Brag#651

ISSUE NO. 651 FEBRUARY 24, 2016

FREE Now picked up at over 1,600 places across Sydney and surrounds. thebrag.com

MUSIC, FILM, THEATRE + MORE

INSIDE This Week

DM A' S

Their debut record is here at last, several years in the making.

A LV VAY S

Canada's favourite islandhoppers make their fi rst trip Down Under.

A NIM A L C OL L E C T I V E

The tenth studio album arrives from these ever-evolving Americans.

L UCK Y P E T E R S ON

A spiritual and soulful approach to the blues.

SEEK A E

Their third record may be their last, but that doesn't mean a break-up.

Plus

BENOI T + BO D AT SIK A S A R I VA L L UK A BL OOM D AV ID S T R A S SM A N A ND MUCH MOR E

A CLASSIC ALBUM TURNS 30

NEW ALBUM OUT NOW

FEATURING 19 TRACKS INCLUDING THE SINGLES ‘HIGHER’ FEAT. JAMES CHATBURN & ‘1955’ FEAT. MONTAIGNE & TOM THUM

RE-STRUNG.COM

TOURING IN APRIL

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T CH AR KS AR C AL 6 M SI T -1 U E Y1 M AG NE D ST SY

SS RO AC

BIG TOP

LIMITED CAPACITY VENUE @ THE DOMAIN FRI MAR 4

HOT DUB TIME MACHINE + JOYRIDE (DJ SET)

SAT MAR 5

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN PLAY ‘PSYCHOCANDY’ + SEEKAE + ALVVAYS + U.S. GIRLS + JONATHAN BOULET

SUN MAR 6

CALEXICO + AUGIE MARCH

MON MAR 7 & WED MAR 9

COMEDY CENTRAL PRESENTS A NIGHT OF STANDUP WITH THE WORKAHOLICS + SPECIAL GUESTS

TUE MAR 8

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR

THURS MAR 10

ROCKWIZ LIVE

FRI MAR 11

BIRDS OF TOKYO + DUSTIN TEBBUTT

SAT MAR 12

SOMETHING FOR KATE + ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER

SUN MAR 13

MISSY HIGGINS + SPECIAL GUESTS

+ MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED TICKETS ON SALE NOW SPECTRUMNOW.COM.AU

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BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 3

rock music news

the BRAG presents

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with James Di Fabrizio and Joseph Earp

GLEN MATLOCK & SLIM JIM PHANTOM

songwriters’ secrets WITH

PATRICK JAMES Songwriting Secrets I sort of treat songwriting as a bit of a journal for myself. I tend to play around with something every day and make sure even if it’s bad I get something out; there may be a good hook or riff that I can use for something else. It seems to always come more naturally the next day if I repeat this process, and then sometimes you’ve just got nothing.

3.

that she never heard it and I never played it again. I was about 13 years of age at the time – ‘Your Body Is A Wonderland’ by John Mayer was an inspiration

at the time I think, so yeah, that song never left the bedroom.

The Last Song I Released I just released my debut album Outlier. It’s a self-produced record that was recorded at Alberts Studios in Sydney.

2.

go out on tour and reshape a song, as I pretty much never listen to my recordings once it’s released.

I think at the moment it’s a song called ‘Burn Away’ from my All About To Change EP. This is a song that just has so much space and keeps sort of transforming with each new approach, probably because it’s very repetitive and just loops around a key lyrical idea, but the backing instruments have a layering role that is quite open-

LORD HURON Oxford Art Factory Wednesday March 23

ended when it comes to playing live. It’s also had a few placements on television, which gives a whole new visual representation of the song for me.

ELLE KING

The Song That Changed My Life 5.

The song that made me want to

Metro Theatre Thursday March 24

learn guitar was ‘Tears In Heaven’

by Eric Clapton. I loved the sound of that nylon string guitar on that record and then obviously the story behind it instantly had me hooked onto singer-songwriters. From there I really started to learn and play and then write my own music.

When I listen to a track it’s always the melody that I’m searching for first – this one got me and always does.

NATIONAL FOLK FESTIVAL

Exhibition Park, Canberra Thursday March 24 – Monday March 28

What: Outlier out now through Create/Control With: Hein Cooper Where: The Basement When: Friday March 4

SHAKEY GRAVES

The Basement Thursday March 31

MANAGING EDITOR: Chris Martin chris@thebrag.com 02 9212 4322 ONLINE EDITOR: Tyson Wray SUB-EDITOR: Sam Caldwell STAFF WRITERS: Adam Norris, Augustus Welby NEWS: Anita Connors, James Di Fabrizio, Joseph Earp, Anna Wilson ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant PHOTOGRAPHERS: Katrina Clarke, Ashley Mar COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Mike Laye

THAT’S THE SPIRIT

ADVERTISING: Les White - 0405 581 125 / (02) 9212 4322 les@thebrag.com Tony Pecotic - (02) 9212 4322 tony@thebrag.com

After a spirited trashing of Coldplay’s table at the NME Awards by frontman Oli Sykes – allegedly over an album artwork dispute (read more in this week’s Industrial Strength column) – British rockers Bring Me The Horizon have announced their hotly anticipated Aussie national tour. It’s not for Soundwave, but in support of their latest album That’s The Spirit. Marking their fifth release, That’s The Spirit debuted at number one in Australia and has seen the band sell out arena-sized shows across the globe. Bring Me The Horizon will play the Hordern Pavilion on Saturday September 17.

PUBLISHER: Furst Media MANAGING DIRECTOR, FURST MEDIA: Patrick Carr - patrick@furstmedia.com.au, (03) 9428 3600 / 0402 821 122 DIGITAL DIRECTOR/ADVERTISING: Kris Furst kris@furstmedia.com.au, (03) 9428 3600 GIG & CLUB GUIDE COORDINATOR: Sarah Bryant - gigguide@thebrag.com (rock); clubguide@thebrag.com (dance, hip hop & parties) AWESOME INTERNS: Elias Kwiet, Joseph Earp, Anna Wilson, Anita Connors REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Nat Amat, Prudence Clark, Tom Clift, James Di Fabrizio, Christie Eliezer, Emily Gibb, Tegan Jones, Lachlan Kanoniuk, Emily Meller, David Molloy, Annie Murney, Adam Norris, George Nott, Daniel Prior, Tegan Reeves, Natalie Rogers, Erin Rooney, Spencer Scott, Natalie Salvo, Leonardo Silvestrini, Jade Smith, Lucy Watson, Rod Whitfield, Harry Windsor, Tyson Wray, Stephanie Yip, David James Young Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this NEW address 100 Albion Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010 ph - (02) 9212 4322 fax - (02) 9319 2227 EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of the BRAG. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Luke Forrester: accounts@furstmedia.com.au ph - (03) 9428 3600 fax - (03) 9428 3611 Furst Media, 3 Newton Street Richmond Victoria 3121 DEADLINES: Editorial: Friday 12pm (no extensions) Ad bookings: Friday 5pm (no extensions) Fishished art: No later than 2pm Monday Ad cancellations: Friday 4pm Deadlines are strictly adhered to.

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4 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

ALL BASES COVERED

Pennsylvanian rockers Modern Baseball are getting ready to head Down Under for a national tour. The announcement comes ahead of their anticipated upcoming album, Holy Ghost – a follow-up from 2014’s You’re Gonna Miss It All, which reached number 97 on the Billboard 200. They hit up Oxford Art Factory on Thursday April 7.

THIRSTY FOR MORE

Returning with their aptly titled Back To The Grind tour, Thirsty Merc will be taking to the stage once more. The string of shows will see the group cross the country in support of their latest album, Shifting Gears. It marks the first major tour for the Merc since they lost their tour manager in a fatal car accident that also left their drummer seriously injured. Needless to say, it’ll be good to have them back. Thirsty Merc will play the Metro Theatre on Friday April 8.

THE GYPSY’S TRAVELLING

FULLY FOLKED

Naysayers can folk off, because the National Folk Festival has revealed its complete 2016 lineup, and it’s a big’un. With over 200 A-list acts included in its program, it’s safe to say that the National Folk Festival’s 2016 iteration is its most impressive yet. International highlights include

Pop duo Gypsy and The Cat are returning to stages across the country, hitting the road as they prepare to unleash their long-awaited new album. Their latest single, ‘Inside Your Mind’, heralds the first full collection of new music from the band since their 2012 effort, The Late Blue.

It’s been mixed by Dave Fridmann, who has previously worked with Tame Impala, MGMT, Neon Indian and The Flaming Lips. Their show is at Oxford Art Factory on Thursday March 24.

The Rubens

STRESSED OUT PILOTS

Following up from last year’s tour, American duo Twenty One Pilots are returning with their largest run of Australian shows to date. Twenty One Pilots have gone from strength to strength since the release of their self-titled debut in 2009, moving on to sell out arena shows across the US. The announcement follows their latest single, ‘Stressed Out’, which has soared to number three on the ARIA charts as well as going platinum. Their show goes down at UNSW Roundhouse on Wednesday April 20.

LOVE ME LIKE GOULDING

Grammy-nominated artist Ellie Goulding is heading to Sydney off the back of her critically acclaimed album, Delirium. The latest record from Goulding features hit single ‘Love Me Like You Do’ from the Fifty Shades Of Grey soundtrack, which broke the world record for the most streamed song in a single week and ultimately charted at number one in over 80 countries. As well as collaborations with Major Lazer and Calvin Harris, Goulding has been praised for her performances at the Coachella, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury festivals. See her play Allphones Arena on Friday October 7.

JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS

Capping off what has been their most successful year (or so) to date, The Rubens are going on a victory lap of the country, hitting Sydney at the tail end of a national tour. The news comes as their hit single ‘Hoops’, which topped the triple j Hottest 100, has been confirmed as certified platinum. Their eponymous 2012 debut album is also platinum. The Rubens will roll into the Hordern Pavilion on Friday June 24.

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performances from Canadian troubadour Gordie Tentrees and acclaimed Scottish act Manran, while on the Australian front there will be showings from Aussie legends like Skipping Girl Vinegar and The April Maze.

That said, there’s far too many acts involved to list here, so all lovers of folk should head over to folkfestival.org.au and start perusing names.

Make no mistake: the festival has moved from strength to strength, and has transformed into a hugely genuine force to be reckoned with. The 50th edition of the National Folk Festival runs from Thursday March 24 – Sunday March 28 at Exhibition Park in Canberra.

Modern Baseball

Shakey Graves photo by Jarred Gastriech

The Song That Makes Me Proud 4.

That kind of changes each time I

The First Song I Wrote It was definitely a love letter 1. to a teenage girl. It was so bad

Newtown Social Club Sunday February 28

VOTE, LISTEN, REVIEW `JOSEPH BANKS - Down To Size’ via triplejunearthed.com

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BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 5

live & local

free stuff

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Anita Connors, Anna Wilson and Joseph Earp

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

five things WITH

MARK HILLTER AND JOHN POSEIDON FROM BORNEO Inspirations MH: Ryan Jordan from Sydney band 2.

Vacant Field, and Charles Slessar, who’s no stranger to the Borneo stage, were my biggest inspirations to start writing music.

Artists like Paul Kelly, Zack de la Rocha and Devo keep me doing it.

JP: I went through big phases of grunge and psych bands in my teens but my favourites were songwriters who wrote intricate and melodic songs: John Lennon, Elliott Smith, Daniel Johns and Kevin Parker have been the most consistent for me.

1.

Growing Up Mark Hillter: When I was six, my older cousin introduced me to alternative rock music via The Presidents Of The United States Of America. I’ve been terrifi ed of cats ever since.

John Poseidon: I grew up in leafy Pymble playing guitar and drums in the garage loft, practising anything written by Dave Grohl.

My older cousin was the one who fi nally got me drumming in his band when I was about 16 and I’ve played ever since.

Your Band MH: We formed back in 2012 to play 3. a show at the Peats Ridge Festival. We’re

all very much a part of the writing process and driven by the possibility of change and a belief that it’s the responsibility of artists to elevate the human spirit.

The Music You Make MH: Our sound sits somewhere 4. between fruity rock and sophisticated punk.

We’re releasing our second single this week titled ‘Eating Animals’, which was produced by Phantastic Ferniture drummer

Music, Right Here, Right Now JP: The best thing about the local 5.

Sydney scene is getting to know the other

bands on the circuit. Our mates Swords are inspiring to watch; they are mad jazzrock geniuses and have a really strong live show.

MH: The Sydney music scene is strong but can feel disconnected at times due to the city’s absurd geography. The lockout laws have galvanised people to protect culture and shone a light on Australia’s violence problems, but for Sydney to become a truly great place and build a great scene, we need to go back to the start of our story. People, music and culture have been oppressed in this city since 1788. It’s the role of our local artists to ignite these conversations of history so people have a chance to understand why people are still punching each other in 2016.

Where: Moonshine Bar, Hotel Steyne When: Saturday February 27

Ash Grunwald

PATRICK JAMES

Sydney-based singer-songwriter Patrick James has released his debut album Outlier. To celebrate, he is travelling the country for his first extensive headline tour with his full band in nearly two years.

Released through Create/Control, Outlier features singles ‘Bugs’ and ‘California Song’. It’s a summation of James’ harmonic and lyrical adaptability, which has seen him already supporting the likes of Boy & Bear, Pete Murray and The Paper Kites.

We have two double passes to give away to his headline show at The Basement on Friday March 4. To enter the draw, head to thebrag.com/freeshit.

Alice Night

KNEES WEAK, ARMS HEAVY

Sweaty Palms Festival has unveiled its full 2016 lineup, a jam-packed program of musicians that includes the likes of heavy-hitters Kingswood, Bootleg Rascal and Tired Lion. Alongside those celebrated names, fans will also get the chance to catch some smaller-scale acts, including triple j Unearthed winners A.D.K.O.B and Elliot The Bull.

There’s a small fee required to enter the festival, but not if you are one of the first 25 people prepared to donate a palm tree in lieu of the dosh, making Sweaty Palms at least vaguely ecologically sustainable. How ’bout that? Sweaty Palms hits The Entrance Leagues Club in Bateau Bay on Saturday March 19.

Yeevs

RIDERS ON THE STORM Hotel Steyne on Manly Beach has just locked in a sizeable music lineup for the 2016 Riders Week, a celebration of Australia’s up-and-coming music talent that will also feature pop-up bars and giveaways. Acts involved across the week include Borneo, Ruth Carp and The Fish Heads, Bin Juice, Hockey Dad and The Strides, among others, so those who like their music to settle on the very cutting edge should save the dates. Riders Week kicks off on Saturday February 27 and runs through till Sunday March 6, when Ash Grunwald will headline Moonshine Bar. See the full program at hotelsteyne.com.au.

HEINITZ HITS THE HEIGHTS

SAY YES TO YEEVS

Those sly foxes over at Slyfox sure do know how to pick ’em. Up-and-coming sludge rock outfit Yeevs have been announced as the headline act for the upcoming Live At The Sly event this week. It’s another success for a band that has spent the last six months moving from triumph to triumph, and ties in nicely with the release of new single ‘Rebound’.

Rounding out the bill are Dead Brian – how could you not love that name? – and Julia Why?. Live At The Sly hits Slyfox on Thursday February 25.

6 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

Vanessa Heinitz is hitting the road to celebrate the release of her new single ‘Less Of A Man’. The track echoes the confusion and dismay felt in the aftermath of a breakup, and demonstrates a new direction for the Sydney singer, with a bright indie-pop sound mastered in the studio by Grammy Award-winning producer William Bowden (Gotye). Heinitz’s east coast tour includes a homecoming gig in her native Penrith where those who know her will recognise much of her character through the dreamy harmonies and bright guitars of her set. Catch Heinitz on Saturday March 26 at The Rocks Brewing Co. and in Penrith on Saturday April 16 at The Tattersalls.

A LONG TIME HUNGRY

Forever Since Breakfast, a self-described “eclectic collection of grumpy men”, are set to take over a number of venues across Sydney

BORROWING VERSES

Music and poetry project Borrowed Verse is presenting a special night at The Newsagency. Featuring appearances from a collection of acclaimed musicians and poets, Borrowed Verse will premiere a series of new collaborations and launch a debut single, ‘The Mountain And The River’, after a Pablo Neruda poem adapted by Alex Bell. Also performing are singer, lyricist, poet and experimental music artist Alice Night, folk duo Willowy and a special guest poet. Borrowed Verse’s An Evening of Poetry and Music takes place Sunday March 13.

as part of a promotional tour for their new album Dangerous Levels Of That’s Fine. The alt-rock risers already have a number of albums under their belt, so prospective audience members can be sure that hits will be collected from across the Forever Since Breakfast back catalogue. They’ll play Lazybones Lounge on Friday March 11, The Boatshed on Saturday March 12, and Petersham Bowling Club on Sunday March 13.

CHILDREN OF THE KAFTAN

Rock’n’roll supergroup Children Of The Kaftan have announced the dates for a 2016 Sydney charity show. The event is designed to raise money for Tour De Cure, an organisation dedicated to funding cancer research. The appropriately titled Peace, Love and Music Tour is set to combine both hard-pressing issues and some groovy, infectious beats, so if such a combination sounds up your alley, then get yourself some tickets, stat. The show hits The Basement on Thursday March 10. thebrag.com

Mangelwurzel photo by George Johnson

Kingswood

Ryan Brennan. Beyond that, our debut EP is being prepped in the kitchen as we speak.

Industrial Strength Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

THINGS WE HEAR • Was a bad review of a show anything to do with the fact that the writer and the act’s manager are having a financial tussle? • Are a number of production houses looking at turning Aussie author Jeff Apter’s book on the Bee Gees, Tragedy, into a teleseries? • Why was the Jack The House party told by cops to cut its sound at 3am, as promoter Mark Dynamix claimed on Facebook, despite the fact the host venue Slyfox has a 24-hour licence and is outside the lockout zone? • 5 Seconds Of Summer again won Worst Band at the NME Awards in London.

The first time, they were so chuffed they tweeted the news to their fans. Tame Impala and Courtney Barnett were nonwinners on the night. Tame Impala lost to Run The Jewels for Best International Band, to Foals for Best Album and to Slaves for Best Music Video. Barnett was trumped by Taylor Swift for Best International Solo Artist. • During the awards, Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes took his revenge against Coldplay over their latest artwork being similar to one of his by jumping on their table and kicking over glasses and bottles. Chris Martin said he’d never heard

of BMTH but said of the incident, “It was great ‌ very rock’n’roll.â€? • After BeyoncÊ’s Super Bowl performance, during which she paid tribute to the Black Panthers (who in the ’70s protected African-Americans in ghettos from police brutality), Miami police are asking for cops around the world to protest outside her shows when her global tour begins in April. A protest in New York last week, alas, drew all of three attendees. • Melbourne producers Anna Laverty, Dallas Frasca and Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote join NT creatives Leah Flanagan, Ursula Yovich of The Sapphires and Stephanie Harrison of Alice Springs’ Bat Hazzard to mentor eight emerging NT female singer-songwriters for the Desert Divas program, which ends with an album of songs written during the program to be produced by Laverty. • Lukas Graham’s ‘7 Years’ hitting number one on the ARIA chart makes him the fourth act from Denmark to top our singles charts, following Mø on Major Lazer’s ‘Lean On’ (2015), Aqua (1997) and Cut ‘N’ Move (1994). • The Mid North Coast is losing another long-time music-hosting venue: the Star Hotel in Wauchope was sold by Les and Karyna Ylias to Queensland’s Taphouse Hotel Group. It is not known what the new owners plan to do with the hotel, which is

currently closed. • While the Grammys drew 24.95m viewers, 17.2m tweets and 1.2m streamers in the US, in Australia the ceremony was watched by 96,000 on Foxtel (38,000 live, 58,000 for the evening repeat), with 76,000 tweets (mostly about Taylor Swift).

There were some no-shows at the event: Rihanna (throat infection), Lauryn Hill (who said she had never confirmed her appearance to play with The Weeknd) and Ariana Grande (who left 15 minutes into the show). Sound glitches plagued Adele and Justin Bieber’s performances.

Natalie Cole’s family dissed the tribute to her as “a disgraceâ€?. A viewer grumbled that having Pitbull close the show was “like ending your 21st birthday with a root canalâ€?. Kendrick Lamar was slammed for his live set by Philadelphia MC Dice Raw, who claimed it was “inspiredâ€? by his hip hop musical about mass jailings called The Last Jimmy. • Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo album, released initially on Tidal, was pirated 500,000 times in its first 48 hours. • According to a music habits survey of eight countries by Sonos, 46 per cent of Aussies preferred to listen to music than have sex. But – oh dear – 29 per cent preferred TV to sex and music. Couples who listen to music together have sex on average 67 per cent more.

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JB NOW MUSIC TO CLOSE

JB Hi-Fi is closing its subscription-based music streaming service, JB NOW Music, after five years. It will go dark on Thursday March 17.

The company blamed the saturated streaming market in Australia making it impossible to compete. JB Hi-Fi CEO Richard Murray said he was disappointed but added, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The music department is entrenched in the DNA of JB Hi-Fi and we are committed to continuing to provide the largest range of CDs and vinyl across our 180 stores nationally and on our online store â&#x20AC;Ś Engaging with our loyal music customers outside the store is key to the ongoing success of music at JB, and the team [is] very excited about future plans to amplify that engagement. We thank you for your

Lifelines Engaged: Kylie Minogue and Brit actor Joshua Sasse made their announcement in a quiet way. She flashed a huge ring on the red carpet at the NME Awards in London and he told everybody at the post-awards party.

Ill: David Bowie/John Lennon guitarist Earl Slick had to pull out of his Australian tour this month with Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and Stray Cat Slim Jim Phantom due to â&#x20AC;&#x153;health concernsâ&#x20AC;?.

Ill: bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes had to reschedule a US tour due to delays in his recovery from a dual knee replacement surgery last month.

Ill: Canadian metal band Cauldron axed a US tour after guitarist Ian Chains was hospitalised following a tour bus crash in Texas.

In Court: Kesha lost her bid to be released from her deal with Dr. Lukeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s record label (she accused him of raping her), with a New York judge telling her, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re asking the court to decimate a contract that was heavily negotiated and typical for the industry.â&#x20AC;? He added that Luke had invested US$60m in her.

Died: a man, 55, working on The Rolling Stonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show in Buenos Aires, was shot during an attempted robbery while he was transporting cash made from drinks sales.

Died: Prince protĂŠgĂŠ singer and actress Vanity of Vanity 6, aged 57, from sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis. She renounced her sexual stage persona to become a Christian minister. Prince dedicated two songs to her at his shows in Melbourne.

thebrag.com

support of the service and look forward to your continued support of music at JB Hi-Fi.â&#x20AC;?

CAROLINE AUSTRALIA RESTRUCTURES

After a strong 2015, Caroline Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s general manager Tim Janes has restructured the company that launched in 2013. After nearly three years as label manager, George Dalziel becomes label director/A&R. He is now more in charge of marketing and PR strategies for breaking Caroline International licensed artists and will have a greater focus in A&R, where heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s had success with Highasakite and Tei Shi. Rachel Jones-Williams, who joined last November, is now national promotions manager, working campaigns for Iggy Pop, Highasakite, Catfish and The Bottlemen, Ben Harper and Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats. After contracting in 2015, Tom McGenniss-Destro is on board full-time as label assistant.

LOCKOUTS CAUSED 40 PER CENT DROP IN LIVE MUSIC REVENUE

The 2014 introduction of the Sydney lockout laws have caused a 40 per cent drop in live music revenue, says a report by APRA AMCOS and the Live Music Office. Nightclubs and dance venues showed a 19 per cent decrease in foot traffic. As a result, affected venues have cut back on booking live entertainment by 15 per cent. The Live Music Officeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s John Wardle reckons we could lose the remaining venues in the lockout zone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not a good look for Sydneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tourism and economic development.

APRA AMCOS is urging live music venues be exempted from the 1:30am lockout, a freeze on new licenses be lifted for music venues, and a review of red tape.

The issue remains volatile. Amid calls for the lockouts to be abandoned, and the massive Keep Sydney Open protest on the weekend, emergency services are pushing for the laws to be expanded throughout the whole state.

