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Strong sexual references, drug use and coarse language
IN CINEMAS MARCH 1
AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2012 AUSTRALIAN TOUR SPECIAL 2012 GUESTS
DEEP SEA ARCADE LOON LAKE DEEP SEA ARCADE SPECIAL GUESTS
LOON LAKE
TUE 15 MAY TUE 15 MAY THE HI-FI 18+ THE HI-FI 18+ THEHIFI.COM.AU PH: 1300 THE HIFI THEHIFI.COM.AU PH: 1300 THE HIFI
ON SALE ONTHIS SALEFRIDAY! FRIDAY 24 FEBRUARY FRONTIERTOURING.COM FRONTIERTOURING.COM WWW.KAISERCHIEFS.COM WWW.KAISERCHIEFS.COM
“ON THE RUN”, THE BRAND “ON THE RUN”, THE BRAND NEW KAISER CHIEFS NEW KAISER CHIEFS SINGLE OUT NOW! SINGLE OUT NOW! BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 3
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s e i r e S Summer PROUDLY PRESENTS
THIS WEEK
NICHEPRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS
Niche Productions proudly presents /
NICHE PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS
Friday 2nd March The Metro
FEBRUARY 25TH MANNING BAR
SUPPORTED BY
ELECTRIC EMPIRE & FANTINE (ACOUSTIC)
FRI. 24TH FEBRUARY THE METRO
TICKETS ON SALE NOW THROUGH MANNINGBAR.COM
SPECIAL GUESTS:
NELSON ROLEO WORD LIFE
(Full Live Band Australian Debut)
with Special Guests /
Guerre & Oliver Tank Tickets on sale now through metrotheatre.com.au nicheproductions.com.au / bonobomusic.com
‘Black Sands’ & ‘Black Sands Remixed’ (released Feb 2012) available on Ninja Tune through Inertia
NICHEPRODUCTIONS.COM.AU
TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH METROTHEATRE.COM.AU NICHEPRODUCTIONS.COM.AU / MAYERHAWTHORNE.COM
THE SCREAMING EAGLE OF SOUL
NICHE PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS
Nation in tions and Live Niche Produc lia present h Billions Austra conjunction wit
CHARLES BRADLEY
THU. 8TH MARCH THE HI-FI
NICHE PRODUCTIONS & LIVE NATION PRESENT
R THE 2012 AUSTRALIAN TOU
(FORMERLY THE FORUM) WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
Friday 16th March The Factory
DIZZ1 / TUKA + BENTLEY TICKETS ON SALE NOW THROUGH THEHIFI.COM.AU
WITH THE CACTUS CHANNEL + TWIST AND SHOUT DJS
new album available at all good record stores
Tickets on sale now through factorytheatre.com.au
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SAT. 31 MARCH THE METRO SUPPORT
THE HAVKNOTZ & DJ VICTOR LOPEZ TICKETS ON SALE NOW THROUGH METROTHEATRE.COM
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT NICHEPRODUCTIONS.COM.AU BECOME A FAN OF NICHE ON FOLLOW US ON
6 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
@NICHEPRODUCTION
YELAWOLF'S NEW ALBUM RADIOACTIVE AVAILABLE NOW ONLINE AND AT ALL GOOD RECORD STORES NICHEPRODUCTIONS.COM.AU LIVENATION.COM.AU
BUY NOW AT
THURS 1 MARCH
DJ KRUSH
TIGERMOTH (SINISTER JAZZ), BENTLEY (DUST TONES) &
DJ ABILITY
UPSTAIRS BERESFORD.COM.AU
THUR 15 MAR
SURRY HILLS ROCKS: SHAVE AID CHARITY
PLUTO JONZE, SURES, JOHN VELLA
LEVEL 1, 354 BOURKE ST. SURRY HILLS BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 7
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B I L L I O N S AU ST R A L I A P R E S E N T S
IS W E E K
W I T H S P EC I A L G U E S T S D A P P L E D C I T I E S
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SOLD OUT
EN M O R E THE ATRE , SY D N EY
S AT 2 5 F E B R U A RY
ON SALE NOW
EN M O RE THE ATRE , SY D N EY
www.ticketek.com.au | www.enmoretheatre.com.au ARTIST WEBSITE www.deathcabforcutie.com TOUR INFORMATION www.billions.com.au
NEW ALBUM ‘CODES and KEY S’ OU T N OW 8 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
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- grab a -
G r
G R I L L’ D e d i t i o n
G
d
r G & A E B u iT
PLAYGROUND WEEKENDER TICKET at
GRILL’D HEALTHY BURGERS T E K C I T Y A D 3 R E D N E K E E W ! D S N S U A O P R * G P Y B A S L V P R A U T O E Y G & BUY D ' L RSON) L E I P R R G E G R U M B F R O *(VERY SPECIAL
THE VSBP PASS GIVES YOU SUPER SPECIAL TREATMENT FROM GRILL’D AT PLAYGROUND! AS A VSBP, YOU GET A FREE BURGER & AN AIRSTREAM Trucker Cap from the GRILL’D Airstream at thE festival. VSBP’S will also GET free chips wITH ANY burger BOUGHT ACROSS THE WEEKEND.
PLAYGROUND WEEKENDER - MARCH 2ND 3RD & 4TH To find out more visit facebook.com/PlaygroundWeekender or playgroundweekender.com.au CHATSWOOD / CROWN ST / CROWS NEST / HARBOURSIDE / VICTORIA ST GRILLD.COM.AU FACEBOOK.COM/GRILLDBURGERS
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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly, Alex Christie, Sigourney Berndt
five minutes WITH
JAKE STONE (BLUEJUICE) FOR S.L.A.M.
W
What can people do to get involved? Buying a brick to help the Annandale wouldn’t be too bad an idea – and then basically just visiting these venues to see shows, on SLAM day (Feb 23) and beyond. There’s so much stuff going on in general, and so many great shows to see; honestly, you can have a wonderful cultural and social life just going out to about three venues in and around Sydney. And if you wanted to work in music, seeing shows at these places is the way to get started. Plus, you’ll have some unforgettably brilliant, romantic moments watching young bands play their first ever shows. If you want to help politically, write to your local member with a list of you and your friends’ names, and show them that people in Sydney need and want their music venues to stay open.
hat’s SLAM all about? SLAM is the Save Live Australian Music campaign, a co-ordinated effort by musicians, the music industry, fans and venues to give a public face to Australia’s live music scene, and the people that love it. That way, it’ll be more difficult to kill it off... What’s the biggest threat to live music in Australia? I relate to Paul Kelly’s quote: small live music venues were my university. I worked at both the Annandale and the Hopetoun Hotel in Sydney as a bartender, which allowed me to institute myself into and learn about the culture of Sydney’s music scene, meet the personalities involved, and see the majority of the bands. I also made a circle of friends I wouldn’t otherwise have had. Those people have become the backbone of my ongoing employment, and a group of peers that taught me about working in the music industry. Beyond that, my time in those venues taught me that small gigs are where music and musicians put a human face to their culture, and meet and relax with their peers; they are the central point around which the culture of music, live and otherwise, revolves. Without them, music has no culture, no scene, no social face. And it’s important to note that
both those venues have since closed or been threatened with closure… What’s your favourite live music memory? My favorite venue memory would have to be something to do with The Hopetoun Hotel, where I worked for about four years. I saw Paul Kelly play solo to a reverent crowd of about 100 people, watched bands like The Jezabels, Dappled Cities and many, many more play
multiple shows before anyone knew who they were, internationals like Feist and Cat Power had their first Australian performances there and partied afterwards, and I got the chance to regularly serve, drink and chat with classic Australian music personalities from bands like You Am I, The Scientists, Beasts Of Bourbon, Hoodoo Gurus, The Dirty Three, and many, many others. There’s literally too many stories to name.
