BMA Magazine 429 Nov 06 2013 by BMA Magazine

AD SPACE

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

AD SPACE

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

AD SPACE

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

AD SPACE

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

AD SPACE

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

Clive Palmer wins seat of Fairfax, credits ironic endorsement in BMA Issue #425. #429NOVEMBER6 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

Advertising Manager Scott Johnston T: (02) 6257 4360 E: sales@bmamag.com

Editor Ashley Thomson

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

Accounts Manager Fahim Shahnoor

T: (02) 6247 4816 E: accounts@bmamag.com

Sub-Editor & Social Media Manager Jeremy Stevens Graphic Design Chris Halloran Film Editor Melissa Wellham NEXT ISSUE 430 OUT NOV 20 EDITORIAL DEADLINE NOV 11 ADVERTISING DEADLINE NOV 14 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.

Love Is Art is a product that came swishing into the BMA Magazine inboxes a couple of weeks ago, and it has to be researched to be believed. Founded by South African-born artist Jeremy Brown, Love Is Art presents buyers with a kit containing two canvases, paints, a painter’s tarp, and disposable slippers. Why? So you can cover yourself and your lover in paint, have sex on the canvas, and when it dries, pin the sexstract result on the wall. If you’re anything like us, the result will be the prone outline of a single person lying next to a laptop. Find out more (and present the weirdest Secret Santa gift ever) by visiting loveisartkit.com.

Dendy Offers Free Films for a Year as part of Canberra Int’l Film Festival The Canberra International Film Festival (CIFF) opened on Wednesday October 30, and in partnership with the event, Dendy Canberra has announced they’re offering free films for a year to the winner of their #CIFFmini competition. How to enter? Attend any of the screenings held as part of CIFF (see ciff.com.au for info) and tweet a 140-character review using the #CIFFmini hashtag. The competition closes with CIFF at 11:59pm on Sunday November 10. For a quick tweet, you may be looking at over $12,000 worth of films. Ain’t nobody got time fo’dat? Only one way to find out.

Shananigans Music Festival to Return for Seventh Consecutive Year What Canberra still has in the way of one- and two-day music festivals is oft-forgot. Shananigans has proven itself one of the most resilient of all local music festivals in recent history, albeit one that stays true to a reliable core (and takes place from sunset). In this, its seventh instalment on Friday February 14, Shananigans will see The Basement host Our Last Enemy, Tonk, Voltera, Penguin (who have reformed just for the night), Super Best Friends, Na Maza, Variodivers (another one-off reformation), Renegade Peacock, Knights of the Spatchcock, Hence the Testbed, Ghetto Pimp, and burlesque trio The Velvet Vixens from 7pm. Tickets are $20 on the door, and for 12 acts on two stages, you can’t argue with that.

Linda Blair to Visit Impact Comics Linda Blair, star of The Exorcist (1973), will be visiting Canberra as part of Monsterfest film festival, a 12-hour grindhouse film experience happening at CIT Woden on Saturday November 30. As part of her visit, Blair will also be making an appearance at Impact Comics in Garema Place on Saturday November 23. When? Dunno. To do what? Dunno. But she’ll be there! Take a can of pea soup, a question she’s been answering since she was 15 years old, and try your luck! Stay tuned to impactcomics.com.au for info.

Smith’s Alternative down a Gardner Jorian Gardner has departed Smith’s Alternative, not long after placing himself at the forefront of the reinvented bookshop’s ‘new venue’ status. Reported local music guru Culturazi, ‘Gardner was involuntarily bought out by major shareholder, Dominic Mico.’ Gardner would later tell the Canberra Times, ‘he had elected to sell his share of the business to Mico to concentrate on his role as director of the Canberra Fringe festival early next year.’ Whichever is the case, Smith’s Alternative has some rather meaty boots to fill. Good luck, little venue, and here’s awaiting with bated breath the anticipated return of Gardner to the Fringe in 2014.

“Mummy, why don’t I have a brother?” “Why, you do, son. That’s him under the small black splotch that looks like Mummy’s ear.”

Love – Lube + Paint = Art

And here’s why: Fresh Blood is their latest initiative geared towards uncovering great new comedy in Australia, and it offers 20 winners $10,000 a piece with which to budget a dream project. In this instance, throwing money at the problem is exactly what works. Head to abc.net.au/freshblood for more info and to apply. Applications close Friday December 20, with content to premiere on iView in early 2014.

ABC Launches ‘Fresh Blood’ in Search of Next-Gen Comedy Talent The ABC has somehow remained the arbiter of Australian comedy for far longer than makes any sense. The Glass House, The Chaser, Kath and Kim, Spicks and Specks, and everything Chris Lilley has done and will continue to do until the sight of him in drag goes by without comment – just about every comedian has worked their circuit at one time or another.

@bmamag

YOU PISSED ME OFF!

FROM THE BOSSMAN This August marked my ten-year anniversary with the house of ill repute that is BMA Magazine. Regular readers with excellent memories will recall I said the same thing last year around the 400th issue, but it turns out a giddy combination of being bad at maths and drinking excessively tends to make you lose track.

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.]

In my time, we have been on the receiving end of myriad feedback from readership and clients alike. I am happy to report that the vast majority is positive. But of our many sections, the ones that attract the most ire are my fellow page-sharer You Pissed Me Off and the Gig Reviews. There is a very simple reason for this: they are critical. And when people are on the receiving end of criticism, they tend to feel attacked.

afternoon. Me - spending 2 seconds safely riding my bike across

The role of the critic – and criticism in general – has been a hot topic in Canberra recently, with the flames fanned by the Childers Group Critics Forum at Gorman House Arts Centre on Friday October 18 that played host to the likes of The Canberra Times’ Jack Waterford, City News’ Helen Musa and some chuckleheaded old snollygoster called Ashley Thomson from one BMA Magazine.

driving history. Maybe one day my love but not before we get

A major aspect explored was the need for more criticism. Indeed, the most frequent requests we get – other than signed underpants, of course – is for us to review a person’s show or work. And why not? As that poorly remembered phrase goes: if a musician performs in the forest and no-one hears, did they ever really perform? At a very basic level, we need people to engage in our work for it to exist. We also seek validation from our fellow humans. We want to feel loved. Pouring one’s soul into a piece of art is like chipping off a part of you and bravely presenting it to the world for scrutiny. And so, when someone goes on to describe it as crap on a crap cracker, it tends to hurt.

Missed connection: You - driving a bomby hatchback one sultry a small crossing that would’ve taken 10 seconds to walk. Your mouth said “walk you dickhead” but your eyes said “I want you to take my angry two inches in your mouth and make me yours”. Well you know that I can’t resist a passionate man with a flawless married. Because we can now in the ACT and I bet that pisses you off as well. dear event cinemas website if you are going to charge a booking fee for tickets purchased over the internet, I would suggest using that fee to pay for someone to add a drop down box so I can select one ticket, instead of the zero you have allocated me, thereby denying yourself any money at all you pissed me off

I’ve seen it first hand. Long ago, Jack Daniels thought it would be a good PR exercise to invite a shambles of music industry types (to use the collective noun) for a spot of go-kart racing. I found myself spending most time with the Goons of Doom and old mate Oscar McBlack of Hell City Glamours. Talk turned to the topic of scathing reviews of their music. ‘One magazine said we were basically the worst thing they had ever heard and we should quit music immediately,’ one of the Goons said. Oh-ho-ho, how we all laughed. And then, in a heartbeat, the tone changed. ‘It hurts, though,’ one said. ‘Yeah,’ chimed everyone else, all bowing their heads as if remembering a lost loved one. When we get hurt, we get defensive, angry, and tend to go on the attack. YouTube comments are the perfect Petri dish for this. One minute someone is suggesting a particular video is crap – a comment perhaps lacking the eloquence of Oscar Wilde, but an opinion nonetheless – and the next people are hurling the most appalling insults and eventually likening each other to Hitler. In short, we tend to go a bit mad in the face of criticism. But we need criticism as much as we need to accept it, in all its forms. When done well, and when received well, criticism can allow an artist to grow and become better. Sure, a scathing remark about ‘your baby’ may hurt at the time, but if you can stiffen the upper lip enough to take the comments on board you will only get better; as an artist and as a person. So if we feature you within our trembling pages and we say something negative about your work it’s not because we don’t like you. It’s because we do like you and want you to go on, hone your work, and succeed. Good luck with that. ALLAN SKO - allan@bmamag.com

facebook.com/bmamagazine

WHO: The Bennies WHAT: Rainbows in Space Tour WHEN: Thu Nov 7 WHERE: The Phoenix Bar

Melbournians The Bennies are gearing up to launch their second, genre-mashing album on Friday November 8 via Poison City Records. The release is titled Rainbows in Space, and the band has decided to take the party out on the road for all to enjoy. Featuring hints of reggae, punk, ska rhythms, and party anthems, they’re a group who know how to mix their influences well. With help from producer Sam Johnson (The Smith Street Band, A Death in the Family), the album picks up right where their previous left off, making sure that existing fans will not be disappointed. 9pm. Free.

WHO: Edseven, D’Opus, Princi, Ceda Nada. WHAT: DAMN! Boogie. WHEN: Fri Nov 8 WHERE: Transit Bar

Everyone gets that urge sometimes. That itch to turn up the funk and dance it all out. So it only makes sense that Mercury Switch and Transit Bar are offering to scratch that itch for you with the introduction of DAMN! Boogie – a night based all around boogie, disco, and classic house music. The night will cover over 30 years of music, with DJs D’Opus, Ceda Nada, Princi, and special guest Edseven (Syd) providing you with entertainment for the evening. So put on your best dancing shoes and cancel anything else you had planned. It’s free entry, and the event starts at 8pm.

WHO: Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer, and Jen Cloher WHAT: National Tour WHEN: Sun Nov 10 WHERE: The Abbey

Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer, and Jen Cloher are three names in the Australia indie roots landscape that have become inescapable over the past few years – and with good reason. The three have 11 albums between them, ARIAs, short listings for the Australian Music Prize, and the response to their shows announced is validating that critical recognition on another level. The trio have an EP with three new tracks, which has been unveiled – each showcasing a different member on lead vocals – and the tour will see them joined by Danny McKenna on drums and Tim Keegan on bass. Doors open at 6:30pm. Tickets are $30 + bf through theabbey.com.au.

WHO: Jordie Lane WHAT: Not Built to Last EP Launch WHEN: Wed Nov 13 WHERE: The Street Theatre

Jordie Lane is returning to Australia for a huge, 20-day run to promote his new EP, Not Built to Last. Lane recorded the release in the States, where he’s been based for the past year, and he’s built it upon a classic ‘70s aesthetic with producer Skylar Wilson (Justin Townes Earle, Caitlin Rose). With support from stations like DIG, ABC Local, and tonnes of community stations nationwide, here’s your chance to see what the fuss is about. Not Built to Last is out now through Vitamin Records. Support from Old Man Luedecke (Canada) and Julia Johnson (The Deep Sea Sirens). Doors at 8pm. Tickets from $18 + bf through thestreet.org.au.

WHO: Love Over Gold WHAT: Lucie Thorne & Pieta Brown WHEN: Fri Nov 15 WHERE: The Street Theatre

Pieta Brown (USA) has toured with artists like JJ Cale, Mark Knopfler, and Ani DiFranco, and her latest release, Mercury, was named #1 Folk Album of 2012 by the Roots Music Radio Report. Lucie Thorne has been shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize, and been awarded Album of The Year by the Sydney Morning Herald. So when the two musicians got together to record an album, Love Over Gold was born. Featuring beautiful vocal harmonies and driving acoustics, themes of love and longing are explored on their debut release, Fall to Rise. Support from Alice Cottee. Tickets from $24+ bf through thestreet.org.au. 8pm.

WHO: Royal chant, Service Bells, and more WHAT: garage syndicate, vol. 3 WHEN: sat Nov 16 WHERE: The phoenix bar

Spring is here, and with it comes another volume of Garage Syndicate. Sydney’s Royal Chant will be headlining the event with their fuzzy, pop blend of rock, and they’ll be showcasing tracks from their upcoming Small Town Bruises EP, alongside existing tales of punk and grimy romanticism. Service Bells will also be gracing the stage. Made up of Fraser Harvey and Mike Morgan (Cameras), Ben Morgan (Ernest Ellis and The Panamas) and Bill Johnston, they’re for fans of Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Pavement, and anyone else who enjoys an honest guitar-wielding rock band. Entry is free, and doors open at 9pm.

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

justin hook As a genre, punk is reclining into its middle age period. The youthful brash energy of the early to mid-‘70s that ricocheted from Brixton to the Bowery before splintering into dozens of sub-genres has ben co-opted by respectability. Lydon has a fruitful career as a media-savvy sound bite generator/ butter salesman, The Saints have done the whole-album reformation thing, and even The Clash recently got the middle age boxset treatment. In the early ‘80s, at around the same time the original punk scene was dying on the east coast, a vibrant scene had already been going strong for near on half a decade in Los Angeles and San Francisco; Black Flag, The Germs, X, and The Weirdos were just as influential in punk and hardcore circles as The Ramones were. It’s tempting to think of ‘Cal Punk’ as one gelatinous glob of solidarity, but that’s not quite the case, as THE OFFSPRING’s Greg K[riesel] explains. ‘The scene is very different in different parts of the city. LA was very different from Orange County, and with those bands that came up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s I think there was more of a sense of camaraderie … Social Distortion, DUI, TSOL, The Vandals. They shared band members, they lived together. But by the time we made it through, a lot of those bands didn’t even exist anymore in the same way. It died out. But it came back in a different way and a new scene started.’

and they weren’t even on the radio.’ Breaking into the big leagues in such a dramatic fashion brings a higher level of scrutiny and expectation, but despite the rapid changes, The Offspring never fractured or went too far astray. Sure, there were some songs that raised eyebrows – Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) was another hit for the band, but not one of their best – but by and large they kept on delivering concise, fast, pop punk. They never lost balance, just got some help. ‘Things were moving on a scale we couldn’t handle by ourselves. So we got a manager, who we still have, and he really kept things under control. Plus we were on Epitaph [iconic Californian punk label started by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz] and so we weren’t dealing with some big record executive. It definitely moved fast but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle.’

My god, I hope we don’t have to do that some day. I hope we don’t fall that far

Chances are most other bands would disaster into a mountain of cocaine with 20 million records under their belt, but there’s definitely a sense The Offspring have succeeded by remaining humble, explains Kriesel. ‘Some bands try and get too creative and go off and write an opera or something. We just keep it simple.’

This is where The Offspring came in, along with colleagues like ALL, Pennywise, and Bad Religion. It was an era when the original mayhem of SoCal had died down a little and bands fought hard to even get a gig. ‘When we started playing shows in ‘84 there was no place to play, even in LA it was few and far between because of the heavy metal scene. Places on the Sunset Strip like The Whisky a Go Go, The Troubadour … it was all hair metal. As far as the whole punk scene went, there was simply nowhere to play in the mid to late ‘80s.’

This simplicity extends to one of the bugbears of the modern record industry – file sharing. Quite early on the band decided to accept the new dynamic. ‘We saw the reality of the situation – it was going to happen whether we liked it or not, so we figured we may as well embrace it. I don’t know that we were thrilled that people were getting our albums for free and weren’t paying for it, so we could sit there and bitch about it or we could use it to our advantage. So that’s what we did. Let’s just accept it, go with and try and make it work for us.’

The Offspring plugged away for most of their first decade, happy knowing they were dong exactly what they wanted. There was no grand plan, no pressure, just friends and music. But that all changed in 1994 when Smash, their third album, took off spectacularly. With over 20 million units shifted worldwide, it remains the highest selling independent release in history.

Paradoxically, this agnostic approach to torrents and the like has repaid in unpredictable ways. ‘In terms of sales it may not have helped us, but more people are hearing our music and we’ve been seeing a younger crowd come in. They’re not buying the albums but they’re still hearing the music somehow. It could be a better trade-off, getting a younger crowd who are hearing us for the first time.

‘Over the first ten years it was building. But things really changed when Smash came out. Before that we realised the band was something we could do, maybe not as a career but making a living out of it like Bad Religion, or Pennywise, or Social Distortion; we could be a band like that. We never thought it would happen to the scale like it did when Smash came out – it was all over the radio and TV. Then it became obvious that okay, sure, this is what we’re gonna do from now on. When we started out, the biggest band that played the sort of music we played was Bad Religion,

‘I’ve seen concerts and the crowd are sipping their cocktails and having a little shuffle dance and [I] think, “My god, I hope we don’t have to do that some day.” I hope we don’t fall that far.’ The Offspring will headline the Vans Warped Tour when it comes to Exhibition Park in Canberra with Millencollin, Parkway Drive, Simple Plan, Reel Big Fish, The Used, and more on Friday December 6. Tickets are still available for $107.10 + bf through Oztix.

