Splendour Weekender 2023

Little 23 SIMZ

Photo. Dougal Gorman

We’ve being doing Splendour for a while now and if there’s one thing we’ve learnt it’s that you have to plan out your sets if you want to see them. Here’s what is on our itinerary. Friday. First up, get around Toby Cregan’s last show with the Skeggs. It’ll be a send off set no doubt. Grab another bev and stick around the amphitheatre for 070 Shake, she’s a weapon who you definitely won’t want to miss. Sudan Archives is next at the Mix Up stage who will change your perspective on violins entirely. Get some food into your belly between sets before the lovely Loyle Carner takes the stage. Plus Lizzo! Holy. And then lose your friends and spend the rest of the night trying to find them. Saturday, I hope you like fish because it’s another day of straight tunas. Today you’ve got Hellcat Speedracer to really get you going early. Tune into the Forum to wrap your brain around the Voice To Parliament. Then it’s Automatic, with a little R&R time before Benee. From here on out you’re pretty much back to back with sets from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Sam Fender, Pussy Riot , the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Plus our cover girl, the one and only Little Simz . Sprint back to the amphitheatre for Flume, because he knows how to do it but give up completely on trying to get working phone reception because the entire festival will be at this one. By Sunday the tops of your feet will start to hurt because there’s actually no part left of your leg that hasn’t been worked to death. Contemplate if this is what a marathon runner feels like on the daily and vouch to never take up that sport while refuelling yourself with a bacon and egg roll and a Berocca. I’d be starting the day off with Gimmy, which should time you over with enough music energy to last until Royel Otis at the GW McLennan Tent. Catch the first half of Thelma Plum’s set before IDLES, amphitheatre, 7:30. You’d be an idiot to miss that one and by then you’ll probably no longer be able to walk.

MASTHEAD

EDITOR SAM HETHERINGTON ASSOCIATE EDITOR NAZ KAWAKAMI CREATIVE DIRECTOR CAMPBELL MILLIGAN CEO RACHEL BLACKLEY

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR JAMIE BREWER SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER RACHEL MOODY DESIGNER D’ARCY LAYCOCK

CONTENT PRODUCER BRESCIA GIBSON DISTRIBUTION CORY ROBERTS ACCOUNTS GEORGIA SHENTON INTERN WILL RICKWOOD

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS VAUGHAN BLAKEY, CHLOE BORICH, TIA HENRICKS, JAMES ROYCE, ISABELLE WEBSTER

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS IZZIE AUSTIN, JAMES ADAMS, MATTHEW BENTON, POONEH GHANA, DOUGAL GORMAN, ALLY GREEN, TOM HAM, ROSIE HASTIE, LOUISA MENG, JESPER NIELSEN , ELANA SAVIANO, CHRIS SEARL, LAURA SMITH, ALEX WALL, KAROLINE WIELOCHA

CONTRIBUTING ARTIST JAKEY PEDRO

SPECIAL THANKS TO

JESS DUCROU, PAUL PITICCO, JADE SKELLY, GABE CRAMB, LAYLA CARROLL, MONIQUE MCINNES, KRISTY ROSSER, AIMEE STEWART,

GRACE O’CONNOR, BIANCA RANNASTE, LIZ JOHN

We respectfully acknowledge the original and traditional custodians of this land the Minyunbal Country which is a part of the Greater Bundjalung Nation We also respectfully acknowledge the wider Northern Rivers Aboriginal communities and elders both past, present and emerging.

Splendour In The Grass 2023

We’re here, we’ve made it, it’s Splendour In The Grass 2023. If you’re reading this, that means you’ve made it too. Well done. Good on you for spending seventeen years picking out your outfit and telling your tinder crush you’ll be front left at The Forest around 6pm waiting to be kissed. Music festivals are the kind of things that make me believe in humans again. A brief moment in time when there is a little less hate and a little less sadness. I mean there’s not very many places where losing all your friends can actually be enjoyable. Or when getting on a total stranger’s shoulders seems like a completely acceptable and even somewhat fun thing to do. Music festivals are here to remind us that we’re here for a good time, together on this silly little planet, however fleeting it is. Music from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Little Simz and IDLES helps too. And some more from Royel Otis, RVG, Jack River, PNAU, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, Sudan Archives, Del Water Gap, Marlon Williams, Teenage Dads and Lastlings too. Look after each other out there, put down your phone and tell that person next to you that you love them.

Sam x

Little

Little Simz Tells Us Absolutely Nothing About the latest season of Top Boy

Words by Sam Hetherington

Intro

Sure I could talk about the piling awards she has received, the scope of her discography since her first record Black Canvas was released in 2013, or her rise to headlining festivals like Love Supreme Fest, but for this one I wanted to get a bit personal. My affinity for Little Simz is rooted in something much deeper than good music. Although I do not have a single accolade to my name, as a female editor of a magazine that is focused on sports and cultures still largely dominated by the boys, I can relate to and appreciate the work Little Simz would have had to put in to be where she is today as an artist in a genre dominated by men. As a female in these situations, you have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously, even harder to be recognised and even then because the boys have long held the top spots you are constantly being undermined for your efforts. It’s like when people call Stephanie Gilmore one of the best female surfers in the world. No. She’s one of the best. Sure Little Simz is a Proud. Black. Woman. But she stands in her own right as one of the most talented musicians around. I’m usually not one to get nervous for interviews (everyone is just a human after all), but this interview has got to be the closest I’ve come to fangirling, and for good reason – it’s fucking Little Simz.

Hey, how are you?

Hello, you right?

Oh, I’m good, good. I know you’re about to jump on a flight so I’ll get right into this. My first question for you is do you have a stylist? Because you have fucking great style.

Thank you. I work with a lady called Luci Ellis. She’s been putting bits together for me for many, many years and yeah. On the dayto-day I just do my thing.

I love it. What is it like to hear people say that your music saved their life as cited from your documentary On Stage Off Stage? Like that’s some powerful shit and I just want to know what your reaction to that is?

It’s emotional, you know what I mean, it’s real. I just always feel that I am blessed that I am able to do that. That I’m able to channel something through my art that is turn able to help someone else. Music is a very powerful thing, you know, so if I can use that for the greater good then that’s what I want to keep doing. As much as it is a lot to hear just because I guess I feel, I dunno, responsible in some capacity. At the same time, it’s just a blessing to be honest. Do you have a song that you’re most proud of?

Nah. I don’t. I think I’m proud of everything I have put out, everything I have made. I don’t have favourites. I guess there are songs, when I put an album out I will be into a certain song more right now depending on my vibe or my mood or whatnot. That’s cool. Good to be proud of everything. On your song ‘Angel’ you have this line ‘New woman, don’t tell me I shouldn’t just because you couldn’t.’ Is people saying no to you a driver as an artist? Yeah for sure. And it’s just fear as well, you know what I mean. People only say that shit [I shouldn’t] because they’re scared. I don’t want to take that on, I don’t take that on. I have always felt my path is set out different. For as long as I am blessed with this gift of the pen then I think it will be a natural

progression. I just like to do things that are a bit challenging and take risks and that’s why it seems like it’s another level up, it’s always elevating. I don’t want to do the safe thing – that doesn’t really excite me. You speak a lot about the corporate dogs and the bad business that comes with being in the music game – do you have a specific shitty experience you want to call out with that?

I have many experiences but I’m not into putting people on blast like that. Everyone is just human, you know what I’m saying like I’m human. There’s just certain things that I don’t believe to be right. I just believe in fairness and in an industry like the music industry that’s not everyone’s game. The shit is what is it, I just have to move in a different direction. It’s hard, especially when you don’t really get educated on it as well. You kind of have to learn on the job. When I’m making music, I’ve done it religiously for so many years but it’s only the past few years that I’ve started to understand the music business. It’s just trying to be as educated as possible and learn all sides of it.

So there’s not much support when you’re starting to attract attention as a musician?

Nah not at all, and that’s why so many artists get taken advantage of.

Is No Thank You, the title of your most recent album a pushback at all related to the fact you got awarded a BRIT for Best New Artist, despite being twelve years and several studio albums into a well-documented career?

Nah, like did it rub me the wrong way?

Yeah I guess.

Nah not at all, it just is what it is really. To some people, I probably am a new artist you know what I’m saying. To some people, it was ‘Venom’ on TikTok, to some people it was ‘Woman.’ People catch on at different times so I’m not phased by that. I’m just grateful. Whatever point you decided to just hop on this thing it’s fine. It’s just a blessing it is an award-winning catalogue regardless of whatever the label is of the award. The recognition is still there regardless so it’s okay.

Well you’re an incredibly humble human, there’s so many artists that have kicked up a storm with that stuff

Oh man, I know! Nah it’s all good.

With all music there’s a layer of vulnerability but I think especially with rap there’s a lot more laid out – do you ever get scared that people are getting such a look into your life especially as people make their own interpretations of what you’re saying?

I did, before I used to think like oh shit man I dunno if I want to say this, what if people think this, what if people think that. But the truth is, people are going to think what they want anyway, do you know what I’m saying, even if I restrain a whole lot back from saying something super exposing people will go onto dissect every little thing because that’s what we do. We wanna know more, we wanna know what they mean, who

I just like and

Photos by Karolina Wielocha

Simz

to do things that are a bit challenging and take risks that’s why it seems like it’s another level up, it’s always elevating.

does she mean by that, what are you talking about here. So I understand it. Whether I do or I don’t that’s not really something I can really avoid so may as well be as open and as honest as I can be, you know what I mean. Totally. Do you ever have out-of-body experiences where you’re looking down on yourself – whether it’s when you won the Mercury Prize or when you released a book or all these phenomenal feats you’ve achieved and just been like what the fuck this is my life.

I try to remain very present. Although I do have moments where I’m like oh that’s really cool. Pat on the back for the one. You know what I’m saying, like I can recognise my work and be proud of it. In the same breath, I’m just someone who believes you should just not take credit for everything you have, you know what I mean. I don’t know who I would be without my faith so a lot of things I just put down to a higher power. I just know I’m being worked through. That’s why sometimes when I do interviews and I gotta explain what a line means sometimes I genuinely don’t know. And that’s why I know it’s not always me, you know. I don’t know why

I said that line like that. It’s not always as calculated as people think, you know. Sometimes it just happens. That’s my thing. I don’t want to take too much credit but I can still acknowledge that I put in the work.

On that, I’m always so intrigued with extremely successful people such as yourself - did you always have an internal belief that you were going to ‘make it.’ Like it’s very clear to me that you’re a humble human from just these last ten minutes, but that aside, was there always something deep down in you that just had that belief or was it something that you kind of worked on with the more success you started to have?

You know what, I did you know. Yes. I love to hear that.

Yeah from when I was younger I would always tell people yeah this is what I’m going to do with my life, you know. I knew because of how driven I was and how on it I was. I just thought, there is no, no way that I can be this committed to something, and this passionate and motivated in the morning to wake up and do it every single day when it’s not paying me a penny. When it was not funding my life but it didn’t even matter because this is the one thing I can truly say with my chest that I’m half decent at, you

Whatever point you decided to just hop on this thing it’s fine.

know. So yeah I think I always had that belief. But also, I come from a very supportive family and I think that when you’re in an environment where you’re allowed to dream it puts a bit of a battery in your back. Like oh okay everyone I’m around believes in me, even in the moments that I don’t, you know. When there’s self-doubt but my mum’s still backing me, in the same way my sisters are still backing me in the same way my brothers are still backing me. You know what I mean, like cool man.

Absolutely. What was it like holding your published book for the first time? That’s a goal of any writer so I can appreciate how amazing that would have been.

Yeah. It’s just like, man! It’s different from holding a record or a vinyl. It’s just reading and words and pictures but the process of making it was very long. I was super deep in when I had the realisation of how much work went into it so I had to finish it. From the sampling process to testing materials, and pages - it’s a whole thing. So by the time I had it I was like thank fuck finally! But it’s really beautiful. It’s almost like a little trophy, even the way it sits.

Yeah I suppose with a CD or a vinyl you’ve gotta go do something else with it to do the thing that it’s intended to do but with a book like that’s it – there in your hands. Exactly. Instant happiness. One more question, this one’s from everyone in the office – can you give us any kind of information about the latest season of Top Boy? Ohhhhh absolutely no chance [laughs]. Not because I don’t want to, but because just because I will get in trouble. Fair enough. I can say that it’s the last season. I think that’s already out there. It’s a ballad though. Looking forward to it. Well thank you so much. This has been a time, you’re someone I really respect and look up to so yeah thanks for making some room in your day for me. Aw thank you, thanks for your time as well. Stay well.

Little

I come from a very supportive family and I think that

when you’re in an environment where you’re allowed to

dream it puts a bit of a battery in your back.

Yeah Yeah

Yeahs

Intro

We interviewed Nick Zinner for the Splendour Weekender when they were scheduled to play last year, so this interview feels more like a chat and a check in than a hard hitting piece of journalism.

Not that we’ve ever claimed to be hard hitting journalists. This just definitely felt much more like a hello than a bit of work. If you don’t know, Nick is the guitarist/songwriter/multitalented star in legendary rock and roll band, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a group that you are lucky enough to be able to see at this year’s Splendour in the Grass.

Some things you might not know about Nick. He is an animal lover. He spent a considerable amount of his childhood in Belgium playing with Smurf figurines. He is a sucker for a baby kangaroo. He is an excellent photographer. If you’re lucky, he’ll take your photo from the stage at some point in the show and you will live on through eternity in the annals of rock and roll history, forever a witness to their greatness, their finesse, and giant inflatable eyeballs. That you get to see them at all is a blessing, so enjoy it as much as we enjoyed this quick and precise conversation.

Words by Naz Kawakami

This is the second year in a row I am interviewing you for Splendour. How have you been?

Since then? It’s been a mixed bag, but mostly better.

Yeah, how is bouncing back from the illness?

It’s been a real ordeal. I guess to quickly summarize, I got pneumonia last November and ended up being hospitalized for it. Then being on antibiotics for several months, just recovering from that. And in the process of that, I basically had to wear this thing called midline which is essentially an IV implant to get daily antibiotics and towards the end of that kind of two week thing, something happened, the IV had to come out, and I got a blood clot. Basically I still have it, over six months later.

It’s like 90% better, but it was really fucked. For a few months, I couldn’t use my arm, it was just so swollen, constantly in pain. I couldn’t make a fist, I couldn’t play guitar, I couldn’t really do anything with my left hand, and it was really terrifying. I had this goal of being able to play for the shows that were coming up in May, and I just had to spend three months just working at it, physical therapy, everything else.

How did you psychologically cope with not being able to play? Because last time we spoke, you explained that you’re constantly writing. How did you deal with not being able to do that? What else did you do?

I could really only use my right hand, so I got into modular synths.

Oh, that’s cool!

It was a really really dark time. That was kind of the only thing I could do to just stay somewhat sane and feel like I was not just, I don’t know, withering away or something.

Do you think that you yielded some pretty dark, gothy modular synthesizer music?

Yeah, definitely.

How are you feeling about going on tour in Australia, having accomplished the goal that you set out to do? I saw you guys last month in Salt Lake City, it was great.

It was so crazy, I’m glad you saw that. You never know what to expect at all, which is kind of the beauty of it, but that was something, that was really special.

I won’t spoil it, but the eyeballs. Oh man. Those are some fun eyeballs. Last time we talked, you were talking about your interest in animals and wildlife. I’m curious if you set aside time to indulge in those things while you’re in Australia?

That’s sort of the wildlife spot, right?

It is, for me, totally. All my favorite animals are there in Australia. I’m going early, going to travel around with my dad for a week, he’s going to come to Australia. We planned this for last year,

then we had to cancel the shows, but we still went and had an amazing time. My dad had never been to Australia before, loved it so much that he wanted to come back again at 84 years old. So there’s a week before where we’re going to see some animals.

Like hold some bears?

I hope so, I want to hold a wombat. So we’ll see. See if we can make that happen.