What: National SLAM day When: Thursday February 23 Where: The Annandale, The Gaelic Theatre, Petersham Bowling Club, GoodGod Small Club, FBi Social, The Vanguard, The Factory Theatre and many more venues around Sydney More: www.slamrally.org
BLACK CHERRY
PUBLISHERS: Adam Zammit & Rob Furst EDITOR IN CHIEF: Adam Zammit 9552 6333 adam@peergroupmedia.com EDITOR: Steph Harmon steph@thebrag.com 02 9698 9645 ARTS & ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Dee Jefferson dee@thebrag.com 02 9690 2731 STAFF WRITER: Caitlin Welsh NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Chris Honnery ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Katrina Clarke, Ashley Mar, Thomas Peachey, George Popov, Rosette Rouhanna ADVERTISING: Ross Eldridge - 0422 659 425 / (02) 8394 9492 ross@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Les White - 0405 581 125 / (02) 8394 9027 les@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Meaghan Meredith - 0423 655 091 / (02) 8394 9168 meaghan@thebrag.com GIG & CLUB GUIDE CO-ORDINATOR: Conrad Richters - gigguide@thebrag.com (rock) clubguide@thebrag.com (dance & parties) INTERNS: Sigourney Berndt, Alex Christie, Antigone Anagnostellis
The first Black Cherry for 2012 is set for March 10 at The Factory Theatre, and they’ve put together a typically complex concoction of awesome for you. The DJs, live bands and burlesque will all be set to the tune of MC Lauren La Rouge, who’s apparently on “sass patrol” – as well as special green fairy original Czech absinth cocktails, Jungle Rump Rock’N’Roll Karaoke (pick your song and sing it with a live backing band), a tempting happy hour (8-9pm), a sausage sizzle and prizes for the rockers among you who can groove that dancefloor good. Bands? Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders, Firebird, The Delta Riggs and Graveyard Rockstars. Burlesque? Tasia, La Viola Vixen and Holly J’aDoll. DJs? Jane Gazzo, Kasdja, Rockabilly Rhino v Wolfman Dan and CeeCee & Ruby Riot. Tickets? BlackCherryPresents.com.au
WAVVES TOUR Lanie Lane
When I told my Mum I wanted to see Tin Sparrow, she thought it was some type of rare garden bird. (She’s never understood me.) Luckily, we know you’ll be as excited as we were to hear that Tin Sparrow have announced some cozy East Coast shows to celebrate the release of their second EP. After supporting Matt Corby’s sold out tour and appearing at Secret Garden Festival (March 17 – Google it, awesome lineup), Tin Sparrow will use April to release their as-ofyet unnamed EP and play shows in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Byron Bay. To find out more head to facebook.com/tinsparrow
Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this address 8a Marlborough Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010 ph - (02) 9552 6333 fax - (02) 9319 2227 EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Publisher, Editor or Staff of The Brag.
DEADLINES: Editorial: Wednesday 12pm (no extensions) Artwork, ad bookings: Thursday 12pm (no extensions). Ad cancellations: Tuesday 4pm Published by Cartrage P/L ACN 104026388 All content copyrighted to Cartrage 2003 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get The Brag? Email distribution@ furstmedia.com.au or phone 03 9428 3600. PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: www.spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204 Win a giveaway? Mail us a stamped and addressed envelope, and we’ll send your prize on over...
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The appeal of Wavves can best be summed up by the title track to his/their third album, King Of The Beach. That during 2011 (read: the year of beachy surf pop) he would title the record King Of The Beach is such a hilariously 2 Pac-move, but the real appeal lies in the line “at the beach, in my jeans,” which suggests he doesn’t even considering getting wet... Just hanging like the slacker-pop king he is. Catch him/them May 15, when they play Oxford Art Factory. They’re out for Groovin’ The Moo, too!
TIN SPARROW TOUR
REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Simon Binns, Michael Brown, Liz Brown, Bridie Connell, Bridie Connellan, Ben Cooper, Oliver Downes, Alasdair Duncan, Max Easton, Tony Edwards, Christie Eliezer, Murray Engleheart, Henry Florence, Mike Gee, Chris Honnery, Nathan Jolly, Alex Lindsay Jones, Robbie Miles, Peter Neathway, Hugh Robertson, Matt Roden, Emma Salkild, Romi Scodellaro, Rach Seneviratne, Luke Telford, Rick Warner
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Stephen Forde : accounts@furstmedia.com.au ph - (03) 9428 3600 fax - (03) 9428 3611 Furst Media, 3 Newton Street Richmond Victoria 3121
Wavves
STARSAILOR
LANIE LANE BANGITY BANG
Break out your cowboy boots, hot rollers and home tattoo kit; Lanie Lane is hitting the road. The rockabilly princess has spent the last twelve months doing a huge number of unreasonably cool things, like recording with Jack White, winning an FBi SMAC Award for Album Of The Year, and making everyone jealous of her pretty hair. And now she’s gearing up for her ‘Bangity Bang’ national tour, which starts in Adelaide and will work its way around the country before landing in Sydney on Friday June 1. Joining Lanie’s wild ride will be next-big-thing The Rubens – and after that, she’s off to SxSW in Texas...
Remember that time at the pub when you stood on a table and declared that one day the frontwoman from The Superjesus would team up with the frontman of Starsailor? Well, it turns out you were right and that SWAT team of security guards were wrong – Sarah McLeod (now of Screaming Bikini) is indeed hitting the road with James Walsh from Starsailor, playing at The Standard on Saturday March 24. ‘Four To The Floor’, you guys! And ‘Gravity!’.
DZ AWESOMERAYS
Bloodstreams is a great name for a debut album. It sounds epic and vital, but doesn’t really suggest anything concrete. It’s perfect, and it’s the name of DZ Deathrays’ debut record, which comes out April 6. Buy it on the day from a proper record store, learn all the words, and then be that guy singing loudly at their April 20 show at Oxford Art Factory. These Brisbane thrash-punkers have just got huge nods from NME and an invite to play at South by SouthWest. Big things to come...
I PREDICT A SIDESHOW
Kaiser Chiefs, the band who predicted last year’s London riots back in 2004, are returning to Australia to perform their long-awaited ‘we told you so’ set (and possibly to play the huge Groovin’ The Moo festivals too, if they have time between all the gloating). Deep Sea Arcade – their great tune ‘Girls’ was criminally overlooked last year – and Loon Lake (dabblers in fine sun-speckled pop) will be supporting the Chiefs’ sideshow at the Hi-Fi in Sydney on May 15.