@bmamag

facebook.com/bmamagazine

ALL AGES Hello there sunshine children! This November has a huge amount of All Ages events in store for you. First up, the Kingsford Smith School Fete will be held on Saturday November 9 at 100 Starke Street, Holt. This annual event will feature a wide variety of stalls including cakes, plants, books, trash and treasure, market stalls, community involvement, as well as sports, rides, and activities. Everything you could possibly want in a fete, so head on down between 10am–2pm and enjoy a wonderful day out. Entry is free, and pre-purchase passports and wristbands are available for day-long access to rides. Don’t forget about This Is Art Market, a wonderful way to both support local artists and find something beautiful to adorn your walls! Don’t buy a generic print that will just end up feeding a big business, stick it to the man and buy from Canberra locals. Bring along a gold coin donation for entry to the Yarralumla Woolshed, between 10am–3pm on Sat–Sun November 9–10. This time, the Old Bus Depot Markets are all about the glitz – The Jewel of Canberra Market will be featuring unique, handcrafted, and vintage jewellery by local independent designers and artists from Canberra. Entry is free, between 10am–4pm on Sunday November 10. We’ve all been looking forward to this one … the Smells Like Centenary Spirit Band Competition Final will be held on Friday November 15! Featuring the jewels of young Canberran musicians selected after rigorous battle of the bands heats, The Steptones, Mind The Gap, Beneath the Surface, Nova Scotia, Harley Quinn, No Assumption, Finding Eve, Behind the Silhouettes, and the yet to be announced winner of the Lift Off Band Competition. Along with dance, food, market stalls, and other activities, you’re in for a real treat when the rockin’ Melbourne band British India headline the concert. This event is free to enter, and will be held at the Royal Theatre, Constitution Avenue, Canberra City from 4pm–10pm. It’s time for the MusicACT Annual Music Awards again! I can’t tell you too much about what this year will have in store for you, as it remains a surprise, but I can tell you that last year’s inaugural awards made ACT history! A spectacular night full of theatrics and the best party imaginable, the MAMAs will be even bigger this year, celebrating all genres across the board at the beautiful Albert Hall on Saturday November 23. 600 ACT music industry members, 100 performers, 26 awards, and endless entertainment – why wait? Order your tickets online through musicact.com.au/mamas/ tickets, from $45 + bf. It promises to be a night to remember! The beautiful Botanic Gardens will be opening their gates this November for the Sunset Cinema, an outdoor movie viewing showcasing art films, new releases, and classics all under the stars and among the plants. Plenty of food and drink will be available including pizza and buttered popcorn, and you can either bring your own seating or hire a deckchair or backrest at the venue. Check the website to view the program, sunsetcinema.com.au/canberra, and pre-order tickets from $14 + bf. Tickets also available at the door. Well, t-t-t-that’s all folks! See you next time. Stay funky,

VICKY CONSTABLE allagescolumn@gmail.com

@bmamag

LOCALITY

With only two months left in this great Centenary year, the time is rapidly waning in which the word ‘Centenary’ still carries weight. No topic of conversation has an uninterrupted year’s longevity, and, with that in mind, I will flush it out of this column once and for all: Friday November 8 sees the Lift Off Band Comp taking place at Woden Youth Centre from 4pm to 9pm, with the winner to take the wildcard place in the Smells Like Centenary Spirit final at Royal Theatre on Friday November 15, 4pm to 10pm. Both events are free, and mark in their own ways the culmination of the Centenary’s contribution to contemporary live music in the ACT: On the one hand, Lift Off is a pre-existing part of Woden Valley Festival that the Centenary characteristically brought into its fold, and on the other, Smells Like Centenary Spirit represents one of the few (perhaps only) truly unique events designed by the Centenary to bridge the gap between fledgling local bands and major venues. Kudos is deserved on both counts, but with British India (a Melbourne band) announced as headliners of Smells Like Centenary Spirit, Robyn Archer’s words ring out: she could have got The Rolling Stones, or held ‘a series of events that had a lasting legacy’. In a strange way, it feels as though live music in the ACT, at least, may have got neither this year. And that’s it!

Locals Revellers, Little Mac and the Monster Men, and ThrownUp will support The Bennies at The Phoenix Bar on Thursday November 7 from 9pm. Expect loud, tight, and fast. Hip hop in the ACT continues from strength to strength, with the cream of the local crop now bonding together under the moniker Capslock Collective. They (Coda Conduct, Context, Semantix, Stateovmind, and Nix) are having a launch party at Transit Bar on Saturday November 9 from 8pm for a $10 door. The same night at The Phoenix, Super Best Friends are polishing off their Round and Round tour with Bacon Cakes and the Z-50 Jays, and Sincerely, Grizzly from 9:30pm. This Is Art Market returns for its second year at Yarralumla Woolshed on Saturday November 9 and Saturday November 10. The weather last year was perfect, and the combination of the setting, local art, music, food and drink couldn’t be better. It’s on from 10am to 3pm both days, and is a gold coin donation for entry. Canberra Country Blues & Roots Festival takes place at Hall Showgrounds, Fri-Sun November 15-17. I can’t claim to be ‘up’ on country, but it’s a big event: five stages, three days, and any event in Canberra is an event of mine. See canberracountry.com.au for info. The Ellis Collective is launching a new single, Walk Back Down, at The Polish White Eagle Club on Friday November 15 from 7:30pm for a $12/15 door.

YOU MADE MY DAY!

Email editorial@bmamag.com to send a message of gratitude, warmth and generosity to the world at large. Aw. Dear *Anonymous Dumpling House* and employee’s of said fine establishment. I’ve missed your excellent exotic potentially unhealthy yet strangely satisfying goods. Thank you for feeding my crazed hunger when no where else could. You made my day... the other day. [This arrived as an entrance into a competition asking for the meaning of life. Advice doesn’t get much better than this, and it made our day.] Age: 62. Answer: The meaning of life is not 42 but a mere 10 (if you follow the 10 suggestions listed below): Have a worry free childhood Play and watch lots of sport (go in hard if you are playing it) Make music or listen to it regularly if you are not gifted Study enough at school to get into uni so you can get drunk a lot with your mates Do something reasonably useful with your working life Save money and pay off your debts early (especially your house) Support charities as best you can Never give up on your family even when they deserve it Retire young and travel everywhere you can afford to go Leave the world a better place when you depart (hopefully at a ripe old age)

And in this column’s most important bit of news, The Phoenix Bar turns 20 this year. It begins its celebrations on Monday November 18 with a special Bootleg Sessions (sporting Cracked Actor, Rafe Morris, Waterford, and more), and will carry them through until Saturday November 23, when they’ll hold an all-day party from 2pm. Other acts coming out of the woodwork to pitch in during the week include Fun Machine, The Fuelers, The Fighting League, and so, so many more. Head to our gig guide online for full details. And that’s everything local I care about. ASHLEY THOMSON - editorial@bmamag.com; @aabthomson

facebook.com/bmamagazine

BAZ RUDDICK & ASHLEY THOMSON In order to predetermine the real winner of the upcoming finals of the SMELLS LIKE CENTENARY SPIRIT: PLAY IT LOUD band competition at the Royal Theatre on Friday November 15, BMA Magazine decided to pit seven of the eight local finalists (sadly Beneath the Surface stayed true to their name) against one another with a series of gruelling, probing questions. In doing so, we aimed to sift out the best candidate for exportation from the ACT, which will naturally lead to global domination. So here you have it, in no particular order: Mind the Gap vs. Novia Scotia vs. Harley Quinn vs. No Assumption vs. Finding Eve vs. Behind the Silhouettes vs. The Steptones! 1) Imagine you are a rapper (east coast or west coast, your choice entirely). You have beef with one of your fellow Canberra bands. Time for a ye olde dis rap he sez. Then a dis rap it is. Tell me which Canberra band you are going to dis rap and on what basis you will do so. Mind the Gap (MTG): The band would be No Assumption, and as we are all wayyy too white to rap we would instead call upon our Irish heritage and challenge them to a group drinking competition. Novia Scotia (NS): Probably The Steptones. Why? We’ve been playing a bunch of comps against them recently and they wear suits … We wear suits … We’re having a suit dispute. Harley Quinn (HQ): GRAMS. They’re probably the only band in Canberra who plays more breakdowns than we do. We have to assert our breakdown dominance. Also, their guitarist has an awful haircut. No Assumption (NA): Reptile Park. Because they stole our band name, which we had not yet chosen. Finding Eve (FE): Our most gangster band member, Ashley Dicks (bass player, obviously), has beef with Novia Scotia. He may or may not challenge them to an old school gangster rap battle at the finals. You’ll have to come to the Royal Theatre on the Friday November 15 to find out. ;) Behind the Silhouettes (BTSI): [Behind the Silhouettes exercises their right to abstain.] The Steptones (TS): Novia Scotia. Their pretty-boy faces are far too easy a target. Plus, their high school grammar is no match for our tertiary education. 2) Imagine. The year is 2015. Tony Abbott and his cronies have turned Australia into a conservative totalitarian state and are leading their boring regime from the hill. You and your beloved partner (who is of the same gender) wish to get married and adopt. It is up to you to write a) a love ballad to move the cold leader’s heart, or b) a murderous song of rebellion to move the people into an uprising. Please write the first lines to your tune.

MTG: Song title: Oh Glorious Leader. I have a man, our love is a dam/ and you are the wall, you bind our hands/ The world’s moving on, Australia should too/ before more of our children, end up like you. NS: Tony, I love this person, he’s a man/ and you don’t understand/ Tony – my bro-ny/ Me and my man – wanna adopt a baby from Japan/ And live happily – as a family and have a Christmas tree and sing merrily/ and not get pissed off by high court decisions. HQ: I’m a bit sick and tired/ So I’m going to be blunt/ True love can’t be stopped/ By some bigoted cunt. NA: First line of No Assumption’s song, Babysitting, re-worded: I can’t take this any fucking more/ I can’t believe we voted you in/ you stupid fucking whore. FE: It’s time for the people to stand up and rebel/ We’re gonna burn the shit outta capital hill/ It’s not anarchism if we’ve got a goal/ I just wanna put my willy in my partner’s hole. BTSI: [Behind the Silhouettes exercises their right to abstain.] TS: Though you hide behind that gaze of steel/ your tender heart inside I feel/ should I only have just one more chance/ I’d nibble those massive ears/ you’d remove your pants/ Then we’d watch the sun rise over capital hill/ though it’s a cold winter morning/ you keep me warm still/ we’ve stopped the boats/ sweet nothings you’d say/ then hand in hand we’d walk into the house/ and know that Australia is now safe. 3) Many people (who aren’t from the ACT) give shit to our nation’s capital for being a) boring, b) not a real city, c) full of wankers, and d) lacking the fireworks and overt prostitution of yesteryear. What do you say to these people, how do you defend your homeland? MTG: We’d bring them to the Smells Like Centenary Spirit final and see if they’re still so naive! NS: Well, what we lack in pyrotechnics and hookers, we make up for in roundabouts and public servants, and personally we find they give the same kind of pleasures. HQ: Those people can come out to a local show and get amongst the pit. Then try and tell us how boring Canberra is. NA: They’re correct; this city is all of those things. BUT NOW IT’S FULL OF PUNKS TOO. SO COME OUT AND HAVE A DRINK AND SKANK TO SOME PUNK. And it has pretty good weed. (Feel free to scratch the last line.) FE: People who say Canberra is boring obviously have never met No Assumption. And we all know well that Canberra provides country living with city privileges … Unfortunately it is full of wankers, but that’s what you get when you take prostitution away from the poor, soul-thirsty people here. And we may not have fireworks anymore (‘cause of all the wankers), but you know what’s better

@bmamag

than fireworks? BRINGING YOU AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO THE ROYAL THEATRE! Did I mention it’s free? BTSI: We can’t really deny this claim. TS: Hey guys, it’s not that bad; have you seen the Skywhale?

story short, that was the tastiest haloumi we’d ever eaten, and if Canberra is cool enough for an awesome New Zealander dude with lemony pockets, then it’s good enough for you too. BTSI: Joel Copeland … A top bloke who gives everyone a fair go. TS: Everyone is lovely.

4) Canberra is full of unsung heroes. Sure we all know the legends who play footy and urinate on people, but we want to know about the unsung heroes. The quiet cool cats of our capital. Please enlighten us with your favourite unknown legend of Canberra and how you see them embodying the spirit of Canberra.

5) The name of the game is ‘Smells like Centenary’. One hundred goddamn years you have from which to choose your newest band member. Since our lovely city went from a goddamn stinking sheep station to its current glory, you can pick anyone, alive or dead, to fill a position in your band. Who is this person and what will they do for your band.

MTG: Whatever mad genius had the idea of founding the venue they call The Phoenix. NS: Our mate and producer Scott Temby. He has an awesome recording studio and he puts up with our shit when we go there, eat lollies, and screw around … and one time he actually let us record some music. HQ: Anyone who comes out to shows and supports the local music scene is a hero in our books. Anyone who has been right at the front of the stage when we’ve been playing to a room of 10 or 20 people is an absolute legend. NA: There are two, I cannot go without mentioning both. First up is Bill the Bus Man. He attended every punk gig throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, and drove ACTION Buses. He’s still around and has been here for about 50 years, and is a local music scene legend. Then there is our good friend Jamir. He often entertains us with the occasional Kamahamaha wave and keeping his children in poke balls. We are proud of him for getting off the heroin. FE: After a gig one night at the Magpies club in the city, we were invited to a party by one of our friends in the audience. We all thought it sounded like fun, but I hadn’t eaten so I rushed past the shops and got some haloumi (that cheese that you can fry) before I got there. Now, not long after we arrived, we became pretty intoxicated, so at this point I decided I wanted to fry up some haloumi and serve it up to people. So I pulled out the frying pan, smothered it in oil and pepper and when it was sizzling, chucked in the sliced haloumi. All the while I did this, Hayden was playing drums with wooden spoons on various household items (to the beat of the electronic house music) with a little mosh group happening all around. Anyway, the cheese was aaaaalmost ready but I couldn’t find the key ingredient. Lemon! I looked in every cupboard, in every nook and cranny and couldn’t find any lemon to make the perfect haloumi. So I went up to this New Zealander guy who I’d talked to before and seemed like he knew what was going on and I asked him if he knew where I could find any lemons … And no shit, he said, ‘What, like this lemon right here?’ AND PULLED ONE OUT OF HIS POCKET! So, long

MTG: Declan Shrubb would be our Band Film Supervisor and WickedSick Riff Consultant. It would be Declan’s job to capture all of the band’s crazy antics on and off the stage in order to create badass music videos for all of our songs, as well as using his wicked-sick guitar skills to write some wicked-sick songs with us. NS: Anyone? We’d have to pick Thom Yorke from Radiohead. We feel his inane ramblings would really boost our sound. He wouldn’t sing – he’d just ramble into a microphone shaking his butt like in the Lotus Flower video clip. HQ: Erin McNaught, for obvious reasons. Apparently she used to play bass in a band too, so I guess that could help. NA: There has to be two, because one is not a replacement, they are simply an addition. First is Gandhi on the synth, and next is Hitler on the go-go dancer in the background, not really playing anything, but just being generally supportive. FE: Can the position be Morale Officer, and can it be filled by Miranda Kerr? She’s recently single … She should come to the finals of the Smells Like Centenary Spirit on the 15th of November at the Royal Theatre at the National Convention Centre. ‘Cause it’s free and we will probably do backflips. BTSI: Tony Abbott can be our dresser. TS: The Queen. Imagine having her sexy ass do a face-melting solo as a torrent of royal corgis floods the stage, drowning all in their adorability.

facebook.com/bmamagazine

And the winner is: the music! (With honourable mentions to Novia Scotia for Q2, No Assumption for Q4 and Q5, and Finding Eve for Q4, and a dishonourable mention to Behind the Silhouettes for pulling not one but two ‘Switzerlands’.) To celebrate the real winner, head along to Royal Theatre on Friday November 15 between 4pm and 10pm. British India are headlining the free concert after sets from all the finalists, with the winner to be announced on the day. The event will also see market stalls, food, and live entertainment fill the National Convention Centre foyer. Good luck to one and all.

Ten minutes into recording, Chad, our guitar player, gets electrocuted by a mic stand and falls to the floor

The band’s drummer, Cyrus Bolooki, took some time out from his wedding preparations to talk to BMA about their shows, their upcoming live album, and most importantly, their spot on the upcoming Vans Warped Tour.

STILL GLORIOUS ian McCARTHY If you’ve ever so much as dabbled in the world of pop punk then the name NEW FOUND GLORY should be a very familiar one. Having been around for over 15 years, the band have released seven studio albums, garnered a strong reputation for their energetic live shows, and been labelled as pioneers of the pop punk genre.

During their career, New Found Glory has developed a reputation as an intensely dynamic live band. ‘It’s not hard for us to get out there and really want to put forth an effort,’ Bolooki says, ‘because we know that kids are paying hard-earned money to come see us, and the kids are enjoying it every second that we play. So there’s no reason that we shouldn’t enjoy it as well and I really feel like we do.’ This is the sort of ethic, no doubt, that the band hopes to put forth with the release of their new live album, Kill It Live. ‘I’m just really glad that the record came out and I think it sounds awesome,’ Bolooki says. ‘I think the setlist that we have is great and I think people will enjoy it. And then you get a little added bonus which is three brand new songs after the live show that nobody’s ever heard before.’ This is all despite the band’s misfortunes when it comes to live recordings. ‘We get up there the first night and ten minutes into recording, Chad, our guitar player, gets electrocuted by a mic stand and he falls to the floor, he’s gotta go to the hospital … Luckily for all of us Chad recovered and the next day he was actually able to play a show, which is crazy.’ New Found Glory is touring Australia in December as part of Vans Warped Tour, something that Bolooki is excited to talk about. ‘We’re really looking forward to it because New Found Glory and Warped Tour just in general, we’ve had a great relationship for years,’ he says. ‘But on top of that I remember back in, I think it was 2002 or 2003, we came over to Australia and we did what was supposedly the Warped Tour over there … and then for years there was no Warped Tour at all. I know they were trying to figure how to do it. So I’m excited that we’re gonna be a part of this … It’s pretty much most of the country and you know, it’s a great collection of bands – and I think people in Australia will get a taste of what it’s like to have a Warped Tour.’ New Found Glory will be performing at Vans Warped Tour at Exhibition Park in Canberra on Friday December 6. Tickets are $107.10 + bf through Oztix, gates open 11am.

@bmamag

Image credit:

THE SWEDEST PUNKS baz ruddick

With the triumphant return of Vans Warped Tour to Australia after a decade-long hiatus, it is only fitting that Swedish veterans MILLENCOLIN grace the stage for the historic occasion. A skate punk band through and through, I spoke to guitarist Mathias Färm about the brotherhood of Millencolin, swedish punk roots, and the intrinsic link between skateboarding, music, and thinking for yourself. ‘We had this big storm that hit here and Britain,’ Färm informs me in beautifully sing-song accented English. ‘I just went to Germany by boat in that shit so it was kind of bad.’ The chirpy punk spoke to me on the phone post-gargantuan storm as he hung out in their home recording studio in Örebro.