Do you get gifted things very often when you’re on tour? I ask because during the last interview, someone read that you were into Smurf figurines as a kid, and then they sent us an email saying, ‘Can you get these Smurfs to Nick?’ And we were like, ‘No man.’

Really? Wow. I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been gifted anything. I feel like that happened much more like early years. It may be just the type of venues that we’re playing, they’re bigger venues recently, it’s kind of harder to have interactions with people. That may be the reason. Or, I don’t know, maybe I’m too old to get presents.

If someone is going to come to Splendour, would you be bummed if they threw a Smurf t-shirt onstage?

Not at all. I would love that. I’m sure Karen and I would fight over who gets to wear it. But that’s funny, I’m psyched that someone picked up on that. I used to be obsessed with the Smurfs! I was living in Belgium at the time, seven years old, they were called Les Schtroumpfs there. I used to collect all the figurines and play with them.

It sounds like a cliché when you hear a musician talking about the joy they get from the audience members, the songs or whatever, but it’s fucking true.

Photos by Elena Saviano

Catch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at 8:45 pm on Saturday at the Amphitheatre

The last time I interviewed you was before your album came out. I’m curious how that reception has been and how it has been to play those song live and on such a large scale?

Man, it has just been unbelievable. It has been so overwhelmingly positive. I think in the back of my head, just with the way culture has gone, I was like, alright, it’s the internet in 2022 and it’s going to be vicious, because that’s just how it is now. I’m not Googling myself every day, but what I saw and heard about it was just amazing. People just really responded to this record, in such a beautiful way. And then playing new songs. It sounds like a cliché when you hear a musician talking about the joy they get from the audience members, the songs or whatever, but it’s fucking true. It had been so long since we had done that, I don’t know, maybe the last record was kind of weird. I think just having gone through so much collective misery, especially here in America, kind of coming through and having insanely beautiful connections with new songs. It is so rad. It’s been really, really great. You saw in Salt Lake City, the shows have been bigger than anything we could have imagined. Not even just the amount of people or whatever, but the experience.

It is very experiential. I’ll end it there, I don’t want to spoil things. I’m sorry that you have to do a press junket.

No it’s okay, it’s been a while, I’m into it.

What new can be said about their gravity, their messaging, commitment to every

Joe

Photo. Dougal Gorman

Not a fuckin thing, that’s what. At least not by me. What I would like to instill in you above all is the contrast between their severity and their emotional earnesty, particularly as it relates to them actually giving a shit about their fans, so let me tell you a story.

I saw Idles for the first time in New York City in October of 2021. They played a venue that I don’t love, but was the only one that could meet their capacity draw. They’re quite big, apparently. The show began promptly at nine, with no fuss and no ego and no hype, though palpable and insatiable hype was born the moment the first bass note of ‘Colossus’ made its way from the front of the stage through to the back of the crowded room. The show banged on and I found it difficult to leave the pit despite the gashed and giggling heads. Blood dripped on the floor but there were only smiles and kisses and hugs and love. At a point between songs, Joe Talbot, the lead singer and interviewee, called out a name in the dark, and a hand shot up from the side of the room. Joe beckoned and the man darted up on stage

with grins. What they explained together is that the man’s mother had recently passed away, and that Idles’ music (much of which describes conflicts, reverence, and grief for Talbot’s mother) had helped the man through it. The band invited him to drum through his favorite song with them on stage to the applause and joy of the audience, and as the man pounded the floor tom, tears came, and he was beautiful.

Words by Naz Kawakami

everyone’s favorite band; about their insistence, and their athletic, even dangerous aspect of their craft?

I think my favourite Australian band is The Chats. I think they get looked down on

by the press a lot

Idles

You’ve played in Australia quite a bit and I’m curious about your experience, thoughts on the scene, all that.

I’ve got lots of thoughts on it. For one, it’s some of the best crowds in the world. Our last tour there was magic. We made some good friends out there. One of the things I was surprised at was when our tour manager introduced us to a whole heap of very good bands, and discovered the wealth of music. It makes you realize how sheltered one’s taste is. I think my favourite Australian band is The Chats. I think they get looked down on by the press a lot because they’re perceived as not being a very serious band, but they’re incredible musically and getting better every day.

Because Australia is very insular, they tend to experience music very differently. You said that they’re some of the best crowds, and I’m curious what you look for to qualify that. The most important thing for any artist to remember is that a good crowd is one that responds to and absorbs your efforts and passion and hard work. If you come in thinking that you deserve something, you’re going to leave with nothing. I think that we have learned that a good crowd is one that reciprocates. Sometimes, you give everything you have and people don’t give a fuck. We love what we do, and our gratitude is expressed by working hard for the crowd. If I’m having a bad day, you’ll see me having a bad day, but that doesn’t mean I’m not

going to work my ass off. That’s what crowds deserve because they’ve given us everything. To answer your question in short, a good crowd is one that gives back what you give them.

You’ve been a band for a very long time, but experienced a very quick rise around 20182019, at least from an American perspective. How did you fare with that as a band and how do you maintain healthy relationships throughout that experience?

I think that our rise came from Joy As An Act Of Resistance, I think it spoke to people and helped carry us forward to a special place. Partisan has helped us with our American audience and has been instrumental in showing us to the people; showing how much we love our job and how good we can be, and I think we’ve improved with every album. I think that it’s the ten years of growth before that album that made us appreciate and recognize what is important. We spent five years in a van with a hole in the roof, we slept under bin bags, we have played for free, we’ve had seventy hour a week jobs.

What was your job?

I was a carer working seventy hours a week. Bowen was a dentist assistant, he’d drive off to play a show and then drive back to London to work in the morning. We did it the hard way, so when it comes to understanding our privileges,

we know exactly how fucking lucky we are. To truly understand that means that you keep your head down and you work. We split our money five ways evenly, and that’s frustrating at times when I’m doing all the work, but other times they have carried me through addiction and hospitalization - they have carried me. We all work our asses off because we are grateful. Doesn’t matter who’s doing the driving so long as we get to the destination together.

What do you think your ambitions were when you began as a band, and do you think they’ve changed over the years?

Yes, and no. We’ve always had a six month plan, until a couple of years ago when it became a twelve month plan. Our intentions have always been to be a band that is brilliant musically, that speaks to people and makes the m feel part of the world, to make them dance, then it was to be able to quit our jobs and just make music, and now for me, it’s to create a sense of longevity and security for my daughter. In terms of music and art, we’ve never lost sight of what we want, which is to be better and better, and we are getting there

because they’re perceived as not being a very serious band, but they’re incredible musically and getting better every day.

You’re a funny guy, and your songs have had a lot of humour in the past but have become more serious. Can you comment on that?

I am very funny, thank you, yeah. It comes and goes. There’s humour in my songs but I was a lot more acute with it before, and I’m not so now. If you listen to Crawler, ‘The New Sensation’ is a sardonic attack on Rishi Sunak, the fucking horrible cunt. It comes with humor. I know it’s a losing battle and Britain is falling apart, but it’s kind of funny because the people who are losing are the people who started the fire. There is humouWr in it, it’s just not as obvious as it used to be. At the moment I’m obsessed with poetry and melody and I want to get better at that now. I’m sure I’ll fire a few jokes here and there.

Because I think that you are one of the biggest bands in guitar music, is there a pressure to maintain that or to operate at a certain level?

I think there is a healthy pressure in the sense of progress. You can’t only play to your audience, you have to play to yourself and challenge yourself - be evolving all the time. That sense of urgency and needing to be better is a beautiful thing to try and maintain, and if we lose our ‘success’, that’s fine, we’ll just carry on making music. When I stop loving it, I’ll stop doing it.

What advice would you give to a band in a position that you were in ten years ago?

Pay no attention to your peers, except to steal anything they do that is brilliant and to write down all the mistakes they make. Remember the crew’s name. Everyone that you work with in a studio and a venue. Speak to them with respect and know that they work their ass off for you. Pay no attention to your peers’ success. Have no resentment of their success, especially if they’re shit - it’s just the way the world is. Keep your head down, do what you love, and do it brilliantly, or, quit. Fuck off.

Photo. Dougal Gorman

Catch IDLES at 7:30 pm on Sunday at the Amphitheatre

Remember the crew’s name. Everyone that you work with in a studio and a venue. Speak to them with respect and know that they

work their ass off for you.

Photo by Tom Ham

ROYELOTIS

Hey fellas. I actually wanted to do something a bit different with you guys. I actually don’t want to ask you about your music as such, but do the Myers Briggs Personality Test instead.

Royel: What is that? What’s the Myers-Briggs Personality Test? Well, you’re about to find out. The actual test has hundreds of questions so I’m probably not going to do that but it’s basically a series of questions that a psychologist uses to figure out what kind of human you are... So, I figured if that’s cool with you guys, we’re going to find out who you are.

Royel: That sounds fun. All right. Okay, I’m going to jump in. So, the first question, is does seeing other people cry make you want to cry too?

Otis: Sometimes. Depends.

Royel: Yeah, is it crying tears of like happiness after they’ve seen someone come back from like, war or something after ages?

I don’t know. It doesn’t specify the crying [laughs], it’s just like, if you see someone cry, do you cry?

Royel: Because I’ve seen this video where this baby gets hearing aids for the first time and his mum cries, and then the mum cries and then I get a bit teary, so I guess that’s like a happy cry.

I feel like I cry when it’s a happy cry, but if someone’s crying when they’re sad, which probably sounds like I’m a fucking asshole - I’m usually like you’ll be right.

Royel Yeah, exactly. Otis and I were talking about that the other day. It’s hard for two people to be crying at the same time. One person always decides they’re going to be the rock.

That’s it right?

Royel: We’ve broken it. We’ve broken the code.

Second question. Do you regularly make new friends? Jesus these are pretty intense.

Royel: Not by choice but we have to meet a lot of people. Personally, I’m not a very social person.

See we’re finding things out.

Otis: I found recently I’ve actually enjoyed putting myself out there and trying to make more friends.

Royel: Have you man? [laughs]

Otis: Yeah.

Do you guys always have a backup plan or prefer to wing it?

Both: Wing it.

Okay, next one. Do you stay calm? Even under a lot of pressure?

Royel: [laughs] that’s a hard no from me.

Otis: Sometimes, yeah. Depends.

Royel: I feel like if I’m wigging out, you’ve got your shit together.

Someone’s got to carry the team.

Otis: Same thing as the crying thing.

Alright. Do you introduce yourself to new people or mostly talk to the ones you’d already know?

Otis: Both, I feel like again, we’re kind of forced sometimes to introduce ourselves.

Royel: In Perth, I got woken up in my bed to get introduced to people before a show. I was literally like opening my eyes, sitting up and going ‘hey, nice to meet you.’

That’s just mean.

Royel: Yeah, but they were excited and high.

Ah yes. We’ve all been there. Do you prefer to completely finish one project before starting another or are you kind of like always starting new stuff?

Otis: Multitasking?

I mean it could be relative to writing songs.

Otis: I tend to get honed in on one thing and won’t start anything else. Just that one thing forever and not move on from that one thing after like two years.

Royel: I think if I get caught and have a bit of a block…

Otis: That wasn’t relationship related by the way [laughs].

Royel: Just had to cover your tracks there [laughs]. But yeah, if I’m stuck I’ll try starting something else in hope that it inspires me to finish the last one.

Yeah.

I like that. Are you very sentimental?

Royel: Yeah.

Otis: Yeah, I am.

This one is a bit rogue, but do you enjoy watching people argue?

Both: No.

I don’t think anyone really does that’s kind of psycho killer tendencies.

Otis: I know people who do. I mean anyone who watches reality TV.

That is true yeah.

Royel: Yeah. Not that there’s anything wrong with reality TV.

Nah not at all, not here to knock anyone. Some people watch reality TV. I just eat pizza.

Do you tend to avoid drawing attention to yourself? Hard for you guys because it’s your job.

Otis: Again, forced to. Yes and no. When we’re not doing shows I’m just happy to stay at home for months and just chill.

Royel: If I’m in a tight-knit group of friends, and we’ve had some beers, or we’re playing pool, I definitely become a bit of a clown. But not with strangers.

Yeah, fair enough. That’s pretty normal. Do you often end up leaving things to the last possible moment?

Both: Yes.

Do you use organising tools like schedules and lists?

Both: No.

Will a small mistake cause you to doubt your overall abilities?

Royel: Yes

Otis: Sometimes.

Like even if you say, play the wrong chord in a song are you just done?

Royel: I’m thinking of like big mistakes. Nah, nah just small.

Royel: Who’s to put a measurement on a mistake?

That is profound, wow. I’m not even going delve into that. Are you more inclined to follow your head or your heart?

Both: Heart.

Aw, always.

Otis: Not in a loving way, I’m just a fucking idiot. Not romantic more like I really want to jump off this rocky ledge into that cold water, not knowing how deep it is. My head is going you’re going to break your leg, but my heart is going nah, but I really want to.

[All laughing]

Are you a routine person?

Otis: I think when I do have a routine I benefit from it, but I tend not to have one.

Royel: Yeah, I agree.

Do you like books and movies that make you come up with your own interpretation of the ending?

Both: No

Otis: I don’t mind movies that make you think about what the actual meaning behind it was.

Royel: If a movie or a book leaves an open page at the end, I’m just like are you fucking kidding me? You had one job to reach a conclusion.

I agree. They just haven’t finished.

Royel: Yeah you’re like, I’m stuck on this ending. What do I do? You know what, I’ll let the reader decide.

Do you have to complete your chores before allowing yourself to fully relax? I guess like doing the dishes before bed.

Otis: It’s good if the kitchen is clean before going to bed [laughs].

Do you usually prefer to be around others or on your own?

Otis: A few others, but just close others. Significant others.

Royel: If I’m at a pub and it’s packed, I’d rather sit alone.

Really?

Royel: Yeah.

That’s interesting. I like that though.

This is a last question. Are you an artistic type of person? Obviously you guys are.

Otis: No.

Royel. Not in the slightest. I’m about crunching numbers. It’s all ones and zeros for me.

Well that’s it from me, thank you so much. I feel like I know you guys a lot better.

Royel: That was fun, thank you.

Otis: Thanks Sam!

It’s hard for two people to be crying at the same time.

One person always decides they’re

going to be the rock.

Catch Royel Otis at 3:00 pm on

at the G W Mclennan

Intro

We’d like to consider Royel Otis friends of Monster Children. We don’t know if they know this but this is how we feel. So much so, that when it came around to interviewing them it felt a bit weird to ask them questions that we already know the answer to. So instead we decided to go a bit off tangent. A bit rogue. The boys have a great sense of humour, and they’re lovely, so even if they weren’t enjoying themselves (they were), we could hardly tell.

Words By Sam Hetherington

JakeyPedro

Getting To Know SITG’s Artist In

Residence: Intro

Words by Sam Hetherington

The iconic work of SITG’s 2023 Artist in Residence Jakey Pedro is centre stage for all to see and enjoy. From the socials lineup announcement to the Splendour bespoke font type, the artist’s candid, offbeat style has no doubt already cropped up across your phone screen, and in the wild on posters and in magazines. Now, experience it in full force in the festival entrance tunnel (aka gateway to paradise). Sunshine and surf culture are key influences for Jakey, as is his life centered in his studio which doubles as his apartment right on the beach at Bondi. His loose approach to neo-expressionist painting sees his work traverse alternate outdoor universes where cowboys

roam the horizon and collide with vibrant colours and contrasting patterns. We were lucky enough to be invited into Jakey Pedro’s home a couple of weeks back, where there is unsurposingly art, surfboards and knick knacks everywhere. Jakey is a straight-A chiller. He’s calculated but humble, and the kind of human that makes for an easy conversation.

First up, where did you grow up?

I grew up in Pomona (west of Noosa Heads) above an ambulance station. Moved around that area most of my upbringing, for Dad’s work as an officer in charge. Now I live in Bondi. This is a typical question, but what inspires you?

I’m inspired by a lifestyle on the beach. Surfing and swimming in the ocean and travel. Fatherhood has also been a huge inspiration for my work.

