? Our creative inspirations are Doug Anthony Allstars and Lady Gaga, but our material is definitely influenced by people watching. What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had whilst performing? It’s a toss up between the time we performed for Malcolm Turnbull or being attacked by a plague of moths whilst performing on the back of a truck at some crazy festival. Of what are you proudest so far? Introducing the world to a brand new musical genre, Glam Folk. What are your plans for the future? To recruit at least one other band to the “Glam Folk” genre.

Australian Songwriters Association Keiran (02) 62310433 Back to the Eighties Ty Emerson 0418 544 014 Backbeat Drivers Steve 0422733974 backbeatdrivers.com Bat Country Communion, The Mel 0400405537 Birds Love Fighting Gangbusters/DIY shows-bookings@ birdslovefighting.com Black Label Photography Kingsley 0438351007 blacklabelphotography.net Bridge Between, The Cam 0431550005 Capital Dub Style Reggae/dub events Rafa 0406647296 Chris Harland Blues Band, The Chris 0418 490 649 chrisharlandbluesband @gmail.com Cole Bennetts Photography 0415982662 Danny V Danny 0413502428

What makes you laugh? People laughing at our songs… when they are about them.

Dawn Theory Nathan 0402845132 Danny 0413502428

What pisses you off? Guitar maestros...that is one annoying instrument....everybody says so.

Dorothy Jane Band, The Dorothy Jane 0411065189 dorothy-jane@dorothyjane.com

What about the local scene would you change? The chips.

Drumassault Dan 0406 375 997

What are your upcoming gigs? National Folk Festival then on to Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Comedy Festival and then off to Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Contact info: thenest@sparrow-folk.com, sparrow-folk. com, facebook.com/twoukesonesong

Feldons, The 0407 213 701 FeralBlu Danny 0413502428 Fire on the Hill Aaron 0410381306 Lachlan 0400038388 Fourth Degree Vic 0408477020 Gareth Dailey DJ/Electronica Gareth 0414215885 Groovalicious Corporate/ weddings/private functions 0448995158

In The Flesh Scott 0410475703 Itchy Triggers Alex 0414838480 Jenn Pacor Singer-songwriter avail. for originals/covers 0405618630 Johnny Roadkill Paulie 0408287672 paulie_mcmillan@live.com.au Kayo Marbilus facebook.com/kayomarbilus1 Kurt’s Metalworx (PA) 0417025792 Los Chavos Latin/ska/reggae Rafa 0406647296 Andy 0401572150 Missing Zero Hadrian 0424721907 hadrian.brand@live.com.au Moots Huck 0419630721 Morning After, The Covers band Anthony 0402500843 Mornings Jordan 0439907853 MuShu Jack 0414292567 mushu_band@hotmail.com Obsessions 0450 960 750 obsessions@grapevine.com.au Painted Hearts, The Peter (02) 62486027 Polka Pigs Ian (02) 62315974 Rafe Morris 0416322763 Redletter Ben 0421414472 Redsun Rehearsal Studio Ralph 0404178996/ (02) 61621527 Rug, The Jol 0417273041 Sewer Sideshow Huck 0419630721 Simone & The Soothsayers Singing teacher Simone 62304828 Sorgonian Twins, The Mark 0428650549 Soundcity Rehearsal Studio Andrew 0401588884 STonKA Jamie 0422764482 stonka2615@gmail.com Strange Hour Events Dan 0411112075 Super Best Friends Greg greg@gunfever.com.au System Addict Jamie 0418398556 Tegan Northwood (Singing Teacher) 0410 769 144

Guy The Sound Guy Live & Studio Sound Engineer 0400585369 guy@guythesoundguy.com

Top Shelf Colin 0408631514

Haunted Attics band@hauntedatticsmusic.com

Zoopagoo zoopagoo@gmail.com

Undersided, The Baz 0408468041

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