You do it for yourself – it is only your own creativity which sets the limits

Despite a break from studio released LPs, last year Millencolin released The Melancholy Connection – a collection of B-sides, a couple of new songs, and a live DVD which served as a celebration of their 20-year brotherhood. ‘Me and Nikola have known each other since we were seven years old,’ Färm says. ‘35 years. It has been the same members of this band for 22 years, so it is a special relationship.’ Having pioneered English language punk in Sweden in the early ‘90s, Millencolin are one of the few bands that have returned with every cyclic wave of punk. ‘Sweden is such a small country that things go around in cycles,’ Färm says. ‘Punk rock was really big and I guess we were one of the first bands that started singing in English … There are always new bands coming, but they disappear, and new ones come back as punk comes back again.’ The link between ‘90s punk and skateboarding is undeniably represented by Millencolin as a band. Skateboarding at a professional level, the sport for Färm, was not only a way to have fun but an exertion of his right and will to think and act for himself. ‘You do it for yourself. It is only your own creativity which sets the limits,’ Färm says. ‘When I was younger, it was very important for me to think out of the box. It is a very healthy thing to be independent and think for yourself and I guess skateboarding is the perfect thing for that.’ This mantra of independence that was initially grounded in skateboarding extends not only to their music, but to their life as a band. Signed to Epitaph records for the duration of their career, Färm stresses that the flexibility of this label that has kept them doing punk the way they want. ‘If we had signed with a major label in 2000, maybe we would have had to do something we wouldn’t have wanted to do. The direction we are taking right now is a bit more of an old school sound … a bit more what it was like when we started the band.’ Millencolin will be performing at Vans Warped Tour at Exhibition Park in Canberra on Friday December 6. Tickets are $107.10 + bf through Oztix, and gates open at 11am.

facebook.com/bmamagazine

Well, it’s been a full two weeks since the last column and punk has managed to survive. Excellent start! So as promised, here’s another column. Think of it as a list of events you can attend to help punk survive even longer. Like two whole weeks longer. If you’re lucky enough to be picking this up in time, you can still catch The Bennies’ Rainbows in Space tour, which stops by The Phoenix on Thursday November 7. They will be supported by local bands Revellers, ThrownUp, and Little Mac and The Monster Men. Also on Thursday November 7, Cinnamon Records will take over Transit Bar to raise funds for Spice Rack, their first label mixtape. The Transit stage will be hosting sets by The Mike Shanahan (Family) Band, youthful surf-punkers Beach Slut playing one of their last shows as a band, and Cinnamon supergroup Sweet Shoppe. Saturday November 9 will see The Ians smashing out a set at Pot Belly Bar in Belconnen. The recently viral Super Best Friends will be returning home to The Phoenix to finish off their Round and Round tour on Saturday November 9. The trio will be supported by Adelaide’s Sincerely, Grizzly and local gem Bacon Cakes. Sydney band The Dead Heads will be rolling through Canberra on Thursday November 14 as part of their three-stop Power Tripping Single Launch tour. They will be joined by fellow Sydney-siders The Rumineers with local support from Sweet Shoppe at the Magpies Club in Civic. If you’re into the heavy stuff then you’ll love being at The Basement on Saturday November 23, where a number of local and interstate punk and hardcore bands will be taking the stage. The line-up: TOXICMEN (playing their final show), Wolfpack, No Assumption, SLEW, The Bastard Sons of Liberty, Mangrove Jack, Miscreation, Reign of Terror, and Black Mountain. Saturday November 23 will also see a tonne of local punk and metal bands taking over the Magpies Club in Civic, including a set by seminal UK punks Spasms. Only a month away now is the Canberra stop of the Vans Warped Tour, which will be on at Exhibition Park on Friday December 6. The festival features a great line-up of international and Australian bands including punk and rock acts The Offspring, The Used, Simple Plan, New Found Glory, Tonight Alive, The Summer Set, Man Overboard, and The Dangerous Summer. Tickets for the tour are $107.10 + bf through Oztix. Also, make sure to tune into Haircuts & T-shirts on 2XX FM every Monday night from 9:30–11pm for a great selection of local and touring punk and hardcore artists, as well as an update on all punk and hardcore related news and tidbits (hoping use of the word ‘tidbits’ doesn’t diminish the credibility of a punk column). Well, that’s me for another two weeks. Just remember, the more gigs you go to, the more they happen, and the easier my job gets. I like it when my job is easy. Make it happen. IAN McCARTHY

@bmamag

PART OF THE FAMILY ian McCARTHY Utah emo band THE USED has had a very successful decade. Since the band’s inception in 2001, they’ve released five acclaimed albums, and developed a reputation for their honest and engaging music, which has won the ears and hearts of millions of loyal fans. BMA had the opportunity to speak with bassist and founding member of The Used, Jeph Howard. It’s been over ten years since The Used first came together – a long time for any band – and Howard explains the changes they’ve been through together. ‘We’ve all seen a lot and we’ve all grown up a lot,’ he says. ‘And I feel like some people have grown up more than others and quicker than others. I think we’re striving to be better people and to just learn more about ourselves and about everything else.’ The band came from humble beginnings, with its members all having been in various states of poverty, drug addiction, and even homelessness. ‘It is weird. When we first started out, some people were homeless, some people were just poor,’ Howard says. ‘It is what it is. We were definitely lower in the food chain, in the world, and all we cared about was music …We didn’t care about money. We didn’t care about people. We didn’t care about anything other than writing music.’

When we first started out, some people were homeless, some people were just poor – it is what it is

That kind of passion has obviously helped drive The Used into the successful career they now enjoy. Roughly 12 years on, the band is now in the early stages of recording for their sixth studio LP. ‘It’s a bit early to get into how awesome it’s gonna be, but I’ve got a lot of faith,’ Howard says. ‘We’re doing some stuff differently and trying some different approaches, so it’s all a matter of how awesome it’s gonna be when we figure out how we’re doing it.’ But a new album isn’t the only exciting prospect looming for the band. The Used are gearing up to tour in December as part of the first Warped Tour in Australia in a decade. ‘We’re super excited. It’s gonna be great,’ remarks Howard. ‘I hear it’s the first one since 2002 … The first Warped Tour we did in America was 2002, so it’s sort of really fun for us. It will feel like the beginning for us again.’ When it came to what Australians can expect from their live performance, Howard had some big ideas. ‘Machine guns, fire,’ he laughs. ‘No, no corporations. We don’t want McDonald’s on stage with us. We want fans to realise that you’re coming to a Used show, but we want you as part of our family. So we encourage as much singing along and being a part of the show as possible. Bert will pull people on stage, he’ll tease people. You’ll never know what he’s gonna do … Something is always different every time.’ Catch The Used at Vans Warped Tour at Exhibition Park in Canberra on Friday December 6. Tickets $107.10 + bf through Oztix, gates open at 11am.

facebook.com/bmamagazine

[Image credit: Adam Thomas]

gus McCUBBING While film buffs were in 1993 made distraught by the death of teen sensation River Phoenix, Canberrans were that same year blessed with the birth of pub that would later become synonymous with live music. Nestled at the old Shooters bar, I caught up with Sean and Fiete of THE PHOENIX BAR management. As flashes of hazy college nights permeated my consciousness, the pair reflected on the bar’s 20-year history, before excitedly talking about the new extension and their upcoming birthday celebration week.

venue’. But with this paucity of alternatives, ‘it’s sort of become that over time, especially in the last five years. In terms of keeping the vitality – there’s not many other places like it. It’s just a normal, no-bullshit pub that puts bands on. Canberra’s a bit starved for that.’ Sean laughs: ‘It’s always had some kind of gypsy musical thing going on.’ Even the maintenance of its refreshingly cheerful and easygoing clientele was a natural development, with Fiete assuring me there’s no exclusionary policy at all – ‘unless you’re a dickhead’. ‘You’ll see people walk into The Phoenix sometimes and take about two or three steps and realise it wasn’t where they meant to walk in.’ This works as a perfect filter for undesirables, with Sean saying there are ‘other Jupiters in our ecosystem that get all that, which works for us.’

We’re not going to throw the doors open and have a new crowd come in. We’re not even going to advertise it. It’s just for the people who like The Phoenix

Despite being an iconic and permanent fixture, Sean was bemused by my suggestion that Phoenix is a terribly eccentric place, that while perhaps not attaining the annoyingly clichéd term ‘unique’, it can definitely be described as ‘quirky’. He says that when opened by Kieran and Caroline in ’93, it was their vision to ‘just have a really good pub, like back home in Ireland.’ Thankfully for all, however, this vision did not require the tacky paraphernalia that litters the ubiquitous Irish pubs designed for backpackers. ‘There’s no plastic or shamrock on carpets. There is some Irish culture painted onto the walls – James Joyce, Samuel Becket, Oscar Wilde with pints,’ Sean continues. ‘That kind of pre-dated the big Irish plastic pub boom that happened – I know in Sydney, in the mid-’90s, that was just horrendous.’ Its aesthetic was instead completely unaffected, deriving simply, explain the pair, from a ‘serious lack of money’. They began with red-rattler tram seats from Sydney and needed bands to bring their own PA before they would clear enough tables and chairs to have them play in the middle of the floor. Everything else, concludes Sean, simply ‘gathered over time’. ‘It’s organic and recycled, but it’s stood the test of time – here we are 20 years later.’ And there you have what is perhaps the key to the evergreen attraction of Phoenix – simplistic authenticity. The pair were aware that despite its humble origins, Phoenix does offer its punters something different. This is an oasis among what is otherwise a drunken carousel of lascivious desperation that snakes around Northbourne Avenue, Alinga Street, East Row, and London Circuit. First of all, Fiete highlights that it’s a great venue for new or unheard-of touring bands to play in because it offers a ‘readymade audience’. He went on to reflect that Phoenix was at its inception part of a broader musical fraternity, which included The Asylum, The Terrace, Terminus, and an ANU Bar once capable of pulling Nirvana. However, it was with an air of melancholy that he explains these venues ‘all seemed to shut down in the mid to late ‘90s’, largely due to noise complaints. Apparently at this point, Phoenix was simply a pub with a stage and not quite a ‘dedicated

So after 20 years of providing a homely venue for drinking and live music, management has now opted to expand the establishment. Having bought the rights to the neighbouring site, Phoenix aims to increase its infamously small capacity of 94 to about 200. Now the bands will have the opportunity to play in a bigger, more focused venue. Meanwhile, management will have a greater ability to keep attracting bands like Twin Beasts, Mojo Juju, and Barons of Tang, all capable of pulling crowds of 200 people. The culture of the bar, however, will not be changing. For instance, Bootlegs will continue to take place every Monday night on the original stage. Aside from an entranceway in the middle of the original bar conjoining with the new one, the only door to what was once Shooters is a one-way emergency exit. This, Sean assures me, means that patrons still have to commit to The Phoenix, and to the ‘staff and the regulars and all the oddities of the pub’, to come in. ‘It’s not something new – we’re not going to throw the doors open [on East Row] and have a new crowd come in. We’re not even going to advertise it. It’s just for the people who like The Phoenix.’ At the end of the interview, a sentimental nerve was finally hit with Sean. ‘The staff and all the new people and acts who come through the pub mean it’s a new thing in itself every week. What keeps us interested is new ideas, meeting new people, seeing new acts. That’s what you want – artists to come in and challenge your audience and ask new questions. I think it’s a feeling of, “We’re doing the right thing”, because we care about people coming in and having a good time. It’s really just about us letting them do that and not getting in the way. I think at the end of day, we really don’t give a shit.’ The Phoenix’s 20th Birthday celebrations will take place in its newly expanded environs Mon-Sun November 18-24. Find out more at lovethephoenix.com.

@bmamag

DANCE THE DROP

This marks the first local summer season without the Foreshore Festival that I can remember. As Director Ryan Phillips quoted in a previous issue of the Drop, the Kicks team intend to bring back the brand bigger and stronger in 2014. I think this is a sign that savvy promoters are going back to the drawing board, throwing away the old festival blueprint, and putting together a new product that is financially viable and sustainable. Years ago, the cracks began to appear as festival after festival shut down or downsized due to poor ticket sales. Only those who were forward thinking enough to strap on a fiscal life vest survived as the levies crumbled and the market flooded with eager emulators, drowning punters in a tidal wave of mediocrity. The dilution of the festival junket stripped away the quality and ‘vibe’ inherent in a memorable festival experience, which caused punters to become more and more selective with their hard-earned cash. They retreated back to the familiarity of big, trusted brands, leaving all of the pretenders fighting over whatever scraps remained. This is how punters are reshaping the industry, by voting with their wallets. Expect only the best for your money, force promoters to think outside the box and provide you with what you really want – because the fact is that they need you more than you need them.

Don’t you hate it when you walk into a public toilet, the only spot available at the trough is right in the middle, and you just can’t summon the will to pee? Well that my friends is called Stage Fright. The annual support group for sufferers of this horrible affliction is being held at NV Nightclub on Saturday November 9. Your councillors for the evening will be Leuky, 3verest, Sample Cat!, Switch, Rush, and Palajda. Offtap and ANOP have joined forces to present Altered States of Mind at Clubhouse on Friday November 15. The two-room event is headlined by everyone’s favourite German tech house troubadour Wanklemutt. Canberra ex-pat Gabriel Gilmour stopped by this week and gave us a peek inside his eclectic record bag: Gesaffelstein – A Lost Era – [Turbo Recordings] – The combo of driving and evil wonky synths, tough synthetics, and that triplet bass when it hits – a true techno monster. Smoke Sign – Welcome to Neo India – [Triple Drop Records] – This gem of a tune combines all the elements of subtle glitch I love with an eastern flavour that transcends EDM boundaries to secure its place as simply an amazing piece of music. James Harcourt – Tension – [Twisted Frequency] – In the years that followed the amazing ‘call and response’, I never thought I would be mentioning James Harcourt in a top five of anything, but this tune blew me away. I’m yet to hear it and not get goosebumps. Andrew Bayer – Soul Cry – [Anjunabeats] – If Aphex Twin overdosed on Prozac I imagine this track would be what he sounds like, and it sounds amazing. Gabriel Gilmour – Windy City – [Unsigned] – This is my latest, check it out on Soundcloud and let me know what you think! TIM GALVIN - tim.galvin@live.com.au

facebook.com/bmamagazine

carrie gibson BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME are currently on tour in the US, and as I begin chatting with Dan Briggs, he admits he is not feeling as metal as fuck as he should be. ‘Yeah, the tour is going really well, a lot of dates so far; we are currently on the last week though.’ Between the Buried and Me have been wowing audiences with their very ambitious set, playing The Parallax II, the band’s latest release, in its entirety each time. ‘It’s been so great and so interesting to see the record being played one song at a time to a full set, and watching the reactions from fans,’ says Briggs. ‘The album will be played in full as if you were listening to it over the CD player.’ I recall the band having mentioned that some of their older songs are not favoured anymore, a statement which Briggs expands on.

This is a mission shared with Indianapolis natives THE CONTORTIONIST, who will be jumping on the plane with Briggs and co. for their first Australian tour. The Contortionist is making headlines with the recent departure of the band’s long-time vocalist, Jon Carpenter – a move which has not dampened the band’s spirit or that of the fans, explains fresh-faced vocalist Mike Lessard. ‘The band were looking for somebody that they thought could obviously fill the shoes of Jonathan, but also someone that brought their own spunk,’ Lessard says, ‘not a vocalist who would simply mimic to the tee. So I mean hopefully they feel like they found that in me,’ he laughs.

As much as we have changed, a band, as they get older, they are always more excited about their newer material

‘As much as we have changed, a band, as they get older, they are always more excited about their newer material – but that doesn’t always necessarily hold true to their fan base,’ he says. ‘We have been very thankful that our fans have gone along with us through all the changes, and every time we put something out it just seems they are just as rabid about it as they were to our past albums. Which is just incredible because we definitely don’t want to play anything old,’ Briggs laughs. ‘I often think about older songs and think, “Wow, we’re just not there anymore.” We’ll do one old song, I guess,’ he laughs. ‘We’ll do one for Australia.’ The music of Between the Buried and Me is unpredictable: some call the band the scientists, others the philosophers – trying to pinpoint a band to a particular genre is always a journo’s worst nightmare. Having so many styles infused, Briggs admits there is one prickle that gets them every time.

‘The storyline is always something to concentrate on. When using a conceptual piece, it’s really essential to make sure that people can relate to it, have an emotional connection with; like The Dark Side of The Moon – that album is continuously eaten up by fans, as there are a lot of ideas presented that affect everyone.’ The band has mentioned that this album has more of a flow to it – something that the band thought past albums had missed out on. ‘We had a record in 2007 called Colors, which was conceptual musically, but lyrically it wasn’t. So this was the first time writing a full-on piece which was connected both musically and lyrically; it’s my favourite way to write a record,’ says Briggs. I ask if this will be the way they decide to write from now on. ‘I don’t know, it’s hard to say,’ Briggs says. ‘I’m sure we’ll change

up the format here and there – a lot of my favourite albums are concept records, but not all of them. I feel we’re still so far off from writing another record, just not there yet. The new record has been out for a year, but we’ve only just started to play it – so the plan is to go see the world right now.’

Fans aren’t always so supportive of change, but in this case it has been embraced with open arms – support which Lessard is very grateful for. We discussed the topic of initiation: perhaps a prerequisite for joining the band was to somehow contort into a coffee mug … ‘Luckily there isn’t one, or I would fail miserably because I’m not that flexible,’ Lessard laughs. ‘I would fail horribly at that.’ Although The Contortionist is visiting Australia for the first time soon, they are no strangers to touring, and I find out the latest from their current tour and life on the road with The Faceless. ‘We have three shows left. We have been out for at least 31 shows on this run, it’s been great so far,’ Lessard says. ‘We have a few weeks off before we head over to Australia.’ The Contortionist have quite an evolution in front of them, with many years to clock up, which is exciting for this young indomitable band with the world stage now at their doorstep. Lessard summarises his expectations for the band plain and simple: ‘You know, honestly, as long as there are people who enjoy the music and keep listening, I will keep playing. That’s all I really ever hoped for – the rest is up in the air, I just hope for the best.’ Between the Buried and Me will be playing at The Basement on Sunday November 17. The Contortionist is supporting. Tickets are $58.15 + bf through Oztix, and doors open at 8pm.