Does having all your studio double as your home get crazy? Well, I used to have a studio near you guys actually in Waterloo but I just found it felt like going to an office job and I wasn’t really going in. Having it here I am just fully immersive in it, and I get it done. Waking up and seeing what I have to do as the first thing really inspires me to do it but yeah I mean I can see how one day it might get old.

Yeah I used to have my desk in my room in lockdown and it felt like all I did was work, I couldn’t really separate the two. Yeah I’m lucky that hasn’t happened yet I’m just excited to be doing art everyday.

I was actually talking to Hollywood on the way here about how/ why some artists ‘make it’ and some don’t – why do you think that is? Yeah it is strange to think about. I have plenty of artist friends who haven’t been able to pursue art full time and their work

is spectacular. I think it just comes down to timing. I got lucky with the timing. Interiors had a pastel moment and I was starting to put my stuff out there at just the right time. I have been a gyprocker my whole life but I sold all of my tools and fully committed to doing art. I stopped partying. That and surrounding myself with the right people. If you’re constantly in the same circles it’s hard to get noticed by people on the outside. So yeah just being around people who I look up to and aspire to be like. I’ve wanted to do this my whole life. To be an artist. I really put everything that I had into it. I committed to it 100%. That’s not to say other artists don’t but I really didn’t give myself a fallback plan and it paid off. And the whole beach cowboy has been well received obviously. Yeah I mean I think a lot of people can relate to it. That whole riding the rodeo of life. Getting back up after falling down. The rider being pursued by the horse or bull is in comparison to life. Sometimes being in control or totally out of control of a situation or feeling. I have one where the cowboy is holding a bunch of flowers, being flung back and they’re falling out of its hand which represents falling in and out of love. A symbol of romance. And then the pastels that are synonymous with coastal life – being in the ocean. You created the identity for this year’s SITG. How did that come about and how did you develop the concept for this year’s look and feel?

Splendour reached out to me a few days before I was travelling to Mexico on holidays and I thought yeah I would love to be a part of that. It seemed like it would be a cool alignment. I whipped up something in the studio with a few silk screens that I had made up and subjects that I’ve used in the past – some of the rodeo subjects. I put a flower in his hand and then a couple of different colours, mocked up this poster and they really loved it. That was the one that kind of won them over. That’s where it started. It’s been a long process since but it’s been a great experience.

And what’s on the cards for the future of Jakey Pedro, is the commercial art world or the fine art world calling your name? Yeah just the balance between commercial and fine art is something that I suppose I’m trying to navigate. I think the commercial thing has been cool lately in terms of the exposure and opportunities. I was never, you know, explicitly looking for it, most of them just fell in my lap and it felt right to do them. I’m a big yes man so it’s hard to say no to stuff. I mean if I think it’s going to help me in the future or aligns with what I’m doing at the time then I will say yes so it’s not completely off the cards at all but just for right now I just want to not take on everything. There is a gallery in New York interested in my work and that’s what feels right to pursue at the moment so that’s what I’m going to do.

Photos by Chris Searl

If you are reading this, you are very likely in Australia, at Splendour in the Grass, our favourite music festival, and are therefore very likely about to see RVG, one of our favourite music makers. RVG, the Melbourne-based rock and roll band consisting of Romy Vager, Reuben Bloxham, Isabele Wallace, and Marc Nolte, is one of our favourites because we are writers and we love acronyms. Acronyms take long phrases and make them smaller, and therefore, easier to type. This is particularly valuable to us because we are lazy and greedy, and while we do make this paper to educate you, we also make it so that we can get free Splendour tickets and talk to our favourite bands, which we are, like RVG, for example. We like RVG because they are an acronym which stands for ‘Really Vengeful Guilt’. Just kidding, no it doesn’t. It actually stands for, ‘Romy Vager Go!’ Or does it? You’ll never know, and we forgot to ask in this very thoughtful and earnest and surprisingly candid interview about their new album, Brain Worms.

Words by Naz Kawakami

WHAT DOES RVG REALLY STAND FOR?

In my research, I’ve read a lot of your interviews and have found that they are very serious, so I’m curious about what fun things you do outside of music that maybe informs or helps to develop your creative process.

Hmmm. I don’t really know. Music’s a big part of my life. I write, I draw, I do lots of other things. Yeah, I don’t know.

How’re you spending your days?

I mostly just hang out, play with my cat.

What’s your cat’s name?

Susan.

Love it. How old is Susan?

She’s about two years old. We found her under a bin. Under a what?

A bin? She’s feral.

Is a bin a trash can?

Like one of those big garbage cans. Dumpsters, got it.

Yeah, we found her under a dumpster and she is now very spoiled. Sometimes she annoys me. Right now she’s very annoying because we’ve just moved house and she wants to go outside but we don’t want to let her out yet because feral cats are a big problem in Australia and we don’t want her to kill heaps of birds and possums. We need some netting or something. Does cat time help you to separate from the seriousness of making music? Do you think that music is 100% of your life?

At the moment, yeah, just because the albums come out and it’s been quite busy. It’s hard to relax.

How do you feel about it’s reception?

Pretty good, honestly. I think that there will be people who really love it and people who don’t understand it. Making simple rock songs in this day and age is a confusing thing but I’m very proud of the record. I set out to make a record like that and it is what I would consid-

er my perfect version of that. I said what I wanted to say and it leaves me a lot of space to move on. We’ve made three of these records and I think we can really make something different now. When you say that this is the perfect version of what you wanted to make, does that mean that there are controversial choices on the album? Or perhaps just things that you included specifically and only for you?

Oh, yeah, we don’t really think about labels at all and we’ve been lucky to have labels that follow along with what we want to do. I don’t want to be in a state where I think about other people too much. I have a very niche view of what I like and it’s much more entertaining to do that and make ourselves happy than try to make everyone else happy or try to live up to the expectations of other people. There will always be people who like you for one specific aspect of what we do, and another group likes another thing we do - if we had to think about other people and pleasing everyone, it’d really hurt my brain.

In an age where everyone wants a TikTok hit, it’s refreshing and I think a necessity to try and make art that is more meaningful. I was talking to (I think?) the Yeah Yeah Yeahs about whether their art belongs to them or the user. What do you think about that?

I don’t know. Especially with a band like YYY’s everyone’s going to be pissed off no matter what you do. With us, I don’t really care. I do care a bit, but with this album, I wanted to make things a bit bright and poppy and more accessible. A lot of the songs can be cryptic, but they’re very much for me, and require some unraveling for everyone else.

Is there anything that you looked to for inspiration or as an example?

There’s a few people. My favourite band ever is the Sisters of Mercy. They have very cryptic lyrics. Very vague,

like impressionistic painting. That’s the style that I’ve always liked. Sometimes lyrics can be very heady, but with this album I was trying to pull back and have things be more flowery.

If that were the metaphor that we were using, you’re making paintings with very primary colors. Yeah, that’s perfect.

Sisters of Mercy is an unexpected reference, especially on this new album.

Yeah, I know, but it’s there. It’s a very hidden influence. I think that this band is secretly a goth band. It’s melodramatic. With these tracks, some people will be like ‘this is a happy sunshine song,’ while others say,’ this is a very heavy, sad song,’ but it’s the same song. It’s always interesting to hear people’s reactions and interpretations. I don’t understand how that works. What do you seek to do or accomplish when translating your music to a live performance?

I think the intensity comes out more. In Australia, we have a very dedicated group of people who will even cry at some songs, which is really bizarre. There’s a kind of triumphant feeling to it. The record is one thing, but the live performance has a lot more to pull from. Squid is turned into a much bigger song live than on the album. I love the audience, I love the energy that they give to us, and I think that we are a better live band than an album band.

Do you feel any pressure or responsibility for the fans who respond so intensely and emotionally to your art?

Yeah, it’s strange. It’s good. I like it more than I hate it. Obviously, to get a reaction out of people is a scary thing. Sometimes I want people to just have fun, but at the same time, I feel very lucky to get those strong reactions out of people.

Photos by Izzie Austin

Catch RVG at 4:15 pm on Friday at the G W Mclennan

Words by Naz Kawakami

Intro

Drinking Etiquette

Ah, yes, nothing beats it, a morning at a festival. All that bleak, hungover hilarity can make one thirsty. What is one to do when one becomes thirsty? One would have one beer from one of Splendours many one-derful beer and alcohol purveyors. But when one has one too many (which one does a bit often, and then one tends to think back at the one that got away, and one usually texts that one at one in the morning, and one is embarrassed because the one is not responding to one’s texts because the one has moved on so one, who has already had one too many, has one more), one must remember this list of do’s and don’t’s; this handy dandy guide to not being a total fuck up and ruining the fun for everyone else when one shouldn’t have had one to begin with.

Pace Yourself

At every festival I’ve been to, there’s always a group of lads with their shirts off despite the rain and wind, ten in the morning, double fisting, and they’re passed out on the ground before lunch. You could have stayed home to do that. I’m all for a morning bev, but I’m also all for an afternoon bev, an evening bev, a night bev, and a bedtime bev, and those bevs won’t be able to be had if you are knocked face down behind the comedy tent before most of camp has even woken up. It’s a bad look, it’s dangerous, and it spoils the fun. Science says a beer an hour, but we know you probably won’t follow that advice, so make sure to have a couple of hearty servings of chips throughout.

SITG is not BYOB

You aren’t allowed to bring in your own alcoholic beverages. Definitely don’t try. You’ll get discovered and they’ll put your face up on the jumbotron and announce to everyone that you are the stupid idiot who thought it was worthwhile to sneak rum in a hydroflask as though you were the first person ever to think of sneaking something in a hydroflask, and everyone will laugh at you and remember your face and point at you on the street, and every Hinge match from here on out will message you,’you’re that fuckin idiot, aren’t you? Who brings rum to a festival anyway? Were you going to make a pina colada in the pit? You’re pathetically unattractive.’ or at the very least, they’ll confiscate it at the gate.

Don’t Throw Your Can/Beverage (unless it’s in a bin): Throwing cans, or anything, really, at another festival goer, artist, staff, animal, ghost, or whatever other matter of being, is a kickout-able offense, unless it is really, really funny. Like, devastatingly perfect. It has to be too good to pass up. For example, let’s say there’s a really tall statue of a cartoon character there and they have their arm out like an open fist, and there’s a perfect opportunity to get a beer in their hand therefore implying that this cartoon mascot enjoys alcohol which is in hilarious contrast to the idea of them being an innocent cartoon, then yeah, get a can up there bottle flip challenge style. That’s really more of a toss, though. A finesse, really. Alright, change of rules: no throwing cans, but finessing is ok.

A Glass Of Water For Every Glass Of Not-Water

Well not actual glass because glass isn’t allowed on the festival grounds, so lets say, a translucent plastic cup of water for every translucent cup of alcohol. This is to keep you hydrated and make sure that you don’t suffer alcohol poisoning, but also to prevent us from suffering an overly-intoxicated you. You are the worst when you get too drunk. You become loud, sweaty despite it being frigid out, handsy, and if I have to see one more white woman vomit into her dreadlocks before jumping back to spin around in the pit, I am going to lose my fucking mind.

Don’t Touch Anybody

I’m not sure this needs to be said, but I’m saying it. Actually, let me rephrase, it 100% needs to be said, but it shouldn’t need to be. If you don’t know someone, don’t touch them. If you touch someone and they recoil, apologize, don’t touch them again, put down your lager, go for a walk over to the bathroom and stare at yourself in the mirror for a while. Reflect on who you have become, and why, and you’re alright with that hard reality. Ask yourself: do I want to be the coolest, funnest person at this music festival, or do I want to be the sort of pathetic, creepy, Love Island-style dickhead that repulses people so dramatically that they suspect you carry roofies around, ‘just in case’. I get drunk and I hug my friends, I get that, but there’s a line. Don’t cross it.

Sandbaggers Are Losers

Is ‘sandbagging/sandbaggers’ a thing in Australia? I don’t know. Here, it is a phrase that describes someone who drinks half or less than half of their beverage before abandoning it, wasting a quality beverage, wasting the cup it was served in, and wasting the money that was spent on it. Unless you’re being appropriately aware of yourself and choosing not to finish your drink because it’ll put you over, finish your drink or don’t crack it in the first place. Bad look, mad wasteful, and a bit sad.

Go To The Toliet Before A Set

I once saw a girl crouch and pee into a zip lock bag at a festival because she was at the front waiting for the headliner and didn’t want to leave her spot. This was an absolutely fucked experience for me and everyone around her. No one wanted to push too hard or dance too happily because we didn’t want to pop the piss grenade that we knew she was carrying around. At that same festival, a man who was too drunk decided it best to vomit into his backpack. In order to not be the person everyone hates, if you want to be at the front and hold your place, maybe use the amenities before pushing in to the front. Another strategy: pause drinking until you have found your place at the front and the band comes on stage. That way, you’ll have a bev for the whole set and your disgusting bodily fluids can be properly ejected afterwards.

Eat Food

This is also to prevent you from getting too drunk too quick and passing out in an inconvenient place early on in the day, and by ‘inconvenient’, I mean inconvenient for those around you. Nothing worse than a long line for the bathroom because some pissed idiot passed out on the toilet. Additionally, no one wants their innocent child to have to step over your inflamed red carcass on their way to the playground. Get a buzz, eat a meal. Maintenance. You’re welcome.

Pushing Into The Front Of Show = Good, Pushing Into Front Of Line = Bad

The nature of a crowd allows for pushing in. Fair game. If you push into the front of the line at the beer tent, you will get punched in the face, and everyone will cheer, and you will deserve it.

Photo by Bianca Holderness

Automatic has completely and utterly charmed us.

Start

How long have you been a band?

HALLE: About five years, since 2017 How’s that been going?

IZZY: It’s cool, it seems to be going alright. It seems to be going pretty well. How did you begin?

IZZY: We just started to jam without any real intentions of this being a career career. We didn’t really know each other that well, Lola wanted to start a band without a guitar and I had been trying for a long time to have a steady project. We just kind of clicked and became really good friends, and now we’re going to Australia!

Why was not having guitar a point?

LOLA: I am always the most creative when I’m more limited, so it was kind of a way to create a prompt or something. It creates certain parameters to be creative, and that just helped me focus, you know? I always just like more electronic and beat-driven music.

What is your songwriting process like?

Do you think that having those parameters helps you? Would you struggle if it was just a whatever thing with no rules?

LOLA: Maybe it’s because we’re around a lot of guitar music so there’s too much influence. Izzy plays guitar, so she was thrown into this band, and we were like, Izzy play synth now. There’s always an interesting outcome when you don’t know what you’re doing exactly. And we were all on the same level with our technical abilities in that way.

IZZY: I’m not a good enough guitar player where I would feel like everything I was playing was boring or cliché, and with a synth, you can literally just make a weird sound and go from there. It’s more experi-

mental and lawless, for me. Were you all playing in bands before this? Were you playing together?

IZZY: No, Lola was in a couple bands playing drums throughout her life, and I just really wanted to be a musician, so I just played with whoever for several years. I had a project where I was playing guitar, and Halle played bass in one other band, for one show.

I know you mentioned electronic music, but that’s a broad thing. Your sound is very niche. How do you think you developed your sound over time?

LOLA: I think at the beginning we had some different influences that shaped the sound, like ESG and Nice as Fuck and Kraftwerk and Suicide and Jesus and the Mary Chain and New Order. We’ve kind of evolved from there. All that stuff is kind of minimal, it’s got a lot of different sounds in it besides guitar and the normal bass drums guitar. Minimal is a good word, but it’s also very gritty, it’s not very glimmery. Even New Order is glittery music, you guys are I think, not rougher, do you know what word I’m trying to find?

HALLE: We’re tough, we’re hard. Hard, yeah, super tough. If someone asked you what kind of music you make, without using the word electronic, what would you tell them?

HALLE: Hard.

IZZY: Really hard stuff. Not for babies.

HALLE: Not baby stuff.