MACCABEES TOUR
Having tasted their single ‘Pelican’ late in 2011 and eaten up their third EP Given To The Wild, fans of British outfit The Maccabees should be salivating at the announcement of their first-ever Australian tour. Since their 2009 release Wall of Arms worked the blogs up into a lather, The Maccabees have made no secret of wanting to pick up where Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian left off and have been busy consolidating their sound, delivering arresting slabs of post-punk, pop, psychedelia and soulful guitar noodles in their latest sonic spread... Place orders at ticketek.com.au for their show at the Metro Theatre, set for Thursday May 10.
VANS BOWL-A-RAMA
The eighth inaugural Vans Bowl-a-Rama Festival is set to kick off this Tuesday, with a proverbial kitchen sink of activities in store. Head down to Bondi Beach to find knick-knacks including art shows, video premieres, giveaways, live bands, and that understated happening that is the biggest professional concrete skate event in the Southern Hemisphere... And because the after party is generally where the cool cats are at, you should already know that the ska/punk/reggae Los Capitanes are headlining at the Beach Road Hotel for free (!) – we advise that your get your sandy butt there at 7pm sharp.
“ABSOLUTELY THE BEST OF BRITISH” MONTY PYTHON’S MICHAEL PALIN
Tuesday 6 March 8pm Sydney Opera House Concert Hall sydneyoperahouse.com 9250 7777 ticketek.com.au 132 849
IPAC Wollongong Sunday 4 March 8pm merrigong.com.au 4224 5999 Newcastle City Hall Wednesday 7 March 8pm ticketek.com.au 132 849
& OMAL E FRTIV ID CT ES ELA RE F D DI TH MA R PE WO
Nothing else has ever sounded quite like it – BRIAN ENO This is music that is designed with a real generosity of spirit – THE GUARDIAN
CITY RECITAL HALL ANGEL PLACE WEDNESDAY 7 MARCH 8 Bookings: 8256 2222 / 1300 797 118 www.cityrecitalhall.com 136 100 ticketmaster.com.au
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rock music news
free stuff
welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly, Alex Christie, Sigourney Berndt
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
five things WITH
ACHOO! B LESS YOU Growing Up Your Band [Ross]: I remember car trips to [Ash]: I do vocals, acoustic guitar, ukulele 1. 3. the Central Coast around the age and glockenspiel. Ross does acoustic guitar, of 7 or 8, waking up somewhere along the highway and hearing Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne, Harry Chapin and Elton John on the cassette player. A healthy obsession with songwriting promptly ensued! [Ash]: I think my parents were a little daggier; all they listened to was Crowded House (who I actually totally love). When I discovered music for myself, it was in an extremely obsessive way. Not sure if you realise, but right now you’re talking to the ex-president of the Official Killing Heidi Fan Club. Inspirations [Ross]: Ben Kweller, Jeff 2. Tweedy, Jackson Browne and Conor Oberst are my favourites. The way they all write songs is definitely an inspiration to me, and influential to the way I approach songwriting. [Ash]: I’m really inspired by raw, honest musicians like Elliott Smith, Conor Oberst and Holly Throsby. The first time I heard Holly Throsby on a triple j live set when I was a teenager, I recorded the two and a half songs on cassette tape and would listen to it over and over.
out the website for more information. (Also, buy a brick for the Annandale – they just took down their For Sale sign!)
Husky
FABERGETTES, GO!
Three cute-as-the-cutest-button girls playing ‘60s pop with doo-wop harmonies and surf licks? Yes please! Sydney’s The Fabergettes are pretty much the best combination of anything ever, so it is no surprise they have been making waves across the country (surf joke!). The band features members from Cuthbert and the Night Walkers and Catcall, so you better believe BRAG will be front and centre on March 9 at GoodGod for the launch of their debut, self-titled EP.
MUSECOLOGY II
HUSKY + SUB POP + TOUR = GOOD
We are extremely happy to report that Melbourne band Husky are the first Australian band ever to sign to legendary label Sub Pop – the famed label responsible for Mudhoney, Soundgarden and The Shins. (Pretty sure that list covers it all, yeah? Oh, Nevermind...) Husky won Unearthed, released a willbe-a-classic debut album Forever So to rave reviews and so many high fives, and supported Gotye, or Yeezy as he’s known in the game... And that was just last year. Now this has happened! To celebrate the recent (and huge) accomplishment, they are playing Thursday May 3 at Oxford Art Factory, and they asked us to ask you to come – because they’re doing this all for you, baby.
‘Mnemonic Museum’ has popped up on our radar as the second in the Musecology series: site-based music performances curated by Siberia Records and Jack Jeweller. Their in
vocals and plays harmonica. We both have very similar musical opinions, which makes all this stuff work really well, but there are enough differences and individual quirks to keep things interesting. The Music You Make [Ross]: Our sound is a bit of a mish 4. mash of folk pop with some traditional country influences. When playing live we’re constantly swapping instruments and lead vocals, trying to shake things up and keep the vibe really raw and intimate. We’re in the process of recording some fresh tunes for release later in the year. Music, Right Here, Right Now [Ash]: It’s pretty easy to get bitter about 5. the state of the Sydney live music scene at the moment, with venues closing and the constant struggle to get people off the couch. But there are some really promising developments! A growing nu-folk scene is gaining momentum in Sydney, facilitated by intimate shows at Hibernian House and The Newsagency. The whole backyard/garden gig thing seems to be taking off too, alongside free weekly events such as Folk Club at The Hollywood Hotel – unique shows in which the night really is just about the music. With: Slow Club (UK) Where: GoodGod Small Club When: Thursday March 1
situ shows take place in a variety of peculiar locations – the first was in a boxing ring, and the second will be the Macleay Museum at the Sydney Uni on Friday March 9. Artists have been asked to respond to one of four psychosis-sequences from the 1960s cult classic The Eyes Of Hell aka The Mask – and the lineup includes Naked On The Vague, Jamie Leonarder with his new outfit Not Applicable, dual-synth-adventurers DCM (comprising Chris Ross [ex-Wolfmother] and Daniel Stricker from Midnight Juggernauts), and more to be announced. Get set to journey into the dark depths of your unconscious… or something...
Made In Japan
MADE IN JAPAN
Jono Graham, Tom Davis, Andrew Knox and James Cooney combine as the pieces of Sydney indie four-piece-pie, Made in Japan. After a year’s worth of toil – recording, performing and working with producer Paul Annison (Children Collide, Red Riders) – the quartet will release their much-anticipated debut album Sights And Sounds on Saturday February 25. In an extraordinary coincidence, they have booked the Oxford Art Factory to play a set filled with their new songs on this exact same date! We’re giving away two double passes to the launch – just tell us something unusual that’s made in Japan.