The Last Drinks coalition of police, paramedics, doctors and nurses wrote to State Premier Mike Baird to ask for a meeting to push their view, urging him not to â&#x20AC;&#x153;succumb to the pressure of a vocal minorityâ&#x20AC;?. Leichhardtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mayor Darcy Byrne will this week submit a proposal to Council to drop the lockouts for live music venues, acknowledging that the state would define what â&#x20AC;&#x153;live musicâ&#x20AC;? means to ensure the exemption covers true blue music venues, and not those that use the loophole by â&#x20AC;&#x153;paying some guy to play a Spotify listâ&#x20AC;? or DJs.

ZOE HAUPTMANN JOINS SIMA

The Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA) has announced Zoe Hauptmann as its new artistic director. The acclaimed bassist served as artistic director of Jazzgroove, and co-directed the Jazz:NOW Festival with SIMA at the Sydney Opera House. More recently, she contributed to the 2015 Wangaratta Festival program.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE SUED OVER â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;DAMN GIRLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Justin Timberlake has been hit with a lawsuit that claims his hit â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Damn Girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; stole its hook,

rhythm and melody from the 1969 song â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A New Day Is Here At Lastâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. The earlier song, a hit for J.C. Davis, was written by Perry Kibble of disco act A Taste Of Honey. When Kibble died in 1999, the songâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ownership transferred to his sister Janis McQuinton and her company PK Music Performance. PK is also suing producer will.i.am and Sony Entertainment Music.

UK INDUSTRY CREATES 12 NEW ARENA ACTS A YEAR

The UK music industry averages 12 new arena acts a year, according to trade journal Music Week. Arenas are where acts make serious money. Music Week analysed the calendars of arenas in London, Manchester and Birmingham since 2007. On average, it takes an act five years from their debut album to graduate to an arena, although 43 per cent of headliners achieve this within three years. The report quoted booking agent Mike Greek from CAA, saying to get to arenas, you need to be able to charge a decent ticket price, so an act must have a catalogue wider than a first album.

The past couple of years have seen Imagine Dragons, Alt-J, Paolo Nutini, Ellie Goulding, Little Mix among those elevated to arenas.

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CHUGG NAMED INTERNATIONAL PROMOTER OF THE YEAR

Michael Chugg has been named International Promoter of the Year in US-based global live industry magazine Pollstarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual awards in San Francisco. It is Chuggâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fourth Pollstar win, after 2000, 2008 and 2010. He has been nominated in the category 13 times since he started Michael Chugg Entertainment in 2000 in Sydney. 2015 saw Chugg Entertainment tour Robbie Williams, Elton John, Rufus Wainwright, Hozier, Alabama Shakes, Tame Impala and Florence and The Machine. This year, the CMC Rocks QLD festival sold out while Laneway Entertainment delivered its best year to date, said Chugg.

ANNE FRANKENBERG JOINS CBAA BOARD

Anne Frankenberg is the latest to join the board of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. The trained clarinettist has just wound up four years as GM of Melbourneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 3MBS, and next month begins as deputy general manager at the Australian National Academy of Music. She has previously held management roles with the Victoria State Opera, the Opera Australia International Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Development Agency, was founding GM of Victorian Opera, and served on the boards of the Australian Youth Orchestra and Melbourne Chamber Orchestra.

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GORDI LANDS US RECORD DEAL Sydneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gordi has landed a record deal with US independent Jagjaguwar, home to the likes of Bon Iver, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Foxygen. She continues to release her stuff in Australia and New Zealand through her own Hey Alfalfa label. Having recently signed to US and UK booking agencies (Billions and Coda respectively), sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heading to the UK in late May for four dates with Norwegian band Highasakite, and then to America to play the Sasquatch Festival in Washington.

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BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 7

THE 30-YEAR ITCH

BY MICHAEL HART T

A

s far as debut albums go, there are few more provocative than Scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy.

Released in November 1985, the LP’s melding of primal, abrasive noise and pop melodies is, even today, a menacing and beautiful blend that either enthrals or ostracises.

To mark the album’s 30th anniversary, the Mary Chain, led by brothers Jim and William Reid, have embarked on a run of shows in which they perform Psychocandy in full. Since reforming in 2007, the Reids have been approached a number of times to do such a tour, but had previously declined all offers.

As Jim Reid explains, the band’s decision to do it now was a matter of timing.

The 12 months leading up to Psychocandy’s release in 1985 was

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The mayhem of the time was another reason the brothers felt it a good idea to revisit the music made during this era. “It kind of occurred to us that quite a lot of songs from Psychocandy never actually got played live at the time, or ever at all.

There was a big chunk of that album that we never performed onstage at any point, and that just seemed a shame to let that be the way that it goes down,” Reid says. “We’re playing songs that, if I’m honest, I can’t even remember how they came about. It’s just weird. You’re standing there and you’re playing this song and you’re thinking, ‘This could be somebody else’s.’ You just don’t remember this song coming into the world.”

He adds: “The Psychocandy period of the band was a very chaotic time

in our lives both onstage and off. If we’d have tried to recreate a 1985 Mary Chain show, it’d be a disaster.

So what we decided was, ‘Let’s make it just about a celebration of the album.’ It’s all about the album, really. It’s not about recreating riots that happened in London in 1985.

1985 It’s about, ‘Hey, 30 years later, people still seem to think that this is an important record. It seems to have had a life of its own, so let’s just make it a celebration of that album.’ It seems to have worked out.”

As is often the case with album shows, the strangeness of returning as over-50s to something made by your younger, more arrogant and angrier selves was something the Mary Chain took into consideration when preparing for the Psychocandy shows. “We just thought it’d be too weird,” says Reid. “It’s again why we booked the rehearsal time; to see how it was going to work out.

“I think a lot of it was to do with the attitude that we approached it [with].

You just go out there and crank it up. You turn up the volume and just make as much racket as you can.

It’s not rocket science, but at the same time it’s not that easy either.

Going back to that rehearsal, we weren’t sure if we could sonically reproduce that album now. We just had to get it right, equipmentwise, in order to make it as loud as possible.”

Since its release, Psychocandy has become a benchmark record for multiple generations of noise merchants, from shoegazers to industrial groups. There were times for the Mary Chain that it felt like the album was casting a long shadow over everything else they were doing. However, they’re now far more comfortable with its place in their history and the effect it’s had on others.

“Certainly, when the band was around in the ’90s, we kind of wished people would shut the fuck up about Psychocandy when we wanted to talk about other things that we were doing. But Christ, there’s not that many people who can make a record and 30 years later people still talk about it, never mind wanting to hear you play it live. It’s something I can’t feel bad about, and also, we do get enough interest in other records we’ve made for it not to be a problem. I love Psychocandy and I love the fact that people still care about it.

“It’s always nice to be remembered in any way,” Reid adds. “It’s all about people picking up other bits of other people’s ideas and running with it.

We’ve done that. That’s, in essence, what rock’n’roll is. If it becomes pastiche, then you’ve got a problem, but it’s great that there are bands around now that have learned a lesson from the Mary Chain. It can only be flattering, really, I suppose.”

While the Mary Chain have been back together for almost a decade, they’re yet to release a new album, in spite of talk of one for almost as long. One track, ‘All Things Must Pass’, was released not long after they played their first reunion shows. Though detail, reluctant to give away much detail Reid says the group’s first full-length release since 1998’s Munki is well on its way.

“We’re actually in the middle of recording it. It’s going pretty well.

We’ve recorded most of the tracks, we just need to mix it now,” he says. “It’s more or less me and William. We’ve had some of the band in playing bits and bobs on it. We’re recording with Youth [Martin Glover], and he’s played bass on most of the tracks.”

In the meantime, the Mary Chain are set to make their first visit to Australia since 2008 with shows in Sydney and Melbourne. As ever, they’ll be doing things in their own fashion.

“We do two sets. We actually do the non-Psychocandy set first.

There’s no encore. Basically, we’re being rather presumptuous. We’re assuming the audience would want an encore, and rather than do it after the Psychocandy set, we decided to do it first. We just figured once you do Psychocandy, that’s kind of it.”

What: Divine Times as part of Spectrum Now 2016 With: Seekae, Alvvays, U.S. Girls, Jonathan Boulet Where: The Domain When: Saturday March 5

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Hilltop Hoods photo by xxx

“I suppose it was coming up for a landmark anniversary and we kind of thought that if we didn’t do it now, it was really going to be too late to do it anytime in the future,” he says.

“What we did was we decided to entertain the idea. The first thing we thought we should try out was to book some rehearsal time and see whether we could do it, whether it was going to work or not. Had that rehearsal gone badly, we would have just knocked it in the head. It just would’ve been an idea that we’d tried that didn’t work, but it worked out pretty well and we felt pretty good about it.”

a heady time for the Mary Chain.

Debut single ‘Upside Down’ was released eleased on Creation Records in November 1984 and quickly became one ne of the best-selling indie singles off the decade. They were soon hailed ailed by sections of the UK press as s “the new Sex Pistols” thanks to their antagonistic early shows where sets would last only 20-odd minutes and the audience would be blasted with relentless noise and verbal chiding. As a result of the goading, some shows ended in riots, most famously at the North London Polytechnic and Camden’s Electric Ballroom (footage of both are online).

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BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 9

Alvvays Their Island Homes By Adam Norris to perform, it is something the band came to rather late in the game.

“We hadn’t played any shows, really, before we made our first record,” she says. “All I notice now when we play is that the songs I’m most excited to play, the ones we enjoy onstage, are the ones that people like the most.

That could just be in my head, but I think you have to take a certain amount of responsibility for what you’re giving to the crowd. I have a bit of a lethargic vibe onstage, but I don’t really believe in bad crowds per se. I think it’s a give and take.

A

s a way of escaping zombies and triffids, an island getaway can be second to none: palm trees, coconuts, leis. There is a flipside, however – just ask Captain Cook. You are isolated, the sea a suffocating presence at every turn, the ferry to the mainland probably haunted. But that very removal can be the genesis for great creativity.

As Molly Rankin explains, solace is sometimes a very inspiring thing. With Sydney’s Spectrum Now festival fast approaching, the Alvvays frontwoman talks tunes, travel and tiny pianos.

“Right now I’m in my apartment in Toronto and it’s snowing out,” Rankin says. “I don’t have a job right now, and I no longer have a roommate, so the back room in my apartment

is now a weird sort of studio space that I can make noise in. That’s a nice little spot for me. I think being isolated is a good thing. When I moved to Prince Edward Island [off the coast of Canada], there’s a bit more going on there in the summertime, but then it gets really, really isolated in the winter. I would say really bad weather, boredom and depression played a role in all the songs. Kerri [MacLellan] and I were just being bored all the time, and that’s sort of how we became relatively creative. Also being away from multiple devices at all times. It’s good to cut the smartphone from the situation, so it’s not some constant influence. I’m not a phone scolder by any means, but for me it’s more an obstacle than a tool. I know that there’s a sunny scene to the record

[2014’s Alvvays] at times, but I think maybe the sheer isolation of winter inspired the need for sunlight.”

It’s interesting to note that while Rankin and MacLellan grew up on one island – Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia – the remainder of their band grew up on another: Alec O’Hanley, Brian Murphy and Phil MacIsaac were original residents of Prince Edward. Clearly there exists some music-imbued archipelago off the Canadian coast. While Rankin released a solo EP in 2010, it wasn’t until Alvvays formed the following year that momentum truly started to build. They have since toured extensively and supported some high-profile names – The Decemberists, Peter Bjorn and John – and although Rankin loves

“Live shows and touring is also something I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t find it incredibly awful as some do, and we can sort of break even when we go on tour. It’s a really great way to spend your 20s, to travel around the world with your friends doing something you love doing. Festivals can be sort of scary, because a lot of that stuff is out of your hands. But if you get good, if you’re comfortable, then I find it a really gratifying thing.”

The fact Alvvays supported The Decemberists is something the fanboy in me simply can’t leave unexplored, and at the risk of discovering that a favourite band is actually a bunch of jerks who set fire to horses and beat up the elderly, I cautiously press Rankin for her insider information.

“Ha, that was certainly the most lavish tour we’ve ever been on!

Actually, that was way beyond anything we’d ever done before in terms of production. They were very nice to us, and their audience was also very welcoming. We hadn’t played a tonne of theatre venues, and it took us a few shows to get used to that. It was really stepping

outside our comfort zone, playing for people who are looking for their seats with house lights on, having a clock by your monitor so you don’t go a second overtime. We’d never done anything like that. It was also a great way to get over my stage fright, because you’re totally exposed. I have a bit of nervous energy, but I’ve gotten over a pretty big chunk of that.

I’m pretty much just myself. It’s more depending on the day – if I actually have something to talk about, I’ll be more engaged. But I don’t have a shtick or anything. I don’t have an alter ego.”

Their upcoming tour marks the first time Alvvays will visit Australia, and fear of festivals notwithstanding, Spectrum Now will provide a great opportunity to engage with a whole new fan base. You can also catch them at Plan B Small Club, or if you’re lucky, backstage with a tiny piano.

“I usually grab Kerri beforehand and we’ll warm up together,” says Rankin.

“I have a tiny miniature piano, and we just get all the notes and keys off that, because neither of us has good pitch,” she laughs. “It’s not something that I initially loved doing, but it’s become really helpful to performing. I guess when you’re not on a tour bus going somewhere, you don’t have a lot of time. I’m usually setting up merch before we go on. Rock star.”

What: Divine Times as part of Spectrum Now 2016 With: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Seekae, U.S. Girls, Jonathan Boulet Where: The Domain When: Saturday March 5 And: Also appearing at Plan B Small Club on Friday March 4

DMA’s Hills, Thrills And Spills By Tegan Reeves

D

MA’s released their self-titled EP in 2014, quickly building some serious hype, and cementing their place on festival lineups around the world. Since then, the Sydney three-piece have taken their time to release their debut album, but the wait is over as Hills End hits stores this week. The album’s mixing was actually finalised 12 months ago with the aid of UK engineer Spike Stent, but guitarist Johnny Took has revelled in the time between recording and releasing, saying he enjoys the project more now than he did while in the studio.

“I was kind of over the songs and the mixes because it was getting frustrating, but when Spike Stent came back with the mixes it made me hear all of the best things I liked about the songs,” says Took.

“Our label head in the UK, Korda Marshall, has worked with Spike Stent before, and he knew that where we were at with the tunes for Hills End wasn’t feeling 100 per cent right, and he felt Stent was up to making it work. I remember the relief I felt when I heard the first mix, because after having some of these songs for three to four years and being there for every guitar take and every vocal take can become exhausting. To be able to give the mixes to someone with so much experience and an idea of the sound we were going for was a massive relief.

10 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

The DMA’s boys really got back to basics with the recording of Hills End, finding that upgrading to an actual studio space didn’t necessarily bring the vibes they required to make the album.

“We started off in this studio that I moved into after the EP, because I wanted to upgrade the space we were recording in from my bedroom,” Took says. “We moved into this shared studio space in Coogee and we did most of the drums, bass and guitars there, but to be honest, after a little while we weren’t really vibing the space, so we ended up just moving back to my apartment and finishing it off there in Newtown.

“When you start working in a studio that’s more than one room, you can talk between rooms through the microphone and headphone hookups, and there were a few little things like that that the vocalist, Tommy O’Dell, didn’t feel very comfortable with. You could almost hear the discomfort in his vocal takes. Once we were back in my apartment you could do things like stay up until three in the morning doing the guitar takes, and you didn’t have to adhere to anyone else’s time schedule. We got the bones of the songs down in the studio, but we pretty much did all the creative stuff back at home where we felt more comfortable and where it all started.”

Hills End is a cleverly crafted collection of songs that translate the journey DMA’s have taken over the past three years. It ebbs between the stripped-back feels of ‘So We Know’ and ‘Delete’, seamlessly stepping up the tempo when needed as heard in the album’s first single, ‘Lay Down’. O’Dell never expected to be the frontman of the band, coming from a drumming background, but his move to the mic meant the roles of drummer and bass player were up for grabs – and the individuals filling those positions have been fluid over the past few years.

“We’ve been through a couple of bass players and a couple of guitarists, not for any particular reason, and because of that our sound has evolved,” says Took.

“Now we’re playing with Tom Crandles from Au.Ra and Joel Flyer from Popstrangers and they’re great. Bringing old songs into the studio and nutting them out with the new guys has been great and I feel as though we’ve really portrayed this live sound onto the record. Now that we have a bit of time before the second album, that’s something I’m going to experiment more with.”

If one thing is certain, it’s that DMA’s now know how to play live, having spent the last 12 months touring through the US and UK playing festivals such as Osheaga in Montreal and The Governors Ball in NYC. “It’s been amazing,” says Took.

“We’ve been able to experience

some really great festivals, and there is a completely different atmosphere and vibe compared to Australia. The calibre of acts playing at these festivals is incredible and some of the set-ups were outstanding. Bonnaroo was really special for us because we thought that no-one was going to turn up, because the US has been a bit slower for us, probably due to the sound we have, but there ended up being three or 4,000 people there to watch us, which was amazing.”

What: Hills End out Friday February 26 through I Oh You Where: Metro Theatre When: Friday June 10 xxx

“We were actually on tour while the album was being mixed and it was quite strange because we’d all be in the tour van, headphones in, seeming like we were quietly doing our own thing, when in actual fact everyone was listening to the mixes, getting really passionate via email.

“Communicating the mixing process over email was advantageous.

Sometimes in person you can be a bit overbearing, and also you don’t want someone over your shoulder the whole time. Stent gave us our space and gave us our own time to listen, and I think that worked out for the best.”

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Animal Collective Paint Another Picture By David James Young

Y

ou never know who’s going to show up on an Animal Collective record.

Not because the band has a revolving door lineup – in fact, the same four members have made up the group since its inception in 1999. Rather, Animal Collective treat themselves as just that: a collective, with releases under their name coming from any combination of the four. In the case of Painting With, the first Animal Collective record in four years, the band has convened as a trio, returning to the lineup behind 2009’s landmark release, Merriweather Post Pavilion. However, change and evolution are still the name of the game.

As A Rival Intelligent Design By Bel Ryan

P

ete Cerni has a lot to be excited about. The recent release of By Design, the new album from his Melbourne punk rock outfi t As A Rival, has already seen them creating waves on a national scale. After a long time in the making, it’s no surprise he’s pumped to showcase the new material on an upcoming tour.

“It took about two years,” says Cerni, the band’s vocalist and guitarist, of the album recording process. “Initially we were just going to do an EP. Then we were looking at different people to mix it and be a part of it. We happened to email Adam Kasper and he was really keen.”

out it was Tom from Bodyjar, replacing someone in the band.

So that’s how it started.

Painting With marks the tenth studio album to bear the Animal Collective name. Weitz is quick to point out, however, that this milestone in the Animal Collective canon was not a factor when creating the record – as a matter of fact, the group had almost lost count along the way.

“To me, it doesn’t even feel like the tenth album – it feels more like 11th or 12th,” says Weitz.

“We put out this DVD a while ago called ODDSAC, and it took up a tonne of time. It felt like making

Now entering their 17th year as a band, Animal Collective have found new ways to break ground and keep their weird and wonderful dream alive. It says a lot about the creative juices that fl ow within each member of the group that a band ostensibly defi ned by being uncategorisable and proudly weird can still fi nd new ways to do so, even after being part of the indie rock furniture for such a long time.

“I think, for any creative person, running out of ideas is a fear that always lingers in the back of your mind,” says Weitz. “Thankfully, it hasn’t happened to us yet. I put that down to our own sensibilities and our own tastes. We all have really different tastes in music and we’re all really open-minded about what the other will bring to the music that we create together.

There’s an Animal Collective sound at this point, and we don’t really know how to describe it.

We’d have never wanted that when we were starting out – to us, having an identifiable sound was like the kiss of death. We don’t mind it so much now – mainly because we still know what excites us about music. I like sounding like Animal Collective.”

What: Painting With out now through Domino/EMI

Kasper wasn’t the only big name associated with transforming By Design from a pipe dream into reality. The album was recorded with the help of Bodyjar’s Tom Read, whose bandmates Shane Wakker and Grant Relf laid down the drums and bass respectively.

This wasn’t actually the first time Cerni had worked with the boys.

“It’s the first tour for us together with the new lineup … I’m excited to play other places. After this tour wraps up we’d love to tour again and maybe bring out something on vinyl. I’d love to play overseas – Japan would be awesome. That’s a bucket list thing. I don’t even care if I play to no-one.”

“We have a side project called Burn The City. That’s a story in itself. I got fired from my job and I knew this guy who did design stuff. So I texted him and he said to give this other guy a call, he’ll sort you out. So I called this number, thinking it was an interview for a job, and it turned

What: By Design out now independently With: Nerdlinger, Dividers, Ebolagoldfish, The Great Awake, Laser Brains Where: Frankie’s Pizza When: Sunday March 6

As A Rival photo by Jay Hynes Photography

“After that we thought, ‘Well, we can’t just do an EP!’” Cerni says. “The first year was writing and making sure we had good, strong songs. Then last year was recording and getting other people involved. It was a long run, but it was worth it.”

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Painting With was recorded

by Weitz, David ‘Avey Tare’ Portner and Noah ‘Panda Bear’ Lennox at EastWest Studios in Hollywood, in the same room famously used by Brian Wilson – one of the group’s key

“I was listening a lot to the first Ramones record,” says Weitz.

“I really enjoyed that listening experience – I mean, I always have, but there was something about the record this time around that clicked with me. It made me think about Animal Collective somehow – the thought that we’d never made a record like that before. The kind of record where all the songs are really short, there’s no ambience, no songs that are slow, no songs that are sad. The kind of record where it opens up with this huge punch and it just doesn’t let up the entire time that you’re listening to it. I really wanted to make a record like that. I thought it would be a lot of fun. I threw the idea out there, and it turns out Dave had been thinking the same sort of thing – just with early Beatles records.”

a record over the period of a few years. We have this live album, too, called Hollinndagain, which I treat as our third record. I know people don’t really count live albums as proper records, but I still see it as a documentation of what we were making at the time.

We defi nitely weren’t aware that we were making our tenth studio album when we did Painting With.

We know we’ve made a lot of records, though, and we’re proud of that.”

“When the demos for the album were all done, I sent them to Tom for some feedback and he was immediately like, ‘I wanna do it.

I wanna record it.’ So that was awesome. He’s my mate, but he doesn’t understand I grew up listening to Bodyjar, so it was cool. It meant a lot that they got involved. Tom was really good to work with, it was really fun. And Wakker’s a top bloke and really professional.”

For As A Rival’s live shows, Cerni is joined by bassist Kylie Groth and drummer Nathan Wheatley.

“We started recording but I knew I was going to need a live lineup.

I knew Kylie from some other bands and her old project fell through, so she put her hand up straight away. And then she knew Nathan. The lineup as it is has been around since June 2015, but you wouldn’t even know.

They’ve come on board and smashed it. We’ve actually got a new guitarist for the tour too. It’s early days but he’s been a part of it for three weeks now. He’s a bit younger and really fresh and keen.

Kasper, a Seattle-based producer and engineer, has previously produced records for industry giants such as Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age and Soundgarden.

“It always starts with a text conversation or an email chain,” explains Brian Weitz, AKA Geologist, who has performed on eight of the group’s albums.

“We talk pretty much every day – I mean, I’m not always talking to all three, but I speak with at least one of the others every day.

We’re always sending each other stuff – inside jokes, weird shit on YouTube. It might be a few years between records sometimes, but we never fall out of contact with one another. Usually, sometime after we’ve taken a little break, one of us will fl oat the idea of the next record to see if anyone else is thinking about it. It’s never taken personally if one of us doesn’t want to or doesn’t have the time to do it – in this case, it was Josh [Dibb, AKA Deakin].

It’s just the ebb and fl ow of this group.”

infl uences – while making such classic records as Pet Sounds and Smile. When it came to the creative direction of the album, Weitz looked to up the energy levels and bring a more primitive swing to the compositions – a return, in some ways, to previous LPs such as 2005’s Feels and 2007’s Strawberry Jam. This shift, interestingly enough, came from an unexpected outside infl uence.

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Lucky Peterson The Spirit In The Song By James Di Fabrizio

T

he blues have always been a part of Lucky Peterson’s life. When he was young, his father owned a nightclub in Buffalo that became a regular hotspot for bluesmen touring across the States.