IZZY: We’re self-taught, so there’s a more jagged edge to our sound, but it’s still minimal. With the self-diagnosed genre thing, everyone is so into marketing and how they’re perceived, I just get turned off from

like, We’re synth-wave, you know, that kind of stuff is superfluous. We normally just say, it’s synth, drums, and bass, and now listen to our band. You have a really strong visual component and that’s also really niche, so I’m curious what influences came into that. I find it’s always challenging for bands to represent themselves visually, it can go really badly, it can be really whack. You guys have been able to not be whack.

IZZY: I think it’s about taste, you know. What’s your taste? What do you get into, when you’re setting out to make a flier or an album cover or music video, what kind of stuff do you draw from?

HALLE: I always love classic 70’s punk aesthetic, but we don’t want to do that exact thing for our band. On fliers that I’ve wanted to make for us and one of the designs for the t-shirt, I really like the aesthetic of Raymond Pettibon. Small amount of colors, simple, but then inserting ourselves, which is a little more feminine than Raymond Pettibon. Izzy has a lot of good references for visuals.

IZZY: I’m blanking. I studied silent film in school, so I’m really into noir, abstract expressionism, German visual artists and the pioneers of that medium. Walter.. I’m blanking. There are a lot of animators that made really cool, minimal stuff. It fits the sinister edge that our band has. A little bit sinister, that’s the word. If you think of stuff, can you email me that stuff?

ALL: Yeah, yeah.

LOLA: There’s a more recent one, Pagame Sorayama, he does the robot art. I don’t know much about him, but we can email it

Out of nowhere, like a sudden hinge match or an unexpected run in, Automatic has completely and thoroughly won us over. We aren’t sure if it’s Automatic’s danceability, their creative use of simple synthesizer techniques, or the undeniable endearment of their approach to songwriting, but we are very, very in love. Well, to say we are in love might be a stretch, but this writer definitely has a crush.

LA’s favorite synth-trio is not only playing Splendour, but going on a wider tour of australia with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which makes perfect sense. The groups’ musical aesthetics, especially when considering Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ very new and very good album, align quite well, and with any luck, you’ll be able to catch both acts in sequence at this here big ole’ music festival. This writer (me) had a very awkward zoom interview with the band who were truly lovely, which you can read below.

Words by Naz Kawakami

Photo by Pooneh Ghana

There’s always an interesting outcome when

you don’t know what you’re doing exactly.

to you.

HALLE: In fashion, Thierry Mugler. Oh yeah, I know this dude.

LOLA: Some retrofuturist stuff.

IZZY: You know the movie Metropolis from the mid-20s. But we don’t want to be too retro. That’s just cool shit that we like and we use it to make stuff.

LOLA: It’s always really hard to find the right person to make our art, actually.

Yeah, that’s why I asked about it. It’s very niche and I don’t draw a clear line to anything. I think that your visual representations are really specific and characterized to your music specifically.

HALLE: I feel like we just try to create a world that is ours, that relates to the music, so it’s good to hear that. We try to keep things in an aesthetic universe.

You’ve been around for five years now, as you said. What do you think your goals were when you started out, and do you think that they’ve changed over time?

LOLA: I think my only goal really was to tour.

IZZY: Ironic, now we’re in the prison of tour

LOLA: I feel like we’ve achieved our view of our goals. We’ve had such a supportive team and have had so many opportunities that go beyond what my goals were. I feel like I’ve achieved my goals. Was the goal just to tour?

LOLA: Yeah actually! Just to start a band and go on a tour with my own band that I started on my own, with my own vision with other people. Not me joining another band.

Do you have new aspirations, has it evolved over time now that you’re in a place where you’re touring the world, doing really well, without trying to flatter you, what do you think your aspirations for the band are now?

LOLA: I do have a silly goal, actually. It’s to play Coachella, I grew up going to Coachella, I’ve seen all my favorite bands there. I know it has changed a lot since the beginning but yeah, it’s one of my weird goals that I need to achieve.

IZZY: It’s not that weird, I feel like a lot of bands probably want that.

You can really shoot for the stars, I understand that you went there all the time, but Coachella feels very attainable

LOLA: Yeah. Also I love the Red Rocks venue, I really want to play there too. What about you guys, do you have any goals?

IZZY: I think creatively I just want to make a really really good record again. Just writing music and having that be fulfilling, collaborating with people that I find really inspiring.

HALLE: Yeah definitely, a goal that I think I wanted in the beginning that I feel like we’ve accomplished is breaking up what I would normally see in bands. Being three women in a band working together, just being an example of women in music working together in a positive way.

What do you all do outside of music and how do you think those things influence or affect your music?

IZZY: We just got back from tour, so our life has been this band. I read a lot, I watch movies, I’m a film nerd. I just rescued a cat. Oh hell yeah. From where?

IZZY: Outside, he was outside my apartment. His face was all gnarly. I paid like $1000 to get him all fixed and now he’s snoozing on my bed.

You paid $1000?

IZZY: I took him and they said it will cost this much or he’ll die. I couldn’t be like, okay die.

My cat had a ruptured kidney last summer and it cost me like 3500 to keep this goddamn cat alive. I don’t regret it, but cats are hardcore money pits.

IZZY: Also the vets, it’s a racket how much everything costs. Do you all have cats?

HALLE: Yeah, me and Lola both have little dogs. I also just found a bunny in my neighborhood. I guess we’ve all rescued animals.

LOLA: Saviors of the street

When you say that you found a bunny, what do you mean you found it? Was it injured or did you just pick up the bunny?

HALLE: I found a bunny hopping around these parked cars, and I was like, this is no place for a bunny. This little 13-year-old boy helped me catch it, it wasn’t that hard to catch. So I’m pretty sure it was a lost pet. So now it’s just in my bathroom and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.

So you took a bunny.

HALLE: It was loose on the street, someone let it loose on accident.

How about you Lola, any pets?

LOLA: Yeah I have a little dog named Tuesday.

How’s that dog doing?

LOLA: She’s okay, I think she has separation anxiety because I leave so much. But she has a good support group of family and friends.

Before we started, you were saying that you guys went to Australia in January, were there any highlights from that trip?

LOLA: Yeah, it was awesome. The shopping was really good, a lot of good vintage. We saw a bunch of bats. They fly every night in Melbourne, it was an overcast summer day and they were just flying. We had this balcony on the roof and we were just watching them for an hour. They were those fruit bats, they looked like mini wolves.

Damn. Thank you for talking to me for 20 minutes about fruit bats and 1920’s movies. I appreciate it.

Photos by @cloudyytots

Catch Automatic at 2:00 pm on Saturday at the G W Mclennan

Ngunya Jarjum

The Northern Rivers Aboriginal Child and Family Network

Ngunya Jarjum was established in 1995 by Bundjalung elders and community to address a crisis in need for more Aboriginal kinship and foster carers. Striving to keep Aboriginal children in family, on Country and immersed in culture, Ngunya Jarjum provides culturally appropriate care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in statutory out of home care.

The organisation works within the Bundjalung Nation encompassing the Clarence, Richmond and Tweed Valley areas to support over 140 Aboriginal children and young people in statutory out of home care. In recent years Ngunya Jarjum has sharpened its focus on family led decision making, targeting early intervention and family preservation services, as well as developing projects and programs that complement the cultural fabric of Aboriginal families and communities.

This year, Splendour In The Grass has donated $50 to Ngunya Jarjum from every Gold industry ticket sold, to support their valuable work.

If you’d also like to donate, or to find out more about Ngunya Jarjum, scan the QR code below

Where are you? Are you in Sydney at the moment?

Pete Mayes: No I’m in LA in my studio, which is a bit of a mess to be honest… I won’t show it to you haha Do you miss Australia?

I mean I do but you know what, I get to come all the time, so it’s good you know and I have a few shows then I have time off in the week and I see my family, so yeah its good! Obviously there are always things you miss about home but luckily we still do shows there so often so.

You’re always home.

Yeah I mean I don’t always get the best weather, I’m about to come out in July so I’m not going to be going the beach or anything.

Yeah I know, it’s probably the worst time to come out to Australia while the rest of the world is in peak summer.

Yeah but we just love Splendour. There’s something magical about Splendour.

The first question I would like to know is as a kid did you ever imagine yourself collaborating with Elton John?

Definitely not! I mean who would you know, like it’s… Certainly not as a kid growing up in Australia you don’t really imagine anything like that’s gonna happen, you don’t even imagine yourself collaborating with, you know, Jimmy Barnes! You know what I mean, whoever else was a big star when I was a kid. No definitely not and to think about it like that is just surreal really. So we were lucky that he just came across our album at the time I guess it was about 2007 or something, 2006 sometime around there, so we were just lucky that he somehow likes our weird music [laughs]. Love that. Do you have an artist, aside from Elton John, that you would like to collaborate with? Dead or alive you know if you could pick anyone at all. It’s hard to pick one, but I mean David Bowie would be amazing. Oh god yeah.

I mean that would be incredible. There was talk of a Stevie Wonder thing, but I don’t know if Stevie knows about it.

Just manifesting it though. I don’t know if he will want to do it but anyway, yeah there’s so many, we could be here for a while! But nah yeah I never even imagined I’d get the opportunity to even meet Elton John let alone be given all of his tapes, you know, what a gift! What a beautiful thing! We’re just very lucky. I’d also like to know because obviously you guys are quite futuristic in sound I would say and incorporate a lot of digital aspects as part of your music - what is your take on AI and music at the moment?

I’ve only just looked into a few things that interest me like a website where you can put in a drum sound, like a snare drum and it’ll give you four variations of that sound based on how much variation you set and I’m like okay thats interesting I could really use that. In terms of making complete records I havent heard many of them and I guess in many ways I don’t want to. But you know I think there’s been many new technologies over the years that have threatened the livelyhood of people, unlike certain other technologies that have been designed to help take out the grunt work this is something that could affect the livelihoods of creative people. Let’s not beat around the bush but at the same time you can’t write down how to create music that affects you emotionally. I don’t know I think there’s a human element to music that is an intangible thing. Absolutely.

We’ve done a couple of videos utilizing AI, I mean the latest single ‘Stars’ with Bebe Rexha is an example. So many people reacted very negatively to that and in some ways I guess you can’t blame people as lot of people do feel threatened by it, but as far as I’m aware we’re not putting anyone out of work doing that, I mean there’s still so many people involved in the process. Of course.

Sorry rambling a lot. What is your take on the Australian music scene, dance scene in particular. Apparently Australia is talked about in a very positive light overseas and that we’re kinda considered cool, I was just wondering is that still true? I mean you’re living in LA so you’ve got the outside insider scoop.

I think it is, especially in America where Australians are very liked for whatever reason. I mean there’s Tame Impala, Flume. There’s just so many, I mean they’re just the big ones,

but there’s so many people who’ve come out of Australia in the last, I don’t know ten - twenty years particularly in electronic music that are very iconic. When you think of electronic music you think of New York, London, Chicago, Detroit, Germany, Berlin, Belgium but I feel like Australia has become one of those places. You’ve also got bands like Amyl And The Sniffers who are doing such interesting things with a very Australian feel. How important it is for you to nurture up and coming talent with your record label, Loud 78? It’s really important for us, I mean that’s the whole reason we started it. It is very time consuming and it’s difficult balancing PNAU which is like a full time thing and that but yeah we’ve put out a lot of records and have quite a few to come, and obviously we’ve been doing this for a while and it’s something we really believe in. What can we expect to see at Splendour?

Splendour I mean, I can’t really give it all away but we’re going to be doing something extra special for Splendour. I don’t really want to say what that is or it won’t be a surprise, but I guess, more of everything!

Pete Mayes of PNAU

Catch PNAU at 10:15 pm on Sunday at the Mix - up

Words by James Royce

You only have to get halfway through saying King Gizzard

And The Lizard Wizard’s name out loud before most people’s eyes glow up. They know who you’re talking about. Maybe you know them as the Melbourne outfit that’ve released 24 albums in just over a decade, with five in the last year alone, spanning every genre you know. They know who you’re talking about. Maybe you came across them like I did when you were that particular kind of zoned out that only happens when you come in from a long surf and someone hands you something that’s small, lit and goes in your left hand before saying, ‘Hey, have you heard of King Gizz?’ and they fire up one of their older Turkish psych rock style records (or is it psychedelic garage rock?), you get one listen and go: Oh, I get it now. Or, maybe you’re just here and reading this and now you’re interested. Either way, they’re hitting the Splendour stage on Saturday after a huge USA tour, and we talked with bassist Lucas Skinner to see just how he, and the rest of the band, do it all.

Photo by Dougal Gorman

The Gizzard

King LizardWizard and

Start

Lucas! Hello, how are we? I know you just got back from quite the USA tour. I was able to catch your last show at the Hollywood Bowl, that was such an experience. That was your biggest show in America to date, no? Yeah, that was… that was wild (laughs). And I loved it. It’s crazy just to be at that place, let alone play it. I mean, the whole tour was wild and just beyond expectations, but that was like the perfect cherry on top. It was definitely the biggest headline show for us.

Were there any other standouts throughout the whole US tour or any of, like, off-the-beaten-path locales that you weren’t really expecting to be as great as they were?

Well, I mean, going back to Red Rocks was really cool. We like to try not to repeat ourselves too much when mapping out our tour, and I felt that going back to the same venue so soon would feel a little weird. But, it felt just as good as the first time. It’s just an incredible venue and you really feel the atmosphere of that place. And I think mostly it’s because a lot of people travel just to go to shows there. It’s a bit of a destination venue. When you play a show it feels almost like a bit more of a festival. People have made a trip to come out there and it’s not like it’s just a weeknight show and someone’s just come out for the night. They’ve really like made a big thing of it, and you can just feel that energy. We also did two shows in basically one day there as well, which was wild. Like, two two-hour sets. We did one in the afternoon and four-and-a-half thousand people had tickets to both and they had stayed in the venue!

So, is there a secret to keeping sanity and setlist intact? You famously never repeat one on back-to-back nights or when you return to a venue.

We don’t plan before the whole tour, but I guess usually each show a few days before or, like, with these shows, we would plan a few days ahead and write three or four set lists. Like, we’ll go three nights somewhere or four nights somewhere, so we would write those all together because we don’t want to repeat any songs in those batches of shows. So, we will write all the setlists in a batch. And there are always a few edits within like a few hours of the show. We’ll sound check something and it may not quite be working how we wanted it to so we’ll swap it out for something else we’re more confident with.

And now you get a silly Saturday show at Splendour! No breaks.

Yeah! Well, we’re home for a few weeks now and we’re doing a whole week of rehearsal soon, which is kind of unlike us. We don’t rehearse a

lot at home. As I said, we kind of treat the sound checks like rehearsal and the time at home is usually spent working on new material. But we’re working pretty hard just to try to bring more songs into the live catalogue. You probably noticed at the Hollywood Bowl set, but we’ve got this almost operating table with all these new kind of electronics going on and modular synthesizer and a sequencer. And, yeah, we’re still learning how to work all that and working out how it’s going to work live. Hopefully, seamlessly. But we’re just kind of like dipping our toe into that world. As we start to take baby steps with that, it’ll all hopefully open up some new doors to the parts in our discography that we just never thought would be possible to play live. To the punter and it might seem like we have this big set-up, and it may have been under-utilized, but it’s just because we’re still learning (laughs).