SLOW CLUB
The Sheffield boy-girl duo Slow Club – whose debut album Yeah, So? “nail[s] precious, vulnerable feelings over the course of their sweet (but not twee of saccharine) indie pop debut,” according to the illustrious P4K – are heading Down Under to show off its follow-up, Paradise, on Thursday March 1 at GoodGod Small Club, with Achoo! Bless You in support. Slow Club have a fuller live band now, and promise to make you swoon and then endure a dancing frenzy – so we suggest eating a healthy, hearty meal first. We have two double passes. Want one? Tell us the names of the Slow Club pair.
goers to down a brew while watching the gig from 50 metres above the crowd – in a PLANE. The madness is being touted by the presser as “the ultimate mile high club,” and we really wanna join. If you want to grab yourself one of the final spots on the flight, the key is to keep an eye on the main stage screens, apparently… For more on Soundwave this Sunday, check out pages 20-23.
SOUNDWAVE’S ELE[V]ATOR
Taking the VIP area to new heights (ah puns), Channel [V] have come up with the inspired ‘Ele[V]ator’. If you’re prepped to head to Soundwave, this is a cracked up but awesome idea, which will allow a few lucky festival
ANDREW + W.K = GOOD
Andrew W.K, the only man who can make both ‘blood-stained face’ and ‘white t-shirt’ work as a look, is following up his amazing 2011 BDO one-manparty romp with a Groovin’ The Moo romp – and you’d better believe there will be a sideshow romp involved. It happens on May 10 at The Standard – so if you see a dude wandering around Taylor Square with blood gushing from his face, your best bet is to go up and party at him. You never know...
Boy & Bear
SLAM: 100 AUSSIE VENUES GET INVOLVED. SO DO YOU.
Live music is pretty important (it’s kind of our thing, ya’know?), so we were thrilled to hear that over 100 venues around Australia are celebrating National SLAM Day on Thursday February 23. The Save Live Australian Music Rally in Melbourne in 2010 made history as Australia’s largest cultural protest – and this year will mark the first time so many venues have supported a single cause. If you’re into the whole live music scene like us, head to slamrally.org and see what you can do to stop your local band room turning onto a pokie den… There a bunch of gigs happening at all your favourite venues – like Papa vs Pretty, Cabins and Palms at The Annandale, Bearhug at FBi Social, Elizabeth Rose at GoodGod Small Club and loads more. Check
BOY + BEAR + STATE THEATRE = GOOD
Boy & Bear are one of our favourite bands in the world ever, but we can’t really put our finger on why. Sure, they’re absolutely lovely people who are also ridiculously talented, with their debut album, Moonfire, picking up five whole ARIAs... But that’s not it. Maybe it’s something to do with the massive 25 date tour they’ve just announced, which hits the State Theatre (wow!) on Wednesday May 30... Tickets for the Remembering The Mexican Tour go on sale on February 27 – and you can find out how to get them at boyandbear.com
“Nature teaches beasts to know their friends” - CORIOLANUS 16 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
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The Music Network
themusicnetwork.com
Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer
THINGS WE HEAR * The Grammys got their second highest ratings ever, with 39 million American viewers tuning in – but organisers were getting pissed on from a great height regardless. First a petition with 23,000 signatures was delivered to their offices protesting their dropping of 31 music categories. Then there was the backlash over their invitation to Chris Brown to perform, after his 2009 bashing of thengirlfriend Rihanna. And they also had to contend with the Catholic League getting pissed off with the use of Catholic symbols in Nicki Minaj’s performance. Minaj arrived wearing a red Versace nun’s habit, accompanied by an old man dressed as the Pope. * JB Hi-Fi will start selling musical instruments in some of its stores. * Tim Freedman may win his quest to use his property in Broken Head for 18 functions a year, with up to 70 guests. Last November Byron council said no, citing noise and insufficient parking spaces on the property. Freedman reduced the functions to 14, and promised to stop all events by 9pm and use only acoustic entertainment. The council has voted for the application to be reconsidered. Some residents plan to take the matter to the Land and Environment Court.
RECLINK COMMUNITY CUP PREPS SYDNEY DEBUT The Reclink Community Cup’s Sydney debut will see Adam Spencer captain the Sydney Sailors and Dan Sultan leading the Western Walers. The Sailors are made up of music industry execs, and will adopt the red and white colours of the Melbourne team of radio stations 3PBS and Triple R. The Walers will don the colours of Melbourne’s Espy Rockdogs of red, yellow and black. The game is sponsored by Promotions 8, who donated the uniforms for the two teams. It is being held on Sunday March 18 at Henson Park in Marrickville, and bands are playing. Anyone wanting to volunteer can contact Prue on 03 94196672 or email volunteers@reclink.org. Musos and radio names interested in playing, contact Kim from Rockstar Management at kim@rockstar.net.au
RADIO WINS OVER BIZ ON STREAMING The Federal Court has ruled that commercial radio stations do not have to pay extra to record companies when they stream music, because it’s already covered by existing licence arrangements for traditional broadcasts. Recording labels will appeal, arguing the decision was made on a technicality.
DELTA SIGNS WITH RIHANNA'S EX-MANAGER On the eve of the release of her new album, Delta Goodrem signed management with Marc Jordan, of New York-based Rebel One. He launched Rihanna’s career. Goodrem was with ex-Sony Music exec Jo Grogan.
HOUSTON HAS TAKE-OFF Despite Apple and Sony’s shameless price hike on Whitney: The Greatest Hits, the album stormed back into the US charts at #6 after selling 64,000 copies in the first 24 hours after the singer’s death. Also returning to the charts were her 1986 debut Whitney Houston
* Liv Tyler recorded a cover of INXS’s ‘Need You Tonight’ as part of her campaign for the Givenchy Electric Rose scent. * Queensland’s country fest Gympie Muster is setting up its own chapel in case fans want to get married, renew vows or have their babies named. * On the eve of their US tour next month, Sydney’s sleepmakeswaves’ self-titled EP entered the CMJ Top 200. In the meantime, Thundamentals’ Foreverlution was the most added hip hop album on US college radio. * Adele reckons reports about her giving up music for five years are a load of horse pellets. She’s heading back into the studio this week. Meantime, research by Musicmetric showed Adele was probably the most illegally downloaded artist in the UK in 2011. But she still managed to sell a further 500,000 copies of 21 in America after her six Grammy wins. * Is there a link? New statistics prove that Australian country music capital Tamworth is also the gun capital of NSW. There are 2963 licensed gun owners in Tamworth, and almost 6000 in the neighbouring regions. * The building of the old Jolly Rogers nightclub in Newcastle is to be demolished, with apartments put up in its place. Once a groovy hang-out, the deserted place has been vandalised and set on fire in parts.
at #72, The Bodyguard soundtrack at #80, her last studio album I Look To You at #118, 1987’s Whitney at #122 and The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack at #183. Her signature tune ‘I Will Always Love You’ was the top seller on iTunes a day later, while 42 of her songs were on iTunes’ Top 200. Houston sold a combined 887,000 downloads in the first week, and her estate is expected to make $10 million in the next 12 months. In related news, the producers of The Bodyguard sequel said filming would continue. Meantime, poet and activist Kola Boof revealed that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had the hots for Whitney, and spoke of going to America to meet her and hopefully get married to her.