The sounds of gospel, early R&B and gritty guitars surrounded Peterson while he was growing up, so it should come as no surprise that he cut his first album at just five years of age. Clearly, the iconic sounds on which he was raised have never left him – Peterson continues to perform and write music today, maintaining a rigorous touring schedule across the globe.

“I’ve been playing since I was three years old,” he laughs. “Now I’m 51, so I’ve been doing this all my life. Now I’m kind of elevated, so I’ll play blues, jazz, soul, gospel, funk – I think the key thing is to make the hair on your arms that you can’t see rise. You know what I’m saying? Give you those chill-bumps.”

From Peterson’s perspective, the blues and its many derivatives can be tabled any way you want, but at the heart of the genre is the same visceral effect it’s always had. In his eyes, this is – and always will be – what gives meaning to the music he makes.

“First of all, you have to be able to feel it,” he says. “If you can’t feel it deep within – from your heart and from the depths of your soul – then it’s not worth doing. Everything I’ve done in my life, I’ve felt it. I’ve put myself through the test.”

“He was the first person I heard who gave me goosebumps,” Peterson recalls. “‘Make It Funky’;

After bursting into music and performance at such a young age, Peterson was taken under the wing of fellow bluesman Little Milton, playing guitar and keyboards in his band. “He was like a father to me,” says Peterson. “I learned how to present yourself to an audience; how to feel the right way. That’s what I learned. I learned the right way how to play the blues and how to read the audience. And that’s the type of stuff I was happy to be around.”

Outside Little Milton’s band, Peterson also developed his chops playing with the likes of Etta James and Bobby Bland. Arguably, it was his years as a hard-working sideman that allowed him to develop his guitar skills to near-virtuosic levels. Peterson never needed to rely on flurries of fast-paced notes – instead, he developed a type of musical intuition; the ability to move with the music before the band had even gone there.

“I let my spirit do that,” he says of his dynamic improvisations. “My spirit will put me there. I work with the spirit and the people, and it will take me where I need to go at the time I need to get there, you know what I’m saying? I don’t force anything; I let everything come naturally. I rely on the audience participation to make me feel good, and when the audience makes me feel good, I want to give back to the audience. That’s what I do.”

After spending much of his life onstage, performance has become second nature to Peterson. As his career becomes less focused on recording studio albums, the live environment is where his music thrives the most. He never feels more at home than when he is armed with a guitar and in front of a crowd. “I feel wonderful. I feel great when I make that connection. I have no problems. And I don’t want any problems, unless a piece of blues decides that it wants to come over my way.”

“First of all, you have to be able to feel it. If you can’t feel it deep within – from your heart and from the depths of your soul – then it’s not worth doing.”

It’s these same feelings Peterson wishes to impart on his audience: “Peace. Friendship.

Love. We’re doing everything out of love,” he says. “That’s what we want – to be able to love somebody and present love, and let it stay like that. My music is very positive. I’m not a sad person at all. Sometimes I can be a cocky person, but I’m not a sad person.”

Peterson has ultimately made it his life’s work to spread his vision of positivity through sound. Now he wants nothing more than to continue sharing it with the world, listener by listener. “I take one day at a time, one moment at a time. I want [audiences] to enjoy my music. I want them to be able to say, ‘If I’m having a bad day and I need

some positive inspiration, I need some inspiration to keep on going on,’ I want them to put my music on and I’ll give it to them. That’s what I want.

That’s what I live for.”

What: Bluesfest 2016 With: The National, Tom Jones, Kendrick Lamar, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and many more Where: Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm When: Thursday March 24 – Monday March 28 And: Also appearing at The Basement on Tuesday March 22

Luka Bloom Spinning A Yarn By Adam Norris

S

peaking with Luka Bloom is a lesson in storytelling at its fi nest. Each question is not only met with a rather delightful Irish brogue, but somehow pinwheels off into stories of his many musical travels, of adventures large and small. There is a splendid Gaelic word for storyteller, seanchaí, and across anecdote and song, I suspect this is what makes Bloom so very enduring; the man sure knows how to sing a story to life.

“It’s a very special blessing, it’s a gift, because anybody who writes songs and is really serious about it in their life would tell you that there’s an awful lot of work involved,” he laughs. “Sometimes you can toil over songs for weeks, months, years, and somehow feel you haven’t quite closed the deal. Sometimes songs slip away from you after you’ve worked at them for ages, and other songs that just seem to come through you, it’s like waking up from a dream and the song is there and complete.”

Bloom has been visiting Australian shores for many years now, and has found himself with a loyal following. We are a country he has great affinity for, and just as his native County Kildare has been fundamental to his craft, so too have Australia, and many other countries again, been instrumental in his evolution as a songwriter.

“If I were born in Sydney as opposed to rural Ireland, I know my songs would be completely different. I know that the nature of my creativity would be completely different. I mean, my writing was completely changed by moving to America – it brought a totally different sensibility to the nature of my songs that I wouldn’t have dreamt of ten years before. In New York, it’s not just about the landscape, it’s the sounds that you’re hearing. I grew up hearing a lot of ballads, a lot of American and Irish and English folk

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music. But then when I moved to New York, I was listening to a lot of hip hop, because that’s what was in the air. I defi nitely think that we singers are moulded to a large extent by our environments.”

After learning that tendinitis has been a recurrent demon throughout Bloom’s life, I wonder of the damages that a performer must face throughout their career, and what measures they must take to sustain themselves. His answer is both evocative and revealing.

“The simplistic answer is love, trust and patience. These might just be words, but I don’t use them fl ippantly. I’ll tell you a funny story. About 12 years ago, I’d just fi nished building this house, and as soon as I needed to go out into the world and earn some money to cover the cost of it, I got nodules on my vocal chords and my tendinitis returned. I was really afraid in that first year I was going to have to sell it. All I could do was sit at home and play lullabies on my guitar, and I ended up making a little record. It was never formally released, but there was something in that vulnerability of that recording, Before Sleep Comes. It ended up selling enough records to allow me to keep living in the house, and that taught me that the greatest gift that any creative person has is their vulnerability.

“I used to worry a lot about songs, my career. I’ve stopped that now. I believe genuinely if I try to be true to myself and write my songs with a good heart, and sing them with a good heart, then I’ll be taken care of.”

What: Frugalisto out now independently Where: The Basement When: Saturday February 27 and Sunday February 28

thebrag.com

Lucky Peterson photo ©JM Lubrano

Peterson first made his name with American audiences as a child performing on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing a cover of James Brown’s soul anthem ‘Please, Please, Please’. Brown’s influence has touched many, including a young Peterson, who still cites Brown as the first artist to awaken him to the power of music.

all that type of stuff. Then when I saw him live, that really lifted me up. The only part about that was I thought, ‘Well, I know I can’t dance like him,’ but boy, I wish I could.”

BRAGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide to film, theatre, comedy and art about town

arts in focus

Falling In Love With Frida photo by Anthony Hopwood

falling in love with frida

inspiration behind the art also inside:

ANDREW O'HAGAN / DAVID STRASSMAN / ARTS NEWS / ARTS REVIEWS / ARTS GIVEAWAY: FAR CRY PRIMAL thebrag.com

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arts news...what's goin' on around town... with Joseph Earp, Anita Connors and Anna Wilson

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit xxx

arts in focus

free stuff FAR CRY PRIMAL

five minutes WITH

DANTE RIVERA FROM THE LATIN AMERICAN FESTIVAL

their own who should share the same Bondi experience we did growing up. That’s why we approached Council to use the Pavilion again in 2016.

all takes place Thursday March 10 at The Star Event Centre.

MOONLIGHT IN MARCH

Moonlight Cinema has announced its massive March program, a Hollywood-happy set of hits with a few Australian debuts scattered throughout. Many will be drawn to the likes of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (although if you haven’t seen it yet, what rock have you been hiding under?), while others will be enraptured by the critically acclaimed The Daughter, an Aussie-helmed production.

Also on the program next month are Triple 9, Deadpool, London Has Fallen and Eye In The Sky, plus Hugh Jackman’s new film Eddie The Eagle and Kung Fu Panda 3. Start airing out the old picnic rug and prepare for some stellar nights surrounded by stars, both on the screen and above your head. The Moonlight Cinema March program kicks off with The 5th Wave on Tuesday March 1 at Centennial Park. Check out the full schedule at moonlight.com.au.

SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS DODARLO, DON’T DELAY

To commemorate the 2016 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the Darlinghurst Business Partnership has launched a Mardi Gras edition of its DoDarlo initiative. Numerous businesses across Darlinghurst have signed up for DoDarlo once more, and throughout the festival season they are offering ten per cent discount specials for customers who can show any proof of purchase to Mardi Gras affiliated events and shows. From designers to dentists, there is a huge variety of businesses that are embracing this suburb-wide celebration. For further information about DoDarlo and the shops, businesses and venues participating in the initiative, head to dodarlo.com.

It runs until Saturday March 5.

Riverside Theatres has announced the exciting addition of Wuthering Heights, an adaptation of the classic Emily Bronte novel, to its 2016 season. The new version of the story has been written and will be performed by Shake & Stir Theatre Company, the cutting-edge

What should be the first stop at the festival for anyone looking to get a taste of Latin America?

Take your time in walking around the festival areas, visiting the stalls, absorbing some of the folkloric performances, and then get a free dance lesson before taking on the main stage area to dance the afternoon away with your newly discovered moves.

What: The Latin American Festival 2016 Where: Bondi Pavilion When: Sunday February 28

provocateurs behind recent stagings of Animal Farm and 1984. A classic story of smouldering desires and dark, barely repressed secrets, Wuthering Heights is a tale with all the requisite melodrama and gothic romance one could require, making it a promising night of the most viciously satisfying entertainment around.

Wuthering Heights runs for only two days, on Tuesday March 22 and Wednesday March 23.

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The game has just been released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and we’ve got ten PS4 copies up for grabs.

Head to thebrag.com/ freeshit to enter the draw.

Aboriginal Comedy Allstars

NEW WORK FROM BARTOK

Sydney-based painter Anthony Bartok is returning with a solo exhibition of developed maturity with humorous undertones. His first solo show in six years, Bartok’s New Work series of paintings and prints has developed as a result of his recent studies at the National Art School. The exhibition sees the seasoned painter and printmaker take aim at accepted social norms of the day with a funny twist.

Bartok’s exhibition runs at Chippendale’s MOP gallery, Wednesday April 6 – Sunday May 1.

HORROR MOVIE CAMPOUT

Be afraid... be very afraid. Following on from acclaimed events in Melbourne and Adelaide last year, the Horror Movie Campout is finally stabbing and shanking its way closer to Sydney. A fully immersive horror event, the mini-festival of all things ghoulish will feature DJ sets, a performance by rock’n’roll outfit The

Kooza

ABORIGINAL COMEDY ALLSTARS

The Aboriginal Comedy Allstars have announced their long-awaited return to Redfern, with the supergroup of funnymen and women set to hit up the suburb for a single show. The Allstars, a comedy collective featuring the likes of Shiralee Hood and Matt Ford, are well known for their gutbusting shows, so the prospect of another showing from the troupe is tantalising stuff indeed. Join in the laughs at Giant Dwarf on Sunday February 28.

Lazys, and the screening of two horror films picked in advance by the audience. It’s sure to be terrifying stuff, and given all the festival’s communication so far has emphasised how far away from your mummy you’ll be, it’s obvious that organisers are planning to reduce even the hardest of horror fans into nervous, quivering wrecks. Yay! The Horror Movie Campout hits the Central Coast’s Mount Penang Parklands on Saturday March 12.

MAKING A MURDERER IN SYDNEY

In an exclusive for this year’s Spectrum Now festival, the co-creators of the controversial true crime Netflix series, Making A Murderer, will appear for a talk in Sydney. Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos will be joining festival ambassador Charlie Pickering in conversation about the story of Steven Avery, who was convicted and later found innocent of a brutal assault. His release inspired major criminal justice reform legislation, and he filed a lawsuit that threatened to expose corruption in local law enforcement and award him millions of dollars. But in the midst of his civil case, he found himself the prime suspect in a new crime. The hour-long event, Making A Murderer: In Conversation With Charlie Pickering, will explore everything from the inspiration for the documentary to its eventual airing on Netflix. Audiences will also be invited to participate in a Q&A with Ricciardi and Demos. It

Far Cry Primal is the newest instalment of the award-winning gaming franchise, reimagined for 2016. In previous incarnations the action-adventure game stormed the tropics and the Himalayas, but now it enters the fight for humanity’s survival with its renowned open world sandbox gameplay. Set in the Stone Age and revolving around the story of Wenja tribesman Takkar, gamers are invited to fight massive beasts and fierce predators, as well as outsmart enemy tribes to conquer the breathtaking land of the Oros.

PULL UP A PEW

COME ON KOOZA

The circus is back in town. The iconic blue-and-yellow big top is heading our way, with Cirque Du Soleil announcing a string of Australian dates for its show Kooza. A throwback of sorts, the performance is all about embracing the origins of the travelling carnival, and will undoubtedly feature the blend of heart-stopping acrobatics and deeply moving beauty that Cirque Du Soleil has become famous for.

Kooza’s Sydney season opens Thursday August 25 at the Entertainment Quarter in Moore Park.

Hold onto your decks and be prepared for the second annual Deckchair Arts Festival. With a bumper crop of musicians, performers and acrobats, the Deckchair Arts Festival is looking to be bigger and better in 2016. Presented in association with the Spectrum Now festival, the event will feature shows from 11-piece jazz band Hot Potato, dancer Kaleb Taylor and the physical comedian Benny B, among many others. All that arts and culture aside, there will also be paddock-to-plate grub provided by The Loch, so if all the dancin’ and carrying on isn’t your thing, the tucker might well be. Deckchair Arts Festival will hit Walsh Bay on Sunday March 13. thebrag.com

Kooza photo by Matt Beard and costume by Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt

DoDarlo

How important is music, art and food to Latin American culture more broadly?

Let’s face it, we invented the word ‘fiesta’, and it means both festival and party. Music, food, dance and socialising is a huge part of the

You’ll be DJing as part of the music program – what sounds can we expect on the day?

This is all about respecting the tradition, but linking it to the modern era. I’ll be mixing some great traditional artists, as well as some Latino house beats and mixes.

xxx

W

hat can you tell us about the history of The Latin American Festival, and why it’s coming back in 2016?

Hola. An early wave of immigration into Sydney from Latin American countries in the late ’70s saw a number of people settled initially around the Bondi area. Waverley Council, to their credit, realised a great way to welcome people would be to stage a festival, celebrating the richness and diversity of the unique dances, music, food and costume. This was so successful the festival ended up running for over 35 years, spanning multiple generations, and cross-funding a number of other arts and culture initiatives. Unfortunately Council a few years ago had to stop their support as it was no longer reflective of the evolving local residential demographic, but there are a large number of Latinos in Sydney who now have children of

How much work goes into a festival that spans the cultures of Latin America in so many different ways?

The bands, DJs, dance groups, stallholders, community folkloric groups and food vendors are very passionate and enthusiastic about their trade, and have great memories about this festival and location, so getting them on board was relatively easy. The really hard work is behind the scenes working with Council, Police, and the various suppliers and stakeholders needed to make the space work. We have a strong team of volunteers behind us from Bondi Association of Arts and Music Inc who have been working around the clock.

Latino culture. Most people, when you mention a Latin festival, have instant thoughts of colour, dance, music, great food, vibrancy.

Falling In Love With Frida [THEATRE] Image And Influence By Annie Murney were gradually woven into it. Now it is this completely entwined story of Frida and me.”

The collaborative process of constructing the piece involved drawing material from a range of different sources. “The performers and I worked with images Frida had painted as well as text I had generated,” says Bowditch. “We used lots of things featured in Frida’s work – for instance, there is a section involving ribbons. We also have a whole gestural sequence based on the way Frida positions herself in photographs.”

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here is no denying the enduring legacy of Frida Kahlo. Her talent, trauma and charisma made her one of the most compelling artists to rise out of Modernism. However, it was only decades after her death that historians began to examine her life and work. This belated recognition has seen Kahlo rise to the main stage of art and popular culture – her works are highly coveted and her image has spread like wildfire.

Nevertheless, beyond all the ‘Mexikitsch’ and Kahlo clichés you might see stamped on the walls of inner city cafés, there are parts of her identity that remain in the dark.

It is the lesser-known aspects of her life that form the basis of Falling

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In Love With Frida, a theatrical piece conceived by performance artist and choreographer Caroline Bowditch. As part of Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, two performances will be staged at Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres next month.

“I think my interest in Frida piqued at the fact that she is one of the highest-fetching female artists in the world but very few people know that she lived with a disability for most of her life,” says Bowditch.

“As a disabled performer, I became interested in the question of how to make art that is just remembered for the art and not the circumstances of who created it.”

Falling In Love With Frida premiered in 2014 and won the Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Since then, Bowditch and her all-female cast have been touring for 18 months and have performed the piece more than 80 times. “The structure is still the same but we are so much more embedded in it,” she says. “Little things are always being developed and we’re always refining it.”

Although Kahlo is at the heart of the show, Falling In Love With Frida is a unique blend of two life stories. “It started as a love letter from me to Frida,” says Bowditch. “And then we started to add things that I’d written as part of the research and personal reflections on my life, so bits of me

A significant part of the mainstream Frida narrative is her passionate and turbulent relationship with fellow artist Diego Rivera. Contrary to this, Bowditch’s project aims to erode the heteronormative view of the artist and examine her bisexuality and relationships with women. “I don’t talk about Diego at all,” she says. “Some of [the performance] is about sexuality and my own sexual journey. I think there is a need for us, as a society, to talk more about sexuality and disability because I don’t think we talk about those things enough.”

One of the central themes driving the performance is the question of legacy. This concern partially came about as the product of an out-ofthe-blue email Bowditch received. “A woman who knew me when I was a child saw me on television and wrote to me. She said, ‘I met you when you were six and I’m really fascinated to see where you’ve got to as a person.’ So I started thinking about legacy and the marks you leave on people’s lives completely unknowingly. We are so unaware of what we leave behind us, whether that’s positive or negative.”

The notion of legacy resonates strongly in Frida Kahlo’s art. In particular, the way she would craft her appearance presents a striking contrast to the ubiquitous nature of images in the digital age. “Frida was such an image creator,” says Bowditch. “And if there was a photo of her she didn’t like, she would just cut her head out. She left what she wanted people to see and none of what she didn’t. I think a lot of us do not have that kind of control now, especially with things like Instagram.

Of course, on the other hand, Kahlo could be thought of as the original selfie queen – she was completely obsessed with painting self-portraits.”

The performances at Parramatta will include a Q&A session with the cast.

“As an artist in receipt of public money, I think it is my responsibility as well as my passion to work out what people got from the show and what made them come in the first place,” says Bowditch. “What I find is that people often comment on what it means to see four strong women performing onstage together without any apology.”

In many ways, Kahlo is the ultimate minority figure – she was endearingly resilient in the face of hardship and fiercely individual. Bowditch’s version of the Kahlo story, however, remains distinct. “There is no shortage of performances about Frida Kahlo, but she has never been told from the perspective of disability,” Bowditch says. “Ultimately, the show is all about love, my love for Frida. It’s more about love than pain, although sometimes you can’t have love without pain.”

What: Falling In Love With Frida Where: Riverside Theatres When: Friday March 4 and Saturday March 5

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David Strassman [COMEDY] Master Of Puppets By Tegan Jones

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ith over 30 years in the business, David Strassman and his hilarious brand of puppet-based comedy seem firmly ingrained in the Australian cultural psyche. Unleashing his rock’n’roll ventriloquism on major cities and suburban venues alike, he made the craft popular again, and will continue to push the envelope with his latest show, iTedE: About Chucking Time.

anything like this and it’s a sustained, hilarious 20-minute discussion, argument and routine with me and fi ve puppets live.”

“The show takes place in my Hollywood workshop – I am concerned with everybody being obsessed with their smartphones and spending all their time online, including my puppets,” Strassman says. “I’m afraid that all of this technology is keeping us from using our imaginations and shows like mine could be in danger of fading away.”

“My show has a defi nitive, 105-page script, but every night I get to improvise and basically dance around the words depending on what the character responds to,” he says. “The show grows every time I perform it, and it’s unlike Cats or Matilda or any show where the actors cannot change the words. I do the voices for all the puppets, so not only can I do that, I can replace jokes that may not be getting many laughs with some improv. So over the years the puppets have grown in character, emotions, foibles, neuroses, dreams and hopes, so that each character is an evolving entity in itself.”

I wonder what exploits the puppets may be getting up to online. “Well, Ted E. is using my credit card to buy Wiggles tickets and Chuck is doing online porn, so there’s a bit of a confl ict right there, but in the show I’m rehearsing to give a Ted Talk on the subject,” says Strassman. “In the first act I introduce fi ve characters that I’ve had in my shows for many years – Chuck Wood, Ted E. Bear, Kevin The Alien, Sid [Beaverman] and Grandpa Fred. In this act I operate them all with traditional, hand-up-the-bum ventriloquism.”

It’s after this where things get truly fascinating. One wouldn’t think that the art of ventriloquism could be modernised much, besides what Strassman has already done to inject new life and comedy into it. But this assumption is straight up wrong.

“For the second act, when I give the Ted Talk, I operate all the characters without touching them,” Strassman reveals.

“They’re all sitting in their own chairs in a semi-circle and I’m controlling them live with a tiny handheld device, with each one of my fi ngers operating one of the puppet’s mouths as I throw my voice to them.

“It’s something I basically haven’t been able to do until last year, and it’s almost seamless. They’re all robotic, but you really can’t tell. No-one on the planet is doing

Now that Strassman has spent so many years onstage with these characters and developing his shows, one has to question if the puppets have taken on a life of their own, or whether they remain scripted creations from the comedian’s mind.

One of the most impressive things about Strassman is his constant drive – he always seems to be touring and working. It’s the simple secret to why his act has remained relevant for so long.

“I have so much fun doing it – I’m a grown man who gets to play with dolls,” he laughs.

“Part of the success of the business model is that you come back after three years, you make sure you don’t wear yourself out and you come back with a brand new show. I couldn’t do the same show for decades; I would get bored out of my head. Pushing new boundaries is what keeps me alive.”

What: iTedE: About Chucking Time Where: Enmore Theatre When: Saturday March 12 And: Also appearing in North Sydney, Windsor, Mt Pritchard, Penrith, Rooty Hill, Sutherland, Kingsford, Parramatta, Blacktown, Hornsby, Dee Why, Castle Hill, Chatswood, Revesby and Campbelltown More: davidstrassman.com

Andrew O’Hagan [LITERATURE] Illuminated In Words By Adam Norris

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arly in Andrew O’Hagan’s 2015 novel, The Illuminations, we are told: “That night … he began to tell a story about himself, a story that never ended. Even after he died the story continued, and became something she added to herself.” Throughout the novel there are scores of vivid and often tragic lines, and O’Hagan’s insight into both the familiar and exotic lives of his characters is remarkable. Yet within those passages above, you might find an entire philosophy of life and writing. The Scottish author sits down with the BRAG to discuss exactly that.

“It’s an interesting question, because I feel that life is compelled by a communal love of stories,” O’Hagan says. “I don’t think there’s really a distinction to be drawn between reality and the imagination. I think reality is nothing without imagination. Equally, I feel that imagination is nothing without reality. I’ve never been personally interested in writing which boasts of being the product of pure, disconnected fantasy … the best of them are writers who are, symbolically or otherwise, still trying to show the world we know. To me, there is no choice between the two.

“James Joyce was a fantastically realistic writer, but of course there are also great interior monologues – he’s this great imagineer where the invisible is just as powerful as the visible. So I think you need an interest in both to be a writer. Even a writer like Borges, who wrote such great magical fictions – there’s a strange and descriptive concrete reality,” says O’Hagan.

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“That was one of the things I was interested in writing about in relation to that war. It felt like fantasy for the boys who were fighting it, but the heat was real. The weapon on their shoulder was real. The fear was real. But the fantasy of conflict was a form of gaming. That to me is the novelist’s territory.”