Nice, so you do your new music and writing and recording when you’re at home? I’ll be honest it always seems like you’re on the road. I mean we definitely do some stuff on the road as well. Like, Stu travels with a small recording rig that fits in a little pelican case and it’s some monitors, a microphone, a little interface and a keyboard. There’s a lot you can do with that. The nuts and bolts and all the drums and kind of the arrangement and the main bulk of the song is recorded at home. But, you know, that still leaves a lot to do on the road at any time. You can record that stuff anyway and anywhere. I guess vocals are the only thing that’s kind of a little bit limiting, you know, because you need to be in a quiet environment. But yeah, I mean, we’re definitely still recording a lot on the road. And, you know, even for a record, even if all the overdubs are finished, Stu just pretty much mixes it all on his laptop. He’s constantly, constantly doing that. So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot that’s done on the road as well. It’s nice when we have the luxury to do all that stuff at home in the studio, though. It’s nice to spread out and use all the gear and stuff like that. But you know, on the opposite extreme, it’s also good to be limited as well and not have as many choices and options. With PetroDragonic Apocalypse, I think most of the initial tracking was done over about two weeks at home. That was just Stu, Cavs and Joe. There’re a lot of overdubs done at home, but then like final overdubs and most of the mixing was done on the last leg of the European tour last year. Literally just like, you know, rolling the spare amps into the green room and doing guitar dubs, singing overdubs, and stuff like that.

feel the atmosphere of that place”

“It’s just an incredible venue and you really

Photo

by Dougal Gorman

–King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard

Hiromi Tango

Hiromi Hotel: Rainbow Dream

The Hiromi Hotel is open for another season of business. Internationally renowned artist Hiromi Tango invites audiences to come on into her immersive installation Rainbow Dream, a realm of circular rainbow sculptures and large-scale projections that harness positivity-inducing colour, light and movement. Covering the space from floor to ceiling with vivid hues, Hiromi encourages visitors to engage with the notion of the rainbow as both a physical and spiritual experience. Slow down and chill at the exhibition throughout the day, or drop in for mindful weaving or facilitator-led workshop to create your own rainbow bubble magic. Just be wary of the human-scale mouse wheel after a few drinks. You’ve been warned!

Splendour in the Grass Art Guide

Words by Chloe Borich

Creativity is the lifeblood of any good music festival and Splendour in the Grass is no exception to this rule. In between the non-stop setlists that run from day to night to sunrise, and the campsite banter that strengthens old friendships and forges new ones, and the dancing that goes on and on and on, you can also witness and become a part of some pretty incredible art. This year, the Splendour Arts Program brings together another cracking lineup of artists who will stop you in your tracks and make you say ‘woahhh’. Here’s our pick of what’s on show.

Andy Forbes Cloud Bridge

If you’ve ever dreamed about dancing in the sky on a gigantic cloud, now is your chance. Splendour Arts veteran Andy Forbes is bringing another provocative and playful immersive art experience to the festival grounds this year. Utilising foam machines, video projection and a giant bridge structure decorated with painted clouds, Andy invites punters to climb aboard and get amongst the wild and unpredictable nature of Splendour, harnessing its ability to embrace and overcome the storms.

Sam Songailo Gateways V2.1

Sam Songailo’s Gateway Legacy is back again: enter Gateways V2.1. Grounded in the digital, the installation work acts as a portal to another world. Co-opting motifs from technology and electronic music, Songailo’s work merges algorithms and sonic references with the modernist grid in an entertaining amalgamation of light, form and sound. These mesmerising themes interplay in Gateways V2.1, which tells the story of the son of a virtual world designer who goes looking for his father. Ending up inside the digital world that his father designed, he instead meets his father’s corrupted creation and a unique ally who was born inside the digital world. Make sure you experience this ultra immersive work with your mates, you won’t regret it.

Photo by Emily Taylor

Photo by Alex Smetana

Photo by Rosie Hastie

Zones at Splendour you don’t want to miss

Words by Isabelle Webster

The Forest

Pack your hoola hoop and do your pre-party stretches because hyper-colour electronic cosmic wonderland, THE FOREST, is back for 2023. Three days packed to the hypothetical rafters, chock full of DJs and multidisciplinary performance artists. Transcend the boundaries of time and space. Prepare for the unexpected. THE FOREST is a place where anything is possible. From psytrance, glitch pop and good old drum and bass, to techno, trap and everything in between, feel the bass thud through your body while taking in the luminous light shows, contemporary dance performances and moving, interactive artworks.

Lose yourself in inexhaustible soundscapes provided by an eclectic array of genre bending performers. Check out Wilma’s electric cello infused sets, the signature tight grooves of Byron based Mexican-Australian producer Unseen Dimensions and the psychedelic stylings of Trip Syndicate. Lose yourself in the deep choppy basslines favoured by Fraktal Fairie and get loose to the punk inspired beats of Twisted Sibling. Who else will be on the wheels of mechanised steel? Doppel, Captain Cooked, Fr3aky, Jamie Lowe, LilxBit, Dysphemic, Twitch, Yurina, Z.i.V, Gez, Matijo, Taya., Themzy and Able. Basically, more ‘unce unce’ than you can poke a glow stick at.

Meanwhile, turn up the heat with literal twisted firestarters–pyrotechnic circus performers–Cinders Ashes. Also performing are dance collective Creative Creatures, who describe themselves as ‘multidimensional galactic beings of light, raising the frequency of human consciousness through movement art’. But wait, there’s more. Installation artist, Clint Hurrell has been commissioned for a monumental light sculpture. His work is adventurous and theatrical, uniting the perspectives of the viewers for a transcendent shared experience. Plus, futuristic cyberpunk video wizards, Eyebyte, will be providing even more visual content. Get amongst it!

Rainbow Bar

Make sure your glitter is biodegradable and get ready to vogue your way through the weekend, because RAINBOW BAR is back, back, back again baby.

GiRLTHING and POOF DOOF are in the house once again, bringing the sparkly LGBTQIA+ energy of Sydney’s Oxford street and beyond to Byron Parklands–and this time, they’re turning it up to eleven. ICYMI, GiRLTHING launched in 2008 as an ‘indie queer girl social’ hosting parties on Oxford Street every Thursday night. Since then, GiRLTHING has put on events nationally, and as a collective, pride themselves on fostering a vibrant community and safe queer spaces. From warehouse parties to art galleries, skate comps and good old sweaty night club nights, there is a GiRLTHING event for any occasion. They’ll be taking up the rainbow reigns on Friday, and then again on Sunday for the ultimate queer club mashup with fellow 24 hour party people, POOF DOOF.

Est. 2011, POOF DOOF has proven itself to be the premier queer dance club brand in Australia, with a laser focus on good music and the desire to make the late night, a great night (and a safe night). They’ll be swinging from the chandeliers on Saturday and Sunday, so you’d better brush off the hot pants and start your engines. Plus! Drag brunch featuring an All Star line up of Queens. Join Dammit Janet, Danni Issues, Daphne Gaye, Kalin Klein and Venus Pagina for raunchy antics and a RuPaul inspired lip sync battle. And, all weekend long they’ll be gogo dancers (of course), a variety of superstar performers and more drag queens than you can poke a wig at, darling.

Photo by Aimee Catt

Photo by Miranda Stokkel

Intro

Let’s keep Splendour splendid for everyone. We all know the old out in nature adage, ‘take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.’ I can feel you rolling your eyes, but it’s pretty spot on. I’ll admit, when you’re headed to something as full on as a three day music festival it’s not quite that simple. So, here are a few tips and suggestions to make sure you’re one of Captain Planet’s good guys, and not a thoughtless nasty little litterbug. Personal sense of smugness optional.

Budget tents for a budget sleep

Don’t get the discount tent. You might not be planning to spend that much time in said tent, but you’ll have a much better time in something made with a bit more longevity. If you’re feeling especially frugal, try borrowing one from an adventurous outdoorsy mate, or buy second hand. Also, it’s way better to fix than replace. If your tent has a tear or your swag is a bit saggy, Mullum Cares (also known as Momentum Collective and Social Futures) will have a marquee set up at the campground and can help you out. In fact, if you accidentally tear your festival wear ‘getting low’–they can assist you with that, too. As they say: buy better, share, repair, repurpose.

In fact, if, at the end of your trip you have mattresses or tents in decent shape that you’re ready to part with, you can donate them to Mullum Cares and they’ll be distributed to people in need in the Northern Rivers Community.

Less crap please

All vendors at Splendour are required to supply compostable containers and cutlery, so it’s only fair that you should do your bit, too. First things first, bring your own water bottles. You’ll be able to refill them at the free water refill stations provided around the festival. Also, make sure your glitter is biodegradable (they can make it from seaweed now!), and don’t bring any cheap inflatable crap from Kmart. SLR cameras aren’t allowed anyway, but if film is more your thing then invest in a small point and shoot instead of a disposable camera. If you’re a smoker, please be conscious of where you’re sticking your butt. If you’re team Vape Nation, take your used vapes with you and make sure you chuck them out properly when you get home. And remember, the less you bring, the less you’ll have to carry home!

Carpool or get the bus

It’s way more fun to share the whole experience. Put on a playlist, break out the car snacks and get hyped up or get stuck into the debrief (depending on the direction you’re headed). I mean, with petrol prices the way they are, it makes far more logical sense to spread out any costs as much as you can. Plus, less cars means less traffic, and less impact on the environment itself. Better still, jump on a bus! FYI, all bus tickets are pre purchased online, and service a huge swath of the Northern Rivers. The most sustainable option, but also the safest option and no designated driver required.

Be aware, be respectful

You are standing on the lands of the Arakwal Bundjalung People and the wider Bundjalung Nation. These are the original and traditional custodians of this land who regained their Native Title in 2019. The totem of the Arakwal Bundjalung People is the Kabul (Carpet Snake) because they start small but get bigger, just as we learn. We have a lot to learn from our First Nation people but respecting the land as they do is an easy and small place to start.

Words by Isabelle Webster

Sustainable Sexy Splendour

SixQuick Archives WithSudan

Words by Sam Hetherington

Intro

When I think of a violin I definitely don’t associate it with dancing, but Sudan Archives is a musician who sure is changing that. Drawing inspiration from Sudanese fiddlers, Sudan Archives blends R&B, electronic dance and violin to make some of the most unique and damn catchy music I’ve ever listened to. Known for her high-performance sets, she is one of the international acts I have pencilled into my Splendour schedule and was lucky enough to catch for five minutes on the phone just after she wrapped up a Glastonbury set.

If you could come up with a name for the mixed genre that your music exists in – what would it be?

For my next album I would say folk trap. I don’t know about right now but that’s the vibe of the next album.

What does it feel like when you’re on stage? Do you feel present or is it an out of body kind of experience?

I think a little bit of both because I am definitely always present but at the same time I’m not really thinking, I’m just in the now, just feeling so much. So it does kind of feel like out of body sometimes because there is so much emotion.

A friend of mine was at Glastonbury and said you have a lot of energy on stage – is your personality very high energy or do you feed from the crowd?

I feel like I have a high energy personality but I draw a lot from the crowd. I really love with this new album of mine that people are actually dancing a lot. They’re not just staring at me. I don’t like it when people just stare at me. I think with this tour people are just dancing a lot. People are having a good ol time and that just makes me want to have a good ol time on stage. That’s why I’m twerking all the time, and getting up in people’s faces, laughing with them. I love it when they scream and get into it. I get into it more. It’s like a party – I want it to always feel like a party every time I perform. You have amazing style. Do you work with someone on this or it’s your own thing?

I would love to take credit for the styling even though I can’t. I’m a stylist in my head even though I’m not. But yeah I have a stylist friend. She’s amazing. Most of the time she’s able to travel with me but when she’s not available I’m sad. I just do what I can do in those situations which is not as good but it’s still me.

Is a collaboration with a fashion brand something you’ve thought about at all?

I haven’t really thought about a collaboration but I’ve always seen myself creating my own brand or my own fashion thing. I feel like that would be lit.

You’ve played some incredibly huge festivals in the last year - Coachella, Glastonbury, and now coming out for Splendour. What’s the best part about playing to such big crowds?

Just seeing lots of people having a good time and dancing. It’s like a prom night. That’s the best thing seeing people having fun along with my music.

Catch Sudan Archives at 5:30 pm on Friday at the Mix - up

Photo by Ally Green

Our Picks From Splendour Forum.

Words by Isabelle Webster

Intro

Take a break from throwing shapes and get curious at the Splendour Forum featuring interviews, talks and panels designed to challenge and inspire you. With a line up of fascinating people from ARIA award winning N’fa Jones to good old Dr Karl, there’s something for everyone. Plus, ever wondered what it looks like to make a podcast? This year, in tandem with the forum, a bunch of Australian podcasters will be recording their shows live on Thursday afternoon, Friday and Sunday so you can take a look behind the podcasting curtain and see the bits you can’t hear.

Generation Fucked

Comedian Nat Damena and journalist Marty Smiley (who also co-host the podcast, Housewarming) prepare to ask those in the know the hairy, scary questions about where everything went wrong, and what kind of future lies ahead. Will the rental crisis ever cease? How can we survive the impending recession? Will I die before I pay off my student loan? And, what can we do to fix it? Joined by Federal Youth Minister Dr Anne Aly (the first woman to sit in any Australian Parliament and the first Muslim woman to hold a ministerial position), Dr Mehreen Faruqi (Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens and Senator for NSW), Harshdeep Kaur (Content and Community Lead at Flux Finance, a financial wellbeing start-up for young Australians), and Joey Moloney (Senior Associate in Grattan Institute’s Economic Policy program). Nothing is off limits, and the chat is sure to be red hot. Perhaps some grim content, but it’s sure to be both entertaining and informative.

2pm Sat

The Voice To Parliament – Explained Saturday kicks off with a deep dive into The Voice to Parliament, hosted by Brooke Boney. The Voice to Parliament panel is made up of passionate and proud members of the Indigenous community including Rachael Cavanagh, Tony Armstrong, Dean Parkin and Carla McGrath who will explain and discuss the impending referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition through a Voice. They’ll get to the heart of what the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is, exactly, and what a yes will mean across social, political and community perspectives. Come along and utilise this incredible opportunity to get your pre-referendum information from the people it directly affects.

Pussy Riot

Then, last up on Saturday, journalist and host of The Project Hamish Macdonald interviews Nadya Tolokonnikova, creator of global feminist protest art-musicgroup Pussy Riot, internationally renowned conceptual artist, activist, author, and one of Russia’s ‘Most Wanted.’ Macdonald, who has a background in international journalism and has been nominated for both the Walkley Awards and the Quills Australian Journalist of the Year Award, will chat to Tolokonnikova about her truly unique collection of life experiences. A true 21st century punk, she’s protested, been arrested and imprisoned, gone on hunger strikes, boycotted the 2014 Olympics, and continues to perform globally while remaining in exile. She’s written a book Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism. Recently she caused waves with an installation at LA gallery, Jeffrey Deitch, called ‘Putin’s Ashes’ featuring a film of twelve women torching a ten-foot scale image of Vladimir Putin in the desert (this was the cause of her addition to Russia’s Most Wanted in 2021) and has begun dabbling in NFTs and crypto, in part to raise money for Ukraine. All this, and she’s only 33. Sure to be a wildly compelling and engaging conversation, this is not to be missed.

B etoota Advocate

Betoota Advocate people, need I say more? Can’t say there’s a news team more on the ball than this lot and now you can listen to just how quick they are live in person. As I was writing this KB in the office was reading up on Betoota and said ‘Jesus Christ, they’re gods,’ and honestly that’s where we’ll leave it hey.

Festival

Max Tischler –Splendour’s Enviro & Sustainability Manager

Max seems to be one of those people who went you know what, I really like doing this, this and this and so I’m just going to go do them all. He’s the Tour and Environmental Road Manager of many international acts including Jack Johnson, which lead him to his work as the Enviro & Sustainability Manager at Splendour. He’s the director, Chief Ecologist and Expedition Leader for Australian Desert Expeditions a non-profit organisation that uses traditionally outfitted pack camels to explore the remote central deserts He is also the Director of the Byron Bay Surf Festival just to top it off. A director of camels, music and surfing. What a combo. We chatted to Max about how he’s rolled all his passions into a full time gig.

What does a normal day look like to you?

I seem to find myself in unusual places doing not particularly normal things most of the time, but no matter where it is I always try and stop to acknowledge the two certainties of sunrise and sunset.

How do you think music and sustainability are linked?

Sustainability is so much about shifting the way individuals and societies behave, often inherent within flawed cultural paradigms. Music has always had the ability to transcend these systemic layers. As such, it’s a potent vehicle for behavioural change, a beautiful messenger, so to speak.