GOTYE’S VIDEO DIRECTOR FINDS GLOBAL FAME The international success of Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ (which this week had clocked over 70 million views on YouTube) has also opened the doors for its video director. Melbourne-based director, award-winning playwright and screenwriter Natasha Pincus came up with the idea for the video, and also directed and produced it. Pincus has been invited to screen the clip at next month’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, which she hopes will open more global opportunities for her. Pincus had previously shot music videos for Paul Kelly, Powderfinger, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson, End Of Fashion, Lior, Pete Murray and Sarah Blasko. She is currently developing a number of feature movies with Australian directors including John Maynard, Bridget Ikin and Kasimir Burgess.
VALE CLIVE SHAKESPEARE Guitarist and producer Clive Shakespeare died last week after a lengthy battle with
David Lee Roth
cancer. He was 62. Born in the UK on June 3 1949, he co-founded Sherbet in 1969. After an eight-month, four-nights-a-week residency at Jonathan’s Disco in Sydney, the band developed into a formidable live force. Shakespeare and keyboard player Garth Porter wrote hits like ‘Summer Love’, ‘Cassandra’, ‘You’ve Got The Gun’, ‘Slipstream’ and ‘Silvery Moon’. Manager Roger Davies (who now looks after Pink and Tina Turner) aimed them at the teen market. They were the first Australian band to have their own merchandising division, and widened their following with mammoth regional tours. By the mid-‘70s, Sherbet were the country’s biggest pop band. In 1975, Shakespeare’s disenchantment with the pop image saw him being ousted and replaced by the late Harvey James, just before things went into overdrive with ‘Howzat!’. Shakespeare went on to produce records for Paul Kelly, South Coast roots/surf band Penny & The Mystics and Carol Lloyd. He rejoined Sherbet for the Countdown Spectacular tour in 2006, playing alongside James. There were plans for him to join them again at a benefit for Harvey James but he was too ill. He leaves a wife, Elizabeth, and daughters Coco and Tori.
DIAL INTO COMMUNITY RADIO A new app for mobile devices dedicated to community radio called DIAL allows listeners to select stations based on location and genre, and interact with stations through social media platforms.
ANNANDALE BINS THE ‘FOR SALE’ SIGN The Annandale Hotel is this week taking down the For Sale sign. Owners Matt and Dan Rule figure that the early response to the venue’s Buy a Brick campaign is a strong sign of confidence; renovations begin in a few months, starting with toilets and a band room. This week is going to be hectic at the venue. Rather than just marking National SLAM Day with a Thursday show (Papa Vs Pretty, Cabins, Palms), it’s celebrating with two more free nights — on Friday with Fait Accompli, Raise the Crazy, Devine Electric, Blackie of Hard Ons, and Saturday with The Fauves, Little Lovers, Tom Ugly, March Of The Real Fly and Jack Carty. During the SLAM celebrations, bricks will be for sale, with inscribed plaques being mounted on the building in exchange for funds. The Rule brothers will shout beers for the 150 patrons who’ve already bought bricks.
GREY GHOST AT EMI
Lifelines Dating: Lana Del Rey and Barrie James O’Neil, of Scottish band Kassidy. Dating: British rapper Professor Green and Millie Mackintosh, from reality show Made In Chelsea based in the posh London suburb. Born: Daughter for Pete Doherty and South African model Lindi Hingston, whom he had a short fling with. He has been unable to travel to South Africa to see the kid as he’s currently on bail for cocaine possession. Split: US hip hop mogul Russell Simmons and Australian actress Melissa George, citing their inability to keep a long distance relationship going. Recovering: Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb told an audience that he has almost got rid of his colon cancer. Died: US film composer Dory Previn Shannon (Valley Of The Dolls, Last Tango In Paris, Pepe), 86, from natural causes. Died: ABC Radio Sydney executive Russell Stendell, from cancer. Starting out at Double J in 1976, as head of radio development and head of ABC Radio’s technology and digital radio planning, he played an integral role in its development. He was also a great supporter of the Sydney Film Festival.
MODULAR INKS KINDNESS Modular’s latest signing is British buzz act Kindness, aka Adam Bainbridge. His debut album World, You Need A Change Of Mind merges leftfield disco, urban funk, pop and ‘80s R&B, and was produced with Phillipe Zdar in Paris.
INERTIA TO DISTRIBUTE SYDNEY'S RICE IS NICE
EMI Music Australia signed Melbourne’s Grey Ghost, releasing their self-titled EP and single ‘Space Ambassador’. Formerly with beat experimentalists The Melodics when he was Jeremedy, he became Grey Ghost after the band split last year. He began collaborating with producers Jan Skubiszewski and Matik, plus a production team including Forrester Savell and Scott Horscroft.
Inertia will distribute Sydney label Rice Is Nice through Australia and New Zealand. The first two releases under the new deal are singles by Shady Lane (‘Dumb Hope’) and Richard In Your Mind (‘She Took The Sun Away’), which are both being given away on their respective Facebook pages. Rice Is Nice is distributed in other territories through USA’s Red Eye and the UK’s State 51.
SAM SPARRO AT EMI
MYSPACE USERS HIT 25 MILLION
After a lengthy silence, Sam Sparro is returning to the spotlight and has signed to EMI Music Australia. His album Return To Paradise revisits ‘40s fashion fused with ‘70s groove and ‘80s dance. Leading single ‘The Shallow End’ is about the predicted end of the world this year – and why we should dance about it ...
VAN HALEN EXPLAINS THOSE BROWN M&MS
MySpace told Billboard magazine that it now has 25 million registered users. It got one million alone after introducing a new music player last December, which had a catalogue of 42 million songs and came with a smart recommendation engine and easy integration with Facebook.
Brown M&M (center)
Van Halen’s impending return to the road has revived talk of the infamous ‘80s demand in their backstage rider that promoters provide them with M&Ms, with all the brown ones taken out. If a brown one was spotted, the band would smash up the dressing room. But singer David Lee Roth explains it was more than just rock star excess. In those days, he says, Van Halen carried a massive production, which needed careful structural and electrical amendments before the show. To ensure that the promoter had read through the extensive demands, they slipped in the brown M&M clause halfway through the list. It was important to get production requirements right, Roth adds, because it affected the safety of their roadies. One time, in New Mexico, the stage slipped six inches from the six-ton production, causing $374,000 worth of damage.
“Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men” - CORIOLANUS 18 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
Martini café during the day. Martini bar during the night.
Sandringham Hotel 387 King St Newtown 9557 1254 MON
20 FEB
TUE
21 FEB
MARTINI CAFE+BAR 529A KING STREET NEWTOWN
WED
22 FEB
MAIN STAGE STREET LEVEL MAIN STAGE STREET LEVEL
Funky as F#ck
CHILL STAGE
Upside Down Miss Jane + Anatta + Furry Lips + L.G.T.