@bmamag

METALISE One of the most pleasing aspects of Canberra’s heavy music scene is its hardiness. Few bands demonstrate this more than Reign of Terror. I’m trying to think of a longer running active Canberra band and I’m struggling to do so … hmm, drop me an email if you think of one. The band plays The Basement in Belconnen on both Thursday November 7 and Friday November 8. They open proceedings on Thursday night, supporting Razorwyre, Darker Half, and Mattersphere. Then they’re co-headlining a show with Queenslanders Gorefield and locals Na Maza, Chud, and Tundrel on the Friday. Both shows are $10. Also this fortnight at The Basement is a huge gig of progressive heaviness for the fans of technical heavy music. Sunday November 17 will see the USA’s Between the Buried and Me joined by The Contortionist and Melbourne’s Ne Obliviscaris. The show is only $25. If you’re a fan of Ne Obliviscaris, or for our local musicians’ interest – if you’re thinking of doing a tour of Asia – the band have posted an 80 minute tour video with footage of the whole shebang. It includes plenty of your classic tour pitfalls, from activating international roaming on your mobiles to arriving in a foreign country to play without any of your equipment, and a bunch of other stuff well worth considering when you plan a tour OS. Search ‘Ne Obliviscaris Asian Tour’ for the video. While on technical trickery, super technical shred guitar playing in the ‘80s would not have been the same without the ‘neo-classical’ stylings of super Swede Yngwie Malmsteen. He of the scalloped frets and Ferrari-stickered strats is doing a series of masterclasses across Australia brought to you by the guys at Thump Music. They have run similar seminars for other guitar players, with the likes of ‘80s master shredders Steve Vai and his old teacher Joe Satriani. You can get along to the Sydney event on Tuesday December 10 at the Wesley Conference Centre. The Steel Panther and Buckcherry tour has been joined by fellow Americans Fozzy to up the frivolity another notch. The licensed all ages show is on at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on Saturday December 7. The local supports for the I Exist album launch show have been announced, with some great acts joining them on Saturday November 30 at the Magpies Club in the city. The Fighting League, Sumeru, and Hygiene are all aboard for the launch. Septicflesh and Fleshgod Apocalypse have just announced their joint Australian tour through May next year. The Sydney show is at the Manning Bar on Saturday May 17 and there will be VIP meet the band packages available through metropolistouring.com. Tickets go on sale from Friday November 8. The second announcement for the 2014 Soundwave festival will be due the day we go to press. I was scratching around my contacts and it just goes to show the pull I have that they’re all staying mum ‘til Thursday for AJ Maddah’s blessing. Spoil sports … JOSH NIXON doomtildeath@hotmail.com

facebook.com/bmamagazine

zine into a billion dollar plus media behemoth, even piquing the corporate interest of the reptilian (equal parts snake and dinosaur at this point) Rupert Murdoch. A few months ago, they launched an EDM sub-site named THUMP, clearly unsatisfied with noisey.com’s inability to usurp Pitchfork.

This month, Blahnket has managed to line up three killer shows, a veritable hat-trick of fine electronic acts, and well done to them. The first of these is at Trinity Bar, headlined by Sydney duo Alba, with Ben Fester. They’re supported by locals Xujih and two of the very talented boys behind the Lotown collective, Doppel and Logan Zingus. Continuing Blahnket’s hot streak of bringing big international acts to Canberra, such as Gold Panda, XXYYXX, and TOKiMONSTA, they’ve lined up Detroit wizard Shigeto. His self-titled LP released earlier this year was very solid, and he’s bringing his layered, frenetic beats to Barcode on Friday November 22. If you heard he was going to perform at Trinity, don’t worry – you’re not going insane. There was a double booking, so it’s moved. Finally, on Saturday November 30, Jonwayne from the US will play at Digress Cocktail Bar. Equal parts alternative hip hop and electronic – ‘I’m a rapper and producer who refuses to give up either one’ – his music beams with personality. The gifts that keep on giving, Blahnket will be aiming to provide a number of subsidised tickets through their Facebook page, so get around it. In Shane Smith’s unrelenting quest to turn VICE into ‘this generation’s CNN’, he’s overseen the expansion of a small Montreal

I was interested to see what the site would eventually turn into. At this stage, after some growing pains, it just seems like regular VICE, except focused exclusively on EDM. There’s still a mix of compelling and uninspired videos (Around the World in 80 Raves, anyone?) presented by bespectacled 20-somethings and the now trademark VICE style and tone. But the main reason to check it out is for the interviews they do and the mixes they publish – like the one by Claptone which is particularly good – which have been increasing in quality and quantity recently. It seems like VICE are now starting to push the site a lot more than they were over the past few weeks. And finally, Gesaffelstein’s newest release, Aleph, which is being touted as his big breakthrough after the success of singles like Pursuit and a concerted online advertising campaign, is a bit disappointing. In his attempt to craft an obsessive, dark album, it comes off more as samey repetition. It’s a very well-made album but the parts are greater than the sum, and as an album it falls down. Slight variations of the exact same aesthetic and modus operandi between tracks aren’t enough to sustain Aleph, no matter how catchy some of the hooks are or how bad-ass the low-end sounds. DONG HYUN SUH

@bmamag

facebook.com/bmamagazine

Lorde

by Martin Ollman Zierholz @ UC 2013

@bmamag

facebook.com/bmamagazine

A STATE OF LUX jade fosberry Was 2010 a memorable year? For me it marked the stumbling debut into my 20s, a series of bad decisions, and several failed uni subjects. Most notable though, was the backdrop to these memories: ADRIAN LUX’s Teenage Crime. Three years later, that track still sends shivers down my spine. It’s beautiful in its simplicity and the perfect example of Lux’s abilities. Soon after, 2012 saw the release of his self-titled debut album, along with many more tracks that solidified his place around the world as an electro-dance prince.

I’m trying to create a certain vibe, like when I was going out to clubs, and that whole world that inspired me

It hasn’t been long since his debut, but his second album is set for release in April 2014. I was lucky enough to have a chat to the lovely Swede, and although it was 7am there, the conversation was deep. The new album will see Lux take his music to another level. The release of Wild Child alone has proven that he’s been pushing himself to conquer new heights of dance music. It’s a rarity these days to hear a dance or electro track that doesn’t fall victim to the standard recipe so many artists are silently swearing by. Lux, however, has a clear methodology with his music: ‘You can try to be creative and think about what’s cool, but I’m trying to look inside myself and get the inspiration from there.’ He then sums up the current state of dance music quite aptly. ‘I think people are putting out songs for the wrong reasons and not spending enough time creating that certain special feeling,’ he says. ‘This time, I’ve tried to really make emotional tracks.’ Lux has graced our shores before, but rarely for a solo show. Fortunately this time, he’s touring alone. This not only means he’s catering the show specifically to his own music, but also that we’ll get to experience the many facets of Lux’s very interesting mind. ‘I try to put a lot of myself into my shows so it’s not just a DJ set,’ he says. ‘With this tour, I’m trying to create a certain vibe, like when I was going out to clubs, and that whole world that inspired me. I feel like that music got a bit lost along the way and the dance culture started to fade. It’s important to maintain that feeling that a lot of us come from. So with the album, tour, and the music I’m playing, I’m really just trying to create that feeling again.’ Lux also cites the visuals he’s bringing with him. ‘The visuals I’ve created are based on my inspiration, to try and live the kind of visual expression I would want to see.’ It’s clear in everything he says that this tour isn’t just going to be a DJ playing tracks to make you dance. It’ll be an experience that will take you on a wild journey, into the inner workings of Lux’s mind. Adrian Lux brings his Wild Child tour to Canberra on Friday November 15 at Academy. Tickets are $14.95 + bf from Moshtix. Doors open 9pm.

@bmamag

facebook.com/bmamagazine

E X H I B I T I O N I S T

Image credit: Amy McGregor

ARTS | ACT

FILLING IN THE GAPS vanessa wright ELLIPSIS brings together the work of four extremely talented, emerging Canberra photographers. Natalie Azzopardi, Holly GranvilleEdge, Katherine Griffiths, and Amy McGregor all produce work that explores the in-between moments and the incomplete stories. Their work can be different visually, but shares the same aim, as Azzopardi describes, ‘to create an experience of immersive storytelling and a suspension of belief’. Azzopardi, Granville-Edge, Griffiths, and McGregor’s work is concerned with the concepts of narrative and truth in photography – what is real or imagined. As Azzopardi explains: ‘Narrative and truth are two eternal elements of photography. For the show, we wanted to explore narrative in an unconventional way, giving the viewer the room to move and elaborate on the images and the story they may or may not be telling.’ McGregor describes her series Cut-In as ‘a series of recreated and imagined cut-in shots influenced by TV and film from the 1970s.’ They are the scenes you see only for a second on screen, but can reveal minute details. Taken out of context they become sinister and cryptic depictions of the everyday, leaving the viewer to create the narrative themselves.

seem to last forever in our memory. 17 is a series that explores these moments and examines the nature of memory. With a focus on brightly lit objects set against an impenetrable black background, the severe naturalism of Granville-Edge’s work is reminiscent of the still life’s of Spanish painter Juan Sánchez Cotán. Each object is given close attention, and through this examination by the camera, the objects depicted take on an otherworldly quality. These are highly constructed scenes, designed to appear part of a larger narrative, but it’s a story that never quite adds up. Similarly, Griffiths’ series Lucid takes on a dark and moody palette to explore the distinctive qualities of dreams. These are intriguing works, full of symbolic imagery, and they trigger the sensation of memory. These scenes become cinematic in quality, and there is a sense of narrative interrupted – again, prompting the viewer to imagine the story, to fill the empty gaps. By exploring narrative and truth in photography, Azzopardi, GranvilleEdge, Griffiths, and McGregor have produced a collection of work brought together by its cinematic quality.

Azzopardi explains it is ‘about rethinking the visual story, about leaving room for the viewer to insert themselves, their own conclusions or experiences, to depart from reality to explore.’

‘I think we all draw from our imagination, a place larger than life, a perfect place,’ Azzopardi says. ‘So our images will have a tendency to the cinematic. As we are trying to embody the unreal, make a viewer believe, drawing on visual storytelling, which is dominated by cinema and the reality and magic it can create.’

Azzopardi’s work in Ellipsis has the bright, hazy quality of a summer holiday or a long weekend; those rare in-between moments that

Ellipsis is showing at ANCA Gallery until Sunday November 10. The gallery is open Wednesday to Sunday, 12–5pm.

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

Image credit: Courtney Green

I’LL BE IN THE SHED rory McCARTNEY The Yarralumla Woolshed is well known for its quiet location, beautiful views, and bush dances. It’s also the venue for the THIS IS ART MARKET, which aims to bring original, affordable art to the masses. BMA spoke to organiser Mel, who together with her husband Matt, is running the show. ‘We got into this kind of by accident,’ she says. ‘We like to hobby paint and we were talking about how people sell art, and somehow we came up with it.’ They made a space that would suit emerging artists, and held their first Canberra event last April. The whole area gets used, with some artists in the shearing pens, some in the main hall, and others outside. The April event was a great success. ‘We were really blown away, getting 2,500 people through, 40 artists exhibiting, and sales in the tens of thousands of dollars,’ Mel says. ‘The most exciting part for us and the artists was that it turned out that it was a setup that successfully sold art. Artists that go to other places said it was the best they had ever sold at any market, even though they had been on the scene for 20 years.’ This November around 50 artists are expected, with most from the ACT and south coast. Types of art on sale include mixed media, painting, drawing, sculpture, street art, and ‘live art’, where there will be creations produced in front of the eyes of visitors. Notable exhibitors include street artist Dranoel, Michael Ashley (aka Leafy Sea Dragon), Luke O’Day, Gillian Jackson, mixed media artist Sally Dunbar, and landscape painters Dermot Seymour and Ian Robertson. The market will feature a new event called an Art Battle, where two artists will be given an hour to produce work which will then get voted on by patrons. ‘The overall aim is to have the public understand that they can buy local, original art,’ Mel says. ‘So many people use Target or similar to decorate their new homes, buying prints made overseas. They hang it on their wall as they think it’s all they can afford. This Is Art Market shows that there is affordable art, it’s made locally, it’s amazing, and it’s accessible. You can buy it at art market.’ The bohemian vibe will be boosted through live music, including Bubbles and Yeti (Mel’s own band), local electronic rocker Taka Perry, and Rhythm Fiction. There will also be food including wood fired oven pizza, healthy stuff like juice and fruit salad, gözleme, coffee, and that essential item for the art aficionado – wine. ‘All this can be enjoyed in the surroundings, which, while in the middle of Canberra, feel like you are out in the hills. With the music, food, and art, it’s fun and relaxing.’

This Is Art Market is being held at Yarralumla Woolshed, Sat–Sun November 9–10, with the event going from 10am to 3pm each day. Entry is a gold coin. Check their website thisisartmarket.com for full details.

@bmamag

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

CLASSICS IN REVIEW Homage to Catalonia George Orwell [Secker and Warburg; 1938]

George Orwell is mostly remembered, rightly so, for the masterpiece that is Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as for his stinging satire against Stalinism in Animal Farm, but it is in his Homage to Catalonia that we are given insight into the formative experiences of his political life. And it is Homage to Catalonia which is surely a classic of English-language histories of the Spanish Civil War, and a classic of the ‘firsthand history’ genre more broadly. In the opening chapters of Homage to Catalonia, we are recounted the revolutionary zeal that had struck anarchist-held Barcelona, the social equality that had diffused through even the militias – so much so that ‘the ordinary divisions of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England’ – and then of the squalid nature of the frontline fighting, with rats ‘as big as cats’ scrambling through the trenches. Orwell goes on to recount the change in atmosphere he encountered in Barcelona after having returned, an atmosphere which would transform into armed fighting between the Republican forces in Barcelona, and then the outright suppression of Orwell’s nonMoscow-aligned faction. On the Aragon front it was Franco’s forces that had fought him in the trenches, but it was in the rear guard of Barcelona where Stalin’s friends had forced him out of Spain. In trying to understand these great cataclysms of history which, in truth, happened ‘only yesterday’ (‘all history is contemporary history’, Benedetto Croce tells us), we’re left dazzled by the great

facebook.com/bmamagazine

multitude of vying forces, factions, fighters, and sheer fate which together make up the contested and incomplete history of any given event. How do we make sense of it all? Who do we believe? Where do we start? Well, the first two questions you can answer for yourself, of course, but as for the third question, you might begin by reading Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War. You might then visit Lennox Gardens on Lake Burley Griffin, where you will find a memorial to the 70 Australians who fought for the Spanish Republic, and consider what drove so many men and women (50,000 from 53 countries, it is said) – mostly unrecognised to this day by their governments and in our ‘official’ histories – to board a boat bound for Spain. And what can writers, artists, and activists of the present day take from Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War? Well, an eye for truth and clarity was Orwell’s trademark, and his regard for what is right and true pitted him against many of his contemporaries of both the left and right, at home and abroad, and in both the corridors of power and the columns of the intelligentsia. We would do well to try and follow the example he set in our own work, mental or material, as modest as it might be. timothy ginty

UNINHIBITED I ran into an old friend over the weekend at Braddon and we joked about how dull our city was. She was stood amongst racks of finery from April’s Caravan outside the Traders, shouting to be heard over the obligatory rockabilly band that April seems to bring with her whenever she relaunches her shop. Around us were hundreds of people, clutching coffees, walking dogs, chatting, scanning, catching up, flirting, browsing. Dull indeed. Say what you will about Braddon’s transformation into a mini Melbourne – I accept its flaws and the veiled stink of pastiche. It works. It turns ideas like those of critic Robert Nelson on their head.

In the Age, Nelson wrote that Canberra is ‘… a place with no sense of community, with an automotive footprint, and hardly any people … Canberra has no urbanistic qualities: it’s an antisocial city in denial of people with feet.’ Nelson must have last visited in the ‘60s, or maybe he lacks the imagination to fight an established and incorrect view of the capital. Sure, if he landed in Gungahlin at 3pm on a Tuesday or decided to take a stroll around Lake Tuggeranong, his view may be more credible. To which he might argue that a city is not just its centre. And then we could argue that a wholesale re-evaluation of Sydney (focusing on, say, St Marys or Liverpool instead of Surry Hills and Bronte) and Melbourne (starting at Preston and winding west to Sunshine), let alone Paris and London, might be due. The fact remains that Canberra is starting to get this urban living thing right, and the flow-on that courses through the wider community is showing. You might not live in Braddon or Acton, but when you visit you’re surrounded by strangers living their lives on the pavement. They’re eating and drinking and making merry, balancing kids and pets and friends, shoved up on stools next to one another, forced to share. I have a young daughter, and we live in an apartment. Many people ask me when we’re moving to the ‘burbs, as if it’s a foregone conclusion. We have no such plan. I’m really interested in raising a child in a space where she has to share her ‘backyard’ with other people, folk outside her family. The theory goes that if she has to share her space, she might be less focused on an idea of personal ‘ownership’. There’s something so powerful about meeting and playing on the street, not just in rooms. From the vendors on the sidewalks of Vietnam to the great plazas of Barcelona, cities with street life always feel like destinations, not just places to pass through. When we get up close with people we don’t know, we’re forced to be civil. This is what it is to build and be part of a community. Canberra has no urbanistic qualities? What complete bullshit. We have them, and we’re building more. It’s slow going, but it is going, and it’s going well. GLEN MARTIN glenpetermartin @gmail.com

@bmamag

ARTISTPROFILE: Alycia Moffat

What do you do? I create highly stylised portraits drawn from imagination. I work throughout a range of print media. When, how and why did you get into it? I have always been interested in the human figure, ever since I can remember. Going to art school really encouraged me to get away from an obsession with the photo-real and pursue my own style of mark making. Who or what influences you as an artist? I love the work of Egon Schiele, the way he created portraits was just so beautifully expressive. Julian Schnabel’s ‘Fox Farm’ series is a body of work that I recently fell in love with. I am also very inspired by abstract expressionism. I think it takes a certain kind of fearlessness to approach a blank canvas with only mark-making and colour. Of what are you proudest so far? I am quite fond of my current body of work which mixes lithography and watercolour, but talk to me in six months time and I will probably have changed my mind. I am

facebook.com/bmamagazine

also working on some album cover art for Dylan Hekimian that I am pretty excited about. What are your plans for the future? I am going to finish my Visual Arts degree with honours. After that, I am looking to move to Brisbane to pursue a career in graphic design, possibly picking up another degree on the way. What makes you laugh? Unfortunately, dad jokes. It has become very apparent in the last few years that my sense of humour may need some fine-tuning. What pisses you off? Pens that run out midway through drawing, and finding cranberries in a packet of frozen berries. What about the local scene would you change? It would be nice if it was more accessible, especially for artists new to the scene. I would like to see more opportunities for young artist group exhibitions. Upcoming exhibitions? An exhibition at Honkytonks with Mimi Fairall, opening Wednesday November 6. And the CNN live art battle final at La De Da in December. Contact Info: alycia_moffat@hotmail.com; facebook.com/mondayneart.