Outside of camels, music and surfing what else do you like to do?

Just spending time with my two boys, seeing the world through their eyes. It is a constant source of wonder and optimism - two things I think the world needs a little more of. And I love to read.

What advice would you give to someone that might want to do any of the many jobs you do?

There’s a particularly profound story behind mythologist Joseph Campbell’s saying ‘Follow Your Bliss’ - it’s something that resonates with me daily, and would be a great place to start for anyone seeking vocational inspiration.

What’s the wildest story you have?

It is a never-ending search for the next one, right?

What’s the last song you played?

Spanish Harlem Incident (Dylan Cover) - Chris Whitely

PHOTO. BLABAC

THE MONSTER CHILDREN GUIDE TO SETTING UP YOUR

Words by James Royce

There are a lot of great things to love about music festivals. But there are also a lot of bad things. Let’s run through the shortlist: bad sets, falling in such a way that you’re featured on the news, and the health repercussions caused by eating nothing but crisps for four straight days. The worst part of a festival isn’t the rapidly dying phone batteries, the wearing the same T-shirt for three days aesthetic because it’s what you were wearing already, and you’re just getting wrecked in it anyway, so why not, and the general feeling of greasy uncomfortable, uncleanness that comes with that sort of thinking, or anything like that. No, the worst thing about music festivals is setting up your tent. No one likes to have their Bacchanalian descent interrupted by some chore. It happens, though, and it’s going to happen to you. We want you to turn that pile of canvas, adjustable poles, and hook stakes into a nice place to rest your legs after walking back and forth to the Ampitheatre seventeen hundred times. So we put together a short list all about how to set things up properly.

01. Realise that this is not Vegas and that George Clooney isn’t just next door and you are not Brad Pitt about to rob the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand on fight night because this is not Ocean’s 11 and you do not have a team with you here. You are on your own. You have to figure this out on your own and make peace with that acceptance first.

02. Look for the directions (Was that my job to pack them?) and hope the one English side didn’t get too dirtied (La Tente? What the hell is that?) in transport.

03. Discover there are no directions.

04. Make acceptance with another hard truth in just two minutes.

05. Take a few breaths, and tell yourself it can’t be that hard, it’s a tent and Boy Scouts can do this, and those are actual children. Everyone knows what a tent is, so how hard can it be?

06. You put the poles that look like they fit into one another, put those in the flaps that are numbered to match the specific poles that go through them, and stick the pointy ends into the ground. You can use your phone light if it’s too hard to see things, and that’s it. That’s literally all you need to do.

07. Not do any of that and just manage to unsuccessfully juggle a pile of aluminium poles while doing that panicky, short breath you only hear people make when they’re about to get in a car crash.

08. Stare forward. Stare down. Stare at the deconstructed tent. Let out a three-second sigh, and get to it.

09. Figure it out one way or another, and give yourself a pat on the back for sorting out a place to rest your head.

10. Sleep anywhere but your tent. Probably on top is best, everyone seems to love that.

Sleep anywhere but your tent. Probably on top is best, everyone seems to love that.

The Only Guide You Need By Will Rickwood

Our office intern Will is brimming with the kind of zest for life that only the youth possess. You know the kind that thinks a hangover is the equivalent of being a little thirstier than usual in the morning and is willing to do work experience for us when we still have no idea what we’re doing. I really like Will, because unlike our other intern who forgot my coffee order (I’m just kidding he forgot the whole office’s lunch orders too) Will is the kind of kid that comes in and says hello and goodbye to every single person in the office and doesn’t look like he’s going to faint. We figured he might be able to party so we asked him what he will be getting up to Splendour if he could go and if he did it well enough we’d buy him a ticket. We hope you have fun at Splendour Will.

Day One

Splendour, mad. Planning to take the first day pretty easy, we’ve got three days after all. Probably gonna grab some food from one of the many food trucks then head over to the Byron Brewery Bar and give whatever they’ve got on tap a go, no doubt I’ll be there for a while. Don’t really have a plan for much after that, might head over to the hill and watch the sun go down, or check out the Science Tent or maybe even the Comedy Club before going to check out some of the acts. Hooligan Hefs, Loyle Carner, and Lizzo all on the first day, mental.

Day Two

Second day is here. Probably gonna have a similar start to the first, wake up, food, drink, you know the drill. Smirnoff Seltzer Springs and Casamigos Tequila Oasis sound cool - give them a go. If there’s any time to kill before the performances I might go cause some mischief in the Karaoke Bar, you know how we rock, or maybe just relax and get a massage. Nah, I’ll leave that for later, don’t wanna miss Flumes tenth year set.

Day Three

Definitely going to start day three with that massage from the Healing Tent , no better way to start the morning. I’ll check out the rest of the bars today as well, Champagne, Stone and Wood Craft Bar, The Winery the list goes on. And for the final day of the festival, are you kidding, I’m well keen for 100 Gecs , obviously, I know that’s going to be bonkers.

This interview was conducted on a Friday night, Del Water Gap’s time, and a Saturday morning my time. That’s a shitty time for everyone involved so I figured it could be a useful time to do a bit of introspection and run one of our longstanding series, Love & Hate. It’s as simple as it sounds, ten things you love and ten things you hate. It’s cool because if you’re pissed off, you’ve been given time to vent, but then you can round it out with some gratitude in the love section. Del Water Gap launched straight into the Love part, and when I asked him about the ten things he hates he just replied ‘I don’t want to diss anything. I can try though.’ What a sweetheart. What a guy. And what a nice way to spend a Saturday morning in the end.

Love &Hate WITH Del Water Gap

Words by Sam Hetherington

1. The number one thing I love is tinned fish, just because it’s right next to my computer. I love them! They’re tasty, they’re healthy, they’re good for your brain, and they have great art. I was just in Portugal and I basically filled an entire duffel bag with these. I was in the airport in LAX running away from the agricultural dog, you know the beagle that finds you. So that’s number one.

2: I love running. I love running! I like to run with nothing in my ears just the sound of my brain. When I’m on tour it really cleans out the cobwebs, you know, just my flow state, so I love running.

3. I love my Grandma. My Grandma Is nighty eight, her name is Patricia, and we’re really close. We talk all the time. She is the only other artist in my family, she’s a film-maker, and she’s really a hater in a way that’s funny. I showed her my first album, she listened to the whole thing two days before it came out, she goes, ‘I have some bad news,’ and I said ‘what Grandma?’, she goes, ‘you have to start over.’ Then she took my phone out of my hand and proceeded to play a bunch of songs that she thought were better than my songs like Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin… I love my Grandma.

4. Speaking of Grandma I love film, I love watching movies, I have a film club that I started with my Grandma and a few of her friends so we watch a movie every week and we talk about it on Zoom. It’s beautiful.

It really became the way that she and I kept in touch during the pandemic and we’ve watched a movie every week since. Films have become a really big part of my creative inspiration too.

5. I love curly hair products. I’m a curly girly as you can tell. I think every curly girly knows that it’s really a journey to find what works for your hair. I think there is a lot of stuff marketed towards us that is not right, so when I find a new good curl product that makes me feel good, makes me feel confident it makes me really happy you know, especially on tour. I feel like skin and haircare is really important to stay sane

6. I love fashion, I got interested in clothes in the last two or three years, I love aesthetics and silhouettes and I love a shoulder and a shoe. A shoulder and a shoe not a shoulder in a shoe. I love a shoulder and I love a shoe and I love the way that clothing affects the way that we move through space and perform. It’s really remarkable to me the difference between playing a show in a T-shirt and playing a show in like a double-breasted suit. It just makes me feel so different. I think about fashion and the lineage of fashion, seeing how everything connects together in a bit of a web of history and creativity is really interesting to me. I just saw this amazing documentary about Margiela that you should see, I’ll send it to you, so good.

7. I love dessert. I think it’s one of the great joys of

being human. I truly cannot go to bed unless I have had dessert. I love gummies, Haribo gummies, do you have those in Australia? I love, love ice cream, you know. I really got into classic vanilla, like I was never a guy that would get vanilla but I recently got into it. I feel like it’s really the true test of a brand in the ice cream world, like if the vanilla is good. Love a brownie, love a hot chocolate chip brownie straight out of the oven, so yeah dessert is definitely up there.

8. I love sleeping. I love sleeping late, I can really sleep late, I can sleep until like 3pm. I take bedding very seriously, I have a little eye mask that travels with me and a white noise machine. I’ve been known to fall asleep to a Harry Potter audiobook.

9. I love photography, I think that’s really my second creative outlet on tour, I always bring a camera and a bunch of film. Yeah, I just love taking photos. I look at the world differently when I have a camera in my hand. I’ll notice things. I’ll notice people. The act of documenting life is very transient, very romantic to me, so I like taking photos and then looking back later.

10. I love fall in New York City. The smell, the feeling of the air, the melancholy. It’s when everyone starts wearing coats, so you can express yourself with your coat, you know leather coat, pea coat, barber, the options are limitless. So I love fall in New York City.

Photo by Matthew John Benton

Singer, actor and all-round nice guy Marlon Williams is someone whose career seems to be on the up and up. A stint touring with Lorde and a cameo in A Star Is Born will do that to you. Having returned to his homeland, Marlon is homing in on his Māori culture and simply enjoying himself and we were lucky enough to grab him for a chat.

Do you still live in New Zealand?

Marlon: Yeah, still here.

Whereabouts? My mum is from New Zealand. Christchurch. Where’s your mum from?

Napier. I always wonder – what are some of the distinctions between the New Zealand music scene and the Australian that you’ve noticed having lived here and there?

MarlonWilliams

Just the pub culture. The pub gigging culture. Since I left high school I sort of hit the threshold of every small venue in the country to play at. I gravitated towards the idea of being able to do a tour of Fitzroy for weeks. You can go around and really build an audience in the way I wanted to do it, that grassroots intimate level, playing as much as I could in as many places I could. So, I guess the main difference is the size.

Yeah, I guess I’ve never really thought about the size of your country relative to when you’re trying to launch a career.

Yeah.

Can you tell me about that and how you’re integrating Māori components into your music for us in Australia who might not be so familiar with what Māori music entails?

Since European colonisation, when Western harmonies came to New Zealand, Māori culture really embraced that and made it into something of their own. I grew up going to the Marae (meeting grounds), going to the meeting houses, learning how to improvise harmony and finding our own spot. It really set me in good stead for a music career based in harmony.

Are there components of Māori harmony that are different to New Zealand to Western harmony?

Without the risk of getting a bit technical, all across the Islands and the Pacific, there’s a real love for ninths and sixes cluster chords. To talk about them tonely you can sort of throw in any note and it makes sense within the chord so it’s a very stacked and thick style of harmony singing.

Has your life changed since A Star Is Born? Do you get recognised in the street?

Weirdly enough, it was such a bizarre and unexpected cameo. Well not that bizarre but it was unexpected. It’s funny because I have friends that I’ve known forever who have watched the film and then I’ll be out with them or something and someone else will recognise me and my friend will be like ‘You’re in A Star Is Born?’

Like they’ve seen it, they know me, and they don’t know that I’m in it. So not really, it more comes up in interviews when it’s a part of the brief. I’m able to sort of slip around.

Do any skills carry over from music into acting?

Yeah, especially as a performer being on stage. At the most fundamental level it’s knowing what holds attention and what the effect timing has on an audience. That’s a really important thing for acting. I came to acting more naturally from music than if I hadn’t. Having toured with Lorde – does she have any funny habits? She’s an intensely private person, which you have to be when you’re a pop star. There’s a lot of magic to her world, she’s very sophisticated into how she performs and what goes into each performance in a way that I am definitely not. So being on tour with her I was constantly in awe of her discipline and focus on ways that I am not. My world is a lot more chaotic than hers when it comes to that stuff. I learnt so much from being around her. She’s very inspiring.

Talking about being chaotic, when do you feel like you produce your best work? When you have time to write or when you’ve got things on the go? Because it seems like you are doing a lot lately.

My best work is done when I’m busy but not too busy. Being in a flow state. I wrote most of my songs when I was working at a dairy packing dollar lolly bags. I just became a verb of doing.

Is there something outside of music and acting that influences your music?

It’s ever-changing. I’m constantly looking for the next shiny thing. At the moment I’m writing an album in Māori. I nearly finished a New Zealand history degree, and it’s got me back in that headspace. A lot of large-scale daydreaming about the bigger picture stuff.

I always like to ask this question but what is the thing that you’re most proud of?

I’m proud and grateful to be able to do this for a career. It’s not a common thing to be able to do this without a side hustle. I’m grateful to a world that has afforded me that time and the privilege of space to do that.

Words by Sam Hetherington

Catch Marlon Williams at 10:30 pm on Saturday at the G W Mclennan

Dave Rastovich shot by Nathan Oldfield.

22 Brigantine St. Byron Bay.

Teenage Dads

Words by Sam Hetherington

Hey Dad. I mean Teenage Dads. I am so sorry I was just on the phone to my dad.

[everyone laughing].

Well, that’s awkward. Anyway, what’s going on?

Vincent Kinna: It’s very chilly this morning. Where are you right now?

Connor McLaughlin: London. Well, that sounds about right for London.

Vincent: It’s been mostly sunny the whole time we’ve been here.

That’s good then. Just about to embark on a big Europe tour, where are you most excited to go?

Jordan Finlay: So, this is the end of the Lime Cordial support tour, but the start of our own one.

Vincent: We’re pretty pumped for Dublin. We’ve been to Dublin before but we’re coming back too. Of course. Dublin is spectacular. Just all of Ireland really.

Jordan: Yeah, I’m also really keen for Austria because that’s where my family is from, and I haven’t been there – so get to see a bit of the heritage.

Connor: I’m keen to play the Vienna show yeah.

Jordan: Sorry one second that reminded me I have to check if we’ve got our passports. Oh god.

Vincent: Got them! It’s going to be pretty cool. Then there’s all the US tour in July so there’s a very big sensory overload of new places none of us have been to. Is this your first Splendour gig?

All: Yes

How did it feel to get the call up to play one of the country’s biggest, or at the very least, most well-known festivals?

Jordan: It was kind of cool actually. We were at a show in the green room and instead of being immedi-

Teenage Dads are a local Mornington Peninsula band consisting of Jordan Finlay, Connor McLaughlin, Vincent Kinna and Angus Christie. I don’t know much about the Mornington Peninsula except that a couple of my friends in Melbourne who also happen to be in a band rave about how beautiful it is. I suppose it must be one of those places where life is so idyllic and all your dreams come true. It at least kind of sounds like that for Teenage Dads who have been on a steady rise and (almost) doing this music thing for their full-time gig. We caught up with the fellas in the middle of their tour in Europe while they simultaneously answered questions and tried to find their passports.

ately psyched it was kind of like uh oh, we’re going to be in America – can we do it? So, it was exciting but also like this flight is going to suck shit because we fly from America a day or two before our performance and then straight back. Angus and I went last year. So, we’re excited to be there and not camp this time. Yeah, this is the first time I won’t be camping too so I’m keen. Now if I was to describe your sound as a band it would be summer, is that a good or a bad description in your eyes?

Vincent: I think it’s pretty accurate. Summer is good, I take it that most people think summer is a good thing. Jordan: Yeah, I guess so. If we had to pick a season, then yeah.

Vincent: Is it like Australian summer? Or is it a Russian summer.

God, I didn’t think to clarify the summer. Not sure what a Russian summer would be like.

Vincent: I think it’s just snowing. So basically, the middle of our winter. Probably not that then. But then you have ‘Goodbye, goodbye again’ which is a completely different pace. Is that the direction we can expect to see more of in the future?

Jordan: Nah [laughs].

Vincent: We showed the label that one and they were like yeah let’s do it.

Jordan: I think it’s cool to have some songs like that. But just because you do one sad song doesn’t mean your whole entire project has to follow that whole path. Some rock band’s biggest songs are the slow ballads but that’s not what they’re about. It was cool to show people that side of us.