The war in question takes place in Afghanistan, though at the risk of drawing a long bow, there is a corollary of conflict with much more domestic battles; with family, secrecy, memory. There are two primary narratives in The Illuminations, and although O’Hagan’s depiction of creativity and senility in the life of elderly photographer Anne Quirk is particularly moving, the sections of the novel dealing with her grandson Luke and his regiment of young soldiers are stunning in their veracity. You can feel the scuff of sweat drying on your collar, you can see the shimmer of desert heat.

Cormac McCarthy once remarked that a writer must first walk the landscape in order to write it, and this is a maxim O’Hagan shares.

“It’s definitely true. Martha Gellhorn once said, ‘If you’re going to write about war, you have to taste it.’ And she didn’t just mean the food or the weather. She meant the fear. And I have to say this to my horror, but they’re young men. These boys are 17, 18, and they’re facing the most horrific prospects every day.

So when I went there and felt that dreadful 50-degree heat inside one of those armoured vehicles, and saw the sheer petrification on the face of these near children, the

sense of boredom and ambition and hunger for glory – if I hadn’t felt that, the sentences would never have got there. Christ knows it takes everything you’ve got to make them half good in the first place, but still, they wouldn’t have been even half without tasting it. So McCarthy is right, you need to walk around in the world a bit before you start rolling out the red carpet for your sentences.

“It’s something I’d hear from students when I was teaching,” he says. “‘What is my imagination telling me, what can I fantasise now?’ And I’d say, ‘Put your shoes on. Go outside,’” he chuckles. “And none of them do.”

O’Hagan is appearing in conversation next month for the mini Sydney Writers’ Festival, and audiences will be able to hear this gregarious author in the flesh. As our interview winds up, we circle back to

that opening quote and how much truth there might be to the sentiment – that the story of a life keeps unwinding long after a person has gone – and if the same cannot also be said of fictional characters.

“Oh God, yeah,” O’Hagan says. “All the people in my family who are most discussed, are most added to, most augmented, most enlarged, magnified, amplified, are the dead!

In a family like mine, it’s a great career move, dying. Before you know it, your reputation has gone through the ceiling. I’m only half joking here.

As the years go by, Auntie Bertha gets that much closer to heaven. I’ve always loved that stuff, you know.

“I wrote a book once called Be Near Me, where the priest is this welleducated English guy who goes to a small Scottish working class town and all hell breaks loose when he

befriends a couple of young ne’er-dowells from the housing estate. When I published that, there was controversy, there were arguments around the whole paedophile scandal, of the breakdown of the Catholic Church.

It was controversy everywhere you’d look, but now he’s like Aunt Bertha, that character. People speak of him with affection. And that’s the best you can set out to do – to make an honest, small contribution to this wonderful art form, and then to depart the stage. That’s the way it is. All writers are just trying to whisper into one ear at a time, to leave something there, and if you can do that well and then just clear off, I think you’ve probably had a nice career.”

What: Andrew O’Hagan: The Illuminations Where: Carriageworks When: Thursday March 3 thebrag.com

theatre reviews Hits and misses on the bareboards around town ■ Theatre

LIFE WITHOUT ME Reviewed at the Seymour Centre on Friday February 12

Life Without Me photo Stephen Reinhardt

Written by Daniel Keene and directed by Cathy Hunt, Life Without Me is a play built on fantasy realism that brings elements of existentialism, purgatory and loneliness to life.

The setting, like its storyline, is simple: it’s a hotel lobby complete with couch, table and reception counter, making it the perfect place for people to come, go or loiter, but not remain. It is in this space where people “blow in” from the street, not altogether wishing to stay at this dingy and charmless establishment, but being forced to remain once arrived. This is their crossroads, their purgatory as it would seem, where they must come to discover where they are going – for at this point in their lives, they only truly know where they’ve come from.

The play opens with its first blown in visitor, John (Drew Fairley). He’s in a huff and soaked to the bone, having unsuccessfully tried to leave town for days. He can’t seem to hail a cab, catch a bus or find the train station. It’s like they no longer exist for him anymore. He is greeted by the hotel clerk Nigel (Martin Broome), an oddball character determined to uphold no hospitality or pride in his establishment.

After much tedious debate over the lack of ■ Theatre

LADIES DAY Playing at SBW Stables Theatre from Friday February 5 – Saturday March 26

Ladies Day photo by Brett Boardman

At its core, Ladies Day, the new play from Alana Valentine, attempts to explore how we deal with the things we cannot deal with; how we come to terms with the unspeakable and the unthinkable. A rape serves as the fulcrum of the work, providing the moment reality itself splinters and a thousand cracked timelines spider out from that single point of contact.

It’s a play with a lot on its mind, then – too much, in fact. It’s a gruelling, difficult work; potential viewers should be warned that watching the sexual violence occur within the cramped confines of the Griffin Theatre is a very unpleasant experience indeed – but it’s also overambitious and halfbaked.

Sometimes its melodrama is laughable, particularly when it comes to its stabhappy climax, and the prose frequently turns

Life Without Me an available room, he finally checks John in.

That tediousness is another prominent element of Life Without Me – the play runs for two hours and 30 minutes, with an intermission, and feels just as long. In this time, we meet five more characters, each determined to wax on about their backstory and lack of direction as much as the other, and each only managing to complete their character arc by pottering, complaining and consulting one another. There is Roy, a linen salesman; Alice, a lonely elderly woman; Tom and Ellen, a couple looking to rekindle their marriage; and Mrs. Spence, a woman who refuses to believe that her husband is dead. She is played charmingly

by Annie Byron and is the standout performer of the night amid some very amiable actors and a satisfactory story.

Stephanie Yip

purple. Even worse, Valentine has limited control of tone. This is a play about sexual assault that also contains musical numbers; misguided moments of song that serve to immediately remove the audience from the action.

It’s also terribly academic.

Valentine herself is a character in the play – or a deliberately hazy version of her, anyway – and in a lot of ways the work tries to explore the notion that art is the lie that tells the truth. But it reaches at these lofty aims clumsily, and with little subtlety, and watching seasoned actor Lucia Mastrantone gurn through a dual role as both the playwright and a police officer (geddit?) is an embarrassing experience.

It’s particularly frustrating because the play does contain moments of real power, and there are a number of monologues scattered throughout the piece that are genuinely affecting, particularly in the hands of thespians Wade Briggs and Matthew Backer, both of whom do very good work. But these flashes are few and far between, interrupted

What's in our diary...

by pretentious speeches uttered by characters who never really seem real, despite the fact that much of Ladies Day’s dialogue has been lifted verbatim from the mouths of reallife people Valentine interviewed.

It’s all capped off with an ending that, though intellectually interesting, is really no more than a kind of shaggy dog conclusion, the artistic equivalent of “it was all a dream”. It’s a whimper rather than a bang; a workmanlike tying up of some very loose ends, and a soggy finale for a work that promises so much more than it ever really delivers.

Joseph Earp

Arts Exposed

Friday Night Vibes Newtown Square, until Friday April 1 Earlier this month, the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre kicked off its Friday Night Vibes series. The eight-week-long festival at Newtown Square, across the road from Newtown Station, invites locals and visitors to linger, wander and enjoy the ‘vibe’ with suitcase markets, live music, chill-out spaces and even free popcorn. In the midst of a changing Newtown atmosphere, owing much to the CBD lockout laws that have attracted late-night partygoers to the Inner West, there’s no better time to remember the vibe that makes Newtown special.

Friday Night Vibes continues until Friday April 1. Visit newtowncentre.org for details. thebrag.com

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guide to:

[PERFORMANCE ART/INSTALLATION]

Benoit + Bo Love Without Borders By Adam Norris

A

great deal of art – be it visual, cinematic, literary, taxidermic – finds its genesis in some ‘What if…?’ moment. It takes two disparate elements and wrangles them into one form, or overlaps competing visions to achieve an unexpected, fresh perspective. Benoit + Bo are perhaps the perfect distillation of that notion, and as the French (Benoit) and Chinese (Bo) artists prepare for their Australian debut, Sydneysiders will be fortunate enough to witness not just one, but two distinct exhibits celebrating all things communal.

We open by discussing the use of colour throughout their work, as even a cursory examination reveals great reverence for striking colours and sharp lines; in the past, it has been described as a particularly French appreciation. “I don’t know if [using] colours is really French now, but it was very French once,” Benoit explains. “Picasso, who isn’t French but lived in France, and Matisse – a lot of artists used to use vibrant colours. But now Parisians borrow from different places, like popular Chinese art. French artists [are] inspired by artists all around the world. Maybe the colour is not really French, but it was important in French painting during the 20th century. But for us, maybe it’s just our personality, our individual [selves].

I used to spend a long time in China, and Bo used to live in France, so we both know very well the culture of each other. I think it’s more our individual taste.”

depicts a metropolis revelling in unity, celebration and unabashed naughtiness. The Pretty Boy Motel is just down the road from Golden Shower Fountain, not far from the Elton John Nursing Home and Spank Street.

Gras, we saw videos – it’s very big, it’s very sexy, it gives us a lot of inspiration about the city. But we don’t know very well the district. But we try to give some kind of other direction with the map.”

It is this individual taste that has led to Benoit + Bo’s sequence of Love Maps. A digital artwork with reimagined city landmarks, the Sydney Love Map And Landscape

“It is mostly imagination, because we have never been,” Bo says. “We maybe can feel an idea. We see photos before creating the map, we go to the internet to see about Mardi

“But I have to say,” Benoit adds, “because we are talking about [it] with people, with friends, with people in the art world, and we are talking about our work, showing our journey with Mardi Gras, everything, and we have this desire for people to be there with us, it’s a celebration for us with beautiful people. I don’t know what is expected, but I think it is fun. Sydney seems like a sunny place. It’s beautiful. In my mind, it must be beautiful.”

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

Across its 38 years of history, Sydney’s Mardi Gras celebration has grown far beyond the famous Parade that attracts the television cameras and crowds. Now, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is an all-encompassing festival season full of alternative events, not only on Parade night but across a wide span of dates and venues. Wondering where to start? Here are just a few of the many alternative Mardi Gras party ideas.

“And with such kind and welcoming people!” Bo explains, beaming. “The Queen of the Desert!”

The pair laugh as a seemingly endless parade of cats wanders in and out of our video feed. They are a remarkably open, friendly couple, and it is this friendliness that they hope to share across the Harbour City. With Love Maps, and their Big Heads conceptual performance, they want people to find a positive experience that is unique, while still being strongly connected to the artists themselves. “[It’s] difficult for us to express something we didn’t live,” Benoit admits. “Maybe we will, but we say there are two kinds of artists: autobiographics, and all others. It’s important, because autobiography is from our own experiences. It can be a way to speak of the life of other people, people we met, people we know. But with us, it can’t be someone else speaking.”

What: Appearing as part of Disco Diaries at the Hollywood Hotel, Saturday February 27 – Monday March 7 And: Sydney Love Map And Landscape is showing at the Newsagency Gallery, Thursday February 25 – Thursday March 31

[PARTY PROFILES] It’s called: Apollo The Party It’s called: Fruity What to see and do: Both levels have DJs and shows all night.

Sights and sounds: In the bar we have shows from Menage A’Trois, Raine Ingmenn, the Gayme Of Thrones cast and DJ Frankie Shin.

In the club we have the Barley Legal cast, Ms. Annie Mation as your hostess, and direct from Adelaide, Les Girls legend Vonni with DJs Kirby and Johny Blueboy.

Bevvy of choice: Cocktails!

Cost: $10 bar, $20 club or both levels $25.

Where: The Shift Bar & Club (Midnight Shift), 85-91 Oxford St, Darlinghurst When: Saturday March 5

What to see and do: You’ll enter through the Launch Pad where Kate Monroe and Adam Cox are keeping it fun and happy with their uplifting, vocal house. You can have a drink in our chill-out zone before making your way into the Apollo Arena – a highoctane dancefloor where hands in the air is the order of the day. Our DJs Ruby and Matt Bachl are well versed in keeping it silly with playful, uplifting, energetic remixes of the songs you love, the tracks you wish you had and ones you’ll remember for a lifetime.

Sights and sounds: This will be our biggest party

It’s called: Birdcage Mardi Gras Warm-Up What to see and do: We have Tanzer flying up from Melbourne to headline the party, and supports from Sveta, Tanner Derby and resident Cunningpants.

Drag queen PollyFilla is also flying up from Mebourne to host our early Mardi Gras drag bingo special with queen bee Felicity Frockaccino. Live shows from 10pm!

Sights and sounds: Rainbows, glitter, confetti,

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ever – we are expecting a sell-out event. Apollo is a sensory overload that pushes the boundaries of sound and light. Two packed dancefloors, an incredible Apollo-designed lighting rig and a Funktion-One sound system that will blow your socks off. It’s an over-the-top dance party putting the F back into fun.

Bevvy of choice: Anything and everything – a soft drink to start, a wine to continue, a beer to top up and of course, water… you won’t stop dancing!

What’s the highlight: The final 15 minutes. It’s the climax of an extraordinary

Cost: Tickets are available online through Ticketek for $79 + Ticketek booking fees, or if you prefer to pay

without fees, we have tickets available in store at Bang Clothing (Flinders Street) or Daly Male (Oxford Street).

Where: Metro Theatre, 624 George St, Sydney When: Sunday March 6, 2-10pm

your favourite locals. The energy at our annual Mardi Gras warm-up party is like no other – it’s one not to be missed.

Cost: Free Where: Slyfox, 199 Enmore Rd, Enmore When: Wednesday March 2, 8pm-3am

day of play and our signature Apollo finale is not to be missed.

streamers and all things gay! Drag performances from 8-10pm, then DJs and live shows from 10pm-3am.

Bevvy of choice: $10 Sly martinis and $10 jugs from 8-10pm. You can’t go past the $5 tinnies all night either.

What’s the highlight: Two of Melbourne’s biggest queer stars will be performing under one roof, easing us into the biggest weekend of the year! Not to mention all

thebrag.com

out & about Queer(ish) matters with Lucy Watson

I

n December, the Ethics Centre, the organisation in charge of the Intelligence Squared (IQ2) debates, released details of its first 2016 debate. Then titled A Trans Wo/Man Can Never Be Fe/Male, the event caused an uproar, and within days, comments on the Facebook event were disabled, the name of the event was changed to Gender Identity Debate (Title TBC), and the Ethics Centre released a statement saying essentially that it was consulting people, and hadn’t finalised details yet.

The premise of the debate served to argue the legitimacy of transgender identities.

Understandably, the community of trans people was outraged, having had their identities legitimated by themselves, as well as in many cases the state, and by medical professionals for some time now.

To have to then defend themselves once again, in a debate, seemed rather archaic (as well as incredibly offensive).

The event then sort of disappeared from our collective minds, and Facebook feeds, until it quietly resurfaced last week, in the most surprising of places.

Scrolling through the Mardi Gras’ official program, I came across the reincarnation of this debate. Now titled Society Must Recognise Trans People’s Gender Identities, the change in tune was obvious.

And yet, being a debate, one must assume there is a negative side to this proposition, arguing against it – that society doesn’t need to recognise trans people’s gender identities – as though this is something still up for debate, as though Australia doesn’t already legally recognise transgender people. And Mardi Gras supports this event. As though transgender people aren’t already vilified enough in Australia, hey, why don’t we get one of the biggest gay and lesbian organisations to vilify them too?

Mardi Gras has often been criticised for its exclusion of transgender people. Usually it’s implicit, by supporting organisations (like Facebook) who regularly discriminate against trans people, or by having events, and films, that overwhelmingly favour cis* gay male narratives, closely followed by cis lesbian narratives. However, now the exclusion of transgender people is so overt that Mardi Gras is publicly supporting an

this week…

event that is putting people’s lives up for debate.

The Ethics Centre has a history of trying to be provocative, and mostly just wildly missing the mark. Do you remember the honour killings talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas a few years ago?

The talk was cancelled, the title probably misrepresented the speaker Uthman Badar’s actual views, and it mostly just generated a lot of awkward publicity for the event, and its co-curator, the Ethics Centre.

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas last year was similarly controversial, with speaker Naomi Klein denouncing the Ethics Centre for having Jim Molan on its board.

Molan was instrumental in Tony Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy, the program that relies so heavily on offshore detention (and we all know how well that’s going). The board stood by Molan then, but the question is, why should Mardi Gras?

With an event like this IQ2 debate?

Mardi Gras is about celebrating diversity and difference. It seems so thoroughly out of step with the festival’s ethos that it would throw its support behind an event that is so obviously designed to be provocative, and as a result, belittles an entire group of people. Even though a Mardi Gras event the following night, Gender Trailblazers, claims to argue against issues raised in the debate, why are we arguing these at all?

Freedom of speech is important, but the freedom to exist is fundamental. Debating the legitimacy of trans lives isn’t freedom of speech, it’s bigotry. Mardi Gras can do better. *Cis refers to cisgender, a term for those born into the gender they identify with.

BenT

Thankfully, there are a few good Mardi Gras events that are supportive of trans people. Make sure you see Kaleidoscope at the Kings Cross Theatre, running now until Friday March 4. The play explores a normal day in the life of Gabriel, a trans guy who’s just trying to leave his house. Also worth seeing is Looking 4 Dick, a stand-up comedy show about BenT’s search for dick, on at El Rocco on Thursday February 25 – Friday February 26 and Thursday March 3 – Friday March 4.

This Friday February 26, in true Mardi Gras fashion, is a busy night. Homosocial is happening back at its old haunt of Secret Garden Bar, L’Oasis #6 is on at Slyfox, and Hellfire, the fetish club, is back at The Shift. Start your night at Homosocial with cheap cocktails, before deciding where to kick on.

Gay gamers rejoice! GX Australia is happening this weekend (Saturday February 27 – Sunday February 28) at the Australian Technology Park. The convention celebrates diversity in games, pop culture and life generally.

Also this weekend is Queer Provocations at the Red Rattler. With workshops, discussions, film screenings, performances and installations, this festival is designed to be an alternative to Queer Thinking’s Mardi Gras program, and is set to be provocative, without taking cheap shots at marginalised groups like IQ2’s event.

Secret Garden Bar

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BARS BRAG

B R A G ’ S G U I D E T O S Y D N E Y ’ S B E S T WAT E R I N G H O L E S

Mon – Tue 5-11pm; Wed – Fri noon-midnight; Sat 5pm-midnight A Work In Progress 50 King St, Sydney CBD (02) 9240 3000 Mon – Fri noon-2am Ash St Cellar 1 Ash St, Sydney CBD (02) 9240 3000 Mon – Fri 8.30am-11pm The Attic 275 Pitt St, Sydney CBD (02) 9284 1200 Mon – Fri 11am-1am; Saturday 5pm-1am Assembly 488 Kent St, Sydney CBD (02) 9283 8808

The Australian Heritage Hotel 100 Cumberland St, The Rocks (02) 9247 2229 Mon – Sun 10.30am-midnight Balcony Bar 46 Erskine St, Sydney CBD (02) 9299 3526 Mon – Fri noon-midnight; Sat 4pm-midnight BAR100 100 George St, The Rocks (02) 8070 9311 Mon – Thu noon-late; Fri – Sat noon-3am; Sun noon-10pm

Bar Eleven Lvl 11, 161 Sussex St, Sydney CBD (02) 9290 4000 Mon – Thu 4-9pm; Fri – Sat 4-11pm The Barber Shop 89 York St, Sydney CBD (02) 9299 9699 Mon – Wed 4pm-midnight; Thu – Fri 3pm-midnight; Sat 4pm-midnight Basement 33 Basement, 27-33 Goulburn St, Sydney CBD (02) 8970 5813 Mon – Thu 5pm-midnight The Baxter Inn Basement 152-156 Clarence St, Sydney CBD

Mon – Sat 4pm-1am Bulletin Place First Floor, 10-14 Bulletin Place, Circular Quay Mon – Wed 4pm-midnight; Thurs – Sat 4pm-1am deVine 32 Market St, Sydney CBD (02) 9262 6906 Mon – Fri 11.30am-11.30pm; Sat 5.30-11.30pm Frankie’s Pizza 50 Hunter St, Sydney CBD Mon – Fri noon-3am; Sat – Sun 4pm-3am Gilt Lounge 49 Market St, Sydney CBD (02) 8262 0000 Wed – Sat 5pm-late

The Glenmore 96 Cumberland St, The Rocks (02) 9247 4794 Mon – Thu, Sun 11am-midnight; Fri – Sat 11am-1am

The Lobo Plantation Basement Lot 1, 209 Clarence St, Sydney CBD 0415 554 908 Mon – Thu, Sat 4pm-midnight; Fri 2pm-midnight

Grain Bar 199 George St, Sydney CBD (02) 9250 3118 Mon – Sun noon-1am

The Loft (UTS) 15 Broadway, Sydney (behind 2SER) (02) 9514 1149 Mon – Wed 2pm-10pm; Thurs – Fri 2pm-late

Grandma’s Basement 275 Clarence St, Sydney CBD (02) 9264 3004 Mon – Fri 3pm-midnight; Sat 5pm-late The Fox Hole 68A Erskine St, Sydney CBD (02) 9279 4369 Mon 7am-3pm; Tue – Fri 7am-lste The Grasshopper 1 Temperance Ln, Sydney CBD (02) 9947 9025 Mon – Thurs & Sat 4pm-late; Fri noon-late Harpoon Harry 40-44 Wentworth Ave, Sydney CBD (02) 8262 8800 Mon – Sun 11:30am-3am

TH

EK

OF

DOWNTOWN BAR bar @ THE COMMONS LOCAL EATING HOUSE E E W

ADDRESS: 32 BURTON ST, DARLINGHURST PHONE NUMBER: (02) 9358 1487 WEBSITE: THECOMMONS.COM.AU OPENING HOURS: WED – THU 6PM-MIDNIGHT; FRI – SAT 6PM-1AM

Mojo Record Bar Basement 73 York St, Sydney CBD (02) 9262 4999 Mon – Wed 4pm-midnight; Thu 4pm-1am; Fri 3pm-1am; Sat 4pm-1am The Morrison 225 George St, Sydney CBD (02) 9247 6744 Mon – Wed 11.30am-midnight; Thu 11.30am-1am; Fri – Sat 11.30am-2am; Sun 11.30am-10pm The Palisade 35 Bettington St, Millers Point 9018 0123 Tue – Fri noon-2.30pm & 6pm-9.30pm; Sat 6pm-9.30pm Mr Tipply’s 347 Kent St, Sydney CBD (02) 9299 4877 Mon – Sat 10am-late Palmer & Co. Abercrombie Ln, Sydney CBD (02) 9240 3000 Mon – Wed 5pm-late; Thu – Fri 3pm-late; Sat – Sun 5pm-late Papa Gede’s Bar Laneway at the end of 348 Kent St, Sydney CBD (02) 9299 5671 Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight Plan B Small Club 53-55 Liverpool St, Sydney CBD

Wed 5pm-11pm; Thu 5pm-1am; Fri 5pm-3am; Sat 6pm-3am Ramblin’ Rascal Tavern Basement, 60 Park St, Sydney CBD Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun 6pm-10pm Rockpool Bar & Grill 66 Hunter St, Sydney CBD (02) 8078 1900 Mon – Sat noon-3pm, 6-11pm

Sounds: Delta blues, Chicago blues and East Coast jazz and funk jazz are played live in The Commons’ cosy Downtown Bar every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday nights.

When we don’t feature live music we tend to offer a playlist that reflects those genres, even though sometimes we go a little tropical and throw some bossanova tunes in there.

Tell us about your bar: Downtown takes you back to the roots of good music and liquor. Our bar menu and music are inspired by the golden age of cocktails, jazz and blues, from the turn of the century until 1950. With the intent to bring back forgotten beverages, we now focus on a libation with a heroic heritage: vermouth, a drink that comes with a history and the romanticism of old secret family recipes, spanning generations. We offer incredible drinks in an intimate sandstone setting, accessible and friendly staff, and the opportunity to learn more about music, your friends, and good ol’ drink.

What’s on the menu?

We always recommend bar snacks that may be the perfect match for your drink of choice, from potato skins with red pepper sauce to crumbed three cheese stuffed olives, scallops ceviche, house-made duck liver pate, or why not indulge in a sharing experience – a design-your-own custom platter? You may choose from a selection of farm house charcuterie and cheeses or seasonal vegetarian local produce.

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Care for a drink?