IN REVIEW

The Comedy of Errors The Playhouse Tuesday October 29–Saturday November 9 The combination of Bell actors and the South Australian State Theatre’s creative and production team, a divine marriage, has inspired a production of The Comedy of Errors as startlingly original as it is unexpectedly funny. Retaining c1600 settings such as a priory, but using to great advantage such mod cons as a customs lounge and a nightclub (transformed at a hop through the magic of liquid crystal and light-emitting diodes), the play resounds with comic elements that, despite having become stock standard fare, retain their ability to use the anxiety of potential tragedy and our sympathy for undeserving victims as fuel for laughter. The production’s archetypal characters, at home in the 16th or 17th century but dressed four centuries later, similarly are both interestingly modern and strangely true to their origins. So we have

the all-powerful, nobly disposed duke powerless before the law to dispense kindness; we have not just one, but two, sets of twins, and consequently complex confusions. We have the somewhat shrewish matron; the tempting sister; the merchant unwittingly cheated of his payment; the hapless castaway; the sharp nun; the thug. And we need no help in recognising all of them. Partly, though, that is a matter of very accomplished acting. Here I’m speaking of acting that, in its deliberate overuse of expression and gesture, seems utterly right – and Bell’s unparalleled ability to convey Shakespearean meaning through action, expression, and gesture. Perfection in timing made the physical comedy sublime. Clever direction of mixed characters in mixed settings gave us marital misunderstandings and legal ones too that, despite very different mores, social structures, and legal underpinnings, must recall to every audience member such immediately relevant circumstances as State penalisation of refugees; the shame of putatively broken vows and promises; the pain of rejection. The production is relevant and convincing – if you’re willing to accept it for what it is: farce. The plot is contrived enough to be unlikely; the characters need (and bear) no deep examination. What holds it all together is a juxtaposition of creativities: originality in design and detail; coordination in physical comedy; and plot twists utterly embroiled with embarrassment, misfortune, humiliation, and a modicum of poor judgement. To fully appreciate the play necessitates receiving it in an understanding that its intent is not to represent reality, to put us on the edge of our seats in hoping for the hero’s glory and the victim’s rescue, to put us in their shoes; but rather to let us see ourselves from the outside, in a microcosm of the fabulously deranged human nature that we inhabit so readily and naturally. Even the sexual comedy that in a modern play is objectionably childish was, here, if unconvincing, no more than childish. Do yourself a favour: see it. john p. harvey

@bmamag

Image credit: Matt Nettheim

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

For the Editor-in-Chief of a magazine which purports to foster the arts, one of the many flawed decisions Mr Ashley Thomson has made has been to hire me – a man who views any self-anointed artist as slippery and duplicitous as a suspect Italian fish. Not that I am immune to the charms of genuine artistry, you understand. I was, for example, captivated by the recent JMW Turner exhibition at your National Gallery, mesmerised by the artist’s ability to marry the unbridled power of a tempestuous seascape with a healthy British contempt for the underclass (intimations no doubt lost on most attendees, being as they were both of the underclass and contemptuous). Nor, indeed, am I averse to the existence of the truly talented artist: a man (or, unrealistically, a woman) who via the union of imagination and dexterity is able to illumine a hitherto veiled aspect of the human condition, touching us all in a most profound, yet perfectly legal way; be it through paint, prose, or music. I am no philistine, I just cannot abide a charlatan. The term ‘artist’ is one of utmost reverence; it alludes to the zenith of human expression, the total mastery of an artistic discipline – stations only truly occupied by a very few. Crucially, it is a term to be bestowed, not commandeered. It is, therefore, with extreme cynicism and prejudice that I entertain any person who describes themselves as an ‘artist.’ In all probability they are a painter, a singer, a writer, a musician; and there is an even greater likelihood that they snuffle around in a nondescript, talent-free trough of artistic dearth, capable only of the shatteringly mediocre. Ask one of these ‘artists’ why it is their ‘work’ is shite, and the shortcomings of their efforts will be immediately projected onto the perceived shallow character of the viewer. As it turns out, their work is not shite, it is just that we, the viewer, cannot fully comprehend the multi-layered complexity of its being – how the genesis of this ‘work’ and its profound commentary on humankind demands the re-evaluation of our relationship with anything and everything around us, on a primal, nay, molecular level. We could do that. Or we could just all agree that it is shite. Using words such as ‘juxtaposition’, ‘cathartic’, and ‘resonate’ will not in themselves elevate ‘works’ above the average. The fact that many see fit to explicitly define just what it is the viewer/reader/listener/ infuriated patron should garner from these ‘works’ surely defeats the very purpose of art itself. Invariably, when these self-proclaimed visionaries exhibit, the only boundaries they push are those which will lead them towards the gaping maw of their inexorable obsolescence. To aspire to artistry is an admirable undertaking, but one will not arrive there simply by adopting a flattering moniker. So, the next time one of you intends to introduce yourself to me as ‘an artist’, I trust you won’t mind when I tell you to fuck off. gideon foxington-smythe

facebook.com/bmamagazine

bit PARTS VILLAINESS WHAT: Fashion Photo Exhibition WHEN: Thu–Sat Nov 7–9 WHERE: Kaori Gallery Canberra’s fashion industry has solidified, and exhibitions like this are a result. Villainess is a fashion photo shoot exhibition featuring ten famous villainous alter egos. It includes mythological characters like Medusa, and the Siren, and also famous contemporary villains like the White Witch, the Borg Queen (Star Trek: First Contact), the Femme Fatale, Pyramid Head (Silent Hill 2), Vampira, and Elle Driver (Kill Bill). It’s a collaborative project between Georgia Kartas (of red magpie), photographer Elly Freer, and makeup artist Laura McCleane. The exhibition launches Thursday November 7 at 7pm. Free. ENCOMPASS WHAT: ACT Arts Showcase WHEN: Wed Nov 13 WHERE: Academy After selling out their first showcase event in September, RAW Canberra has announced another for mid-November. Titled Encompass, it will bring together 30 upcoming artists across fashion, music, visual and performing arts, and film, and put on a huge extravaganza at Academy. RAW: Natural Born Artists is an independent organisation, for artists, by artists. They focus on encouraging artists in the community and giving them the tools and resources they need to help everyone grow. Tickets are $15 + bf, through rawartists.org/canberra/ encompass, or $20 on the door. The showcase kicks off at 7:30pm. COMEDY & BEER WHAT: Comedy and Beers Night WHEN: Thu Nov 14 WHERE: The Durham Castle Arms, Kingston With the weather set to heat up by November, Canberra will soon be well into its warmer months. When that happens, all you really need some evenings is a drink and a few laughs. So it’s lucky that Comedy ACT and the Durham Castle Arms have come together to provide you with just that – a night of comedy and beer. Hosted by MC Harris Stuckey (of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, pictured), and several other comedians, including Hamish Hudson, it’s set to be a great evening. And the icing on the cake? $5 schooners from craft breweries like Little Creatures. From 9pm. Free entry. RADICAL REELS TOUR WHAT: Adventure Film Festival WHEN: Sun–Tue Nov 17–19 WHERE: National Film and Sound Archives The Banff Mountain Festival is taking 11 of their most extreme and high-adrenalin films from their latest festival all around the country, and they’re stopping by Canberra’s National Film and Sound Archives this November. This is the largest and most prestigious mountain adventure, culture, and exploration festival in the world; these films are designed to keep you on the edge of your seat. They feature footage of some of the best climbers, paddlers, BASE jumpers, skiers, snowboarders, and mountain-bike riders around. To book tickets, see banffaustralia.com.au.

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

the word on albums exhilarating ideas for a 15-year-old who feels trapped, but then that 15-year-old has better writers to chart the story, be it Bowie or Morrissey or the countless others who can create a nuanced reading of this narrative. Win Butler doesn’t do nuance. What is most frustrating about Reflektor is that amongst the cod-ordinary angsty poetry and the inevitable walls of sound is an extraordinary record. A peerless ideas-fest on a par with Funeral. How disappointing it is to receive a truly great record whose overall effect is dissipated by an unreliable narrator and great ideas stretched beyond breaking point. The great ideas have a lot to do with producer James Murphy. His filters and taste elevate the weird disco rock within.

album of the issue arcade fire reflektor [Merge] A few weeks ago another of those peculiar cultural moments particular to our age occurred, when a decent amount of the internet devoted itself to live reportage of a new album stream. Radiohead probably started this with In Rainbows, and recently Daft Punk and Kanye have served as lightning rods for the online ‘community’ to bathe in something ‘together’. Arcade Fire did so via YouTube, streaming their new LP to the full 85 minutes of the 1959 cult film Black Orpheus, with the Twitters and Facebooks and blogs and more regular music sites offering a rolling commentary on the new record. A record, cue irony, all about connectivity in the modern world. A New York Times piece suggested that the themes coursing through Reflektor take something from Kierkegaard’s ideas on a ‘reflective age’, and there’s some referencing of Baudrillard’s simulacra too. Both deal with the reduction of ‘real experience’ and the integration of distancing agents – the screen, interaction via social media, so on. Big ideas. Current and pertinent ideas. Good material for a big record from a major band. But if you’re gonna put them in song, you need a better writer than Win Butler. Their first and best record, Funeral, was rooted in experience. We could forgive the bombast and searching universalisms because grief, and a desire to live in the face of it, is deeply personal. But since then Butler has been on a trip, keen to let his listener know that the misfits are hard done by, that religion can be (deep breath) a bit crap, that the grownups in their houses with their jobs are dull, and the suburban houses that form the suburban dream are prisons. These might be

The title track is one of the most magnificent songs of the year. It’s a perfect fusion of AF and Murphy. Every movement drops at the right moment. No crescendo is too obviously signposted and the lyrics stay on the right side of naff. There’s a beautifully meta moment where the Bowie-esque breakdown so often used through LCD Soundsystem songs is again called on, but this time featuring the voice of Bowie himself. It’s dramatic, danceable, and has a saxophone refrain. It’s seven minutes of perfection. Here Comes the Night Time is six minutes of the same, albeit in a very different form. Inspired by the Haitian rhythms the band have been banging on about in interviews, a frenetic intro gives way awkwardly to a strange, loping two-step. It’s an odd masterpiece. Elsewhere, the dub of Flashbulb Eyes, the post-punk noise of Normal Person, and the slinky New Order stylings of Joan of Arc raise the bar. These are such great tunes, makeable only by the group that brought you No Cars Go and Wake Up. The second half of the record contains the lowest points. Awful Sound and It’s Never Over meander (both are almost saved by Murphy-led rhythmic interventions). Afterlife hints at grandeur but is again brought down by thudding lyrical cliché. Porno is a B-side at best, a few good ideas linked by a bunch of ineffectual ones that makes for a decent curio and Here Comes the Night Time II is so inessential as to inspire questions of judgement from all concerned. The scale of the thing makes it exhausting, which is pertinent. It’s a long record full of sounds and messages delivered via sledgehammer. So once the hubbub dies down, who will be listening, nay connecting to Reflektor, as a whole, on repeat? What kind of mood does the listener need to be in? How much of her day will she need to clear to focus on it? Will the broad and unquestioning proclamations of Butler sound just as naïve as they do now? I suspect that once the excitement fades we’ll feel that there are a clutch of songs amongst the very best this band has made, with a lot of stuff that’s fine if it pops up on shuffle, and, say, another third which you might take or leave. GLEN MARTIN

@bmamag

joan jett & the blackhearts unvarnished [Turnstile]

the crooked fiddle band moving pieces of the sea [bird’s robe records]

feelings be kind, unwind [create/control]

It was a gobsmacking moment when this rolled up in the post, finding that Joan Jett, the 1980s female version of Billy Idol, was still belting out the big ones for rock ‘n’ roll.

Sometimes a review starts out with a daggy pro and con list: Con – Cover art awful. [Ed: This particular piece of cover art is the subject of an extraordinary time lapse YouTube clip detailing how it was created. Highly recommended, whatever Tatjana says.] Pro – Producer Steve Albini worked with Pixies and Nirvana. Big fat pro. Con – My being jaded by folk musicians who are more drunk than talented ‘jamming’ around a fire. Pro – Sounds of non-conformist intelligent soundscapes made by accomplished musicians.

While Philadelphia Grand Jury fans are still lamenting the breakup of the group, former frontman Simon ‘Berkfinger’ Berckelman hasn’t exactly been sitting idle, turning his hands to producing the likes of Dune Rats, Art vs. Science, and Velociraptor. Two years on from PGJ’s demise, Feelings offers up Berckelman’s new band, though in many senses it’s a band reunion under a different name, with the Phillys’ Dan W and Joel Beeson both back in the line-up.

Joan is best remembered for I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, which reached No. 1 in the US in 1982, became a minor rock anthem, and has been butchered by karaoke singers countless times since its release. Unvarnished is her tenth album with the Blackhearts and her first release in seven years. Stylistically, the album offers a solid dose of mainstream pop rock, with upbeat, fastpaced songs that sound similar. Opener Any Weather is one of the better tracks, with a chorus crafted with audience sing-alongs in mind. Joan liked it so much that there are two versions on the CD, although telling them apart is a challenge. Make it Back is the best of this bunch, delivering a ‘90s punk vibe, and Fragile holds some of the better guitar moves on the disk. Other highlights are hard to find, unless you’re into a heavy dose of cow bell, in which case Different and Seriously might be your thing. Joan retains her trademark deep voice, although things sound ragged on some of the trailing edges of notes in songs like TMI. Most tracks struggle to rise above mediocre and the one, unimaginative grinding guitar sound washes through the tracklist. Lyrics are distressingly bland, with some being cheesier than Woolies’ dairy cabinet. The closing ballad, Everybody Needs a Hero, sounds like a Roxette reject. Unvarnished is conventional, inoffensive fodder aimed at existing Joan Jett fans. It is also living proof that some artists should rest on their laurels. rory McCARTNEY

And so it goes. Crooked Fiddle is a fourpiece that is clearly influenced by more than the traditional, weaving through every genre with a slanted bow. The album is mostly instrumental, with violinist Jess Randall making a spectacular mess of ‘spot the instrument’ as she mimics every sound possible. The Vanishing Shapes of a Better World is like the sweet girl in the string section decided to run off with the grungy drummer and they had some words, apparently achieved by popping a snare drum to a bass amp. Neptune’s Fool sounds like below deck at the Titanic if Jack and Rose had taken a mood enhancer, while Shanti and the Singing Fish is the contemplative morning after. The band only hint at the classical sounds that may have once filled their repertoires; now they are able to piece together a piñata of sound, hacked at with droning bass thuds as they smash into shanties John Hillcoat would be proud of. This is the soundtrack to The Proposition at sea – you can hear the high-pitched wail of the seagulls as they circle overhead, smell the salty air as you bob along on your boat without a paddle, and yet breathe a sigh of relief that it will never be the waterlogged mess of an overpriced Costner flick. tatjana clancy

facebook.com/bmamagazine

Their debut album Be Kind, Unwind sees an impressive cast of Sydney indie peers contributing to the 11 tracks here, including Megan Washington and members of Dappled Cities and Yves Klein Blue. Compared to PBJ’s occasionally lo-fi sprawl, Feelings comes across as a more slimmed-down vehicle, the emphasis falling more upon pared down, catchy hooks, though the familiar backing harmonies of Berckelman’s former band surface at more than a few points. There’s also a firm focus on a sunny and pretty feel that’s more than appropriate as the summer comes on. If City Hall hints at a slightly more classic rocktinged Pavement, with its wavering slacker chorus hook and layers of guitar jangle, New York Summer offers up the gratuitous and obvious single as it fuses an infectious kazoo-like synth hook with garage-rock riffs and the sort of tribal drums that sound like they’ve stepped straight off a Ronettes record. Elsewhere, Intercourse tips its hat towards Prince with its sex-obsessed falsetto vocal and disco drums, while Loosen Up veers closer to Devo’s uptight new wave antics. There’s a sense here more than anything else of Berckelman pilfering his record collection and having a great time. chris downton

album in focus

los campesinos! no blues [Wichita/Turnstile] Los Campesinos! have forged a career out of taking their bright and audacious pop and drowning it in a barrel of blood, break-ups, and despair. While this is by no means an original concept – juxtaposing the morbid and sorrowful with catchy hooks and otherwise pleasant melodies – Los Campesinos! manage to do so with such gusto, confidence, and balance on their fifth record, that to deny them their place at the front of the pack would be criminal. The six-piece’s debut album, Hold On Now, Youngster…, may have been soaked in glockenspiel and charming boy-girl back-and-forths, but not too far beneath its gleeful surface lay a solid foundation of adolescent angst. Fast forward a few years to the release of their fourth album, Hello Sadness – a break-up album through and through – and the band had not only embraced this foundation, but built upon it; there was barely a hint of their initial, overwhelmingly joyous spark. While No Blues feels in part a continuation of this, it takes a step back from the emotionally direct appeal of its predecessor, concerns itself with slightly different matters, and puts on a cheeky grin in the face of all that dark. Gareth’s lyricism is witty and remarkably entertaining, which is par for the course. Obscure football references abound in greater numbers than ever, and discovering their meaning is more delight than chore. Gareth’s vocal talents also develop even further away from his once youthful and often abrasive

yelp – something perfectly highlighted in the impressive As Lucerne/The Low. However, where Hello Sadness would yank your heart out and break a few ribs on the way with songs like Hate for the Island, No Blues eschews such visceral acts in favour of a subtler approach. Don’t worry, the shadows are just as dark, but instead of reaching straight through your chest, they slip into your mind on the fourth or fifth listen. When you realise the full impact of what you’re singing along to, and how goddamn clever it actually is – well, that’s when Los Campesinos! really shine. The beauty of music like this is that the basic juxtaposition it’s built upon allows for a kind of dual appreciation. If you’ve just been dumped, it’ll hold your hand and provide enough empathy to keep you together; but on any other bright day, it can be just as pleasing. The refrain of Avocado, Baby, sung by a cheerleading squad, is enough to bring a room of smiles, and What Death Leaves Behind climaxes with the line ‘We will flower again’ – a glimmer of hope rarely encountered in Gareth’s world. Tom, who writes most of the music, only furthers this dual appreciation. He has very rapidly developed a knack for sealing up tracks with warmth and energy, without becoming ostentatious or snatching for attention, and so at times here, his writing proves far more uplifting than any bleak lamentation Gareth can spit forth. As a result, tracks like Let It Spill and For Flotsam manage to course with a sense of upbeat optimism. The release disappoints only slightly with its mixing, which feels like it covers up aspects of the record that deserve to shine. Kim’s vocals on Avocado, Baby feel stifled under the mimicking synth line, and sometimes Jason’s drumming fails to cut through as powerfully as it should. However, such criticisms are, for the most part, few and far between. Tracks like Glue Me and A Portrait of the Trequartista as a Young Man sound particularly sublime, and No Blues does an admirable job of conveying Los Campesinos!’ usual darkness without becoming self-indulgent or lyrically banal. The result is a band turning their balancing act into a fine art, and barely missing a step. JEREMY STEVENS

autechre l-events [warp/inertia] You probably already know which side of the Autechre fence you sit on before I even get started on this review. Either you’re in rapt appreciation of the complex, constantly shifting micro-structures in their music, or you find them frustratingly impenetrable. Admittedly, the UK duo have often seemed wilfully ‘difficult’ in the past, with 2001’s Confield and its predecessor Draft 7.30 ushering in a period of extreme austerity and cerebral exercises that were often more interesting to contemplate than actually listen to. In recent years, though, Autechre have been going through something of a purple patch, with 2010’s stunning Oversteps album reintroducing some of the warmest and most approachable music they had fashioned in some time, before the sprawling Exai took things slightly further out into the dark earlier this year. As hinted at by the similar sleeve art, this latest EP L-Event offers a companion piece to the main Exai set, but it’s a considerably different beast, one that’s far more sharpedged and contorted. Crushed metallic tones re-emerge as a motif continually here, with the hyper-dense Tac Lacora offering up one of the most head-scrambling compositions Autechre have done since Gantz Graf, as serrated webs of noise rush in seemingly every direction at once. That said, there are still comparatively gentler and more approachable moments to be found amidst these four tracks. M39 Diffain sends vaguely funky robotic bass tones bouncing against half tempo arrhythmic beats that suggest ultra-deconstructed hip hop, while elsewhere Newbound ventures out into optimistic-sounding crystalline synthscapes, though there’s still a sense of lurking menace in the background amidst a forest of restless bass rumbles and laserlike textures. If you’re an Autechre fan, you probably need this. chris downton