What’s it like shifting from a high school band to this being your full-time job? Wait is this your full-time job yet.

Vincent: Almost. We’re like 95% of the way there.

Connor: We have left work for three months to do these tours, so we have one leg through the door but let’s just say we haven’t deleted our boss’s numbers just yet. And growing a fan base while you’re also growing up as people?

Vincent: I try not to think about the high school aspect too much because I don’t count that.

Jordan: You always hear about bands that when they take off it’s like their fifth band but none of us had ever done music in a band before. So that’s probably why we consider the high school band the pre-band. We weren’t even called Teenage Dads back then or writing original music. It was just having fun playing at parties. It wasn’t until after school that we started writing our own music. Did you have a name before?

Connor: Nah we didn’t have a band it was always just like can the band play at my 18th birthday? To be fair we were playing 18th birthdays as Teenage Dads pretty quickly and everyone was like you should have named it something else and we were like yeah probably.

I saw you sell DILF shirts, was that one of your ideas because they are brilliant?

Vincent: There was a couple of people that had it lit up on their phone trying to throw us off a bit when we were playing, and we just immediately thought it would be good on a T-Shirt.

Jordan: Yeah, just played into it a bit. Great idea, well thanks boys.

Thanks Sam.

The Morning (After)

Fanging for a caffeine fix? Pop on over to Loggerhead Coffee. An espresso will put some pep back in your step, or have a little hot choccy if you’re still feeling a bit fragile. Or, Dum & Dumpling –Nothing heals like the power of a dumpling, and the best thing about a festival over multiple days is that you can go back for anyt types you missed on the first pass. There’s coffee and classic egg and bacon rolls, too, from Dot and Herbie served from their vintage caravan ‘Thelma May’. In this case, Thema definitely will.

Snackish

If you’re a bit peckish, a gozleme from Emmy’s is a mighty good snack. Or pay a visit to Hoy Pinoy for Filipino BBQ and Samaras Food Truck for a famous Halal Snack Pack. Do you want a cheeky little borek? Off you trot to Up Rising Bakery. Maybe you like a chewy drink ? Chatime’s got you.

Late Night / Great Night

For good food and good times, check out the Taco Truck from Snack Boss Raph Rashid–or if you’d prefer the classic burger and chippies vibe – Beatbox Kitchen and EL’s Fried Chicken will be there too. Then head on over to Antico Woodfired Pizza and those damn tasty dough things we all know and love. We’re just a stones throw from the ocean here in Byron so why not try some Fish’n’chips from Catch & Kiss, or paella from the Melbourne Paella Company. Feeling something Japanese? Pay a visit to the good folk from Brunswick Head favourite, Trouble San. VIP Village has the goods slinging with Mary’s Burgers, Daughter in Law and Three Blue Ducks. Offt.

Vegetarian / Vegan / Gluten Free

Dietary requirements? No worries! The legends from Govinda’s will be slinging their iconic festival meal ‘The Feast’ all weekend long. ‘Royal’ basmati rice with poppy seeds; potatoes, carrots and peas in a coconut curry; kofta balls with tomato chutney; and date halava. Then, wash it all down with a mango lassi. If you’re more of a sweet tooth, Miss Koko have you covered with their vegan coconut soft serve.

Sweet Treats

Whatever your sweet-heart desires there’s a sugary option to perk you up. Grab a doughnut and a homemade ginger beer from Byron Bay Organic Doughnuts, or an organic, handmade ice cream from Billy Van Creamy. Or, if nature’s sugar is more your speed, Melon Fiesta has watermelon every which way (including melon filled with melon flavoured soft serve).

Don’t forget, make sure you dispose of your food wrappers and packaging thoughtfully.

Intro

Food is great. It’s the best. And somehow, it always tastes so much better at a festival, consumed straight out of the box. Especially if it is deep-fried and on a stick. Extra points if you’re a little tipsy, or better still, vaguely hungover. But, with over a hundred food options available at this year’s Splendour in the Grass, from the food halls, pop-up stalls and food trucks, you’re likely to get paralysed by choice. So that you can get ahead of the hunger–and the subsequent overwhelming inability to make a decision–we’ve compiled a mouthwatering cheatsheet of (just some) of what’s on offer.

Words by Isabelle Webster

Food Food Food

Intro

Bar Guide

The perfect concoction of epic live sounds and diverse taste, this year’s Splendour Bar offering is one of both variety and homegrown speciality. SITG 23’ might have more booze and guaranteed good times than you’ll know what to do with.

Smirnoff Seltzer Springs

Coachella, move aside, not only have Smirnoff brought Vegas to you, but they’ve managed to pack the entire Palm Springs in their suitcase with them too. Loading in an desert cacti fit-out and even a free enviro-glitter station to brighten up those dreaded eye bags, by night Neons light the way into a choc-a-bloc line up of DJs Jessie Belters, Dan Muz, Yazmin, Club Raiders DJs, Beandip, Spacie, Kira Sunday, Cashew, Reiflex, Tony Velvet, Tere and Kaktus. Go have a dip.

Casamigos Tequila Oasis

It may feel like half your mates have packed their board bags and have swung off on their all encompassing Mexican adventure. Don’t fret, Casamigos tequila oasis can hold your hand, go get perched and sip away on a fresh Margarita while feeling all nostalgic about your Latin American fever dreams.

Stone & Wood Craft Bar

Nothing screams ‘I’m in Byron bay’, than sinking a crisp Stone and Wood right on its own birth land. S&W have even gone to the almighty effort of building you cold frogs a nice ole fire-pit. So go warm up and cool down, simultaneously.

The Winery

Finished with the headliners? Well, they’re not exactly finished with you. The Winery is here to relieve you of your party pressures and duties, or completely turn them on, with a huge selection of Headline Acts wines with every different shade of grape juice all you wanna-be rockers require. Gather your mates and raise your glass all the way to imposter syndrome.

Platypus Karaoke Bar

Don’t those main stage punters make it look easy? So why not give it a crack yourself? Slip off the rocks if you haven’t already and dive into an epic beverage splash sesh of your top tracks at the Platypus Karaoke Bar.

The Champagne Bar

If cocktails, karaoke and beers don’t tickle those fancy fingers of yours this just might sway you into some decadent sparkling leisure. The Champagne Bar is in an unequivocally prime location for those sipping on only the finest Mumm Champagne.

Red Bull Unforeseen

For all of you out there who are ‘flying high’ this Splendour season. Red Bull Unforeseen are taking it up another notch, who thought they could? This might not be for the faint of heart, (quite literally) For those already geared up, your flight from the RBU tent will be departing from 6pm daily. Please standby, the only way is up.

Byron Bay Brewery

Ah ye ole faithful, The Byron Bay Brewery are parking up and bringing their sinking surf tones while you yourself sit back and sink some of the best brews in town. The stage is being shared by good mates Beddy Rays, Chutney, Cool Sounds, Eggy, Ghost Mutt, Go-Jo, The Grogans, Lazy Ghost, Old Mervs, Pasiflorez, Ra Ra Viper, Royel Otis, and Velvet Club. Bit of a special opening night party too for you Thursday night punters so hang around for some epic live noise and some pressies for your pockets.

Photo by James Adams

Words by Tia Henricks

Words by Sam Hetherington

Intro

Known for her musical talent as as well as her activism prowess, Jack River is someone Australia should be pretty damn proud of. From campaigning for the inclusion of Australian music in Olympics coverage to releasing a protest song addressing the urgent need for action on climate change, First Nation and women’s rights, she’s not afraid to stand up for what she believes in while bringing everyone else up in the process. We caught up with Holly at a particularly chaotic time for us, which was equally matched given Holly has recently become a new mum. A super mum, a super woman and a super lovely chat below.

Jack River68

Start

Hey, hey, how is life?

Pretty mental. Album coming out and looking after my daughter. Other work deadlines that all happen at once. Sounds chaotic. Congratulations on the new album Endless Summer, let’s talk about it.

It’s ten songs to escape the apocalypse basically. What’s the story behind why it’s called Endless Summer?

There’s a few different reasons. I guess I wanted to create an escapist wonderland in the production and at the same time wanting to suggest that there is a very real endless summer on the horizon. I was super inspired by the Beach Boys and wanted to make modern Beach Boys pop which is my personal ambition. Has becoming a mum changed anything with music for you?

Not really, I don’t think. My relationship has been pretty strong with music my whole life, a very magical relationship. I don’t think it will have changed too much, more just listening to way more whacky kids’ music which will confuse whatever I make next.

Totally I suppose what you listen to infiltrates in some capacity the music you write?

Yeah absolutely. It’s why the music that we listen to when we’re young has such an influence on us in later life.

What song is the most special to you, if you have one, and why?

‘Lie to you.’ I’m really looking forward to playing it live. It’s a big, ambitious pop song with a lot of heart and I think people will like it. It should just be really magic to bring that song to life on stage.

Do you think you’ll bring your podcast To Rebel In The Times back?

Not sure. I love podcasts so much and I’m sure there will be something on the horizon but I’m not sure just yet. It was kind of a beautiful moment in time. We were entering lockdown and I wanted to keep talking to artists about the things I am passionate about and that provided the space to do it.

Over the years you’ve done some amazing campaigning for music such as using Australian music for the Olympics coverage and even writing specific songs such as We Are The Youth– why do you think lean into an activist sort of role? Is that just your personality?

Since I was really young I’ve been inclined to get involved in local, state and then National politics and standing up for what I believe in. Becoming an artist and understanding more about our industry and how governments treat us, I feel like I have no choice. I really care about it and I have the means to make a change so why not jump in and do it. It’s what I love to do alongside music, I’ve always loved to get involved and get people together to tackle issues. Also just to make everything a little bit more sparkly, fun and exciting. I love to make politics and social issues a little more accessible and more fun to engage in.

Do you have one particular campaign that you’re especially proud of, or that had a tangible impact?

The recent one ‘Our Soundtrack, Our Stories’ campaign drastically changed how the ad industry, TV and radio were viewing, using and supporting Australian

music, and the same with the governments. Our industry came together, with over seventy music companies coming together to support the call to ask for more Australian music on TV, in ads and on the radio and it’s still reverberating in different forms now. Also this year I’m working on the Voice To Parliament campaign. I feel like that’s the most important thing that I can put my time towards this year.

Do you as an artist struggle with imposter syndrome at all?

Definitely. There’s a song on my album called ‘Stranger’s Dream.’ It’s hard to even talk about because imposter syndrome is happening right now. I think it’s like a continual conversation with myself about being okay with who I am and okay with feeling different and a bit of a freak. I think most of us might feel like that but we don’t talk about it. I think especially for me mixing politics and music, doing something that not too many artists are in the ring with me doing. I think back to when I was at school and I was always doing art, music and politics. I think when you struggle with imposter syndrome you have to think about what you felt when you were a kid because that was the time before society told you how to feel. It’s a good clue as to who you really are.

What is the most important thing to you as a musician?

Being honest in my songs. Having fun. It’s a magic career and wild ride that I get to have as a musician so just enjoying the moment while it’s there.

Photo by Laura Smith

Catch Jack River at 5:30 pm on Friday at the G W Mclennan

Classifieds

Words by Vaughan Blakey

FOR SALE

Pink Eye Drops

Did you use the port-a-loo and forget to wash your hands? Did somebody fart on your pillow? Are you suffering from the interminable condition known as Pink Eye? Pink Eye Drops are now available at the SITG Merch tent as part of the Ocean Alley hygiene package for the low low price of $13. Note: Cash payments not accepted as nobody wants to contract gross pink eye from your grubby unwashed hands and stinky fart face.

Nicorette Gumboots

Absolute necessity for all patrons of SITG. Boots made entirely of Nicorette gum personally masticated by my Aunty Simone who smokes four kilos of Main Arm chop per week so you know it’s chemical free. Gumboots took nine years and 500 packets of Nicorette to complete. Smells awful but completely waterproof. $150.

Aunty Simone

Aunty Simone for sale. 75 y.o. Reasonable condition. Smokes way too much Main Arm chop and smells like a gumboot made of chewed Nicorette. $150 ONO.

Empty Beer can Empty Beer Can. Perfect condition except empty. A must-have for all can collectors but must specify can does contain 100 per cent emptiness. Once in a lifetime offer. $500.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SITG’S FREE PERINEUM CHARGING STATION!

Are you feeling flat and tired? Went a bit too hard a bit too early? Does the idea of walking all the way from the Amphitheatre to GW McLennan make you huff and sulk? The solution you need could be right in front of you… nay, make that right above you! Welcome to the wonderfully energised world of Perineum Charging!

According to Santa Monica based (and board certified) dermatologist Kerry-Anne Winklespitter, ‘the perineum, is just like a rank sweaty mobile phone, and sunshine is just like a USB chord connected to a huge flaming never ending battery that floats in the sky at daytime. Simply plug those powerful USB rays in and let the charging

begin! You’ll be running laps around Splendour in no time!’

For the first time ever Splendour In the Grass will be offering a free Perineum Charging Station for all ticket holders. It’s called the sun it will be available in all outdoor areas across all three days.

Warning: Excessive Perineum Charging can lead to third degree burns.

Lost, contact Lens.

Last seen in mosh pit at Amphitheatre during Skegss set. Can no longer see out of left eye. Have been walking around in circles since Saturday afternoon. Please help.

Found, Velcro Wallet.

Humiliating to open in public due to obscene ripping velcro noise. Contains 30 cents and a non-winning $2 scratchie. Driver’s License says Kid Laroi. Please retrieve ASAP.

Found, contact lens.

Must have fallen into ass cleavage during Skegss set because it was pressing against my butthole while I was singing the “Ooooh Ooooooh Oooooh Oooooweeeooohh!” L.S.D. chorus. Tried it on but didn’t fit so clearly not mine. Also, need Pink Eye Drops if anyone knows where to find some.

Scent free attitude

I’m looking for a new attitude because Mum says my current attitude stinks. I didn’t know attitudes could stink but if anyone can smell out a stinky attitude it’s her. New attitude must be scent free but tell Mum to keep her nose in her own beezwax from now on.

Lil Kim Supreme t-shirt

Has anyone out there got a Lil Kim Supreme Tee shirt they’d be happy to part with? I ripped the sleeves off mine when I went through a brief protein shake and bodybuilding phase five years ago so the babes could check out my guns and now I totally regret it. Anyhoo give us a call if you have a Lil Kim Supreme t-shirt with the sleeves still on it.

Someone who says ‘Lit’

Desperately seeking anyone who uses the word “lit” to describe anything other than the lighting of a candle. If you are this person, or you know this person, please contact me immediately.

Indigenous VoiceTo Parliament

Later this year Australians will be asked to vote in a referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition through a Voice. Recognising First Nation people is one of our country’s most prominent issues, and the referendum is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do just this. Allira Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue and Cobble Cobble woman from the Barungum and Birrigubba Nations talks us through what that means.

So in layman’s terms, in the simplest form, what is the Voice to Parliament?

The Voice to Parliament is enshrining a First Nations Voice into the Constitution. It will be an advisory body of First Nations Peoples that will provide advice to the government of the day on laws that affect First Nations Communities.

How does this help First Nations Australians?

The advice provided by a First Nations Voice will mean better laws and policies for First Nations Peoples. It will mean better outcomes across the board including health, housing, criminal justice and education.

How will this trickle down at a local level?

The concept of the Voice is based on giving the voice back to the voiceless, so it won’t be a top-to-bottom approach but a bottom-up approach. So the Voice will give back to community leaders who will have a seat at the table. If it’s in the Constitution then the First Nations Voice is permanent, protected and legitimate so politicians and government have to and must listen to us.

When do we vote?

The proposed date is at the end of this year, likely the start to the middle of October. The date hasn’t been set yet but the Prime Minister will have to set a date in the next two to six months because the bill has already passed to run the referendum.

Say the majority votes yes, then what?