Try the Barrel Aged Old Fashioned: Maker’s Mark 46, Angostura bitters and sugar, aged for four weeks in a 20-litre Tasmanian oak cask, which was previously filled with port and then whisky. One of the best Old Fashioneds you will ever try!

Highlights: With a piano tucked away in the corner and the sandstone walls wrapping around the few small tables scattered throughout this intimate space, you feel as though you are far away from the city, from Sydney and from everything else that fills your regular life. In a 164-year-old heritage-listed farmhouse with its low ceilings and sandstone walls, you could close your eyes and let the blues and a sip of your Old Fashioned take you back in time.

The bill comes to: Check out our weekly cocktail canapé combination for just $20.

The Rook Level 7, 56-58 York St, Sydney CBD (02) 9262 2505 Mon, Sat 4pm-midnight; Tue – Fri noon-midnight The SG 32 York St, Sydney CBD 0402 813 035 Tues – Fri 4pm-midnight; Sat 6pm-midnight Shirt Bar 7 Sussex Ln, Sydney CBD (02) 8068 8222 Mon –Wed 8am-8pm; Thu – Fri 8am-10pm Since I Left You 338 Kent St, Sydney CBD (02) 9262 4986 Mon – Wed 5pm-10pm; Thu – Fri 5pm-midnight; Sat 6pm-midnight Small Bar 48 Erskine St, Sydney CBD (02) 9279 0782 Mon – Fri noon-midnight; Sat 5pm-midnight

Mon – Wed 4pm-midnight; Thu – Fri noon-2am; Sat 4pm-2am The Swinging Cat 44 King St, Sydney CBD (02) 9262 3696 Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight Tapa Vino 6 Bulletin Place, Circular Quay (02) 9247 3221 Mon – Fri noon-11.30pm

Fri – Sat 6pm-late The Commons 32 Burton St, Darlinghurst (02) 9358 1487 Tue – Wed 6pm-late; Thu – Fri 12pm-late; Sat – Sun 8:30am-late The Darlie Laundromatic 304 Palmer St, Darlinghurst Mon – Sat 5pm-11pm

Uncle Ming’s 55 York St, Sydney CBD Mon – Fri noon-midnight; Sat 5pm-midnight

Darlo Bar 306 Liverpool St, Darlinghurst (02) 9331 3672 Mon – Sun 10am-midnight

York Lane 56 Clarence St, Sydney CBD (02) 9299 1676 Mon – Wed 6.30am-10pm; Thu – Fri 6.30pm-midnight; Sat 6pm-midnight

Darlo Country Club Level 1, 235 Victoria St, Darlinghurst (02) 9380 4279 Wed – Thu 5pm-midnight; Fri – Sat 5pm-2am

121BC 4/50 Holt St, Surry Hills (02) 9699 1582 Tue – Sat 5pm-midnight Absinthe Salon 87 Albion St, Surry Hills (02) 9211 6632 Wed – Sat 4-10pm Arcadia Liquors 7 Cope St, Redfern (02) 8068 4470 Mon – Fri 4pm-midnight; Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm Bar Cleveland Cnr Bourke & Cleveland St, Redfern (02) 9698 1908 Mon – Thu 10am-2am; Fri – Sat 10am-4am Bar H 80 Campbell St, Surry Hills (02) 9280 1980 Mon – Sat 6pm-11.30; Sun 11am-3pm Bellini Lounge 2 Kellett St, Potts Point (02) 9331 0058 Thu – Sun 6pm-late The Beresford 354 Bourke St, Surry Hills (02) 8313 5000 Mon – Sun noon-1am Black Penny 648 Bourke St, Surry Hills (02) 9319 5061 Mon – Sat 7am-midnight; Sun 7am-10pm Busby 55 Riley St, Woolloomooloo (02) 9326 9055 Wed – Sat 3pm-midnight Button Bar 65 Foveaux St, Surry Hills (02) 9211 1544 Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight Café Lounge 277 Goulburn St, Surry Hills (02) 9016 3951 Mon – Thu 5pm-midnight; Fri – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sunday 4-10pm Casoni Italian Bar & Eatery 371-373 Bourke St, Darlinghurst Tue – Thu 5pm-11pm; Fri – Sat 5pm-midnight; Sun 5pm-10pm Central Tavern 42-50 Chalmers St, Surry Hills (02) 9212 3814 Mon – Sat 10am-2am; Sun 10am-10pm

The Smoking Panda 5-7 Park St, Sydney CBD (02) 9264 4618 Mon – Sat 4pm-late

Ching-a-Lings 1/133 Oxford St, Darlinghurst (02) 9360 3333 Tue – Wed 6pm-11pm; Fri – Sat 6pm-1am; Sun 5pm-10pm

Stitch Bar 61 York St, Sydney CBD (02) 9279 0380

The Cliff Dive 16-18 Oxford Square, Darlinghurst

Dead Ringer 413 Bourke St, Surry Hills (02) 9331 3560 Mon – Fri 5pm-midnight; Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm Della Hyde 34 Oxford St, Darlinghurst Thu – Sun 4pm-late Eau-De-Vie 229 Darlinghurst Rd, Darlinghurst 0422 263 226 Mon – Sat 6pm-1am; Sun 6pm-midnight The Forresters 336 Riley St, Surry Hills (02) 9212 3035 Mon – Wed noon-midnight; Thu – Sat noon-1am; Sun noon-10pm Gardel’s Bar 358 Cleveland St, Surry Hills (02) 8399 1440 Tue – Sat 6pm-midnight Gazebo 2 Elizabeth Bay Rd, Elizabeth Bay (02) 8070 2424 Mon – Fri 4pm-midnight; Sat – Sun noon-midnight Golden Age Cinema & Bar 80 Commonwealth St, Surry Hills (02) 9211 1556 Mon - Sun 3pm-midnight Goros 84-86 Mary St, Surry Hills (02) 9212 0214 Mon – Wed 11:30am-midnight; Thu 11:30am-1am: Fri 11:30am-3am; Sat 4pm-3am The Hazy Rose 1/83 Stanley St, Darlinghurst (02) 9357 5036 Wed – Thu 5pm-midnight; Fri – Sat 3pm-midnight; Sun 3-10pm Hello Sailor 96 Oxford St, Darlinghurst (02) 9332 2442 Tue – Sun 6pm-3am Hinky Dinks 185 Darlinghurst Rd, Darlinghurst (02) 8084 6379 Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun 1-10pm Hollywood Hotel 2 Foster St, Surry Hills (02) 9281 2765 Mon – Wed 10am-midnight; Thu – Sat 10am-3am Hustle & Flow Bar 105 Regent St, Redfern (02) 9310 5593 Tue – Sat 5pm-midnight Li’l Darlin Darlinghurst 235 Victoria St, Darlinghurst (02) 8084 6100 Mon – Sun 5pm-late Li’l Darlin Surry Hills 420 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills (02) 9698 5488 thebrag.com

Mon – Fri noon-late; Sat 4pm-late LL Wine and Dine 42 Llankelly Place Potts Point (02) 9356 8393 Mon – Thu 5pm-11pm; Fri – Sat noon-late; Sun 11am-10pm The Local Taphouse 122 Flinders St, Darlinghurst (02) 9360 0088 Mon – Wed noon-midnight; Thu – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-11pm Love, Tilly Devine 91 Crown Ln, Darlinghurst (02) 9326 9297 Mon – Sat 5pm-midnight; Sun 4-10pm Low 302 302 Crown St, Surry Hills (02) 9368 1548 Mon – Sun 6pm-2am Mr Fox 557 Crown St, Surry Hills 0410 470 250 Tue – Wed 5pm-late; Sat 10am-midnight; Sun 10am-10pm The Norfolk 305 Cleveland St, Surry Hills (02) 9699 3177 Mon – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm Old Growler 218 William St, Woolloomooloo 0422 911 650 Tue – Sat 5pm - midnight The Passage 231A Victoria St, Darlinghurst (02) 9358 6116 Mon – Sat 5pm-late Peekaboo 120 Bourke St, Woolloomooloo 0403 747 788 Mon – Thu 4pm-10pm; Fri – Sat 4pm – 12am Play Bar 72 Campbell St, Surry Hills (02) 9280 0885 Tues – Sat 5pm-midnight Pocket Bar 13 Burton St, Darlinghurst (02) 9380 7002 Mon – Sun 4pm-midnight The Powder Keg 7 Kellett St, Potts Point (02) 8354 0980 Wed – Thu 6pm-late; Fri 1pm-2.30am; Sat – Sun 6pm-late The Print Room 11 Glenmore Rd, Paddington (02) 9331 0911 Thu – Fri 5pm-late; Sat – Sun noon-late Queenie’s Upstairs 336 Riley St, Surry Hills (02) 9212 3035 Tue – Sat 6pm-late & Fri noon-3pm Roosevelt 32 Orwell St, Potts Point (02) 8696 1787 Tue – Fri 5pm-midnight; Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm Rosie Campbell’s 320 Crown St, Surry Hills (02) 8356 9120 Mon 5pm-midnight: Tue – Sun 4pm-midnight Shady Pines Saloon Shop 4, 256 Crown St, Darlinghurst Mon – Sun 4pm-midnight The Soda Factory 16 Wentworth Ave, Surry Hills (02) 8096 9120 Mon – Thu 5pm-late; Fri 5pm-3am; Sat – Sun 6pm-3am Surly’s 182 Campbell St, Surry Hills (02) 9331 3705 Tue – Sun noon-midnight thebrag.com

Sweethearts Rooftop 33/37 Darlinghurst Rd, Potts Point (02) 9368 7333 Mon – Thu 4-11.30pm; Fri – Sun noon-11.30pm This Must Be The Place 239 Oxford St, Darlinghurst (02) 9331 8063 Mon – Sun 3pm-midnight The Tilbury Hotel 12-18 Nicholson St, Woolloomooloo (02) 9368 1955 Mon – Fri 9am-midnight; Sat 10am-midnight; Sun 10am-10pm Tio’s Cerveceria 12-18 Nicholson St, Woolloomooloo (02) 9368 1955 Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun 2-10pm Vasco 421 Cleveland St, Redfern 0406 775 436 Tue – Sat 5pm-midnight The Village Inn 9-11 Glenmore Rd, Paddington (02) 9331 0911 Mon – Sun 12pm-late The White Horse Hotel 381-385 Crown Street, Surry Hills 1300 976 683 Mon – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm The Wild Rover 75 Campbell St, Surry Hills (02) 9280 2235 Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun noon-10pm The Winery 285A Crown St, Surry Hills (02) 9331 0833 Mon – Sun noon-midnight

Anchor Bar 8 Campbell Pde, Bondi (02) 8084 3145 Tue – Fri 4.30pm-late; Sat – Sun 12.30pm-late Bat Country 32 St Pauls St, Randwick (@ The Spot) (02) 9398 6694 Mon – Sat 7am-midnight; Sun 7am-10pm Beach Road Hotel 71 Beach Rd, Bondi Beach (02) 9130 7247 Mon – Sat noon-1am; Sun 11am-10pm Bondi Hardware 39 Hall St, Bondi (02) 9365 7176 Mon – Wed 4pm-late; Fri noon-midnight; Sat 9am-midnight; Sun 9am-10pm The Bucket List Shop 1, Bondi Pavilion, Queen Elizabeth Drive (02) 9365 4122 Mon – Tue 11am-5pm; Wed – Sun 11am-late The Corner House 281 Bondi Rd, Bondi (02) 8020 6698 Tue – Sat 5pm-midnight; Sun 3pm-10pm Fat Ruperts 249 Bondi Rd, Bondi (02) 9130 1033 Tue – Fri 6pm-late; Sat – Sun 2pm-late The Hill Bar/Eatery Cnr Campbell Pde & Hastings Pde, North Bondi (02)9130 2200 BAR Mon – Fri 4pm-late, Sat – Sun 12pm till late Mr Moustache 75-79 Hall St, Bondi Beach (02) 9300 8892 Mon – Fri 5pm-11pm;

Sat noon-11pm; Sun noon10pm The Phoenix Hotel 1 Moncur St, Woollahra 0413 688 546 Wed – Thu 4pm-11pm; Fri – Sat noon-11pm; Sun noon-10pm The Robin Hood Hotel 203 Bronte Rd, Waverley (02) 9389 3477 Mon - Sat 10am-3am; Sun 10am-10pm Speakeasy 83 Curlewis St, Bondi (02) 9130 2020 Mon – Sat 5pm-11pm; Sat – Sun 4pm-10pm Spring Street Social (and Jam Gallery) Underground 195 Oxford St, Bondi Junction (02) 9389 2485 Tue 5pm-midnight; Wed – Sat 5pm-3am Stuffed Beaver 271 Bondi Rd, Bondi (02) 9130 3002 Mon – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm

The Angry Pirate 125 Redfern St Redfern (02) 9698 9140 Tue – Thur 5pm-midnight; Fri – Sat 3pm-midnight Arco 3 Little Queen Street, Chippendale (02) 9318 0815 Tue – Sat 5pm-9.30pm Bar-racuda 105 Enmore Rd, Newtown (02) 9519 1121 Mon – Sat 6pm-midnight Bauhaus West 163 Enmore Rd, Enmore (02) 8068 9917 Wed – Fri 5pm-midnight; Sat – Sun 11am-midnight The Bearded Tit 183 Regent St, Redfern (02) 8283 4082 Mon – Thu 4pm-midnight; Fri – Sat noon - midnight; Sun noon - 10pm Blacksheep 256 King St, Newtown (02) 8033 3455 Mon – Fri 4pm-11pm; Sat 2pm-11pm; Sun 2pm-10pm Bloodwood 416 King St, Newtown (02) 9557 7699 Tue – Wed 6pm-late; Thu – Sun 5pm-late Calaveras 324 King St, Newtown 0451 541 712 Wed – Sat 6pm-midnight Cornerstone Bar & Food 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh (02) 8571 9004 Sun – Wed 10am-5pm; Thu – Sat 10am-late Corridor 153A King St, Newtown 0405 671 002 Tue – Fri 3pm-midnight; Sat 1pm-midnight; Sun 1pm-10pm Cottage Bar & Kitchen 342 Darling St, Balmain (02) 8084 8185 Mon – Wed 5pm-midnight; Thu – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm Different Drummer 185 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (02) 9552 3406 Mon – Sat 4.30pm-1am Doris & Beryl’s Bridge Club and Tea House 530 King St, Newtown Mon – Fri 5pm-midnight; Sat – Sun 5.30pm-midnight

Earl’s Juke Joint 407 King St, Newtown Mon – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun 4-10pm

Mon – Thu 5pm-midnight; Fri – Sat 11.30am-midnight; Sun 11:30am-10pm

Forest Lodge Hotel 117 Arundel St, Forest Lodge (02) 9660 1872 Mon – Sat 11am-midnight; Sun noon-10pm

The Record Crate 34 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (02) 9660 1075 Tue – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm

Freda’s 109 Regent St, Chippendale (02) 8971 7336 Tues – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun 4pm-10pm The Gasoline Pony 115 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville 0401 002 333 Tue – Thu 5-11.30pm; Fri – Sat 3-11.30pm; Sun 3-9.30pm The Hideaway Bar 156 Enmore Rd, Enmore (02) 8021 8451 Tue– Thu 4pm-midnight; Fri – Sat noon-1am Hive Bar 93 Erskineville Rd, Erskineville (02) 9519 9911 Mon – Fri noon-midnight; Sat 11am-midnight; Sun 11am-10pm Kelly’s On King 285 King St, Newtown (02) 9565 2288 Mon – Fri 10am-2.30am; Sat 10am-3.30am; Sun 11am-11.30pm Knox Street Bar Cnr Knox & Shepherd St, Chippendale (02) 8970 6443 Tue – Thu 4-10pm, Fri – Sat 4pm-midnight Kuleto’s 157 King St, Newtown (02) 9519 6369 Mon – Sat 4pm-late; Thu – Sat 4pm-3am

The Royal 156 Norton St, Leichhardt (02) 9569 2638 Mon – Thu 10am-1am; Fri – Sat 10am-3am; Sun 10am-midnight Secret Garden Bar 134a Enmore Rd, Enmore 0403 621 585 Mon – Tue 7am-5pm; Wed – Sun 7am-11pm Soho In Balmain 358 Darling St, Balmain 0407 525 208 Tue – Sun 5pm-11pm Temperance Society 122 Smith St, Summer Hill (02) 8068 5680 Mon – Thu 4pm-11pm; Fri – Sat: noon-midnight; Sun: noon-10pm Thievery 91 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (02) 8283 1329 Tue – Thu 6pm-11pm; Fri 6pm-midnight.

Sat 11pm-3pm & 6pm-midnight Timbah 375 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (02) 9571 7005 Tue – Thu 4pm-10pm; Fri noon-11pm; Sat 3pm-11pm; Sun 4pm-8pm Wilhelmina’s 332 Darling St, Balmain (02) 8068 8762 Tues – Fri 5pm - late; Sat – Sun 8am - late

The Workers Lvl 1, 292 Darling St, Balmain (02) 9555 8410 Thu – Sat 5pm-3am; Sun 2pm-late ZanziBar 323 King St, Newtown (02) 9519 1511 Mon – Sat 10am-4am; Sun 10am-12am Zigi’s Wine And Cheese Bar 86 Abercrombie St, Chippendale (02) 9699 4222 Tue 4pm-10pm; Wed – Sat 2pm-late

Alberts Bar 100 Mount St, North Sydney (02) 9955 9097 Mon – Wed 11.30am-10pm; Thu 11.30am-11pm; Fri 11.30am-midnight Daniel San Manly 55 North Steyne, Manly (02) 9977 6963 Mon – Thu 4pm-midnight; Friday – Saturday noon– 2am; Sunday noon-midnight Firefly 24 Young St, Neutral Bay (02) 9909 0193 Mon – Thu 5-11.30pm; Fri 4-11.30pm; Sat noon-11pm; Sun noon-10pm The Foxtrot 28 Falcon St, Crows Nest Tue – Wed 5pm-midnight; Thu 5pm-1am; Fri – Sat 5pm-2am; Sun 4pm-10pm The Hayberry Bar & Diner 97 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest (02) 8084 0816 Tue – Thu 4pm-midnight; Fri & Sat noon-midnight

Sun noon-10pm Hemingway’s 48 North Steyne, Manly (02) 9976 3030 Mon – Sat 8am-midnight; Sun 8am-10pm Honey Rider 230 Military Rd, Neutral Bay (02) 9953 8880 Tue – Sat 4pm-midnight; Sun 4pm-10pm InSitu 1/18 Sydney Rd, Manly (02) 9977 0669 Tue – Fri 5pm-midnight; Sat 9am-midnight; Sun 9am-10pm The Hunter 5 Myahgah Rd, Mosman 0409 100 339 Mon – Tue 5pm-midnight; Wed – Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm Jah Bar Shop 7, 9-15 Central Ave, Manly (02) 9977 4449 Mon – Fri 4pm-late; Sat 9am-late; Sun 9am-10pm The Local Bar 6/8 Young Ln, Neutral Bay (02) 9953 0027 Tue – Fri noon-late; Sat – Sun 8am-late Los Vida 419 Pacific Hwy, Crows Nest (02) 9439 8323 Mon – Wed 5pm-midnight; Thu – Sat 11.30am-midnight; Sun 11.30am-10pm Manly Wine 8-13 South Steyne, Manly (02) 8966 9000 Mon – Sun 6.30am-late The Mayor 400 Military Rd, Cremorne (02) 8969 6060 Tue – Fri noon-midnight;

Your bar’s not here? Email: chris@thebrag. com Sat 8am-midnight Miami Cuba 47 North Steyne, Manly 0487 713 350 Tue – Thu 8am-10pm; Fri – Sat 8am-1am; Sunday 8am-4pm Moonshine Lvl 2, Hotel Steyne, 75 The Corso, Manly (02) 9977 4977 Thu 5pm-2am; Fri 1pm-2am; Sat noon-2am; Sun noon-midnight The Pickled Possum 254 Military Rd, Neutral Bay (02) 9909 2091 Thu – Sat 9pm-1am SoCal 1 Young St, Neutral Bay (02) 9904 5691 Mon – Tue 4pm-late: Wed – Thu noon-1am; Fri – Sat noon- 2am; Sun noon-midnight The Stoned Crow 39 Willoughby Rd, Crows Nest (02) 9439 5477 Mon – Sun noon-late The Treehouse Hotel 60 Miller St, North Sydney (02) 8458 8980 Mon – Fri 7am-late; Sat 2pm-late Wilcox Cammeray 463 Miller St, Cammeray (02) 9460 0807 Tue – Thu 4pm-10pm; Fri – Sat 2pm-11pm; Sun 2pm-10pm

The Little Guy 87 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (02) 8084 0758 Mon – Fri 4pm-midnight; Sat 1pm-midnight; Sun 3pm-10pm Mary’s 6 Mary St, Newtown (02) 4995 9550 Mon – Fri 4pm-midnight; Sat noon-midnight; Sun noon-10pm The Midnight Special 44 Enmore Road, Newtown (02) 9516 2345 Tues – Sat 5pm-midnight; Sun 5pm-10pm Miss Peaches 201 Missenden Rd, Newtown (02) 9557 7280 Wed – Sun 5pm-midnight Mr Falcon’s 92 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (02) 9029 6626 Mon – Thu 4pm-midnight; Fri 3pm-midnight; Sat noon-midnight; Sun 4pm-10pm Newtown Social Club 387 King St, Newtown (02) 9550 3974 Mon 9am-6pm; Tues – Fri 9am-8pm; Sat 10am-8pm The Oxford Tavern 1 New Canterbury Rd, Petersham (02) 8019 9351 Mon – Thu noon-midnight; Fri – Sat noon-3pm; Sun noon-10pm Lord Raglan 12 Henderson Rd, Alexandria (02) 9699 4767 Mon – Sun noon-3pm, 5pm-9pm Raven’s Eye 127 King St, Newtown (02) 9557 6429 BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 23

bread&thread Food & Fashion News... with Anita Connors, Joseph Earp and Chris Martin

ROZELLE COLLECTORS MARKET REFIT

Rozelle Collectors Market

WILLIE TURNS ONE

Willie The Boatman, one of the Inner West’s favourite brews, is turning one, and the men behind the beverage, Pat McInerney and Nick Newey, are inviting everyone to come along and celebrate. Two events will be held – one at the Keg & Brew and the other at the Dove & Olive – giving you ample choice when it comes to how you want to party. There will be a kissing booth, merch giveaways and cupcakes, not to mention beer. Lots and lots of beer. Willie’s Thirsty Birthday Bash hits the Keg & Brew on Thursday February 25 and the Dove & Olive on Sunday February 28. Happy birthday, dear Willie, happy birthday to you.

The weekend event formerly known as the Rozelle Markets has a new name and operator. Located at Rozelle Public School on Darling Street, it is now the Rozelle Collectors Market. Despite these recent changes, the market will continue to have an emphasis on antiques, collectables, vintage, retro and second-hand goods. It will also be introducing special events and new offerings throughout the year, including suitcase showcases, rack sales, pop-up fleatiques, vinyl record spins, antique appraisals and bicycle recycle workshops. Make your way there on any Saturday and Sunday from 9am to see what’s going on.

MARKETS IN MAY

Gluttons and gourmands of Sydney, now is your time to rejoice (and/or begin fasting.) Sydney’s premier celebration of market culture, Markets In May, is set to return to its Martin Place home.

Each Thursday in May, a different market-based food brand is going to take over the venue, serving up a delicious selection of sweet and savoury treats. The brands in question are The EQ Market, The Brewery Yard Market and The Blak Market, all of which are celebrated for their mouth-watering cuisine. So unpack your bibs and those dinky wooden knives and spoons, and get those dates saved away. Markets In May kicks off on Thursday May 5.