@bmamag

singles in focus by cody atkinson justice crew everybody

day ravies tussle [popfrenzy]

stonefield stonefield [wunderkind/illusive]

Let’s just get all the keywords out of the way. Shoegaze. Dreamy. Sounds a bit like MBV, YLT, and OMG. ‘Swooping’ guitars (you might use ‘corruscating’ too, but you run the risk of being barred from the music critics fraternity). ‘Layered’, ‘breathy’ vocals. And so on.

Sisters Amy, Hannah, Sarah, and Holly Findlay hail from Darraweit Guim in Victoria, a town best known for having a strange name. Together, they comprise Stonefield, which has had a pretty meteoric rise.

The thing about this very fine debut record from Day Ravies is that in order to get your attention, these terms will be used to position the album in the marketplace. That whole ‘if you like A you’ll totally love B’-style targeted advertising trick. Which does this band no real favours. Yes, they sound a bit like some bands you’ve already heard, and they exist in a more marginal frame of pop music than, say, melodic indie, or hardcore, or dubstep, or Cyrusporny or whatever. But all bands sound like other bands. And even though I’ve spent half this review referencing it, do ignore this pigeon-holing palaver. Tussle should simply be known as one of the best debuts of 2013. Check the phrasing in the first line of I Don’t Mind, the upward lilt of the voice, the effortless pacing. It’s superb stuff. Double Act performs similar tricks, sounding timeless and brand new at once. They’re beautifully played and so thoughtfully arranged that your correspondent found himself drifting into paroxysms of pure pleasure on Canberra public transport more than once. The stars of the show are vocalists/ bassists/keyboardists Lani Crook and Caroline de Dear, but clearly the guitar of Sam Wilkinson is the Shields-esque glue that binds this great record, and none of it would work without the steady yet fluid rhythm of Matt Neville. Point being that Day Ravies is a fully formed unit, the sound of a united purpose.

The band won the 2010 Triple J Unearthed High contest, played Glastonbury in 2011, and was the half time entertainment at an AFL match (not the grand final) the same year. The band has been much hyped, with even the label Wunderkind singing their praises. Their debut album delivers hard rock with a strong ‘70s influence, like a female version of Wolfmother, but without such strong and catchy melodies. What they do bring is the outstanding rock voice of Amy and the retro keyboard sound from Sarah, which whip up the sound like nitrous oxide boosts an engine. The lyrics are very simple, often repetitive, and don’t always stand up to much scrutiny (how does ‘put a curse on me, set me free’ fit together?). However, it should be said that some of the album highlights like House of the Lonely, with its strong chorus, and the closer Keep on Rollin’, also bring the most repetitious vocal lines. The radio friendly Put Your Curse on Me injects a little Ockerism into the lyrics, with ‘Riding around in your red HQ’. Album highlights also include the opener C’mon, with juicy riffs, great licks, and lots of grunt. There’s an impressive amount of musical low end torque in the LP, evident even in the softer, slower songs like Diggin’ My Way Out. Yes, the music does at times sound as though it has been created to a formula. However, it’s a pretty good formula. rory McCARTNEY

The best part of this song happens at 3:47, where silence hits the track. Also, I watch one fucking Justice Crew clip and they’re advertised all over my Google. Every time I search anything, Justice Crew pops up. I’m taking this personally. (0 stars.)

readable graffiti happy to be A nice little fun pop song from ex-Canberrans Readable Graffiti. Happy to Be doesn’t shoot for bombastic, instead content to remain understated. Toning down the electronic elements from their previous efforts, Happy to Be remains melodically interesting throughout. (3.5 stars.)

dollar bar diff’rent 4 gurls On the cusp of releasing their long-awaited second album, Brissy legends Dollar Bar play to their grittier side. Diff’rent 4 Gurls sees distorted vocals mix with even more distorted guitar and some very nice riffage. Dollar Bar also show that they can turn a phrase when needed. If you can ignore the terrible spelling, it’s quite a good listen. (4 stars.)

los campesinos! avocado, baby Los Campesinos! have spent most of their career treading the difficult line between twee and punk. Indeed, they may have created the line between twee and punk. Avocado, Baby hits both these sweet spots in its five minute runtime. The lyrics adeptly mix melancholia and literary references, which I guess is an admirable thing. (4 stars.)

glen martin

facebook.com/bmamagazine

the word

on films

WITH MELISSA WELLHAM

How is it that Rachel McAdams has starred in a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel (The Notebook) and a movie based on what is essentially a real-life Nicholas Sparks novel (The Vow), and yet she’s still so darn likeable? Perhaps because despite roles like this, she usually plays fairly plucky and genuinely good-hearted characters. Her role in About Time is no different – and it’s the chemistry between her and Domhnall Gleeson that keeps the film going.

quote of the issue ‘This is such a weird joke.’ – Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson), on time travel, About Time

about time

prisoners

captain phillips

Rom-com old hat Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) has directed one of his most eccentric films to date, with a movie about time travel that isn’t really about time travel at all.

When young friends Anna and Joy disappear from their own street on Thanksgiving, their families (Hugh Jackman and Mario Bello; Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) are thrown into emotional turmoil. After one particular suspect, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), is released, desperate father Keller (Jackman) decides to find answers his own way, convinced that Jones is guilty.

Captain Phillips feels like having a gun held to your head. Director Paul Greengrass delivers an astonishing film that’s compelling and ruthless.

Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson aka BILL WEASLEY FROM HARRY POTTER) is a somewhat hapless young man, who is told by his father (Bill Nighy) on his 21st birthday that he has the ability to travel through time. Tim decides to use his power for the most noble of aims: getting a girlfriend. The trailer for About Time made the film look much more like a conventional romantic comedy than it is. The storyline isn’t centred entirely around the relationship between Tim and Mary (Rachel McAdams), but is just as much about family relationships, and the great, big, beautiful mundanities of everyday life. The strength of About Time is the contrast between the sweet and sad subplots in the film, and a twist in the last third of the film saw me sobbing. To be completely honest – not a lot happens in About Time. Never have I seen a movie about time travel where the protagonist uses their power for so little – neither good nor evil. But rarely have I seen a film, either, where life lessons are delivered with such a deft, light hand. melissa wellham

Prisoners is rough going in parts, and director Denis Villeneuve certainly knows how to push the boundary of what the most squeamish audience member will be able to handle. Jackman turns in an especially harrowing performance as the intense and religious Keller, blinded by anger and determination to protect his family. Howard’s Franklin serves as a more relatable moral counterpoint, and Jake Gyllenhaal (Detective Loki) is also well cast as the detective you want to root for, methodically trying to work the case even as it looks more and more hopeless. The chilly surrounds of Pennsylvania in winter are the perfect backdrop for this bleak study of human darkness – the frosty setting is beautifully shot, and the breathtaking cinematography strikes a fine balance with the ugliness of the subject matter. Prisoners will grip you all the way to the satisfying conclusion. Just when you think it is running out of steam, the plot lurches in a different direction, getting you perched on the edge of your seat again. Overall, a tense and thoughtprovoking film that will stay with you out into the sunlight. megan McKEOUGH

Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) is commanding a cargo ship through the Gulf of Aden when it’s overtaken by armed pirates led by Abulwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi). Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray (adapting the book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea) don’t focus on extensive backstories for Phillips and Muse. Instead, Greengrass and Ray introduce them at the inception of the job that will sync their destinies. These men are defined by actions within the bounds of the incident that unfolds. The focus is tight; no flashbacks or calls from home. Greengrass masterfully handles the suspense, and in an unnerving way he constantly tightens the noose on the story. The film moves from chaotic boat chase sequences on the open seas to intense negotiations within confined spaces; it’s completely nerveracking. Hanks spends a lot of time enhancing the intensity of the situation by projecting complete fear, and it’s an ace performance. Abdi is riveting. You can sense every inch of his character’s struggle, and there is an intimidating shift in his eyes as the character embraces his status as an outlaw. Captain Phillips has all the grit of Zero Dark Thirty and the astonishing feat of the mission in Argo. It’s career defining work from Greengrass. CAMERON WILLIAMS

@bmamag

machete kills The sequel to Machete is exactly what you expect it’s going to be – except maybe the shtick is a little worse for the wear the second time around. Still directed by Robert Rodriguez, Machete Kills doesn’t survive the expectations set by the first film. The first film introduced the audience to Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo) – in an intentionally B-movie Mexploitation-style flick – a former Mexican federal agent who ends up on the wrong side of the tracks. The second time around, Machete has been hired by none other than the President of the United States, for a ‘mission that would be impossible for any mortal man’. Standard stuff. For the first half hour or so you might be entertained, but as the same targets are shot, sliced and diced as the first time around – both character targets, and more metaphorical genre aspirations of the film – you might start to zone out a little. There’s only so much ridiculous one can take before it all starts to become a little, dare I say it, dull. The supporting cast of scantily-clad babes did little to endear the film to me, especially when the grrrl-power roles they were given are so … lame. Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, and Amber Heard deserve a bit better. But if you still couldn’t get enough the second time around, don’t worry. Because Machete Kills Again is already in the works. melissa wellham

alan partridge: alpha papa Alan Partridge has been around for over 20 years, but with the release of Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, few may still ask, ‘Who is Alan Partridge?’ Luckily, the comedic fabrication of actor Steve Coogan and comedy guru Armando Iannucci stands on its own, retaining every hilarious nuance of the character. A radio station, North Norfolk Digital, is purchased by a media company and begins to cull the older employees. One of the DJs, Alan Partridge (Coogan), attempts to negotiate with upper management and it sets off a chain of events which results in a siege. The brilliant thing about Alpha Papa is that it’s not trying to play the populist card in an attempt to widen the appeal of the character. The screenplay by Coogan, Iannucci, Peter Baynham, Neil Gibbons, and Rob Gibbons is flush with the swagger of Partridge. The writing team takes every opportunity to squeeze in witty interactions, sight gags, and physical comedy which becomes so frequent that laughter management is required so you don’t miss the next joke. Coogan completely fades into the character and his brilliant timing and execution of Partridge’s mannerisms is done with the precision of a surgeon. The plot loses momentum toward the finale as the situation is drained of all comedic opportunities, but it’s a tiny blemish. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is jam-packed with wit that ensures the tradition of great British comedy is still alive and well. CAMERON WILLIAMS

facebook.com/bmamagazine

the word

on games

Rain / The Stanley Parable Platform: PS3 / PC Developer: SCE Japan Studio / Davey Wreden + others Length: 1-2 hrs / 2-3 hrs Verdict: Avoid / Worth grabbing Made by Sony Japan, Rain is a platformer that sees you trying to rescue a girl from a mysterious beast. The twist to the whole tale is that everyone, men and beasts alike, are invisible. The only way see them is through the rain drops that land on them, or through the footprints they leave when passing under cover. The main gameplay mechanic revolves around this play on your visibility. You need to duck into crevices to avoid wandering foes, artificially create cover, and just outright leg it sometimes. While the gameplay makes for a nice trailer, in actuality the game feels muted. The gameplay is laboured and devoid of much variation. An example of this is the continual need to drop down ladders, a dull mechanic that is somehow shoehorned into the whole game. Visually, the environments initially look quite captivating, but eventually become pretty dull and uninspired. Overall, this game felt like the kind you’d see come out of a student group project – it’s amicable, but ultimately boring. Luckily, I also chose to check out another indie title: The Stanley Parable. Available on PC and soon Mac, The Stanley Parable started life as a Half-Life 2 mod and eventually made its way through the Steam Greenlight process. Trying to describe the game, though, is somewhat difficult, in that the less you know about it, the better. More broadly, the game is very conceptual, focusing its subtle musing on the constructs of modern gaming. More specifically, you play Stanley – a faceless character that pushes buttons at his desk all day. One day all of Stanley’s colleagues disappear, leaving you to wonder what happened. From there, the whole thing starts getting pretty weird and meta. Bringing the whole game together is the narration. Voiced by the relatively unknown Kevan Brighting, the narration is both amusing and engaging, as supported by a fantastic script. Without spoiling too much, the narrator talks of-you-to-you throughout, using a combination of guilt and anger to get you to follow his storytelling ways. While the game could be criticised for not having a showstopping finish, those following along with the game’s subtext will probably realise why and forgive it. From a technical standpoint, the game is solid. The Source engine continues to look sharp and refined after roughly ten years of service. You could possibly fault the game on its length, but for its $15 price tag, it’s pretty reasonable. Overall this game is intriguing enough that I would definitely encourage gamers, particularly those fascinated by the craft, to give it crack. torben sko

BLACKBOX The most original music competition on the box (and the one most likely to uncover the kind of bands Chez Blackbox enjoys) is about to kick off. Exhumed (ABC1, Thu Nov 14, 8pm) has been searching the country for the best bands that never were. The rules were simple – be unsigned, unrecorded, unrecognised, and play for the love. Oh, and at least some of the band members needed to be old farts. There were more than 1400, and every local ABC station chose a winner. Six of them will compete in the Grand Final at (of course) Rooty Hill RSL in Western Sydney. The four-part series follows the competition and includes some illuminating personal stories. On a different musical front is Yarrabah! The Musical (NITV, Sun Nov 10, 8pm) which is the outcome of a partnership between Opera Australia, writer/director Rhoda Roberts, and the people of Yarrabah to produce a musical that tells the story of the community’s protest against the Queensland Protection Act in 1957. Now that The Chaser team are far too recognisable to pull their own pranks, Craig Reucassel has to be content with looking back at the shocking exploits of others in another season of Shock Horror Aunty (ABC2, Wed Nov 6, 8:30pm). What is it about offices, call centres, and IT people that makes such good comedy? Adding to the list of comedies in this genre (though not outshining Blackbox favourite The IT Crowd), is The Call Centre (ABC2, Wed Nov 13, 8:30pm). And where does the funny come from? It’s about Britain’s newest maligned country – Wales. Docos to check out include Young, Mormon and Single (ABC2, Wed Nov 6, 9:20pm) which looks at the Mormon version of spring break, Richard Hammond’s Miracle of Nature (SBS1, Wed Nov 6, 7:30pm) looking at biomechanics, Bodyline (ABC1, Sun Nov 17, 7:30pm) which takes a fresh look at (one of) Cricket’s biggest controversies with comedian Adam Zwar recreating the famous moment, Joel Parkinson – One Perfect Day (WIN, Sat Nov 9, 4pm) which follows the Aussie surf champion through the Pipe Masters in December 2012, and Nordic Wild (SBS1, Sat Nov 16, 7:30pm) which looks at the creatures of Scandinavia, starting with the first signs of snow melt. The SBS JFK season continues on with Jack Without Jackie (SBS1, Sun Nov 10, 9:10pm) which recounts conversations with the world’s most famous first lady only a few months after the assassination, and JFK (SBS1, Tue Nov 12, 7:30pm) which follows the story of the president, not just his assassination. Auntie also gets in on the action with Four Corners: JFK: The Lost Bullet (ABC1, Mon Nov 11, 8:30pm). The last episode of period detective series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (ABC1, Fri Nov 22, 8:30pm) takes on a serious turn of the century subject when they investigate the death of a teenager at the infamous Magdalene Laundries. Movies to keep a look out for include Se7en (WIN, Sat Nov 9, 10pm) the mid-90s thriller (and the seven deadly sins), Blown Away (GEM, Sun Nov 10, 8:30pm) from the same era about an Irish bomber, Shrek 2 (Go, Sun Nov 3, 6:30pm), Australian classic The Sundowners (GEM, Sat Nov 16, 1:40pm), ‘70s British spy drama Zeppelin (GEM, Sat Nov 16, 4:25pm), Tomorrow When the War Began (SCTEN, Sat Nov 16, 8:30pm), and German alternate reality flick The Door (SBS2, Sat Nov 16, 9:35pm). And yes, that really was ‘80s teen staple Corey Feldman on #7DaysLater (ABC2, Tue, 9pm). TRACY HEFFERNAN tracyherrernan@bigpond.com @ChezBlackbox

@bmamag

the word on dvds

the killing – Season Three [madman]

no reservations – season nine [roadshow]

Mr Selfridge – Season One [Universal/Sony]

After a brilliant debut season, then a season where it looked like the writers were searching headlines for plot points (Afghanistan, religious fundamentalism), the third season of The Killing is back on track by focusing on what made it so good to begin with – the tentacles of tragedy as they rip apart families and communities.