The Voice model will be decided on how it will look. There are design principles out there but they will be determined after the fact because once you’re in the Constitution it cannot be changed. It’s not a one-size-fits-all model in our communities so we need to listen to the community leaders who will be the decision makers on policies and laws that affect our communities.

How else can we be an ally to First Nation Australians during this?

To be informed, educated and aware of this issue. Be aware of the misinformation that is on social media. Educate yourself so that you can make an informed and conscious decision when you get the ballot paper.

Is there anything else we should know?

It should be noted that this referendum is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Everyone should be involved and have a say. This is one of the biggest concerns within our country - recognising First Nations Peoples is so important for Australia.

Is there a way this campaign is being incorporated in this year’s SITG?

There will be a Voice to Parliament talk at the Forum on Saturday at 10am where a panel will discuss in further detail what the Indigenous Voice to Parliament will mean from a social, political and community perspective.

Where can we go for more information? ulurustatement.org

TheVoicetoParliamentisenshriningaFirstNationsVoice into the Constitution. It will be an advisory body of First NationsPeoplesthatwillprovideadvicetothegovernment of the day on laws that affect First Nations Communities.

Use your remaining two brain cells to complete this Splendour-flavoured quiz!

Across

Our favourite guitar, amp, and pedal makers, as well as a certain Sam

Idles’ favourite ballroom

The name of Brando, Wayans, and this Splendour artist.

Working by itself with little or no direct human control.

Drug _______ is not allowed at Splendour in the Grass

One of the words that rhyme after ‘King’ in this artist’s name

Skeggs’ favourite month

Danny Brown’s favorite board game

Noah and Miley

A quicker way of typing Splendour in the Grass

The last name of one of Slendour’s Qest Bueens

Are fires allowed on the campgrounds?

Down

Little Simz’ first name

Lizzo’s birth city

The last name of the guy who directed the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Heads Will Roll music video Where you’re currently located (also known as the North Byron Parklands)

(A Phrase) How you’ll be describing Lizzo’s set to your friends

The brand of camera that Nick Zinner shoots most of his photos on

The Splendour artist, not the side character in Hamlet

Flume’s latest album (you’re not a real fan if you don’t know this)

An animal featured in the title of hit songs by both Mumford & Sons and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

100 Gecs’ favorite chip snack

Flume’s frequent collaborator (so frequent, she’s performing here at Splendour) 19 17 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 5 2 1

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs saddest/best song

I expect you’ll have a pretty good time here, at Splendour in the Grass, and my expectations tend to come to fruition. Why is that? I have spent time in New York City where there is a psychic/tarot card reader/medium/fortune teller on every corner, so by proximity, I am quite gifted. I don’t see much negativity in the cards for anyone unless your name is Todd, you’re an Aries, and you have brown hair. Then you’re fucked. You are absolutely fucked, man. You’ll be lucky to make it out of this weekend alive, let alone with all of your bodily appendages. You’re on thin ice, Todd. Everyone else, though, here is your daily horoscope, read by me, something of a future seer. Because there are a lot more astrological signs than there needs to be and we only left one page for this horoscope, I am splitting them up amongst the days. Except for Todd. That poor bastard needs my help.

FRIDAY

Aries: Open up and reveal more of your sensitive side, Aries. The more willing you are to share with others, the more they will feel comfortable sharing things with you. Maybe try crying with Idles rather than bashing about. Tell your friends you love them, and shed a tear. Then when they call you out on it, retreat into your natural shell of rigidity and shame.

Taurus: Things should go well for you today as long as you can keep the drama to a minimum, but that’s never been you, has it? You’re the type of person who says passive aggressive shit like, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have worn that. Looks good on you, though.’ Lean into it.

Gemini: You may have to bring yourself down to ground level in a rather sobering fashion, Gemini. You are about to get knocked in the head and your downfall will be glorious like a really depressing movie. At least you have several soundtracks to choose from.

Cancer: You have a tremendous ability to understand the inner workings of any situation, Cancer. You may need to give someone a reality check to make sure they’re on the same page as you. Have a few drinks, venture into the crowd until you find them - you’ll know them when you see them - and yell, ‘are we on the same fucking page?’

Todd: First of all, I’m sorry, Todd. It isn’t up to me, it’s in the cards and in the stars and in the soul and unfortunately for you, in your future. That said, it is best to be optimistic but protective of yourself. It could be pretty chill tonight, but only if you do the following: go find fried chicken. Eat it. Get the bones. Dip them in your blood. Bury them. Say a prayer over the burial. Reach your arms to the sky and yell, ‘Splendour Gods! I call on thee! Protect me for I am supple and afraid!’

SATURDAY

Leo: Don’t say anything about someone behind his or her back that you wouldn’t want to say if the person were standing

right next to you, because they probably are standing right next to you, because you came with them and are shar ing a camp site, and this is a festival where personal space doesn’t exist.

Virgo:

decisions, Virgo, do what’s best for you today. Don’t feel like you need to perform certain tasks just because of guilt over a past situation. Maybe that past situation is that you got absolutely smashed last Splendour and everyone remembers what your ass looks like, that doesn’t mean you have to go around showing it just because they asked and you feel guilty. It’s your ass, your time, only show it when it’s right for you.

Libra: It’s time to settle down from the rapid-fire activities of the past few days and retreat to a quieter state of mind, Libra, so maybe Splendour isn’t the best place for you. There are a lot of meditation tents and I hear that Mumford & Sons’ set is pretty mellow, so maybe start there?

ing, crying during the

ing to ‘fix up’ a Sam Fender

Todd: Oh, Todd. You didn’t do the thing with the bones, did you? And how did that turn out? Not so good, huh? How’s your arm feeling? Hopefully better. It looks horrendous but it’ll get better (maybe). Alright, so today, you need to find a man. He will be wearing a blue thong. How will you know if he’s wearing a blue thong? It’ll come to you. His name is John. He has the crystal. Take the crystal and bring it to Karen O. She will endow you with the powers of the grass, and you will be blessed. This is the only way.

SUNDAY

Sagittarius: Turn your energy inward today, Sagittarius. Make a detailed list of what you need to get done in order of priority. Honestly, good advice. You’ve spent the last two days in shambles, missing every set, falling asleep in a pile of empty cups. Get it together, today. The universe believes in you.

every situation. All I’ll say is that I’m not legally allowed to tell you to streak.

Aquarius: Get in touch with your vulnerable side today, Aquarius. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. And by that, the universe means stop pretending to be one of Mumford’s sons. It won’t get you backstage, and to be honest, I don’t even think the people on stage are all related. How many sons does this guy have? Pisces: This is your day, Pisces, so don’t let anyone take it away from you. The key will be to get a head start on whatever goals you wish to accomplish. Don’t waste time thinking about exactly how you’re going to accomplish them. Just get started. Maybe pack up the campsite now so that tomorrow, when the 6000 cars that are blocking in your Corolla move, you’ll be there and ready.

Scorpio: This is an excellent day in which your thinking is clear and your emotions stable. Use this powerful combination of a solid frame of mind and compassionate feelings to express yourself in a sincere,

Capricorn: Your head and heart are working in concert today. Things are coming together just as you expected them to. Have confidence in yourself. More than likely, you have the perfect solution to

Todd: Todd, Todd, Todd, what’re we going to do with you? If this weekend has taught you anything, it is that I am right and you are wrong. Arm’s looking worse. Your eyes are puffy, too. The arm thing will go away, but the eyes won’t. You’ll be looking like a crying Renee Zellweger for the rest of your life, but that’s your own fault for not giving Karen the crystal. Alright, alright, here’s what you do. You need to wake up early, find the man in the cat costume - siamese, not tabby. You gotta find him, and Todd, you have to kiss him. And I mean, really kiss him. Not ‘really’ like full tongue; ‘really’ like kiss him like you love him. Really try to make a connection, Todd. Feel the softness of his lips on yours and take his essence in. Embrace him. Put one hand on his back and the other on his cheek, and when the kiss is done, give him one on the forehead. He’ll start to purr, that’s when you know you’ve done it right. In a matter of minutes, you will feel a joy like you’ve never felt. A lightness. Pure joy.

Scopes

Words by Naz Kawakami

Brother, sister duo Amy and Josh Dowdle of Lastlings are the type of siblings that make you question how you grew up. You’re telling me you can spend hours together in a studio and not want to spear tackle the other to the ground? Beyond me. That in itself is a phenomenal feat, without even throwing in two albums and worldwide tours to the mix. We got to chat with the pair about their newest album Perfect World, and what’s it’s like coming back to Splendour to play mainstage.

Words by Sam Hetherington

Start

You're both on the Gold Coast hey?

OneLast Thing With Lastlings

Josh Dowdle: We're from the Gold Coast yeah, but we moved to Melbourne a few years ago but right now we are on the Gold Coast yes.

Whereabouts on the Gold Coast?

Amy: We grew up all around, but most of it was spent in Tallegbudgera Valley.

Oh that's the spot. I lived in Burleigh and Tugun for most of my life.

Amy: Oh so beautiful.

Anyway, jumping in. Talk us through your new album Perfect World.

Amy : Yeah. So Perfect World is kind of like a diary for myself. A lot of the songs on the album are about being in your early 20s, discovering yourself, experiencing heartbreak, loss and navigating your way through mental health as well. I think there's a lot of learning about yourself in your 20s. So I think, yeah, that's what most of the songs are about.

Josh: The songs have been written over the last few years. We released our first album a few years ago but some of the songs that we were writing during that time are on this new album. So some of the songs are super new, some are only like a few months old, whereas some are a couple years old. So there's like a pretty diverse range of how our music has changed over the years as well. There's a bit of UK garage inspired beats, dance music and some songs that are a little bit more stripped back. Some more piano and Amy singing.

When you say this new album is a mix of older songs and newer songs, would you be able to tell what the newer songs and the older songs are as an audience do you think?

Josh: I think you can. Each of the songs are in order of when they were written on the album too. The start is a more vulnerable style and towards the end, it kind of like has that more hopeful feeling. So if you're listening to it like that, I think you could be able to hear that, yeah.

That's beautiful. What were some of lessons you learnt about mental health that you mentioned?

Amy: Self worth - knowing that you can be good on your own. When you’re moving out of high school, finding your place, it’s a lot.

What have you learnt outside of mental health that can be applied to this ablum?

Amy: I think Josh and I have grown a lot since our last album. For Josh his production has improved so much, and I think my songwriting as well has improved a bit. And I think, yeah, it's always a bit of a learning curve, even with each song. Like, I feel like we're learning more and more about the music we want to make and writing music itself as well.

I just watched the trailer for Perfect World before this. What was the idea behind this? Why did you want to do a trailer for perfect world?

Josh: We did a trailer for the first album, kind of unintentionally, we went over to do more of a documentary style thing but didn't get enough footage to do it. So we kind of condensed it into more of an album trailer, more of a visual mood piece kind of thing. That was received really well the first time

and it was really fun to make, to work on something creative like that. We were going to go shoot a lot of stuff in America anyway, like the album cover, press shots and all that kind of stuff. So we just thought we'd tail it onto the back of it and shoot the trailer as well.

So cool, and where was it filmed? It’s giving very Dune vibes.

Josh: Yeah we were supposed to shoot at place called Death Valley. But then there was flash flood, some crazy rain and all the roads got taken out basically so we couldn't go there. So we filmed in a place called Anza Borrego.

Amy: It was so hot.

Josh: I think it was like forty degrees, and we were shooting in all black long sleeve stuff. But we worked with a really, really great team.

Yeah, so cool. In terms of your upcoming album tour, obviously Australia, the US, Splendour, do you have one particular spot or place that you're really pumped to play out?

Amy: Playing at the Forum. That’s a bucket list venue for us. We’ve played there a few times as supports. We supported Two Door Cinema Club there. I think we did another one there in the early days. But it's yeah. It's such a beautiful venue. Melbourne is currently our home so it's nice to do like a hometown show and have like a lot of friends and our families come down for it.

Josh: Yeah, we're really excited for that one. But that's not to say we're not excited about all the other ones as well.

Yeah, but you know, every artist I’ve talked to there is always a bucket list show.

Josh: Exactly. Playing Splendour as well, though, because we played there in like 2017?

Amy: I think it was 2018?

Josh: Yeah we played at the Mix Up Tent. I think it was like the first set and the tent was packed and was really great set. So we're really excited to come back to Splendour and play Mainstage.

Oh, yeah. So good. Especially mainstage. This is the last question and it's actually just a genuine life advice question. I have a twin sister and I love her to death but I think if I also worked with her, I'd probably kill her. So just how do you guys not do that?

Amy: I think boundaries is one thing and also like being able to communicate with each other.

Josh: That doesn’t help when she doesn't answer a phone [laughs].

Amy: Obviously we spend a lot of time together to write otherwise we have a solid amount of time apart too.

It’s honestly impressive that you can work alongside a sibling and do such good work, being musicians together. That’s really special.

Josh: I guess we're like really different as well, like personality wise as well as I think that maybe that works as well sometimes.

Photo by Louisa Meng

Catch Lastlings at 3:15 pm on Sunday at the Amphitheatre

News Fake

FLUME TO BE HONOURED WITH BRONZE STATUE AT BRUNSWICK HEADS SERVO

Electronic/Dance Superstar Flume is set to be immortalised with a giant bronze statue at a service station in Brunswick Heads. The statue, 35 metres high and rumoured to cost around $340,000, will be paid for by the service station’s owner Brian Itchycorn, who only heard Flume for the first time after the dyed-blonde Australian sex symbol took out this year’s Triple J hottest 100. ‘Yeah look, to be honest a year ago I didn’t know Flume from a can of diesel’ laughed Itchycorn, ‘but Say Nothing is a hell of a song. See, I work long hours and Triple J flogged the shit out of it to the point where I couldn’t wait for it to come on. Then every time it did, I’d rip off me undies and run out to the bowsers swinging them above my head like a rodeo cowboy whipping an invisible dance bull! People got the fright of their lives and I was arrested on three occasions, but they’re memories I’m just not willing to forget… hence the statue.’ When asked how Itchycorn was able to fund such a giant sexy statue he replied: ‘Are you kidding me? Fuel is two bucks a litre mate! I’m rolling in money!’

Words by Vaughan Blakey

LIZZO’S FLUTE DETAINED AT AUSTRALIAN CUSTOMS

Lizzo’s flute has been detained by Australian Border Security after failing to declare ‘cured meats and unspecified wood items’ upon arriving at Brisbane airport last Thursday. It is alleged that Lizzo’s flute was unaware that such goods were illegal due to the nation’s strict biosecurity laws. Upon discovery of the contraband Lizzo’s flute is reported to have flown into a rage with one witness reporting to have overheard the woodwind instrument screaming at officials: ‘Don’t you know who I am? I’m a superstar! I’ll bet Jethro Tull’s flute never had to put up with this shit!’ At the time of press Lizzo’s flute is still yet to be granted entry to Australia and whether or not it will perform at Splendour remains to be seen, however Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has weighed in, issuing this firm warning to all touring artists: ‘It doesn’t matter what band you’re in or where you’re playing… we won’t abide by flutes flaunting our laws in this country.’ It is now believed the unspecified wood items mentioned by Border Security may actually be relatives of Lizzo’s flute, including Lizzo’s Oboe, Lizzo’s Basoon and Lizzo’s Recorder.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD FORCED TO CHANGE NAME

The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages has issued an immediate cease and desist order to Australian psyche indy rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard in an effort to stop the Melbourne six-piece from further lying to the Australian public. Head of Operations for the RBD&M, Ms Penny Pisswhistle, argued that the name was misleading and untruthful as not a single member of the band are kings, nor wizards. ‘It’s disrespectful to this nation’s actual King, Wally Lewis not to mention our only true wizard, the late great Shane Warne,’ scorned Ms Pisswhistle. She then went on to say she had serious doubts if any of the band were lizards either, but conceded they likely did have gizzards. Although the band is yet to officially release a statement it is believed they will abide by the orders and in line with the demands henceforth be known as ‘The Six Humans with Gizzards.’