$10 8:00pm
STREET LEVEL
Paul Hayward’s Punk Rock Karaoke Band + $3 SCHOONERS OF SANDO LAGER
FREE 8:00pm
Sando Sketch Club Life Drawing
FREE 7:00pm
Unherd Open Mic “The Songwriter Sessions” Adam Pringle and Friends
FREE 8:00pm FREE 7:30pm
+ TOOHEYS $6 NEW JUGS (7-8PM)
FREE 8:00pm
“Cool Runnings with The Bashment Crew” THU
23
CHILL STAGE
FEB
STREET LEVEL
Roots’n’Reggae, Dancehall, Soca, Dub, Jungle and Polynesian mix featuring Selector Secretary, DJ One Love, Miss Katie and special guests….
MC/DJ Ibo Jah, Selector Melody Man and The Melody Makers
$10 8:00pm FREE 8:00pm
Johnathan Devoy + special guests “Zombie Dog presents”
FRI
South King Sessions Wednesday 22nd The Hungry Trio
24
Drill + Zeahorse + Toydeath
$15 8:00pm
STREET LEVEL
B-Massive
FREE 8:00pm
MAIN STAGE
The DC3 + Root! + special guests
$15 / $20 8:00pm
STREET LEVEL
Dave Tice and Mark Evans 4pm-7pm
FREE 4:00pm
MAIN STAGE
+ Manic Sleeper Cell
FEB
S AT
25 FEB
Friday 24th Gabby Dever Saturday 25th ILUKA Sunday 26th Amanda Lindholm and Adam Fitzgerald
“I-94 Bar presents” SUN
26
CHILL STAGE
Deniz Tek Group (one off show)
$10 7:00pm
+ Intercontinental Playboys + Men From UNCLE
FEB
02 9519 9869 WWW.MARTINICAFE.COM.AU
DJ Kaki 8pm-late
STREET LEVEL
50 Million Beers
FREE 4:00pm BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 19
PLAYING AT
or those who’ve heard it, the name Marilyn Manson is synonymous with a brand of insidious, anger-fuelled glam metal, and a musical output geared to incite the deconstruction of such pillars of modern American society as Christianity, conformity and an obsession with violence. His tours in the late 1990s and early 2000s were explosive affairs, typically picketed and protested by conservative political and religious groups, climaxing with the blame assigned to him for the role his music (arguably) played in the Columbine tragedy of 1999. Compounding all this moral outrage was the fact that the conservative backlash only seemed to make him more successful. Yet the age in which an artist is able to shock based purely on live performances, stage costumes and lyrical content has long since passed and, thanks to the rise of the internet, Manson’s outlandish approach has been superseded by millions of citizens willing to say or do anything for 15 minutes of fame. Now with his eighth full-length record Born Villain on the way (the first not being released through major label imprint Interscope) Manson finds himself at a crossroads: is his shock-filled approach still relevant? And if not, what’s to become of Marilyn Manson? “A lot of times, a large portion of people – especially in America – aren’t interested in finding something deeper. Sure, sometimes I like the jingle on the commercial, but at
the end of the day, when you go to sleep, you’re locked in a moment when you remember certain images, songs, smells and sounds that stay with you forever,” says the remarkably chatty Manson from his Los Angeles home, which doubles as the studio where he laid much of the groundwork for Born Villain. “And that’s what allows me to have an attitude where I can objectify the fact that people treat what I made as a product, but not get mad and take it personally. I can treat it not as a product, but as something that comes from me. I can still be happy about making it. And I also know how to adapt to what I believe is a great new environment. A lot of people have never heard my music; I would never walk into a room or a situation and have the arrogance – or, actually, the ignorance – to assume that they know what I’ve done before. I want to play them [Born Villain] just as I would my first record, and have them like it for the same reason.” As the oft-reclusive 43-year-old speaks, he sheds the thick exterior he’s presented in the past. He is open when discussing not only his fears about his place in the world, but how he might overcome them. “I was struggling very hard to figure out where I would fit in this changing world – [as] someone that’s against everything and then suddenly, they’re a part of everything. And in that Warhol, Salvador Dali sense, I was just trying to make it out alive.” What Manson chose to do was get back to basics. “I can’t
say it was simple, but it was important to go back and give myself no other options. Limitations are a very strong thing for artists to have. I moved into a place and started painting, and only gave myself one colour: black, with white paper. We started making this record, and made it with the limitations of immediacy and urgency. It wasn’t so much improvisation as it was figuring out that when you only have a pencil and a guitar or a drumstick it’s almost reinventing the wheel. And I like limitations. They work for me. It worked for me back when I didn’t even have any songs, and I could only draw.” In 2012, Manson sees himself less as a crusader for a cause and more as an artist, born Brian Hugh Warner, who has finally gotten back in touch with what pushed him to start creating music under the Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids moniker over 20 years ago. “Over the past few albums, it didn’t start to become less passionate, but [it became] less fun for me. Art was always the thing that brought some fulfilment to me. And it had started to slip away.” With Born Villain, Manson has regained control of what he lost. He took his time, refused to rush the process and allowed his newfound creativity to take him wherever it could. The making of the album, which was jointly released on Manson’s own label Hell, etc. Records and Cooking Vinyl Records, was also an opportunity for him to look back on his time spent at a major label’s beck and call. (And amidst all of these changes to the man and his career, it’s refreshing to know that he never lost the ability to paint a vivid picture with trademark Manson wit…) “Here’s a profane reference, or metaphor: you’re having oral sex with a woman and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Wow, this is wonderful!’ and you just want to keep doing it – but then
you think to yourself, ‘Wait, people have also told me that mustard is great,’ so you put mustard on it just to change it, and keep going. These labels, they love something but then they want to try something different because everyone’s telling them something else to do. They get afraid of just loving something, just because. It’s not the artist, they think – it’s the formula. But people identify with stuff that really hits them.” It’s Manson’s hope that Born Villain will indeed hit fans, without the mustard. While he’s ready to acknowledge his past, he’s more content to move forward; shocking those around him is not a concern for him, and he doubts it ever was. Turns out Manson, with his ongoing fight to be honest, may be more relevant now than ever. “Whatever I’ve done, it’s certainly led us to this conversation. I’ve always said that I can’t possibly be shocking – and believe it or not, I said that when I started out. What you can be is confusing, and interesting. It’s a form of communication. And all that added to the determination of making this record. I think this will be considered the best Marilyn Manson record. It’s the most true to how I wanted it to be.” What: Born Villain will be out in May, on Hell, etc. and Cooking Vinyl With: System Of A Down, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, A Day To Remember, Bush, Machine Head, Bad Religion, The Used, Dillinger Escape Plan, Steel Panther and loads more Where: Soundwave @ Sydney Showground When: Sunday February 26 Sidewave: Wednesday February 29 @ The Enmore Theatre, with Coal Chamber, Wednesday 13 and Motionless In White
“What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues, that, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, make yourselves scabs?” - CORIOLANUS 20 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 21