The Makers And Shakers Market

YOU GOTTA SHAKE IT TO MAKE IT Morgan McGlone

HARRY’S NEW RESIDENT

Al Taglio

GET A PIZZA THIS

Pizza by the slice: that’s how the traditionalists do it in Italy, and it’s why a little slice of the homeland has landed in Surry Hills. Al Taglio, located on Albion Street, has launched its menu of tasty focaccia-style delights made to traditional recipes. Highlights include the Calabrese (tomato sauce, mozzarella, spicy salami, onion and bell peppers), the Siciliana (tomato sauce, anchovies, capers, black olives, oregano and garlic oil) and the Trevigiana (tomato sauce, mozzarella, gorgonzola and radicchio). Al Taglio is as much about the food as it is about attitude: its mission statement includes references to fairness (“We preach egalitarianism. Feel free to take someone else’s pizza when they go to the loo”) and sensation (“We want you to burst and tell all of your friends. Just before you burst”). Can’t argue with that.

Surry Hills’ Hotel Harry has announced the identity of its new food curator.

Taking up the residency from this April is Morgan McGlone, who will be drawing on his considerable global experience as well as a love of Southern-style cuisine. McGlone recently worked alongside Sean Brock at Husk Restaurant in Charleston and Nashville, where he was the first nonAmerican to be appointed Chef de Cuisine. He then returned to Australia to open Belle’s Hot Chicken in both Melbourne and Sydney. At Hotel Harry, McGlone will introduce a custom Silver Creek Smoker as well as curate the bar menu at Harpoon Harry and popup dinners with a host of industry fi gures in the Friends of Harrys Series, alongside the room service and special event catering.

On the hunt for some hideously fashionable knick-knacks? The Makers And Shakers Market has you covered. The inaugural event will showcase market stalls from a number of brands, including The Storybook Rabbit, Leafsmith & Kin and many more. The range of homewares is already shaping up to be fairly astonishing – if that’s your kinda thing, of course – so provided you don’t think you’re going to overdose on all that twee, you should get yourself along. The Makers And Shakers Market hits Marrickville Town Hall on Saturday April 2.

PHARRELL GETS INTO JEANS

The man behind one of the world’s most overplayed songs has stuck his flag again into the world of fashion. In news that is bound to make lovers of denim around the world ‘happy’ (geddit?), Pharrell Williams has stepped up as the new co-owner of G-Star Raw. It’s not the first time Pharrell has worked with the company: his prior involvement includes working with the organisation to create a range of jeans made from recycled ocean plastic. Williams has described his plans to make G-Star the “definitive jeans brand of the 21st century”.

Ambitious, but we like it.

MANU’S THE MAN

Australia’s favourite foodie Frenchman and My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Feildel is heading to the theatre for An Evening With Manu Feildel – Live On Stage.

The event aims to take audiences

CLAIRE’S KITCHEN AT LE SALON

on a culinary journey through regional France. Manu will be sharing practical cooking tips as well as gourmet Gallic specialities, and throughout the night there will be opportunities for onlookers to participate in the fun. An Evening With Manu Feildel runs Thursday May 12 – Friday May 13 at the Capitol Theatre.

OH MY, IT’S MALBEC

Lovers of full-bodied red wine, rejoice! Sunday April 17 is Malbec World Day. To celebrate Argentina’s most famed grape, Cell Block Theatre at the National Art School will play host to Gauchito Gil’s Malbec World Day the following Saturday April 23. Guests are encouraged to get involved with wine tasting as both Argentinian and Australian wine producers showcase their talents, as well as join in the live tango dancing. And barbecuing up a storm will be local grill house Porteño.

restaurant of the week

ADDRESS: 35 OXFORD ST, DARLINGHUST OPENING HOURS: TUE – SAT FROM 6PM Who’s the cook/bartender?

Marc Kuzma AKA Claire de Lune opened the restaurant four years ago. Marc is the executive chef and host, Valentin is the maître d’, Wayne the chef, and Aurelien the sommelier/bartender. The restaurant has been voted number 43 in the Top 100 restaurants, Australia.

Eye candy: Claire has decorated the venue with fabulous imported wallpapers, antiques, chic furniture and crystal chandeliers.

Flavours: We have a traditional French menu with some modern touches.

Something to start with: Double baked three cheese soufflé.

Care for a drink?

Aurelien, our sommelier, has sourced some amazing French wines from smaller vineyards and created some very unusual cocktails, all with a French twist.

Sounds: Gentle French jazz and all the classics from Piaf to Jacques Brel.

Make us drool: An elegant restaurant at the ‘Paris end of Oxford Street’ with very personal service in a chic but relaxed atmosphere.

The bill comes to: $85 pp plus wine, with ten per cent off your bill during the DoDarlo campaign.

Website: claireskitchen.com.au

xxxx

The main course: Chateaubriand Bearnaise for two.

Our beef comes from Greenham, a Tasmanian organic farm.

Room for dessert?

Our dessert trolley offers a choice of French patisseries, crème brulee, chocolate mousse and more.

24 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

thebrag.com

Album Reviews What's been crossing our ears this week...

ALBUM OF THE WEEK sheaths of the cosmos. It’s hurt, yet defi ant, and when Kristine Leschper sings about hating her body on album opener ‘Too Small For Eyes’ she sounds like she’s starting a war, while the guitar part on ‘Copper Mines’ is all barbed wire and rusted, ancient machinery.

Feeling strongly about something – particularly something that can be bought – is looked down upon these days. We scorn fandoms; we feel strange about loving. But music is important.

Music matters. And an album like Mothers’ When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired seems ready-made to rekindle the most unabashed adoration imaginable.

It is a record about the struggle one faces when they try to live a good life, a catalogue of the casual evils we commit every day, and the sins that have us wanting to “apologise to everyone we meet”. But more than that, When You Walk is an album for you.

Though Leschper sings about specifi cs on the tremendous ‘Blood-Letting’, they are the specifi cs of your life, somehow, and the haunted fi gures that populate the album are people you know.

When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired Wichita

Falling in love is cool again thanks to this young Georgiabased band.

It’s also full of contradictions. It’s grand, yet small, like a pair of slippers sewn together from

When You Walk is a gift designed for you and your love, shaped so that you might curl up against it.

Joseph Earp

KANYE WEST

JOSEF SALVAT

BJ THE CHICAGO KID

MYSTERY JETS

GUNNS

Among the Cosby-defending nonsense and bizarre selfaggrandising that has been littering Kanye West’s Twitter profile, there lies a single nugget of truth. Recently, West described The Life Of Pablo, his new record, as the “album of a life”.

He was right. But it’s not the album of your life, or mine; it’s the album of Kanye’s life, the culmination of years of self-promotion. More than anything, it’s deeply, unavoidably misogynistic.

By now most will have heard about the deluded couplet at the centre of ‘Famous’ (“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous”) but that’s the tip of a very large iceberg. This is a record in which women are relegated to the position of objects (“Big booty bitch for you!” on ‘Feedback’); in which Kanye discusses the various states of the female rectum more than any other aspect of feminine personality (on ‘Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1’, the first instalment of a song that Ye apparently wrote while in tears); in which women are painted as fellatio-hungry airheads.

There’s a charisma to Josef Salvat that is entirely endearing. He’s an artist who crafts chart-ready music with a slight disdain for all the trappings that come associated with success.

Having previously aligned himself with the likes of Jill Scott, Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul, the latest album from R&B singersongwriter BJ The Chicago Kid is underwhelming. Out of the 15 tracks on his second full-length, only a handful hit the mark of mature and sophisticated soulinfused music, none more so than lead single ‘Church’. Featuring Chance The Rapper and Buddy, the jilted beats and smooth guitar licks make it a truly sensual R&B classic, as the dilemma of succumbing to seduction or religious obligation is summed up in one simple hook. ‘The New Cupid’ is another standout, featuring a sweet verse from Lamar on top of a glacial beat with a charming façade. ‘Love Inside’, ‘Crazy’ and ‘Man Down’ all prove catchy and stellar in execution.

Curve Of The Earth soars high in all its melodic magnificence, rocketing to orbit and back as it spares little time for filler. If the nine articulate and textually diverse songs make up the Earth’s core, then it’s the production that coats this blue planet with life, accentuating an already fine specimen.

She’s A Rainbow is a hip trip, man, in that it is as dated and neutered as that lingo suggests. It’s a denim jacket staled by cigarette smoke, limply hanging in the corner of a Vinnies, forgotten and perennially uncool.

The Life Of Pablo Def Jam/Universal

Some have argued that in order to enjoy the work one needs to separate the man from the record. But Kanye is Pablo and Pablo is Kanye.

Night Swim Liberation

His debut Night Swim encapsulates all those feelings into one neat, tidy, if not slightly confused package. ‘Open Season’ is glitchy electronics over a piano-led beat that, while expertly crafted, feels a little too similar to the darker pop songs currently flooding the airwaves – something that continues in ‘Paradise’. It’s not until we reach ‘Hustler’, a shadowy late-night creeper, that we feel like Salvat has really opened the door to authenticity and let us into his world. ‘Till I Found You’ is a soulful piece that’s dripping with lyrics that intertwine love and salvation, before Salvat treats us to ‘Constant Runners’, an album highlight wearing its ’80s synthpop influences on its sleeve. It’s the type of track that makes us feel like we are the person Salvat is singing about, and not just to. On the title track, Salvat shows us just how brooding lust, obsession and betrayal is truly supposed to sound.

This is a vicious mess; the sound of a very sad man screaming misogynistic slurs into a cave, growing dizzy from the sound of his own voice.

While Night Swim does occasionally feel disjointed, it is a strong debut from an artist who is looking to bring those guilty pleasures and abandoned fascinations out of the darkness and onto the dancefloor.

Joseph Earp

Iain McKelvey

In My Mind Motown

But the rest of the album mostly comes off as cheesy and manufactured. ‘The Resume’ is a truly cringeworthy track with lyrics like, “Here’s my resume, can you hire me? / I wanna work your body like it’s a nine-to-fi ve,” while ‘Woman’s World’ is just a rearrangement of a cliché.

MANGELWURZEL Gary Independent

thebrag.com

Sure, it may occasionally veer a little too close to the domain of the trifle and the trite – ‘My House’ is a misstep, and the bong bubble that starts ‘Glorious’ reeks of a high schooler’s impression of what anarchy sounds like – but on the whole, this is a relentlessly original work. It’s an exercise in bad taste that somehow feels like high art,

Mystery Jets’ English roots run deep throughout this record, offering subtle salutes to everyone from The Beatles to Radiohead. ‘1985’ channels the candour of Thom Yorke’s bittersweet delivery, while ‘Blood Red Balloon’ echoes The Beatles’ vocal harmonies and fluttering synth sounds akin to breakthrough-era Pink Floyd. At times ethereal, and others grounded, the album’s lyrical themes centre on reflection. Peering down from above and stargazing from below, the songs shift from introspective to retrospective points of view, musing on a life’s past and present.

Rich in melody, Curve Of The Earth will have you humming hooks for days on end. Vocals, guitars and keys are in a constant state of tradeoff, each demanding attention in the leading role and making each opportunity worthwhile.

She’s A Rainbow Spinning Top

There’s just not enough originality to the piece, and the countless guitar solos feel borrowed rather than owned. Gunns have evidently spent some time studying psych rock, but though they understand the surfacelevel concerns of the style, they haven’t mastered the concept of the drive that underpins all those freakouts and love-ins.

‘Death Of The Sun’ is an opiateaddled lullaby, and ‘The Fool’ is all Dangerfield accessorising and meandering mundanity. Gunns somehow manage to close the whole thing with a reprise, a carbon copy of a carbon copy that sends the piece petering out into oblivion.

It’s not much good, nor interesting, nor catchy, but worse than all that, it’s not any fun. Despite its energised demeanour and punchy, short running time, it’s a veritable slog to get through.

A bit more effort might have propelled BJ The Chicago Kid to something of Miguel or The Weeknd’s stature: popular, yet respected for their individuality.

Mystery Jets’ latest effort is catchy and easily digested, without succumbing to monotony – the songs break the stratosphere, but remain relevant to life on Earth.

It’s as though these songs have spent time in the company of a particularly daggy youth minister; a bore with the borrowed language of a more interesting man.

Chelsea Deeley

Aaron Streatfeild

Joseph Earp

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK Comparing any record to a puddle of vomit may seem like the vilest insult around, but in the case of Mangelwurzel’s very good Gary, it’s the only quantifier that seems to stick. This is a technicolour yawn of an album; a delightfully crude stew of semi-digested concepts that somehow reaches both new lows and ecstatic, dizzying highs at the same time.

Curve Of The Earth Caroline

like a trash fire in the Louvre.

The wail of the saxophone defines the record as much as the Robert Crumb-esque lashings of weird sex and arch cheekiness, and though the squeaky jazz-punk stylings of a song like the title track or the debauched ‘Everybody’s Friend’ owe a lot to James Chance and his Contortions, there’s a manic energy to the piece that belongs solely to Mangelwurzel.

Gary is delirious, unbridled, horrific fun: like an axe murder in a school for clowns, or an inferno in a puppy farm, or yes, a steaming puddle of your beloved’s vomit.

OFFICE MIXTAPE And here are the albums that have helped BRAG HQ get through the week...

KENDRICK LAMAR - To Pimp A Butterfl y FRENZAL RHOMB - A Man’s Not A Camel NORDIC GIANTS - A Séance Of Dark Delusions

HAWKWIND - Space Ritual HILLTOP HOODS - The Hard Road

Joseph Earp BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 25

DIIV photo by Sandy Kim

MOTHERS

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VIEW FULL GALLERIES AT

thebrag.com/snaps

up all night out all week . . .

live reviews W Whhaat t wwee' 'vvee bbeeeenn oouut t t too sseeee. . . .

DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE Enmore Theatre Tuesday February 16

Look, let me start by saying this was one of the best gigs I’ve seen since… well, ever.

17:02:16 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9332 3711

From the energetic opener, ‘The Weekend’, to the traditional ‘Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby’ sung a capella around a single mic, there was something reminiscent of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion to the evening, something wonderfully homespun and thoroughly entrancing. No flashy set or affectations; just fiddle (Brittany Haas), double bass (Paul Kowert), guitar (Willie Watson – though he also covered banjo, fiddle, and some darned fine vocals) and the inimitable Welch and Rawlings weaving worlds from sound. That they do so with such ease is a testament to their craft, and just watching Rawlings work his Epiphone guitar is an education in itself. But that they

galdstone

PICS :: AM

waxahatchee

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After missing Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings’ ‘solo’ show the previous week, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

Their musicianship is the stuff of folk and bluegrass legend, and the unabashed praise being heaped on those concerts did nothing to assuage the suspicion that I’d lost a memorable moment there. Suddenly, catching the Dave Rawlings Machine seemed vital, and across two sets and two encores the quintet sure didn’t disappoint.

appear to have such fun with each other’s playing is where the magic lives. The longterm duo have lost none of their passion for performing, and recalling the intensity of ‘Method Acting / Cortez The Killer’ gives me goosebumps even now.

Not every choice was as stirring. Two songs in saw the somewhat rambling appearance of ‘Bodysnatchers’, which is a fine number but could arguably benefit from a bit of a trim live. Yet that is the sole small caveat for a concert I have no doubt will remain with me for years to come.

Between DRM’s original material came a selection of remarkable covers, from the aforementioned Neil Young to a jawdropping ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ (Bob Dylan), ‘This Land Is Your Land’ (Woody Guthrie), Rawling’s Ryan Adams co-write ‘To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)’ and that fine old chestnut, ‘The Weight’ (The Band).

In all, it was an evening of highlights.

The wordplay of ‘Sweet Tooth’ was nicely balanced by the call-and-response ‘Stewball’, while the storytelling of ‘The Trip’ won my heart until Welch’s own ‘Look At Miss Ohio’ stole it away again.

These songs, these musicians, are truly one of a kind, and if you missed them… try to forget everything you hear.

Adam Norris

20:12:15 :: Frankie’s Pizza :: 50 Hunter St Sydney

keep sydney open

21:02:16 :: Frankie’s Pizza :: 50 Hunter St Sydney

26 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

kate miller-heidke

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trophy eyes

PICS :: AM

21:02:16 :: Belmore Park + Hyde Park

18:02:16 :: Factory Theatre :: 105 Victoria Rd, Marrickville 9550 3666

thebrag.com

MOUNTAIN SOUNDS FESTIVAL 2016

Mount Penang Parklands Saturday February 20 Mountain Sounds is establishing itself as the place to go for good vibes, a preview of the best upcoming names to look out for, and a great party at the end of the summer festival season.

In its third year running, the festival organisers have ironed out some of the crinkles of past events, with food, drinks and bathroom lines being quite well controlled this year. There was an artsy flair that added to its barnyard feel, with ad hoc artworks such as crate robots and Bowie tributes hidden throughout the festival in the trees and down winding paths.

Wherever you wandered throughout the day, there were different tunes for different tastes, with a big rock stage, electronic tent, a party bus, a smaller rock stage and secret stage, and the festival’s variety of acts was certainly one of its strengths. The scheduling

Harts brought out his daring rock’n’roll soon afterward, finishing up his set by triumphantly shredding his guitar behind his back. The Delta Riggs owned their psychedelic and strange rock and worked a growing crowd, while later on Alpine performed old and new hits with confidence, colour and such a crisp sound that it was often difficult to distinguish from their recordings.

made it difficult at times to catch the bigger acts if you were a fan of both the electronic and rock genres, but the set times were long enough that you could jump between both.

The electronic tent had moments of greatness mostly provided by Slumberjack’s crowd-pleasing beats (despite some technical difficulties cutting off their sound midway through) and Art vs Science’s penchant for introducing rock into their dance material, including an epic ‘Enter Sandman’ cover towards the end of the evening. The standout electronic act of the day, however, was Adelaide beatmaker Motez, who demonstrated masterful control over the crowd despite an early slot. He moved seamlessly from song to song, moulding the atmosphere without dropping the energy on the dancefloor.

Though Violent Soho were a late addition to the lineup, the band drew lots of fans and provided an energetic end to the festival. The Queenslanders capped off a day filled by a variety of sounds with some heavy rock that got heads banging and hay bales flying into the night.

Meanwhile, the rock stage provided the most winning acts this year, with a strong run of almost all Australian bands. I Know Leopard got things started with beautiful floaty tunes, while

While Mountain Sounds drew less people than it should have this year, it was a relaxed day filled with good tunes, good company and a friendly vibe. It’s a Central Coast gem that deserves a weekend getaway.

Erin Rooney

party profile

friday night vibes It’s called: Friday Night Vibes It sounds like: Something different each week; the soundtrack to these upcoming Fridays will rockabilly to gypsy, indie rock to Brazilian beats range from – all in an effort to celebrate the diversity of Newtown.

Acts: Lolo Lovina, Playing Brazil, The Cruisi n’ Deuces, Joe & Harmony, Grouse, Lee Sulliva Sleepers and more… n and The Sell it to us: Free tunes, live art, meet local makers and revel in the Newtown ‘vibe’ (plus there’s free popcorn and flowers upon arrival at Newtown train station) – the perfect way to kick off your Newtown. night out in The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The music , to put that flower you were given in some water the people, the dancing – the good vibes! And hopefully …

Crowd specs: Newtown dwellers and visitor s, young and old. Everyone’s welcome.

Wallet damage: Free!

live reviews ALBERT HAMMOND, JR., GUNNS Oxford Art Factory Friday February 19

Albert Hammond, Jr. arrived for his debut solo headline tour in Australia last week, despite it being a decade since his first record was released. The Strokes guitarist had a fair swag of material to draw on – with three albums and an EP to boot – and his band played a tight set to a largely lethargic crowd, with a sound eerily reminiscent of the group that made him famous.

The support slot was filled by young Fremantle quartet Gunns, who sound like they should be wearing paisley shirts and mop tops. The group performed a series of pretty, psychedelia-tinged tunes with an added rock punch. ‘Death Of The Sun’ and ‘Who’s Gonna Be Your Dog’ from their new EP were aired during a promising set, in addition to ‘Live By The Sea’.

Albert Hammond, Jr.’s set gave his Australian fans the chance to see the guitarist step out of The Strokes’ shadow and play frontman. The songs sound a lot like The Strokes, and Hammond has a nice voice, but he is no Julian Casablancas. Some of the songs had a great idea, tone or riff, but there were other moments where the tracks sounded far too repetitive and familiar.

‘Everyone Gets A Star’ was a fun and exuberant way to start and ‘Rude Customer’ was a slice of danceworthy rock that could have been a Franz Ferdinand cut. Hammond’s newer material certainly has a more mature and wistful air, and that was particularly evident in ‘Losing Touch’ and ‘Side Boob’. They were performed well, but the crowd was rather sedate, which could have been chalked up to the evening’s stifling heat or because some punters wanted Strokes songs (there were none).

The set was instead filled with upbeat tunes from his AHJ EP as well as some material from his debut album.

‘Blue Skies’ proved a nice diversion from the more energetic pacing elsewhere, a slower and stripped-back piece of balladry, before the night closed with ‘Holiday’.

It had been a show that often hinted at a retro sentiment packaged up in a jaunty, contemporary feeling, and while it had been fun to party with Hammond, some punters were left hungry for a Strokes show.

Natalie Salvo

Where: Newtown Square (opposite the train station) When: Every Friday, 6-8pm (until Friday April 1)

wed

24 Feb

thu

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

25 Feb

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

fri

26 Feb

(10:00PM - 1:40AM)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

sat

5:45PM  8:45PM

27 Feb

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

sun

28 Feb (8:30PM - 12:00AM)

(10:00PM - 1:15AM)

mon

live at the sly ft. recall

tue

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

01 Mar

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

PICS :: AM

29 Feb

18:02:15 :: Slyfox :: 199 Enmore Rd Enmore 9557 2917 EY MAR :: OUR PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHL

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 27

g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com

pick of the week Fat Freddy’s Drop

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26 Hordern Pavilion

Fat Freddy’s Drop + Hiatus Kaiyote + Thomas Oliver 6:45pm. $76.36.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 24 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Folknery + Twin Set The Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $5.

Manouche Wednesday - feat: Gadjo Guitars Mr Falcon’s, Glebe.

7pm. Free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN

& WORLD MUSIC

Declan O’Rourke + Pauline Scanlon + John Spillane + Leah Flanagan + Shane Howard Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $59.

Sean Wayland Group

Foundry616, Ultimo.

8:30pm. $21.50.

The Groovemeisters Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 8:30pm.

Free.

The Phoenix Pie Play Bar, Surry Hills.

8pm. Free.

INDIE, ROCK,

POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Dan Potthast + The Resignators + Ivan Drago Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7pm. $25.

Legs Electric Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney. 6pm. Free.

Live Music @ Manning Manning Bar, Camperdown. 3pm.

Free.

Mark Travers Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. Free.

Muso’s Club Jam Night Bald Faced Stag Hotel, Leichhardt. 8pm.

Free.

Rob Thomas Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 6pm. $99.90.

The Sword + American Sharks + Clowns + Los Hombres Del Diablo Max Watt’s, Moore Park. 7pm. $55.

Vibrations At Valve feat: Bounty Hunters + Bermuda Bloom + Fire Knight + Masta Gravity + Tyler River Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 7pm. $15.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 25 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Katherine Vavahea + Gabe Jones + Sabrina Soares + Dominique Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 8pm. $10.

Trivia Evy Sings Jobim Foundry616, Ultimo.

8:30pm. $27.50.

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Dom Turner & Supro

+ Cass Eager And The Velvet Rope + The Arc Riders The Basement, Circular Quay. 6pm. $19.20.

Harbourview Hullabaloo - feat: Zack Martin + Mawuli Dokli Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks. 7pm. Free.

Michael Harvey Museum Of Contemporary Art, The Rocks. 6:30pm. Free.

Patrick Lyons + Steve Robinson The Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $5.

Roadhouse Rockabilly Night - feat: Jordan C Thomas Band Miss Peaches Soul Food Kitchen, Newtown. 7pm. Free.

Sunset Sessions feat: Benny Vibes + Krysitie Erickson The Bristol Arms Hotel, Sydney. 6pm.

Free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

AJ Dyce The Push Bar, The Rocks. 7:30pm. Free.

Blake Tailor Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill. 7pm. Free.

Chico Seeds Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney. 9pm.

Furnace & The Fundamentals Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 5pm. Free.

Glenn Esmond Manly Leagues Club, Brookvale. 7:30pm.

Free.

Greg Hooper + Dee Donavon Penrith RSL, Penrith.

11am. Free.

House Of Rock feat: Tracing Lines + DBTH + Buffalo Trip The Forresters, Surry Hills. 8pm. Free.