In the same way that it’s best to resist meeting your idols, it’s probably a good idea not to get your hopes up about famed chef/traveller/raconteur/ tall guy Anthony Bourdain devoting an episode to your home town. When Tony came to Sydney, you’d reasonably expect him to seek out some of the off-the-track wonders the truly multi-gastro-ethnic city has to offer. Even more so when Bourdain has made crystal clear his obsession with SE Asian food, a cuisine well represented in the vulgar town up the highway. So seeing him hang out in jerk-infested inner city haunts like Surry Hills is somewhat disappointing. Understandable, perhaps, but more like an opportunity lost. Go west, Tony.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s also the laziest, so I can only assume the person who came up with that saying was a good-for-nothing content thief. Every time a new genre, show, band, toy, or thing becomes a runaway success, there usually follows a long string of facsimiles. In the wake of Downton Abbey, period drama was the new thing. Which brings us this unusual piece of television – a cross between Abbey, Boardwalk Empire, and, uh, Entourage. Jeremy Piven is Harry Gordon Selfridge. Typical turn of the century American, full of bravado of the manifest destiny-type and determined to mix up staid old London with an over-the-top retail store. Selfridge created the modern department store, so appropriately Piven’s performance is a strange amalgam of Ari Gold (his Entourage character, one that will shadow his entire career it seems), PT Barnum, and Boardwalk Empire’s Nucky Thompson. By most accounts, that was the real Harry Selfridge, but Piven is one of those actors who is so intertwined with one of his previous roles (Gold) that it’s impossible to view him objectively. For Mr Selfridge, though, it works … so long as you can stomach Piven.

This time around, the kidnapping of an industrialist’s young daughter is linked to the death of a foster child years ago, but how? As usual there are red herrings aplenty and political shenanigans to grind your teeth on. The former is part and parcel of The Killing, but the latter is undercooked – struggling to make a convincing connection to the main plot. At the start, it’s shady businessgovernment relationships and GFC job creation, but it’s soon all about the PM and a coalition partner getting it on. Blurgh. The finale has been criticised by some on the grounds that Sarah Lund betrays her character in one dramatic instant – the formerly methodical and logical Lund lets emotion take over. But if anything, three seasons of The Killing has taught us that bottling up emotions is disastrous, hampers decision making processes, and is a strong repelling force to family and friends. For all of Lund’s alleged investigative skills, she was hardly the poster child of a successful cop, let alone decent person. Her team bumbles the case and Lund fails to shoot the kidnapper. Anyone else would be on immediate desk duties. As for her family, her son hates her, her mother pities her, and her daughterin-law is icily rejected during a sonogram. Ouch. Somewhat fitting, then, that we say goodbye wondering if it was all worth it – if that one final action would ruin her career. As for her life, well, it was already in glorious shambles. justin hook

facebook.com/bmamagazine

Throughout the life of No Reservations you definitely sense when Bourdain is bored of a city, and you get the feeling in these episodes he’s over the whole thing. The spark has dimmed a little. But a dim Bourdain is still a hundred times brighter than most other foodie travel presenters. Understandably, there are a few clip shows to pad it out, but they serve to highlight how the host can connect to situations beyond food, especially music. He still loves Josh Homme and hangs out with The Black Keys, Alejandro Escovedo, and Sleigh Bells. When the training footage for his Afghanistan trip is revisited, you’re reminded of the days Bourdain and his crew would go deliberately off the beaten path, push the limits a little. It has not gone unnoticed that Bourdain’s entire ethos is rock ‘n’ roll, even though his profession was foie gras. This is it for Bourdain under the No Reservations banner, and despite a disappointing local episode it’s a fitting conclusion to a series that worked hard to show us the many ways pork can be consumed. justin hook

Shows that follow in the footsteps of others normally suffer smaller budgets and, consequently, a drabber patina. But these episodes ring with early 1900s authenticity – as much as it is possible to tell from a century away. Problem is, though, how much drama can be eked out of a story about a retail outlet? Which is why Mr Selfridge’s encounters with London society extend the show’s reach and dilute at the same time. Whilst nowhere near the failure it appeared in ads, Mr Selfridge struggles to find its core reason for existing. justin hook

the word

on gigs

Adalita, Laura Jean Transit Bar Thursday October 17 Laura Jean came on stage first, but was met by an indifferent crowd. It was one of those times where you wished you had a megaphone to tell the others in the crowd to shut up and listen. Jean showed range and depth throughout her set, both musically and lyrically. Having not seen her before, it was a surprise to see such a well-developed set as support, as she worked between more electric material to acoustic stuff and back again. I get that people are there sometimes just to see the headliner, but can we give the support a shot, even if it’s just for two songs? Is that too much to ask? Adalita’s first solo effort after the hiatus of Magic Dirt was a stripped back affair. For the follow-up, Adalita has gone back to what she knows best: two guitars, bass and drums. But, unlike her days in Magic Dirt, she employs these weapons differently. In a live sense, the newer and older stuff are quite different in nature, with the second album’s material grabbing you furiously and the first album making you think more about the fragilities of life. The delineation on the night was quite clear, with the band clearing the stage for the older stuff. The best response from the crowd came for the lead single Trust is Rust, and it seemed the crowd was in a mood to rock.

PHOTO BY MARTIN OLLMAN

Through her near two decades in the alternative music spotlight in Australia, Adalita has proven herself to be one of the most powerful female voices on the scene. But I got this strange sense walking away from the show that it’s only now that she’s fully hitting her stride. CODY ATKINSON

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

the word

on gigs

Lorde, Oliver Tank Zierholz @ UC Saturday October 19 In such a fantastically intimate setting, a privileged crowd of Canberrans saw global pop sensation Lorde (aka Ella YelichO’Connor) perform almost all of her songs –most of which have seen the top end of the Billboard charts. The 16-year-old singersongwriter is the answer to the clogged airways of pop culture’s toxic lungs. Whether it’s because of her realist lyricism (albeit from a teenager’s perspective), her minimalist-transgressive approach to production, or her sensational goth-meets-art-school-girl get-up, Lorde is quickly becoming an architect in designing a tasteful and worthy alternative to mainstream music. It’s obvious in both her lyrics and her presence that she’s switched on, not just to the goings on of her own private sphere, but also towards the sexual politics that come hand in hand with a Universal record deal. Beginning the night was Oliver Tank, the solo Sydney producer, who gracefully took to the stage at around 8:30pm with a soothing prelude set. He projected a certain warmth and serenity into the room as he progressed, hushing the excited crowd into calm cooperation. With redemptive melodies and electro percussion, he offered a surprisingly apt synchrony of contrasting genres. Like Lorde, his dark-haired mane buried his face throughout, leaving a mystery that fitted the ambience of the night’s performers. Starting with The Love Club EP’s opening serenade, Bravado, and following with her similarly drum and bass Biting Down, Lorde then rapturously gauged the audience’s attention, starting the iPhoneheld-high-in-hand flurry. Wearing all black, her stage demeanour consisted of microphone clenched in one hand with a Stevie Nicksesque zombie stagger, which was triggered with the weighty throbs that enveloped the audience. Controlling her iconic hair when necessary and revealing wise snake eyes when the light focused, it was in fact her validating smile that clued the audience in to the joke of moronic youth: ‘White teeth teens are out.’ Continuing with the intoxicating hits of her new album, Pure Heroine, she awed with Glory and Gore as well as Tennis Court. However, it was the tremendous energy of 400 Lux that signified the apex of her range and performance capabilities – hatched with an eerie foghorn sound and the all too relatable lyrics: ‘We’re hollow like the bottles we drink/ we may be hollow but we’re brave.’ She conversed little with the audience throughout the night, but it hardly mattered. At least we can applaud her attempt at landing a rapport with a ‘What’s up Canberra? Talk to me.’ As the boys in the audience yelled ‘Marry me!’, she sipped her water and sang her teenage triumphs – ‘you buy me orange juice’ – but there still remained an almost absurd, counter-intuitive vibe regarding the whole thing. With the husky roll of her voice and unquestionable confidence, it was hard to believe that she’s only 16. Though some question the validity of her formula, assuming instead that she’s a carefully constructed neo-Del Rey, the verve and talent she offers is as disarming as it is undeniable. One of the things that comes to mind now that I’ve put Lorde at the top of my playlist is a grand new hope for the future. Specifically – a future where we can go to clubs, sans the fear of hearing a handful of crass misogynists and two-bit hacks on the loud speakers, and instead hear Lorde.

PHOTOS BY MARTIN OLLMAN

SINEAD O’CONNELL

@bmamag

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Wed Nov 6 - Thu Nov 7

Listings are a free community service. Email editorial@bmamag.com to have your events appear each issue. wednesday november 6

thursday november 7

Art Exhibitions

Ellipsis

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

Photography by four Canberra-based emerging artists. Opens Wed Oct 30, 6pm. 12-5pm. ANCA GALLERY

Backburning

Curated by Annika Harding, with work by Julia Boyd, Trish Roan and more. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat).

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Ellipsis

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Photography by four Canberra-based emerging artists. 6pm. 12-5pm.

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Backburning

10am-4pm.

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm.

ANCA GALLERY

Curated by Annika Harding, with work by Julia Boyd, Trish Roan and more. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat).

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

10am-4pm.

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Head Full of Flames

Something Familiar

Art by Tracey Sarsfield and S.A. Adair. 12-5pm. M16 ARTSPACE

Comedy

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free.

Anh Do – The Happiest Refugee

Something in the Way

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

Villainess

Art and fashion by Elly Freer, Georgia Kartas, and Laura McCleane. Opens Thu Nov 7, 7pm.

Comedian Anh Do’s show based on his book The Happiest Refugee. 7:30pm. $46.90-$49.90 + bf.

Karaoke Karaoke

With Ka-tere-oke. Win $50 cash and vouchers. 8:30pm. P J O’REILLY’S (TUGGERANONG)

CANBERRA CITY FRAMING GALLERY

Karaoke at The Inn

Luminous Earth

OLD CANBERRA INN

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

8pm-midnight. Free entry.

Rock Karaoke

9pm-2am. Free entry. CHARLIE BLACK

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Something in the Way

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Something Familiar

Art by Tracey Sarsfield and S.A. Adair. 12-5pm. M16 ARTSPACE

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Karaoke Karaoke

From 10pm. All welcome. THE DURHAM

Karaoke Wednesdays

With Carry On Karaoke. 9pm. Free entry. DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

Live Music The CMC Presents

Alex Richens, Joel Davey, The Gordons, Guyy Lillyman. 7:30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Dream on Dreamer

With A Skylit Drive, No Bragging Rights, Hellions. Doors 8pm. $23.50 + bf thru Oztix. THE BASEMENT

Something Different Night at the Circus

Circus, music, poetry, comedy by Circus For Life - free! 7pm. CHIFLEY HEALTH & WELL-BEING HUB

Jeff Thompson Book Launch ‘Faceless’ launch. 6-7:30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Theatre The Comedy of Errors

Bell Shakespeare return for the second time in 2013. 2pm/7:30pm. $45–68. THE PLAYHOUSE

facebook.com/bmamagazine

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Thu Nov 7 - Sat Nov 9 Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

On The Town

Live Music

ALIVE Fridays Double Header

Freyja’s Rain

Live Music

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

The Bennies

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Villainess

Retro Weekends

thursday november 7 (cont.)

With Revellers, Little Mac and the Monster Men, ThrownUp. 9pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

Victoriana Gaye

Male/female folk punk mariachi softcore prog duo! 7:30pm. Door price TBA.

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Art and fashion by Elly Freer, Georgia Kartas, and Laura McCleane. Opens Thu Nov 7, 7pm. CANBERRA CITY FRAMING GALLERY

Head Full of Flames

Presenting Samuel James and Dave Winnel. $10 entry before midnight. Spinning your favourite retro tunes with DJ Sass and Tasha. Free entry. 9pm. DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

Ben Reeve

10pm to late. Free.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Levee Breaks Duo

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free.

THE DURHAM

Something in the Way

Our Sound Presents. With DJ Daz, Ventures, Lumic, and more. Free before 10pm.

SOJU GIRL

Theatre

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

8pm. Free.

Razorwyre

Darker Half, Mattersphere, Reign Of Terror. Doors 8pm. $10. THE BASEMENT

Busby Marou

8pm. $23.50 + bf through Oztix. ZIERHOLZ @ UC

Cinnamon Records Spice Rack Fundraiser

Sets from Sweet Shoppe, Beach Slut, and more to raise money for a label mixtape. $5 pre-9pm, $10 after. TRANSIT BAR

Dos Locos

9:30pm. Free.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Evan & the Brave

The Island tour. 8pm. Door price TBA. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Theatre Triptych

Plays by Olivia Hueson, Jessica Bellamy, Lachlan Philpott. Tickets $15-21 thru cytc.net. CANBERRA YOUTH THEATRE

The Comedy of Errors

Bell Shakespeare return for the second time in 2013. 2pm/7:30pm. $45–68. THE PLAYHOUSE

friday november 8 Art Exhibitions Something Familiar

Art by Tracey Sarsfield and S.A. Adair. 12-5pm. M16 ARTSPACE

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Ellipsis

Photography by four Canberra-based emerging artists. Opens Wed Oct 30, 6pm. 12-5pm. ANCA GALLERY

Backburning

Curated by Annika Harding, with work by Julia Boyd, Trish Roan and more. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat).

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013 Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm. ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily.

Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free.

TRAP

TRINITY BAR

Triptych

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Plays by Olivia Hueson, Jessica Bellamy, Lachlan Philpott. Tickets $15-21 thru cytc.net.

Karaoke

The Comedy of Errors

Irish Club Karaoke Competition Canberra’s best karaoke singers can compete for $1000. 8pm til late. CANBERRA IRISH CLUB

Live Music Salt n Pepa

7:30pm. $86.90-$90 + bf.

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Live Acoustic Music

By Raw Gigs, every Friday from 5-7pm. Free. MINI BAR

CANBERRA YOUTH THEATRE

Bell Shakespeare return for the second time in 2013. 2pm/7:30pm. $45–68. THE PLAYHOUSE

saturday november 9

ANCA GALLERY

Curated by Annika Harding, with work by Julia Boyd, Trish Roan and more. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat).

3rd Exit

THE DURHAM

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Gorefield

Reign of Terror, Na Maza, Chud, Tundrel. Doors 8pm. $10. THE BASEMENT

A. Baker Friday

True Jungle Souljahs presents a D&B party. With Buick, Para, and more. 9pm to 4am-ish. Door price TBA. THE CLUBHOUSE

Super Best Friends

With Bacon Cakes and the Z-50 Jays, and Sincerely, Grizzly. 9:30pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

Back to the ‘80s Band 10pm. Free.

THE DURHAM

Massive

With local supports TBA. Doors 8pm. Door price TBA. THE BASEMENT

Elizabeth Rose

With Charles Murdoch, and many more. Free before 10pm. TRINITY BAR

Special K

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

TRANSIT BAR

Ellipsis

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

10pm. Free.

DJ Loxy

YARRALUMLA WOOLSHED

Good food, good music, and original local art in a beautiful setting. Gold coin entry. 10am-3pm.

Backburning

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVES

Capslock Collective Launch Party

Alex Bowen

Deemed the heart and soul of blues. 7:30pm. $15.

Aka Markus Popp. With Spartak and Hinterland. 6-8pm. Free, but book online.

This Is Art Market

Finals, as part of Woden Valley Festival. 4-9pm. Free. WODEN YOUTH CENTRE

Oval

10:30pm. Free.

Art Exhibitions

Photography by four Canberra-based emerging artists. Opens Wed Oct 30, 6pm. 12-5pm.

Lift Off Band Comp

Supported by The Guitar Cases. 7:30pm. Free.

Coda Conduct, Context, Semantix, Stateovmind, and Nix combined! 8pm. $10 door.

Emma Davis and Brian Campeau

The Best of Friends tour. 8:30pm. Door price TBA. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Chrome – iVardensphere CD Launch

DJs Salem, datacipher and Resolute play alternative/industrial/dark electronic. 9pm-3am. $10. HELLENIC CLUB (CIVIC)

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm.

On The Town

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

Spinning your favourite retro tunes with DJ Sass and Tasha. Free entry. 9pm.

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Retro Weekends

Live music and more. 5:30-7:30pm. Free.

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm.

DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

Our Sound

Head Full of Flames

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

NEWACTON PRECINCT

Trap edition. 10pm. Door price TBA. TRINITY BAR

Chicago Charles/ Something Like This 5pm afternoon session. 10pm band. Free.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

DAMN! Boogie

Featuring Edseven, a night dedicated to funk, soul, early disco, and house. 8pm. Free. TRANSIT BAR

Novia Scotia

With Prefix, and The Sexytet. 7:30pm. $7 door. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

LOVE Saturdays

With Pred. 9pm. $10 entry all night.

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free.

Zac

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

Something Different

CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

10pm to late. Free.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

Hi-Five House Party

Villainess

For all your new and retro clothing wants. 10am-3pm. $3 entry.

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Art and fashion by Elly Freer, Georgia Kartas, and Laura McCleane. Opens Thu Nov 7, 7pm.

10am. $32.50 + bf.