Dashboard Confessional
PLAYING AT
Cautionary Tales By Joshua Kloke
T
he man behind the acoustically-inclined emotive act Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba, recently reached a plateau in the band’s existence: their ten-year anniversary. When asked if he ever expected to be where he’s at now, he answers with a forthrightness that became something of a theme throughout our conversation. “I’ve definitely exceeded my original expectations for the band, 100 times over,” he tells me from his home outside of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. “I adjusted that vision when I realised that this thing of mine could possibly be a success – that there was a possibility that I had the opportunity to make this my life. That’s a grand goal, but I looked at it in a very pragmatic way. Treating the opportunity with the respect it deserved and not blowing through it in a fit of self-importance. And because of that, I picked my spots as well. I’ve been grateful every step of the way. So far, I’m right where I hoped I’d be, but not where I expected I’d be.” But although he’s pleased with how his career has turned out, Carrabba is careful not to get too comfortable. “It has been a while since I’ve put out a record. There’s always that artistic frustration that you’re resting on your laurels. I certainly don’t want to be trading in my old stock.” What started with Swiss Army Romance, Carraba’s debut with Dashboard Confessional, has evolved into a career that spans six fulllengths and five EPs. Yet it was Swiss Army Romance which established his beguiling acoustic push as something of a cult favourite – and when it came time to celebrate the tenyear anniversary of the record, the 36-year-old admits he was a little taken aback. “I don’t ever get away from what I’ve done; I’m still having the career that I started. I certainly don’t look at it from a nostalgic point of view, although that may be a factor in the listener’s experience. But to me, these songs I write, they’ve been my life every day – certainly professionally. So I didn’t look at it in terms of a celebration,” he says. “The year running up to the anniversary, people kept asking me what I was going to do, and it didn’t occur to me to celebrate it beyond something personal. You know, maybe just go out to dinner.” Carrabba eventually re-released the record with hand-written lyrics, amongst other additions aimed at Dashboard’s legions of fans. “When I see that kind of thing from Morrissey or something, I get excited,” he says. “But still, I’m always moving forward. I don’t love looking
Meshuggah
PLAYING AT
Destroy. Erase. Improve. By Tom Hersey
M backwards for anything other than… cautionary tales,” he says with a chuckle. “You get in trouble when you look backwards and celebrate yourself too much.” Yet if anyone were justified in celebrating their work, it would be Carrabba. His songs swing to the emotional side of the fence, forgoing powerful cerebral trips for connections that he hopes will stay permanent. “A knock on me, maybe justified, is that the songs are too sad. They’re for sad people, but I don’t think they’re for people to be sad. I think they’re there to bring people out of sadness. At least, that’s the purpose they’ve served in my life,” he says. “For me, the songwriting process is very reactionary. You’re chasing or reacting to new things happening around you. And anytime I’ve stopped in that process to consider changing a line or something, because I feel like that’s the kind of thing people might like … and they’ll be able to relate to, I’ve really missed the mark,” he says. “I guess I’m not interested in being cool. I’d rather be connected to people.” Soundwave: 5pm @ 3 Annex stage Sidewave: Monday February 27 @ Manning Bar, Sydney University, with Jack’s Mannequin and Relient K, 18+ only
eshuggah played a major role in shaping the sound of technical extreme music. Their 1995 record Destroy Erase Improve would go on to serve as the blueprint for modern technical metal – and although there’s a whole scene of musicians still infatuated with that particular record, it was 17 years ago for Mårten Hagström and the rest of the Swedish band. In 2012, with their seventh studio record, Koloss, Meshuggah are trying to distance themselves from the scene they helped create. “Normally when people listen to us their immediate reaction is, ‘Oh, this is really strange and really technical’ and so forth – and that technical aspect is something that we haven’t really liked. It’s not why we make music,” Hagström explains. “The expression is supposed to be cool and different – it doesn’t really matter if it’s supposed to be weird or hard to play. And this time, it’s a bit more subtle.” Though Meshuggah may be ceasing the ties with some of their earlier material, Hagström posits that the band still live by the creed set out in the title of their landmark 1995 record. Koloss is another shining example of the band’s aptitude at destroying, erasing and improving on what’s they’ve done previously. Since their 2008 release ObZen, the ‘djent’ scene has risen to prominence in the extreme music landscape, and though Meshuggah reign as the undisputed kings of the scene, playing technical death metal now doesn’t seem as unique or interesting when done so amongst a sea of lesser imitators. So instead of writing in the same style of blisteringly technical albums like 2002’s Nothing and 2005’s Catch Thirtythree, Meshuggah went back to the drawing board to craft a record that could be more interesting and better utilise
some of the subtleties the band hinted at on ObZen. Because for Hagström and his crew, who are adept at writing technical riffs in bizarre time signatures, writing music that could be both subtle and extreme was the best test of their abilities. “This is maybe a record that you listen to and think, ‘Oh, this is quiet straightforward’ – but then you listen to it [more] and you go into the detail and you come to realise it’s actually the opposite.” I suggest to Mårten that the subtleties of the Koloss material are going to make the live shows very interesting and he agrees, before explaining how Meshuggah have always had an uphill battle when it comes time to introduce their records in a live context. “It will be funny to see how this record is received by fans when we start to play it live. In retrospect, since ObZen came out, people have been saying how that album did really well and sold really well and people tend to think of it as a really good album, and that’s cool. But when it had just come out, a lot of fans were disappointed – and now I don’t hear that anywhere. Just a few months after its release there were a lot of disappointed people – and that’s something that’s always happened with our albums. “To an extent, I think it’s a good thing – to do something that people that have to adjust to, instead of giving them something where they can say, ‘Oh, that’s exactly what I was expecting and exactly what I wanted’. That’s never what we’ve stood for. We’ve always tried to mess with people a little bit.” What: Koloss is out on March 31, through Riot Act Soundwave: 2.30pm @ Stage 4A Sidewave: Tuesday February 28 @ The Factory Theatre, with Devin Townshend Project, lic. all-ages
Cathedral
PLAYING AT
Last Rites By Tom Hersey
A
plans for one last studio album. When we talk, he and founding guitarist Gary Jennings are working with bassist Scott Carlson and drummer Brian Dixon, writing songs for The Last Spire. It’s material that Dorrian expects to serve as a poetic punctuation to the band’s career. “I think it would be nice to round this band off as we started it, just doing a record for ourselves, with no pressures or commitments from record labels. We’re kind of in control of how this record will sound, just as we were with the first record.”