Legs Electric Marlborough Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. Free.

Live & Original @ The Merc - feat: Courtney Luzmila + Jerome Fandor +

Derek Turner The Mercantile Hotel, The Rocks. 7:30pm.

Free.

Live Music @ Manning Manning Bar, Camperdown. 3pm.

Free.

Luna Grande Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7pm. $23.

Matt Lyon Penrith Panthers, Penrith. 6:30pm. Free.

Ocean Colour Scene Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $75.54.

Passenger Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $76.97.

RB Mr Falcon’s, Glebe.

8:30pm. Free.

Ride For Rain + The Dissolutes + The Blind Veggies Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 8pm.

Free.

Ross Maio Penrith RSL, Penrith.

11am. Free.

San Cisco Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $35.

Simply Red + Natalie Imbruglia State Theatre, Sydney.

7pm. $109.90.

The Arc Riders The Basement, Circular Quay. 6pm. $15.

The Desert Sea + The Shadez + Avelna + Aureus The Vanguard, Newtown. 7pm. $13.80.

The Fumes Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $15.

The Gooch Palms Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $13.60.

Twin Fires + The Buffalo Grass Boys Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 9pm.

Free.

White Bros Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. Free.

Yeevs + Julia Why? + Dead Brian Slyfox, Enmore.

7:30pm. Free.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Charlie Parr The Vanguard, Newtown. 6:30pm. $34.

Elwood Myre + Caitlin Harnett + Callum Wylie Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham.

7pm. $10.

Eugene Hideaway Bridges The Basement, Circular Quay.

7:30pm. $34.50.

Fifty Million Beers The Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm.

Free.

John Vella Duo Coogee Bay Hotel, Coogee. 12pm. Free.

Sunset Sessions feat: Benny Vibes + Krysitie Erickson The Bristol Arms Hotel, Sydney. 6pm.

Free.

Vanessa Heinitz The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney. 7:30pm. Free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Bin Juice Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 9pm.

Free.

Burn The Floor Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $43.89.

Fat Freddy’s Drop + Hiatus Kaiyote + Thomas Oliver Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 6:45pm. $76.36.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS 1349 Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm.

five things WITH

ASHTON TREMAIN FROM THE DESERT SEA Inspirations Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Clapton, Red Hot 2.

Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Rage Against The Machine, Silverchair, Radiohead, QOTSA, The White Stripes, The Strokes… and the list goes on. I think I was about nine years old when I first heard RATM and it absolutely blew my mind!

Your Band Andy, Ben and I have been mates for 3. years. Andy has been rocking the bass since

Growing Up I think as a band we’ve all come from 1. musical backgrounds in one way or another.

All of our families consisted of people either being musical themselves, or just having a love for great music. We grew up listening to the likes of Hendrix, Zeppelin, The Doors and 28 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

Stevie Ray being played in our family homes.

As a child I always remember my dad and his brothers playing guitar and singing Beatles songs up at our family farm. I think that being surrounded by music from a young age has a profound impact, and for us, played a big part in our musical discovery.

we formed The Desert Sea back in 2012. We were originally a three-piece but as our sound evolved we decided to add another guitarist – that’s when Ben came on board. When we found ourselves in need of a new drummer, my brother Will put his hand up for the job. He is an insane guitarist so his drumming skills had gone under the radar a little, but he came down to rehearsals and just blew the set out of the water. We really had no choice but to let him join [laughs]. I think we are all creative minds and share a real passion for making music. When you combine that with each individual’s different perspective, it provides a really cool dynamic.

The Music You Make We bring a mix of grungy blues rock and 4. draw our sound from bands like Queens of the Stone Age, The Black Keys, Zeppelin and

RATM. We have a new single coming out soon, which we recorded at Szyslak Studios in Avalon with Hell City Glamours guitarist Mo Mayhem.

He’s a great engineer and did a really great job of helping us get the sound we wanted.

Music, Right Here, Right Now In recent times people’s engagement 5. with discovering bands has definitely changed.

With more ways for people to find and stream new music, the old days of going down the pub to check out a new band seem to be fading. I think now you’ve really got to engage people on all the social media and streaming platforms, on top of regular gigging, to really boost your following. As far as music right now, our management SEG look after some great up-and-coming acts like Aureus, Chico Seeds and The Shadez and it’s really inspiring to see those guys rock it live. I think in recent years there have also been more Sydney bands getting national attention, which is really cool. It’s great to see hard-working bands like Violent Soho and Sticky Fingers doing well.

With: The Shadez, Avelna, Aureus Where: The Vanguard When: Thursday February 25 And: Also supporting The Fumes at Mona Vale Hotel on Saturday February 27

thebrag.com

g g guide gig g

g g picks gig p up all night out all week...

send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com $49.95.

Art Party 40 - feat: Spectacles + Zikora Create Or Die Warehouse, Marrickville. 7:15pm. $20.

Belinda Carlisle + Pseudo Echo Rooty Hill RSL Club, Rooty Hill. 8pm. $69.

Big Radio Dynamite Penrith RSL, Penrith.

9pm. Free.

Blake Tailor Quakers Inn, Quakers Hill. 8pm. Free.

Blow Colonial Hotel, Werrington. 8:30pm.

Free.

Courtyard Sessions - feat: Microwave Jenny Seymour Centre, Chippendale. 6pm.

Free.

Evie Dean Club Liverpool, Liverpool. 5:30pm.

Free.

Glenn Esmond Kings Park Tavern, Kings Park. 7pm. Free.

Jimmy Mann The Push Bar, The Rocks. 7:30pm. Free.

Judy! Barbra! Liza!

Bette! - feat: Velma Vegas And The Vaguettes Seymour Centre, Chippendale. 8pm. $38.50.

Karaoke Figtree Hotel, Sydney.

8pm. Free.

Live Music @ Manning Manning Bar, Camperdown. 3pm.

Free.

Matt Lyon The Oriental Hotel, Springwood. 8pm.

Free.

Michael Fryar Padstow Park Hotel, Padstow. 7pm. Free.

Michael Kopp Lord Raglan Hotel, Sydney. 7pm. Free.

Nathan Roche + Joseph Liddy And The Skeleton Horse + Jordan Ireland & Purple Awechestra Waywards, Newtown.

8pm. Free.

Pasha Bulka Bald Faced Stag Hotel, Leichhardt. 8pm. $11.80.

Rare Finds #11 - feat: Le Pie + Sparrows + Edward R Oxford Art Gallery, Sydney. 8pm. $5.

Reckless Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 8pm. Free.

Rob Thomas State Theatre, Sydney.

7:30pm. $130.90.

Sound Society Marlborough Hotel, Newtown. 11pm. Free.

Statefx Bridge Hotel, Rozelle.

8pm. Free.

Steve Crocker Chatswood RSL, Chatswood. 5pm. Free.

Suite Az + DJ Troy T The Arthouse, Sydney.

5pm. Free.

Tara Favell Zest Grill House, Rooty Hill. 5:30pm.

Free.

Ted Nash Fortune Of War, The Rocks. 8pm. Free.

The Indians Factory Floor, Marrickville. 8pm. $8.

The Smooth Groove Revesby Workers Club, Revesby.

8:30pm. Free.

The Snowdroppers

+ The Hard Aches + The Strums + Twin Fires Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $23.10.

The Underground Architect + Amber Lies + Fox And The Hound Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 9pm. $10.

Twilight At Taronga - feat: Bjorn Again Taronga Zoo, Mosman.

7pm. $70.95.

Vanessa Heinitz 99 On York, Sydney.

5:30pm. Free.

We The Kings Metro Theatre, Sydney.

7:30pm. $54.40.

Yeo The World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. $13.

Zeppelin Live Kareela Golf Club, Kareela. 8pm. Free.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Burn The Floor Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $43.89.

Janet Seidel Quartet Penrith RSL, Penrith.

2pm. Free.

The Kinetic Jazz Orchestra Foundry616, Ultimo.

8:30pm. $27.50.

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Bandsonstage feat: Slow Nomad Petersham Inn, Petersham. 8:30pm.

Free.

Catherine Traicos The Newsagency, Marrickville. 8pm. $21.50.

Dave Anthony Rocks Brewing Co, Alexandria. 2pm. Free.

Luka Bloom The Basement, Circular Quay. 7:30pm. $65.

Queen Porter Stomp The Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $5.

The Magic Carpet Ride - feat: Hannah Robinson + Paul Spencer + Rapt + The Trippy Hippy Band Newtown Neighbourhood Centre, Newtown.

6pm. $15.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Abbalanche (ABBA Show) South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club, Kingsford. 7pm. Free.

Alfredo Malabello The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney. 7:30pm. Free.

Autolysis + Diminish The Gods + Burial Chamber + Infested Entrails + Nekrology + Dyonisis + Necrostalgia Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 8pm. $10.

Belinda Carlisle + Pseudo Echo Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8pm. $69.

Better Live Revesby Workers Club, Revesby.

8:30pm. Free.

Blake Tailor Hurstville RSL, Hurstville. 7:30pm.

Free.

Blake Wiggins Kings Park Tavern, Kings Park. 2pm. Free.

Blues Brothers Rebooted Campbelltown RSL Club, Campbelltown.

8pm. Free.

Borneo Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 9pm.

Free.

Chase Atlantic Metro Theatre, Sydney.

4:45pm. $20.

Chopdogs Harbour Cruise 2016 - feat: Dan Potthast + Faux Effects + The Resignators + Rancid + Batfoot + Hightime Star Casino Wharf, Sydney. 12pm. $43.

Corona Sunsets feat: Natalie Conway Watsons Bay Hotel, Watsons Bay. 3pm.

Free.

Dirty Deeds: The AC/DC Show North Bondi RSL, Bondi North. 8pm.

Free.

Disney In Concert feat: David Campbell + Harrison Craig + Lucy Durack + RickiLee Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 5pm. $69.90.

Endangered Species Carousel Inn Hotel, Rooty Hill. 8pm. Free.

Evie Dean Royal Hotel, Bondi.

9pm. Free.

Frank Sultana The Hideaway Bar, Enmore. 7pm. Free.

Georgia White Novotel, Rooty Hill.

6:30pm. Free.

Glenn Esmond Trio Marlborough Hotel, Newtown. 11pm. Free.

Grand Oyster Palace + Prints Familiar + Sun Sap Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $5.

Isaac Graham + Jack Lundie + Heath Anthony + Spencer Scott Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 2pm. $10.

Jimmy Bear Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 5:45pm. Free.

Jordan Rakei Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 8pm. $28.

Karaoke Picton Hotel, Picton.

8pm. Free.

Matt Lyon Plough & Harrow, Camden. 8pm. Free.

Nathan Cole Ingleburn Hotel, Ingleburn. 1pm. Free.

Soundproofed Wallacia Hotel, Wallacia. 8pm. Free.

Spiderbait + Tired Lion Metro Theatre, Sydney.

8pm. $47.50.

The Chosen Few Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 8pm. Free.

The Fumes Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale. 8:30pm. $15.

The Kamis

Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 11am.

Free.

The Matchbox Tribute Show Oatley Hotel, Oatley.

8pm. Free.

Twilight At Taronga - feat: Bjorn Again Taronga Zoo, Mosman.

7pm. $70.95.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 28 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Live Music Sundays - feat: Sydney Blues Society Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. Free.

Not Good With Horses + Toby Robinson The Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 5pm. $5.

Singer Songwriter Showcase - feat: Open Mic For Singer Songwriters Mr Falcon’s, Glebe.

6:30pm. Free.

Songquest Final feat: Stuart Jammin + James Donnelly + Lucy Tiger + Phil Marino Harlequin Inn, Pyrmont. 3pm. Free.

Songsonstage feat: Pauline Sparkle + Funk Elevation Petersham Inn, Petersham. 4pm. Free.

Sunday Live At The Bowlo Marrickville Bowling Club, Marrickville.

4:30pm. Free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Wallacia. 1pm. Free.

GBH Factory Floor, Marrickville. 8pm. Free.

Glen Matlock + Slim Jim Phantom Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 6pm. $51.

Glenn Esmond Peachtree Hotel, Penrith. 1pm. Free.

Luna Grand Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 7pm. $23.50.

Peter Northcote’s Drive - feat: Andre Kaman Bridge Hotel, Rozelle.

3:30pm. Free.

Ted Nash The Mill Hotel, Milperra. 12pm. Free.

Ted Nash Fortune Of War, The Rocks. 6pm. Free.

The Nature Strip Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham. 2pm. $5.

The Road Runners The Merton Hotel, Rozelle. 6pm. Free.

The Strides + The Strides + Blackbird Hum Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 7pm.

Free.

U2 Elevation Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 4:30pm. Free.

UK Anthems Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 8:30pm. Free.

Xibalba + Reactions + Burning Season + Life’s III Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 12pm. $25.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 29 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Burn The Floor Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $43.89.

Jazz & Shiraz Sundays Northies Cronulla Hotel, Sydney. 1pm.

Free.

John & Yuki Jazz Band Illawarra Master Builders Club, Wollongong. 2:30pm.

Free.

Latin & Jazz Open Mic Night The World Bar, Kings Cross. 7pm.

Free.

Reggae Mondays - feat: Eric Renaud And Caribbean Soul Civic Underground, Sydney. 10pm. Free.

The Monday Jam The Basement, Circular Quay. 8pm. $5.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Bermuda Bloom + Civil Serpents + Munjak + Nowhere Society Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 5pm.

Free.

Between The Buried And Me + Chon Metro Theatre, Sydney.

7:30pm. $59.84.

Bobby Bento’s Classic Sixties Show Penrith RSL, Penrith.

2pm. Free.

Dave Debs Macarthur Tavern, Campbelltown. 2pm.

Free.

Disney In Concert feat: David Campbell + Harrison Craig + Lucy Durack + RickiLee Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 5pm. $69.90.

Evie Dean Wallacia Hotel,

John Maddox Duo Mr Falcon’s, Glebe.

7pm. Free.

Songsonstage feat: Russell Neal + Chris Brookes Kelly’s On King, Newtown. 7:30pm.

Free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Anton Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. Free.

Live & Original @ The Corridor - feat: Julianne Jessop + Hannah Robinson + Lola Sola Corridor Bar, Newtown. 7pm. Free.

Live Music @ Manning Manning Bar,

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 24

Spiderbait

Rob Thomas Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 6pm. $99.90.

The Sword + American Sharks + Clowns + Los Hombres Del Diablo Max Watt’s, Moore Park.

7pm. $55.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 25 Chico Seeds Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney.

9pm.

House Of Rock - Feat: Tracing Lines + DBTH + Buffalo Trip The Forresters, Surry Hills.

8pm. Free.

Microwave Jenny Seymour Centre, Chippendale. 6pm. Free.

The Indians Factory Floor, Marrickville.

8pm. $8.

The Snowdroppers + The Hard Aches + The Strums + Twin Fires Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $23.10.

Luna Grande Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7pm. $23.

Twilight At Taronga - Feat: Bjorn Again Taronga Zoo, Mosman. 7pm. $70.95.

Ocean Colour Scene Factory Theatre, Marrickville.

8pm. $75.54.

We The Kings Metro Theatre, Sydney.

7:30pm. $54.40.

Passenger Enmore Theatre, Newtown.

8pm. $76.97.

San Cisco Manning Bar, Camperdown.

8pm. $35.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27 Borneo Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 9pm.

Simply Red + Natalie Imbruglia State Theatre, Sydney. 7pm. $109.90.

Catherine Traicos The Newsagency, Marrickville. 8pm. $21.50.

The Desert Sea + The Shadez + Avelna + Aureus The Vanguard, Newtown.

7pm. $13.80.

Isaac Graham + Jack Lundie + Heath Anthony + Spencer Scott Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 2pm. $10.

The Fumes Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $15.

The Gooch Palms Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $13.60.

Jordan Rakei Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 8pm. $28.

Luka Bloom The Basement, Circular Quay. 7:30pm. $65.

Yeevs + Julia Why? + Dead Brian Slyfox, Enmore. 7:30pm.

Free.

Spiderbait + Tired Lion Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $47.50.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 28

1349 Factory Theatre, Marrickville.

7pm. $49.95.

Between The Buried And Me + Chon Metro Theatre, Sydney.

7:30pm. $59.84.

Bin Juice Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 9pm. Free.

Courtyard Sessions - Feat:

Camperdown. 3pm.

Free.

The Monday Jam The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills. 6pm.

Free.

TUESDAY MARCH 1 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Sunset Jazz Hermann’s Bar, Darlington. 6pm.

Free.

Glen Matlock + Slim Jim Phantom Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 6pm. $51.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Bucket Lounge Presents – Live & Originals - feat: Callum Rowland + Fallon Cush + Jessey Napa Mr Falcon’s, Glebe.

7pm. Free.

Co Pilot Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. Free.

Live Music @ Manning Manning Bar, Camperdown. 3pm.

Free.

Live Rock & Roll Karaoke Frankie’s Pizza,

Sydney. 4pm. Free.

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Bandquest - feat: Firechild Ruby L’otel, Rozelle.

7:30pm. Free.

Charlie Parr Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 7pm. $35.

Songsonstage feat: Russell Neal Gladstone Hotel, Dulwich Hill. 7:30pm.

Free.

Songsonstage feat: Stuart Jammin Kelly’s On King, Newtown. 8pm.

Free. xxx

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 29

brag beats

BRAG’s guide to dance, hip hop and club culture

dance music news club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Martin, Anita Connors and Joseph Earp

five things WITH

BABICZ BRINGS THE BEATS

JORDAN RAKEI

Robert Babicz

JACK UP THE BASS

Growing Up I can 1. remember from an

early age always being surrounded by music, whether it was on the way to sports training, school or with my parents around the house. No-one in my house religiously played instruments, but they always encouraged me to continue with my passion for it. My own musical journey has changed so much since first listening to music.

I went from Aqua to Usher to Fat Freddy’s Drop to Radiohead and now to not being an avid music listener.

2.

Inspirations I think my two biggest inspirations are Radiohead and Saul Williams. Saul Williams is actually a poet, but he has always been fearless with his creative choices. Same as

with Radiohead, so it’s very inspirational to try and follow their footsteps and push my creative boundaries.

of it in London, so musicians have spread worldwide.

Your Band My band is 3. friends that I have

I think the unfortunate thing about music these days is that it’s very hard to fi nd authentic and truly good music. I like to challenge my own boundaries, and encourage others to do so. In saying that, I’m really excited to hear Matt Corby’s new album. He’s my favourite artist right now and I have worshipped him for a long time. I just appreciate how he took his time with the release and everything I have heard so far has been amazing.

met through the Brisbane music scene. We all connect through the niche music scene of soul music in Brisbane. My Australian band members are Imraan Paleker, Reece Freeman and Sam Maguire. Heavy, heavy players.

The Music You Make 4.

I let my music speak

for itself. I think it’s different and doesn’t need to be compared to anything else. I’m in the fi nal stages of my album, so I’m really excited to get that out shortly!

Very proud for what it represents.

I recorded most

5.

Now

Music, Right Here, Right

With: Tululah Where: Newtown Social Club When: Saturday February 27

Leeds-based duo Audiojack will return to Australia this March for a trio of shows in Melbourne, rural Victoria and Sydney. The DJ and production outfi t made up of Richard Burkinshaw and James Rial have spent the last decade touring the world, taking over dancefl oors at some of the world’s best known clubs including Kater Holzig, Ritter Butzke and Watergate in Berlin, Paris’ Rex Club, Harry Klein in Munich and Electric Pickle in Miami. Their Australian visit sees them roll into the Greenwood Hotel on Saturday March 12.

For the non-believers, he is the king of bleepbloop music. For the converted, he is an emotive beatsmith like few others. Babicz, the acclaimed producer behind world renowned labels Junkfood and Babiczstyle, has just announced the dates for his 2016 Australian tour. The veritable renaissance man and seasoned TED Talk guest lecturer is well known for his raucous and moving gigs, so his legion of fans will undoubtedly greet this news with rapturous anticipation. But it’s not just his loyal followers who should be happy: anybody who is interested in the direction electronic music is currently taking should head over. Babicz hits S.A.S.H By Night at Home Nightclub on Sunday March 13.

THIS IS THE REAL THING

The tour dates have landed for This Is Hip-Hop, and a bunch of genre veterans are coming our way. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony top the bill, performing their Grammywinning album E. 1999 Eternal in full. Joining them will be West Coast rappers DJ Quik and Snoop Dogg collaborators Tha Dogg Pound, with more artists to be announced closer to the shows.

This Is Hip-Hop will take over the Hordern Pavilion on Friday May 27.

THOMAS JACK IN THE HOUSE

This weekend’s edition of Pacha Sydney features an up-and-coming star if ever there was one. Thomas Jack, a producer and DJ in his early 20s, hails from Bemboka in southeastern New South Wales. While that might be an unlikely place to get your chops in EDM, Jack made his breakthrough with the single ‘Final Speech’ and a collaboration with Nico & Vinz on ‘Rivers’. His club sets break the barriers of genre, incorporating saxophone, flute, trumpet and more. Catch a rising talent at Ivy on Saturday February 27.

Kilter

KILTER ON THE ISLAND

Get ready to watch that great orb of fire we call the sun sink below the horizon, all soundtracked by Kilter’s glossy beats. The Island Live has announced that Sydney-based beats man Kilter will serve as the event’s next headlining act. Kilter will play a sunset show, with support duties handed to Shantan Wantan Ichiban and Klue, who will be in DJ mode, plus another guest to be announced. It’s sure to be a fairly unbeatable evening, an attractive offer not only for fans of house and techno, but for anyone who likes their evenings out to be as energised and synth-happy as they come. The Island Live with Kilter hits the harbour on Friday March 11.

J DILLA’S DIARY BEACH ROAD’S END OF SUMMER

xxx

The people at the Beach Road Hotel are no strangers to a jump, jive and wail. And to commemorate the end of summer, the Bondi venue is hosting a huge week of music. The last Wednesday of the season this Wednesday February 24 will see Late Nite Tuff Guy hit the Sosueme decks. The alter ego of techno legend HMC, AKA Cam Bianchetti, Tuff Guy will work his magic, mixing vintage disco and soul tunes into modern clubbing wonders. Supporting are Moonbase Commander, Sideboob DJs, Bobby Gray, Sports and Basic J. Next up on Saturday February 27, Sydney-based DJ, producer and singer-songwriter KLP headlines the Yours party. Infl uenced by the likes of Gwen Stefani, Disclosure and Hot Chip, she will deliver an energetic DJ set and a nice lead-in to her upcoming EP release. And fi nally on Sunday February 28, Mark & Oz and Surf Disco will be spinning chill vibes and sweet times, while jumping around on the outside deck will be Scotty Doesn’t Know, Two Much, Rondon and Jimmy Can’t Be Trusted.

30 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

KLP

A long lost vocal album by J Dilla, originally intended for release in 2002, will finally be unveiled to the world this April. The Diary represents the last collection of previously unheard material that James Yancey had planned to share with fans during his lifetime, and is understood to have been the production king’s attempt to further his profile and take advantage of all the plaudits that had gone his way for his behind-the-scenes work in the hip hop industry. The project never saw the light of day, but after Yancey’s death in 2006, mixdowns and masters were discovered in his archive. Ten years later, they’ve been reassembled for The Diary, featuring Dilla alongside Snoop Dogg, Bilal, Kokane, Frank and Dank, Nottz, Boogie and more. The record is out Friday April 15. thebrag.com

SAT 27 FEBRUARY SPECIAL GUEST

NICO STOJAN RESIDENTS

RABBIT TAXI MESAN

1 0 P M T I L L L AT E

$10 BEFORE 12AM / $15 AFTER 1 9 9 E N M O R E R O A D W W W . S LY F O X . S Y D N E Y

BY DAY

BY NIGHT

EVERY SUNDAY HOUSE MUSIC HOME NIGHTCLUB

GREENWOOD HOTEL 1pm to 9pm

8pm to 4am

www.sash.net.au thebrag.com

BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 31

Datsik Duke Nuke ’Em By Joseph Earp

S

pend any time in conversation with Troy Beetles and you’re likely to find yourself fantasising about the contact list on the musician’s phone. After all, the man behind the Datsik moniker has collaborated with some of the most important names in contemporary hip hop, pop and techno – Lord knows he must have some fairly important numbers saved away.

Just as excitingly, Beetles has nothing but positive things to say about his famous collaborators.