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Fash ‘n’ Treasure

EXHIBITION PARK IN CANBERRA (EPIC)

CANBERRA CITY FRAMING GALLERY

Theatre

Something in the Way

Triptych

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Plays by Olivia Hueson, Jessica Bellamy, Lachlan Philpott. Tickets $15-21 thru cytc.net. CANBERRA YOUTH THEATRE

The Comedy of Errors

Bell Shakespeare return for the second time in 2013. 2pm/7:30pm. $45–68. THE PLAYHOUSE

@bmamag

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Sun Nov 10 - Wed Nov 13 sunday november 10 Art Exhibitions Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Something Familiar

Art by Tracey Sarsfield and S.A. Adair. 12-5pm. M16 ARTSPACE

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

This Is Art Market

Good food, good music, and original local art in a beautiful setting. Gold coin entry. 10am-3pm. YARRALUMLA WOOLSHED

Ellipsis

Photography by four Canberra-based emerging artists. Opens Wed Oct 30, 6pm. 12-5pm. ANCA GALLERY

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

On The Town

Something Different Old and New: NewActon Pavilion Launch

NewActon’s heritage pavilion re-opens, with music, art, food, film, and more. 12-6pm. Free. NEWACTON PRECINCT

IRON BAR

Sundays in the Park

Stunning local talent in an intimate outdoor setting, w/ Pocket Fox. 3pm. $5-15. GORMAN HOUSE ARTS CENTRE

Dyson, Stringer and Cloher

Three of the best female songwriters in Australia. Doors 6:30pm. Tickets TBA thru theabbey.com.au. THE ABBEY

Sunday Afternoon Sessions With R&R. 4-7pm. Free entry. CANBERRA IRISH CLUB

Art Exhibitions Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Something in the Way

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

monday november 11

Irish Jam Session

Free traditional Irish music in the pub from late afternoon on into the night. Free. KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Decades

Live music with Jay, Melina, and Esme, and a vinyl sale. From 3pm. Free. TRANSIT BAR

SOJU GIRL

7:30pm. Door price TBA. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Karaoke Karaoke Love

Croon and wail your heart out on the Transit stage. 9pm. Free. TRANSIT BAR

The fifth Radford Art Students’ Exhibition 2013. 10am-4pm. Free.

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm. ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Something in the Way

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

Karaoke Karaoke

Live Music

From 10pm. All welcome.

Irish Jam Session

Karaoke Wednesdays

Free traditional Irish music in the pub from late afternoon on into the night. Free. KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Container (USA)

hellosQuare presents. With Spartak and Mornings. 8pm. $10 door.

THE DURHAM

With Carry On Karaoke. 9pm. Free entry. DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

Live Music

THE BASEMENT

Canberra Musicians Club Presents

2XX LocalnLive Presents The Bootleg Sessions

Trivia

Nyash, Matthew Simpson-Morgan. 7:30pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Stonefield

THE PHOENIX BAR

Trivial Tuesdays

First prize $75 bar tab, second $50 Indian Affair restaurant voucher. 6:30pm. Free.

Guests TBA. 8pm. $18.40 + bf thru Oztix.

Trivia and Peers with Bondy and Kiers

Arc Cinema Presents. 7:30pm. Free.

With Old Man Luedecke, and Julia Johnson (Deep Sea Sirens). 8pm. $18/23 + bf.

Trivia

Something Different

Something Different Brendan Shanahan

‘Mr Snack and the Lady Water’ book launch and reading. 6pm. Free. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Trivia Rainman’s Trivial Excuse

Transit trivia returms with your host Rainman. Book your table now on (02) 6162 0899. 7:30pm. TRANSIT BAR

tuesday november 12

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily.

Irresponsible Comedy

A BITE TO EAT CAFE

Blues rock brother-sister duo. 7:30pm. $5.

Something in the Way

CHIFLEY HEALTH & WELL-BEING HUB

From Circus for Life. 7pm. $14/8.

Art Exhibitions

Barefoot Alley

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Comedy

Sunday Best at A Bite to Eat

With Jude Kohn: soulful vocals and a dirty blues guitar. 5-7pm. Free entry.

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

Cabaret in the Sky

Line-up TBA. 8pm. Free.

Free live music from 2pm every Sunday.

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

TRANSIT BAR

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

The Acoustic Sessions

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

Does exactly what it says on the packet. From 2pm.

Live Music

RASE ’13

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm.

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm.

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Free Pool Tables

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

RASE ’13

The fifth Radford Art Students’ Exhibition 2013. 10am-4pm. Free. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

facebook.com/bmamagazine

DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

THE PHOENIX BAR

7:30pm. All welcome. THE DURHAM

Tuesday Pub Trivia

First prize $70 bar tab. 7:30pm. Free entry. O’NEILL’S IRISH PUB

ZIERHOLZ @ UC

Jordie Lane

THE STREET THEATRE

RAW Presents Encompass Not your average art show. 7:30pm. $15 presale thru rawartists.org/canberra. ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

wednesday november 13 Art Exhibitions Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Tue Nov 14 - Sat Nov 16 thursday november 14 Art Exhibitions Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

RASE ’13

The fifth Radford Art Students’ Exhibition 2013. 10am-4pm. Free. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm. ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Something in the Way

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

Comedy Comedy and Beers Night

Hosted by Harris Stuckey. 9pm. Free entry. THE DURHAM

Karaoke Karaoke

With Ka-tere-oke. Win $50 cash and vouchers. 8:30pm. P J O’REILLY’S (TUGGERANONG)

Karaoke at The Inn

8pm-midnight. Free entry. OLD CANBERRA INN

Rock Karaoke

9pm-2am. Free entry. CHARLIE BLACK

Live Music Vanity

With Reactions, Breakout, …Is Dead. 9pm. THE PHOENIX BAR

‘93 Project

Original jazz compositions. 7:30pm. $5. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Peter Calvert

Nova Scotia, Azim Zain, Pleased To Jive You. Doors 8pm. $10. THE BASEMENT

Chicago Charles & Dave 9:30pm. Free.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

Something Different

Launching their new single, Walk Back Down. 7:30pm. $15/12 door.

THE STREET THEATRE

Tommy Emmanuel: Live & Acoustic

Circus for Life’s major production for 2013. 2pm/7pm. $18/15.

Workshops Wordsmiths

Monthly writer-types meet-up, by Scissors Paper Pen. 4pm. Free. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

friday november 15

THE POLISH WHITE EAGLE CLUB

8pm. $59.90-$79.90 + bf.

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Live Acoustic Music

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

By Raw Gigs, every Friday from 5-7pm. Free.

RASE ’13

Smells Like Centenary Spirit Final

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

MINI BAR

The fifth Radford Art Students’ Exhibition 2013. 10am-4pm. Free.

CCAS Members Show

Opens Fri Nov 15, 6pm. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat). Free.

Art Exhibitions

British India headline a free, all-local, Centenary battle of the bands concert! 4-10pm. Free.

Something in the Way

Adrian Lux

Austral-Japanese Harmony

ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily. SOJU GIRL

Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Connected Diversity/ From Land to Sea

Art by Helen Aitken Kuhnen. Opens Fri Oct 25, 6pm. 11am-5pm (-4pm, Sat). BILK GALLERY

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

RASE ’13

The fifth Radford Art Students’ Exhibition 2013. 10am-4pm. Free. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

CCAS Members Show

Opens Fri Nov 15, 6pm. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat). Free.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

ROYAL THEATRE

ALIVE Fridays Presents. 9pm. Tickets $14.95 + bf thru Moshtix.

Something Like This 10pm. Free.

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm.

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

A. Baker Friday

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm.

NEWACTON PRECINCT

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

THE DURHAM

Live music and more. 5:30-7:30pm. Free.

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

Festival 15 VI: The Covers Version

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

15 local bands performing some of their favourite covers. Doors 8pm. $15. THE BASEMENT

Bot (Italy)

10pm. Door price TBA.

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Live Music

TRINITY BAR

Special K

Nick Rigby/Oscar

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

5pm afternoon session/ 10pm band. Free.

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

On The Town D’Opus + NAM (Operatives) (Melb) 10pm to late. Free.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Retro Weekends

10:30pm. Free.

Canberra Country Blues & Roots Festival

With James Blundell, Carter & Carter, and many more. 5 stages, 3 days. See canberracountry.com. HALL SHOWGROUNDS

Harrison Craig

More Than a Dream tour. Crowned The Voice of Australia. 7:30pm. $69-$79 + bf.

Spinning your favourite retro tunes with DJ Sass and Tasha. Free entry. 9pm.

CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Austral-Japanese Harmony BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Something Different

THE PHOENIX BAR

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm.

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

Round & Round We Go

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm.

Circus for Life’s major production for 2013. 2pm/7pm. $18/15.

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

THE STREET THEATRE

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia

Workshops

Paintings of the hills of Canberra by Franzi, and people, place, nation in quilts. 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

Karaoke Irish Club Karaoke Competition

Drama Improvisation

With local actor and director Ali Clinch. 10am-12pm. $8. PLAYING FIELD STUDIO

saturday november 16

Garage Syndicate Vol. 3 With Royal Chant, Service Bells. 9:30pm.

Louis London

Lush synths, intricate guitar work, soaring vocals. $10 thru Oztix, $15 door. 8pm. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

3rd Exit

10pm. Free.

THE DURHAM

Noughties Party!

Kick Up Your Heels and UC Live present Strangeways DJs. Details TBA. ZIERHOLZ @ UC

Movember Fundraiser

Featuring The Gaps, Huskie Strutters, and more. Doors 8pm. $10.

Canberra’s best karaoke singers can compete for $1000. 8pm til late.

Art Exhibitions

THE BASEMENT

Something in the Way

On The Town

Live Music

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily.

CANBERRA IRISH CLUB

Canberra Country Blues & Roots Festival

With James Blundell, Carter & Carter, and many more. 5 stages, 3 days. See canberracountry.com. HALL SHOWGROUNDS

Love Over Gold

Supported by Alice Cottee. 8pm. $29/24 + bf. THE STREET THEATRE

The Ellis Collective

Round & Round We Go

SOJU GIRL

Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free.

Ced Nada

10pm to late. Free.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE PENTHOUSE

Retro Weekends

Spinning your favourite retro tunes with DJ Sass and Tasha. Free entry. 9pm. DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

LOVE Saturdays

With Jono Fernandez. 9pm. $10 entry all night. ACADEMY NIGHTCLUB

CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

@bmamag

ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE Sat Nov 16 - Tue Nov 19 Something Different

Live Music

‘A Student’s Guide to Doing Anything’ Launch

The Acoustic Sessions

RIP Publishing & CS Housing Co-op present. With free copies, homebrew, and more. 7pm. Free. CANBERRA STUDENT HOUSING CO-OP

Discover Lake Ginninderra Foreshore Walk

Walk with Tyronne Bell and Dr Fiona Dyer. $35 adults/$30 concession. 1:30-4:30pm. BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Round & Round We Go

Circus for Life’s major production for 2013. 2pm/7pm. $18/15. THE STREET THEATRE

sunday november 17 Art Exhibitions Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Luminous Earth

Art by Annika Romeyn. Opens Thu Nov 7, 6pm. 11am-5pm. Free. CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ARTS SPACE (MANUKA)

Night Falling

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Free live music from 2pm every Sunday.

Art Exhibitions

Sunday Sass @ Smith’s

Something in the Way

IRON BAR

Beth Monzo (Beth’n’Ben), with Julia Rose (Anarchist Duck), and special guests. 3pm. SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE

Canberra Country Blues & Roots Festival

With James Blundell, Carter & Carter, and many more. 5 stages, 3 days. See canberracountry.com.

SOJU GIRL

Head Full of Flames

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free. CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVES

British Film Festival 2013

See britishfilmfestival.com.au for session details and tickets. PALACE ELECTRIC CINEMA

Karaoke Karaoke Love

The best Canberra blues musicians gettin’ loose. 2-5:30pm. $3 members/$5 non-members.

Sundays in the Park

Canberra Blues Society Jam

HARMONIE GERMAN CLUB

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily.

Croon and wail your heart out on the Transit stage. 9pm. Free.

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

TRANSIT BAR

Film

Live Music

Radical Reels Tour

Irish Jam Session

Banff Mountain Film Festival presents action/sports films. See nfsa.gov.au for films/tix.

Free traditional Irish music in the pub from late afternoon on into the night. Free.

NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVES

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

With Steven Uno. 4-7pm. Free entry.

Live Music

Something Different

Sunday Sippers

The Phoenix 20th Birthday Bootleg Sessions

Lip-Readings: My First Time

Stunning local talent in an intimate outdoor setting, w/ Sarv. 3pm. $30. GORMAN HOUSE ARTS CENTRE

Sunday Afternoon Sessions CANBERRA IRISH CLUB

Chilled beats and improvisation. 1-6pm. Free.

Hither and Yon

With Brass Knuckle Brass Band, Cracked Actor, Waterford, Rafe Morris. 8pm. Free.

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Trivia

NEWACTON COURTYARD

Classic and original Australian and Celtic songs. 6pm. Door price TBA.

Irish Jam Session

Austral-Japanese Harmony

Between the Buried and Me

TRANSIT BAR

KING O’MALLEY’S IRISH PUB

With The Contortionist, Ne Obliviscaris. Doors 8pm. $25.

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

THE BASEMENT

Roy Jackson: Retrospective 1963–2013

On The Town

Art Exhibitions

Spanning 50 years of painting and drawing by Jackson. 12–5pm.

Free Pool Tables

Head Full of Flames

Film

TRANSIT BAR

Radical Reels Tour

Banff Mountain Film Festival presents action/sports films. See nfsa.gov.au for films/tix. NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVES

THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

Theatre An Evening with Hoges

Transit trivia returms with your host Rainman. Book your table now on (02) 6162 0899. 7:30pm.

Art by acclaimed Japanese ceramicist Hiroe Swen. 10am-4pm.

Does exactly what it says on the packet. From 2pm.

A new bi-monthly feminist readings night, with Mel Tait, music, and more. 7pm. $10/$7.

THE PHOENIX BAR

The fifth Radford Art Students’ Exhibition 2013. 10am-4pm. Free.

ANU DRILL HALL GALLERY

Banff Mountain Film Festival presents action/sports films. See nfsa.gov.au for films/tix.

Night Falling

HALL SHOWGROUNDS

Rainman’s Trivial Excuse

BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE

Radical Reels Tour

Art by Stewart McDonald. Opens Wed Oct 23, 7-8pm. Open daily.

Free traditional Irish music in the pub from late afternoon on into the night. Free.

RASE ’13

Film

monday november 18

Join Aussie icon Paul Hogan as he hits the stage. 7:30pm. $89.90$129.90 + bf. CANBERRA THEATRE CENTRE

Trivia

tuesday november 19

Trivial Tuesdays

First prize $75 bar tab, second $50 Indian Affair restaurant voucher. 6:30pm. Free. DIGRESS COCKTAIL BAR

Punk in the nation’s capital, 19771992. 10am-5pm (12-5pm Sat-Sun). Free.

Trivia

Night Falling

First prize $70 bar tab. 7:30pm. Free entry.

7:30pm. All welcome. THE DURHAM

CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY

Tuesday Pub Trivia

Digital paintings by Paul Summerfield. Opens Thu Oct 31, 6pm. Open daily. THE FRONT GALLERY AND CAFÉ

CCAS Members Show

Opens Fri Nov 15, 6pm. 11am-5pm (10am-4pm, Sat). Free.

O’NEILL’S IRISH PUB

The Birthday Quiz

BMA Presents. 7:30pm. Free. THE PHOENIX BAR

CANBERRA CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE (GORMAN HOUSE)

Cathy Franzi & Art Quilt Australia 10am-5pm (12-4pm,

CRAFT ACT CRAFT & DESIGN CENTRE

OUT

Nov20

linda blair (the exorcist) i exist guitar wolf the crooked fiddle band ...and more!

facebook.com/bmamagazine

FIRST CONTACT SIDE A: BMA band profile

Aaron Peacey 0410381306 band.afternoon.shift@ gmail.com.au

Jenn Pacor Singer-songwriter avail. for originals/covers 0405618630

Adam Hole 0421023226

Johnny Roadkill Paulie 0408287672 paulie_mcmillan@live.com.au

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

Vintage Vulva

Australian Songwriters Association Keiran (02) 62310433

Where did your band name come from? Do you really want to know?

Backbeat Drivers Steve 0422733974 backbeatdrivers.com

Group members? Alana (bass), Glenn (drums), Johnboy (guitars), Pea (vocals).

Bat Country Communion, The Mel 0400405537

Describe your sound: The best fuck you’ve never had. Who are your influences, musical or otherwise? MC5, The Saints, Every Time I Die, AC/DC, and cross-dressing. What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had whilst performing? Pea not getting arrested after violating several punters at The Phoenix during our set. Of what are you proudest so far? Awesome international and national supports, and getting a room full of people to cheer as Pea tells them to all get fucked. What are your plans for the future? Rock ‘n’ roll. What makes you laugh? Sexual tension and cartoons. What pisses you off? Lack of common courtesy, idiots who don’t know they’re idiots, and punk bands who think they are the only punk band in town. What about the local scene would you change? Punters’ attitudes towards attending gigs. What are your upcoming gigs? Saturday November 9 – The Basement, w/ MASSIVE (VIC), Sudden State (VIC) and Johnny Roadkill. Saturday November 23 – The Basement, TOXICMEN’S LAST SHOW w/Toxicmen, Wolfpack, No Assumption, The Bastard Sons of Liberty, Alison’s Disease, Mangrove Jack, Miscreation, Reign of Terror, and Black Mountain. Contact info: facebook.com/vintagevulva

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

Birds Love Fighting Gangbusters/DIY shows-bookings@ birdslovefighting.com

Mornings Jordan 0439907853

Black Label Photography Kingsley 0438351007 blacklabelphotography.net

Obsessions 0450 960 750 obsessions@grapevine.com.au

Bridge Between, The Cam 0431550005 Capital Dub Style Reggae/dub events Rafa 0406647296 Cole Bennetts Photography 0415982662 Danny V Danny 0413502428 Dawn Theory Nathan 0402845132 Danny 0413502428 Dorothy Jane Band, The Dorothy Jane 0411065189 dorothy-jane@dorothyjane.com Drumassault Dan 0406 375 997 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 Guy The Sound Guy Live & Studio Sound Engineer 0400585369 guy@guythesoundguy.com Haunted Attics band@hauntedatticsmusic.com

Kayo Marbilus facebook.com/kayomarbilus1

MuShu Jack 0414292567 mushu_band@hotmail.com

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 Sam White sam@imcmusic.net System Addict Jamie 0418398556 Tegan Northwood (Singing Teacher) 0410 769 144 Top Shelf Colin 0408631514

In The Flesh Scott 0410475703

Undersided, The Baz 0408468041

Itchy Triggers Alex 0414838480

Zoopagoo zoopagoo@gmail.com

@bmamag

ad space

facebook.com/bmamagazine

@bmamag