He describes Diplo, the American producer with whom he collaborated on ‘Pick Your Poison’, as a “wizard”.

his serial collaborator Bassnectar, AKA Lorin Ashton, a legendary figure in the DJ community who’s well known for his energised live shows. “[Ashton] is such a cool dude, and he’s very humble considering the amount of people he’s played to over the course of his life and career,” says Beetles. “Everything about Lorin is awesome. He promotes the good side of electronic music, minus all the bullshit that can come with getting notoriety in this industry. I really respect that. I’m a basshead for life.”

“It was actually really a lot of fun banging shit out with him,” Beetles says. “He invited me down to crash with him in LA. From there we spent a few days in the studio messing with ideas. It was like, ‘Well damn, we could totally use a vocalist. Do you know anyone?’

Ten minutes later a vocalist is in the booth recording for us.

He [Diplo] has got a tonne of connections, so on that front it made it really easy to do something original.”

Indeed he is. Beetles doesn’t only make bass music, he lives it, and the affection with which he regards the genre is exceedingly obvious. “I am very fortunate that I was able to ride the wave of dubstep as it blew up,” he admits, “but anyone who’s been to shows of mine knows that it’s not all I play. I love all forms of bass music, whether it be dubstep, hip hop, drum step, bass house – it’s all under the same umbrella and it’s great that people are so open to hearing all different types of stuff.”

represents bass at its most giddily pop-culture-centric, and the piece’s gloriously swollen beats have been echoing throughout clubs for almost seven years now. That said, to say Beetles was surprised by the response to the single is probably an understatement.

That said, of all the artists Beetles has worked with, it’s not the likes of Diplo or hip hop legend Snoop Dogg he singles out for praise – it’s

Of the many tracks that Beetles has had his hand in, ‘Nuke ’Em’ remains his best known. The glossy and gargantuan tune

“It’s so funny that tune blew up in everyone’s eyes,” he says. “I banged it out in a couple hours before I was gonna play one of

my first-ever shows in Kelowna [in Canada]. It’s crazy that it caught on.”

But despite how unprepared Beetles was for the tune’s success, he has now completely embraced the number, and seems pleased to have it as part of his musical identity. “I am really happy that people are listening to my music. It still blows my mind that I am able to travel around and play music

for people, and it’s turned into my career.

“Once I made money from it, I realised I didn’t want to do anything else in life, because it seemed too perfect – [I] never saw it coming, and never thought ‘Nuke ’Em’ would be part of the reason why.”

Where: Manning Bar When: Saturday February 27

Seekae Home And Away By David James Young considerable amount of time since you last heard from them.

“I’ve been holed up in my studio out in Clovelly, in the south-east of Sydney, for a little while now,” says George Nicholas, one of the group’s three members. “I’ve mostly been doing a lot of mixing work here – I just did the Roland Tings album, and I did some work on Moon Holiday’s latest as well. It’s something that I’ve been doing on and off for about two years – just little bits and pieces here and there while Seekae isn’t on tour. I’ve had a fair bit more downtime from that side of things recently, of course, so I’ve just been laying low and focusing on that recently. It’s a really nice thing to do with my time – you get to hear a lot of different people’s music and analyse their approach to writing and creating. Taking a technical role helps you to appreciate making music a lot more.”

Seekae were recently announced as a part of a lineup that can only be described as an indie kid’s wet dream, a mini-festival of sorts called Divine Times taking place in The Domain as part of the Spectrum Now festival running throughout March. Seekae will serve as main support to Scottish shoegaze legends The Jesus and Mary Chain, joined by international guests Alvvays and U.S. Girls as well as comeback kid Jonathan Boulet. It’s their only scheduled show for the foreseeable future, but it won’t be the last we hear from the trio this year.

“I just finished work on a new Seekae track last week,” says Nicholas. “John [Hassel] and I have been sending it back and forth to one another online, and our production side of things is completed. We just need Alex [Cameron] to come in and do some vocals for it and then we’ll be on our way. We’re not sure about release dates at this stage, but we’ll definitely be playing it at the show in Sydney.

We’ll have to spend a little more time with it, trying to figure out how to pull it off live.”

A

s Staind so helpfully put it all those years ago, it’s been a while since we’ve heard from Seekae. The IDM explorers, best known for slow burners like ‘Another’ and ‘Void’, have been out of the public eye since touring ended for their

32 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

third studio album, The Worry, some 18 months ago. Speaking to one of the band’s members almost plays out like catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in years – right off the bat, you can’t help but to enquire as to their whereabouts in the

When asked whether this new single will serve as the lead-in to Seekae’s fourth studio album, Nicholas reveals something about the future of Seekae itself: there may well never be a new record. Although he and the rest of the group are proud of what they achieved through each of their last three albums, Nicholas does not see the format suiting them anymore.

“I think we’re just going to focus on standalone singles from this point on as far as Seekae is concerned,” he says. “The

prospect of making a record is quite a daunting one. I think it’s better to think of the songs as little individual bite-sized tasks as opposed to the whole ordeal of trying to create a complete, cohesive work that says something as a whole. By intensely working on one single thing, you can really work toward making something sound the best that it can. You can segment the process a lot more, which I really like. Once you’re done with that, you can easily move onto the next thing in a completely different context. It means that you’re really happy with everything that you put out.”

Of course, there are the logistics of the group members’ individual locations to factor in now also. Although the band is Sydney born and bred, the last few years in both the lead-up to and the aftermath of The Worry have seen some major sea changes occur. And we’re not just talking a move to the countryside here – we’re looking at literally fl ying across the sea. As Nicholas explains, Seekae have geographically splintered off into three separate parts of the world.

“John lives in France, Alex is in Berlin now and I’m still based in Sydney,” he says.

“Really, it’s totally fi ne. We’ve found that we’re a lot more thoughtful and a lot more refl ective when we’re writing on our own.

Of course, we’ve written in the same room as one another in the past, but I think the three of us have always been prone to get overexcited about things that we’re working on. We’ll latch onto something and convince ourselves that it’s the best thing ever, when there’s a pretty good chance that it’s not. [Now we’re] taking a different sort of approach where we can each hear full ideas of what the other has in mind for a song. I think it’s going to work for us going ahead.”

Surely this has majorly impacted on the fold of Seekae itself – and will do so for as long as they remain active? “Nah, it’s great,” Nicholas teases. “I never have to see them anymore!”

What: Divine Times as part of Spectrum Now 2016 With: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Alvvays, U.S. Girls, Jonathan Boulet Where: The Domain When: Saturday March 5 And: The Worry out now through Future Classic

thebrag.com

club guide g

club picks p up all night out all week...

send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

club pick of the week Cyril Hahn

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27

Max Watt’s

Cyril Hahn + Chrome Sparks 8pm. $49.90.

Xxx

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 24 HIP HOP & R&B

Wu-Tang Clan + Ivan Ooze Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 7:30pm. $88.27.

CLUB NIGHTS

Birdcage Mardi Gras All Out Takeover - feat: Tiny + Mary Mary + Cunningpants + Co Co Jumbo + Drag Bingo With Felicity Frockaccino Slyfox, Enmore. 8pm.

Free.

Feki The World Bar, Kings Cross. 8pm. Free.

O-Week Party Newtown Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. Free.

Salsa Wednesdays - feat: DJ Miro + Special Guests The Argyle, The Rocks. 8:30pm. Free.

Sasslife Weekly #14 - feat: Cranioid + Ethereal Mist + Sasslife DJs + Performance From Kieran Bryant Secret Garden Bar, Enmore. 7pm. Free.

Snapback - feat: Various Artists Newtown Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. Free.

Sosueme - feat: Late Night Tuff Guy + Moonbase Commander + Sideboob DJs + Bobby Gray + Sports & Basic J Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm.

Free.

The Wall The World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. Free.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 25 CLUB NIGHTS Femme Fetale thebrag.com

The Argyle, The Rocks. 6pm. Free.

Glitter Ball - feat: DJs Red Rattler, Marrickville. 6pm.

Free.

Mixed Tape - feat: DJs Hermann’s Bar, Darlington. 4pm.

Free.

The Thursday Jive - feat: Nukewood + And Friends Taylor’s Social, Sydney. 5pm. Free.

XO Thursdays Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale. 9pm.

Free.

HIP HOP & R&B

A$AP Rocky + Raury Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 7pm. $91.65.

Snapback Auction - feat: Jon Cotton & The Book Keepers + Pimpanzee Play Bar, Surry Hills.

8pm. Free.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26 HIP HOP & R&B

Izmzmag Presents Girls - feat: DJ Anissa + Yemisul + Tommy Codling + Ebony Boadu + Flex Mami Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 9pm. $10.

CLUB NIGHTS

Bassic - feat: Sable + Noy + Heirs To The Throne + Snillum + Robustt + Bassline + Blackjack + Squeef + Two Hoe Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 9pm. $22.60.

Cirque Du Argyle - feat: Minx + Tass + A-Game + Mike Champion + DJ Sabio + Crazy Caz

The Argyle, The Rocks. 8pm. Free.

Courtney Mills Marquee, Pyrmont.

10pm. $13.40.

Cult + Laurence Vector + Monobrow + Saffron Mash + Pragz Different Drummer, Glebe. 7pm. Free.

El Loco Later - feat: DJs On Rotation Excelsior Hotel, Surry Hills. 9pm. Free.

Feel Good Fridays Bar100, The Rocks.

5pm. Free.

Fennesz Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $35.

Friday Frothers feat: DJ Babysham + DJ Jesse Sewell Side Bar, Sydney.

9pm. Free.

Friday Lite - feat: Victoria Kim Plan B Small Club, Sydney. 10pm. Free.

Fridays At Zeta Zeta Bar, Sydney.

9pm. Free.

Good Life - feat: A$AP Rocky + Jeremih + Dvbbs + Deorro + Marshmello + Marlo + Will Sparks + Joel Fletcher + Timmy Trumpet + Havana Brown + Frontliner + Droplex Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush.

4pm. $92.

Guilty Pleasures - Feat: DJ Sean Rowley Ivy Bar/lounge, Sydney. 9pm. $20.

Harbour Club - Feat: Resident DJs The Watershed Hotel, Sydney. 6pm. Free.

Heaps Gay X The Bearded Tit Pop Up Rooftop Patio Feat: Charlie Villas + Lorna Clarkson + Lillian Starr + Deep Sea Astronauts Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington. 6pm.

Free.

Homosocial - feat: Homosocial DJs Secret Garden Bar, Enmore. 7pm. Free.

Jam Fridays Jam Gallery, Bondi

Junction. 9:30pm.

Free.

Joel Fletcher + Luke La Beat + Harper + Mint Dealers + LTB + Five 9 + Rash Bandicoot Candy’s Apartment, Potts Point. 8pm. $23.50.

L’Oasis - Feat: Phil Smart + Kali + Rohan Willard + Luke O’Connor Slyfox, Enmore.

10pm. $10.

Loco Vineyard Hotel, Vineyard. 9pm. Free.

Loco Friday - Feat: DJs On Rotation The Slip Inn, Sydney.

5pm. Free.

Mo Funk Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly. 11am. Free.

Night Lyfe - Feat: DJ Belvedere + Yanya Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm.

Free.

Phat Play Friday Feat: Don Data + Sandro + Benny Hinn Play Bar, Surry Hills.

4pm. Free.

Scubar Fridays - Feat: DJs On Rotation Scubar, Sydney. 8pm.

Free.

Student DJs Hermann’s Bar, Darlington. 5pm.

Free.

The City Knock Off - Feat: DJ Just1 + King Lee + Samrai Taylor’s Social, Sydney. 5pm. Free.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27 HIP HOP & R&B

Boathouse Saturdays - feat: Resident DJs The Watershed Hotel, Sydney. 9pm. $20.

Chasm Mr Falcon’s, Glebe.

8pm. Free.

Cyril Hahn + Chrome Sparks Max Watt’s, Moore Park. 8pm. $49.90.

R&B DJs By The Greens Marrickville Bowling Club, Marrickville.

4pm. Free.

The Chop - feat: Moody + Kid Fiction + Caratgold + Raine Supreme + Benny Hinn Play Bar, Surry Hills.

6pm. Free.

CLUB NIGHTS

Aden Mullens + Murray Lake Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly. 11am. Free.

Argyle Saturdays feat: Tass + Tap-Tap + Minx + Crazy Caz The Argyle, The Rocks. 6pm. Free.

C.U Saturday - feat: Mike Witcombe + Jahra Mortimer + Jac Frier + Kaiser Waldon + Alex Ludlow Civic Underground, Sydney. 9pm. $16.50.

Datsik Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $45.

El Loco Later - feat: DJs On Rotation Excelsior Hotel, Surry Hills. 9pm. Free.

Feenixpawl

Marquee, Pyrmont.

10pm. $23.70.

Foxlife - feat: Rabbit Taxi + Mesan Slyfox, Enmore.

10pm. $10.

Frat Saturdays feat: DJ Jonski Side Bar, Sydney.

7:30pm. Free.

Lndry - feat: Deetron + Huxley + Avon Stringer + Marley Sherman + Persian Rug + Andy Web + Soy-C Andee + DJ Just 1 + King Lee + Fingers Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 9pm. $28.

Masif Saturdays Space, Sydney.

10pm. $25.

Mona Saturdays feat: Local DJs Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale. 9pm.

Free.

My Place Saturdays - feat: DJs On Rotation Bar100, The Rocks.

8pm. Free.

No Rest For The Wicked - feat: DJ She Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 8pm. $10.

Outlook Festival Sydney Launch - feat: Kode9 + Mark Pritchard + Christian Vance + Garage Pressure + Shivers* + U-Khan + Dave Stuart + James Petrou + James Cripps + Oscar Mike + Charades Burdekin Hotel, Darlinghurst. 10pm. $16.50.

Pacha Sydney - feat: Thomas Jack Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 6:30pm. $38.

San Saturday Nights - feat: Jimmi Walker + Mike O’Connor Daniel San, Manly.

9pm. Free.

Saturday Start Up - feat: Sweetie + Hiphophoe + Erica Englert Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington. 6pm.

Free.

Scubar Saturdays - feat: DJs On Rotation Scubar, Sydney.

8:30pm. Free.

Soda Saturdays Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 6pm. Free.

The Beat Kitchen + Paris Groove Scooter + Fifi La Frug + Maxxxyt + Xs:If Different Drummer Bar, Glebe. 8:30pm.

Free.

The Sweet Escape feat: Stereogamous Imperial Hotel, Erskineville. 9pm.

Free.

Yours - feat: KLP Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm.

Free.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 28 CLUB NIGHTS

Aden Mullens + Murray Lake Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly. 11am. Free.

Beresford Sundays - feat: DJs On Rotation Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 3pm. Free.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 24 Birdcage Mardi Gras All Out Takeover - Feat: Tiny + Mary Mary + Cunningpants + Co Co Jumbo + Drag Bingo With Felicity Frockaccino Slyfox, Enmore. 8pm. Free.

Sosueme - Feat: Late Night Tuff Guy + Moonbase Commander + Sideboob DJs + Bobby Gray + Sports & Basic J Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. Free.

Wu-Tang Clan + Ivan Ooze Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 7:30pm. $88.27.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 25 A$AP Rocky + Raury Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 7pm. $91.65.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26 Bassic - Feat: Sable + Noy + Heirs To The Throne + Snillum + Robustt + Bassline + Blackjack + Squeef + Two Hoe Chinese Laundry, Sydney.

9pm. $22.60.

Cirque Du Argyle - Feat: Minx + Tass + A-Game + Mike Champion + DJ Sabio + Crazy Caz The Argyle, The Rocks. 8pm.

Free.

Joel Fletcher + Timmy Trumpet + Havana Brown + Frontliner + Droplex Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush. 4pm. $92.

L’Oasis - Feat: Phil Smart + Kali + Rohan Willard + Luke O’Connor Slyfox, Enmore. 10pm. $10.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27 C.U Saturday - Feat: Mike Witcombe + Jahra Mortimer + Jac Frier + Kaiser Waldon + Alex Ludlow Civic Underground, Sydney.

9pm. $16.50.

Datsik Manning Bar, Camperdown.

8pm. $45.

Yours - Feat: KLP Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. Free.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 28 Escape Sundays - Feat: Mark & Oz + Surf Disco + Scotty Doesn’t Know + Two Much + Rondon + Jimmy Cant Be Trusted Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 4pm. Free.

Fag Tag Sky Terrace, Pyrmont. 3pm.

Free.

S.A.S.H By Day Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney. 1pm. $15.

Fennesz Carriageworks, Eveleigh.

8pm. $35.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 29

Good Life - Feat: A$AP Rocky + Jeremih + Dvbbs + Deorro + Marshmello + Marlo + Will Sparks +

Jhene Aiko + Thandi Phoenix Enmore Theatre, Newtown.

8pm. $79.90.

A$AP Rocky

Escape Sundays feat: Mark & Oz + Surf Disco + Scotty Doesn’t Know + Two Much + Rondon + Jimmy Cant Be Trusted Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 4pm.

Free.

Fag Tag Sky Terrace, Pyrmont. 3pm. Free.

Marco Polo - feat: Woz Ivy Bar/lounge, Sydney. 1pm. $22.60.

Russian Caravan feat: DJ Sveta + And Friends Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington. 2pm.

Free.

S.A.S.H By Day Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney. 1pm. $15.

S.A.S.H By Night

Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour.

8pm. $15.

Shady Sundays Imperial Hotel, Erskineville. 5pm.

Free.

Sin Sundays The Argyle, The Rocks. 7pm. Free.

Sunday Sundowners - feat: Jimmi Walker + Mike O’Connor Daniel San, Manly.

3pm. Free.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 29

+ OTG + Chivalry + More Side Bar, Sydney.

8pm. Free.

HIP HOP & R&B

Jhene Aiko + Thandi Phoenix Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $79.90.

TUESDAY MARCH 1 CLUB NIGHTS

CLUB NIGHTS

Mashup Monday feat: Resident DJs + DJ Thieves + Recess

Coyote Tuesdays The World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. $10.

Terrible Tuesdays Slyfox, Enmore. 6pm.

Free.

BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16 :: 33

Off The Record Dance and Electronica with Tyson Wray

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VIEW FULL GALLERIES AT

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up all night out all week . . .

xx

OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER

:: ASHLEY MAR

F

irst up: everything that could be said has already been said, so I’ll keep it brief regarding Sunday’s Keep Sydney Open rally. 15,000+ people turned up to say this with the greatest passion: fuck you, Mike Baird #casinomike.

You guys – Picnic is turning eight! That’s eight whole years of bringing you the best house, techno, disco and beyond from around the globe. I love these guys. And what better way to celebrate than a party with freakin’ Soichi Terada. Seriously, even this guy’s press shots make me happy. The Japanese veteran behind Far East Recording was thrown back into the spotlight last year following the release of Hunee’s curated compilation Sounds From The Far East (on Rush Hour Recordings), which focused heavily on Terada’s back catalogue, and went on to be selected as Resident Advisor’s number one compilation of the year. I mean, look at that bloody smiling face on the record sleeve. Check out classic tracks such as ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Sun Shower’ to get you in the mood before Saturday March 19 at Jam Gallery. Support comes from Picnic staples Adi Toohey, Andy Webb, Ben Fester, Hubert Clarke Jr, Jon Watts and Kali. Happy birthday, legends.

Oh man, Mad Racket always throws killer Mardi Gras parties, but this year’s is looking even more special than usual.

Returning to Australia following an acclaimed debut sojourn Down Under in 2015, The Black Madonna will fill headline duties. Recently appointed the music director at Chicago’s Smart Bar, the outspoken selector has made a name for herself following killer releases on the likes of Argot, Classic, Forbidden Colours,

The Black Madonna Freerange Records, Home Taping Is Killing Music, Stripped & Chewed and The Nite Owl Diner. Support will be handled by Simon Caldwell, Ken Cloud, Jimmi James and Zootie. It’s happening on Saturday March 5 at the Factory Theatre. The starting/finishing times will be earlier than usual, with the party running from 6pm-2am.

Tour rumours: one of the German cats I’ve already mentioned in this week’s column has a return to Australia booked, soon to be announced. Care to guess which one? (Hint: it’s Marcel Dettmann).

Also, the Tresor 25th anniversary tour will be coming to Sydney in June, details imminent.

Best releases this week: I’m basically going to lose my mind if that new Traumprinz/DJ Metatron album that premiered on Boiler Room doesn’t surface within the month, but I digress. I’m really digging Dorisburg’s Time Stretch Totem (on Aniara), while other highlights include Nthng’s Are You Here (Pacific Command) and Pantha du Prince’s The Winter Hymn (Rough Trade).

Marcel Dettmann photo by Flavien Prioreau

Reeko, Krenzlin Bridge Hotel

SATURDAY MARCH 5

Prins Thomas Civic Underground The Black Madonna Factory Theatre

Marcel Dettmann

Jeremy Underground, Sadar Bahar, András National Art School

SATURDAY MARCH 19

Soichi Terada Jam Gallery

SATURDAY MARCH 26

Vril Burdekin Hotel

Got any tip-offs, hate mail, praise or cat photos?

Email hey@tysonwray.com or contact me via carrier pigeon.

34 :: BRAG :: 651 :: 24:02:16

What we've been out to see...

Rising Atlanta hip hop star Raury commends us for welcoming his return to our shores with another sold-out show.

He then stops and adds: “But things are so different now. So much different.”

Prophetic and ambiguous statements such as this are littered throughout his hour-long set.

SUNDAY MARCH 6

St. Germain Enmore Theatre

live review Oxford Art Factory Tuesday February 16

Paula Temple Bridge Hotel

TUESDAY MARCH 15

21:02:16 :: Greenwood Hotel :: 36 Blue Street North Sydney 9964 9477

RAURY, JOY.

RECOMMENDED SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27

s.a.s.h by day ft. san proper + vakula

PICS :: AM

Hoooboy, we might just have the gig of the year on our hands here. Regular readers of this column will know how much I love the label Giegling, and now one of its mainstays Vril has locked in his first ever show in Sydney. Plus, he’ll be playing totally live. His 2014 record Torus was without a doubt one of the best of year, and now that Marcel Dettmann has given the seal of approval (he finished up Fabric 77 with the track ‘Torus XXXII’), you know this night is going to be all killer, no filler. Support comes from Trinity, Matt Lush and Dave Stuart. It’s happening on Saturday March 26 at the Burdekin Hotel. I’m giddy.

But while buzzing in anticipation for his arrival, we succumb to the electronic artistry of Joy. A Brisbanite with a stunning sound, her voice soars over the heavy beats and shimmering keys produced by her two musical cohorts.

She floats through tracks ‘Crazy For You’ and ‘Falling’ from her 2015 release Ode, moving minimally, apart from a few hand gestures and the occasional sway. The only real burst of energy comes during a remix of ‘Stone’, as she jumps ecstatically during the breakdown. Single ‘About Us’ closes the set and she exits stage left, leaving her band to groove out to the end.

You get the impression that her stage presence will only evolve from here.

The difference between Raury’s last Australian visit, almost a year ago exactly, can be put down to the release of his debut album All We Need. Its tracks get a sufficient showcase, opening

with the driving call-to-arms that is ‘Revolution’. The beat is pulsating and the dancing is frantic, accompanied by intense visuals of a burning globe projected onto a screen behind him.

From there the energy is constant and the images transform, as Raury races through ‘Forbidden Knowledge’, ‘Woodcrest Manor II’ and ‘Her’ with great passion and energy.

The only problem is we’re having trouble hearing him, irking the crowd to the point where shouts of “turn it up” can be heard in between songs. It’s soon to be rectified, particularly during the single ‘Devil’s Whisper’. The breakdown in this song causes chaos, with crowd members jumping wildly while Raury’s guitarist plays a fierce solo over distorted beats.

A polarising rap verse goes down well here, with such flow and precision that it further solidifies Raury’s rising reputation as a talented MC. ‘Cigarette Song’ and ‘God’s Whisper’ from his debut EP Indigo Child cause a crowd sing-along, while ‘Friends’ offers a more upbeat, rocky vibe. The repeat of ‘Devil’s Whisper’ as an encore sees Raury launch himself into the crowd to bask in the adulation and sweat of his Australian fan base. A technically imperfect show, but the performance of a lifetime.

Chelsea Deeley

thebrag.com

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