fter 20 plus years, doom metal legends Cathedral are calling it a day. “This will be our last stand. And the very, very last one will be in Perth… of all places,” vocalist Lee Dorrian chuckles. It’s certainly hard to fathom. Having burst onto the international metal scene with their 1991 debut Forest Of Equilibrium, and going on to continually redefine the doom and stoner metal genres, England’s Cathedral are planning to end their storied career by saying goodbye to the live arena with a performance in Perth. As Dorrian explains, the band were booked onto last year’s ill-fated Soundwave Revolution tour and then asked to play this year’s Soundwave, eclipsing what was supposed to be the band’s final show in London late last year. “We have been thinking about this for quite some years really,” Dorrian explains. “It’s not like we just don’t give a shit and want it to all end. That’s just not the case. It’s taken half of our lifetimes to get to this point, so it’s only when the band is over that I think I’ll be able to sit back and reflect on what we’ve done. I know that we’ve done enough. The last album we do will be our tenth studio album after 22 years – it’s a long time, by anybody’s standards. And we have fought for our music, and done everything we can to make our records the best they could be. And that we have been fighting after all these years made the band
“We’ve got six or seven songs together,” he continues, “but they still need a lot of finetuning, really. The plan is that once we get back from Oz we’ll head into the rehearsal room and work on the songs, before recording them in April. Then hopefully the album, which will have lots of slow doom, mid-paced heaviness and progressive songs, will be out by September or October.”
think, why should we still be fighting? Let’s just go out with a bang and enjoy the high. “We don’t want to be sitting here five years down the line just churning out records and not putting as much into live [performances],” he continues. “The fact is we’re very happy about
where we are as a band, the records we’ve made and our live show. We’ve had a good innings so it’s just time to bow out gracefully.” Although they won’t take to any more stages, this Soundwave tour isn’t quite the end of Cathedral. Before the band retires, Dorrian has
When Dorrian discusses the legacy and life of Cathedral, he says he has “mixed emotions” about ending the band – but ultimately, he feels that he’ll always “look back with a lot of fondness.” What: The Last Spire is due out later this year Soundwave: 5.20pm @ Stage 7 Sidewave: Wednesday February 29 @ The Factory, w/ Paradise Lost and Turisas, lic. all-ages
“As the dead carcases of unburied men / That do corrupt my air, I banish you.” - CORIOLANUS 22 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
Lamb Of God PLAYING AT
Still Hungry By Oscar Schiesser
“‘Where do we go from here?’ That’s a very daunting question,” drummer Chris Adler answers. “Coming out of Wrath we all weren’t sure that we could do another record. Not physically, [although] obviously we’re not getting any younger, but it felt like we had really achieved what we wanted to achieve as a band. So, how do we beat that? How do we get the hunger – the edge – to stay relevant? It’s obviously at a point where we could just kind of rest, and just do what everybody expects us to do. But that’s the last thing I want to do. There is no way we could leave the legacy of the band at the last album being all weird. We can’t do that shit. We have to stay true to it or let it go, and that’s a hard thing for a band – or anybody with a career – to really stomach.” With a steadily growing fan base, it was always going to be a matter of time before LOG stopped being that band with the new sound, and took their place as flag-bearers of a scene. But with new blood constantly entering the music world, how can an established group hope to remain relevant? “It’s brutal, you know, but the music industry is very cut throat. Especially in metal – there’s a new band every four minutes and they write the stuff the kids want to hear much better than the old guys do. So we know where we’re at, we know the place we kind of created in the scene, we know the impact that we have had on a lot of young bands,” Adler says. “But we don’t want to stop – our evolution is continuing. There will never be another Metallica; in this age; with the technology and the attention spans, it’s just not possible. Bands like ourselves, Machine Head, Slipknot, we’ve kind of created this second tier level behind them that makes sense with the technology of today, and how far you can get. We embrace and appreciate that and realise how far we’ve come to be able to be a part of that, but also, it makes us very much a target. We’re not that underground cool band anymore. It’s hard to root for us, you know? We really have to fucking prove it. Especially now, putting out our seventh record, we’re very easily dismissed by the new heavy metal fan of being the good old guys. ‘Ah you know, they’ve made their money – let’s support this unheard-of Norwegian black metal band’. We know that and it adds to the pressure,” he continues. “How do we continue to prove our relevance and our credibility in the scene?” It seems that LOG have reached a point where
“The music industry is very cut throat. Especially in metal – there’s a new band every four minutes and they write the stuff the kids want to hear much better than the old guys... But we don’t want to stop.”
bit more free,” he says. “But then again, in the back of our heads, you can feel as free as you want but it’s got to fucking kick the last album’s arse or else you have to stop; [we] can’t put out something that is any less in any way to the last record or we start to become a nostalgia act.” After both hearing the album and talking with Chris, it is obvious LOG have a goal to surpass what has come before. “Name one band that you can say their seventh record is your favourite. None. There’s none. So for us that was in the back of our head the whole time, like, ‘How do we make this record as important as our first or second or third record?’” he says. “We’re not in this for money – it’s never been about money. We love the music that we make, we love being a part of this scene, we love contributing to the future of music and heavy music, and it’s an honour to be in the spot that we are. We don’t take it for granted.” Soundwave: 6.10pm @ Stage 4B Sidewave: Thursday March 1 @ UC Refractory, Canberra, with In Flames and The Black Dahlia Murder, lic. all-ages
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ver since their early days as Burn The Priest, Lamb Of God have employed a no-bullshit attitude to ensure each album released has been a progression from its predecessor. They trumped the now classic Ashes Of The Wake with the release of Sacrament, winning both a Grammy nomination and a horde of new fans. Having set the bar high, they met the challenge with the organic and raw Wrath – scoring two Grammy nominations, and cementing themselves as a cornerstone of modern heavy music. But when a band have ascended at such a consistent rate, how long can it last?
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they aren’t on the same level as big acts like Slayer or Metallica, but are also not still on the rise to power, like Trivium or Mastodon. It’s a point in a career that sometimes spawns nostalgic albums, but one listen to Resolution underlines LOG’s intent. Vastly different to any previous record, it still retains the distinct LOG characteristics. It is the sound of a band pushing their limits, and Chris is adamant to keep pushing for as long as possible. “I think every album has somewhat been a reaction to the album before it. With Ashes, we felt like it was a great album but it was missing some production quality, so we beefed up production quality for Sacrament. Then after Sacrament we felt like we beefed them up too much, so we stripped it back for Wrath and tried to make this nasty and raw-sounding album. We all felt like we had accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, so now we can really spread our wings a little bit … Now we felt a BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 23
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing By Oliver Downes
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hile the abundance of collaborations and side-projects he’s been involved with over the last twenty years may suggest otherwise, there’s a peculiar consistency to the work of Will Oldham. Usually filed under altcountry (though Southern Gothic would be nearer the mark), Oldham’s music – whether recorded as Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Will Oldham or his most enduring moniker, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – tends to induce and reward the kind of quietly intensive listening associated with the wee small hours, when the moon’s slunk away for the night and options have been winnowed down to sleep or contemplation of the dark. Indeed, Oldham has developed a reputation – not entirely undeserved – for sounding a little down. His first record as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (and sixth overall) was the appropriately titled I See A Darkness (1999), a searingly bleak meditation on love, death and existential dread. Though it is the album that sporadically (and rightly) finds its way onto Top 100 lists, with subsequent releases such as The Letting Go (2006) or the sublime Lie Down In The Light (2008), Oldham has developed a distinctive musical idiom that seems to blend a modern view with an almost nineteenth-century sensibility. An occasional actor, he was given a leading part in John Sayles’ Matewan (1987) as well as landing bit roles in everything from Junebug (2005) to R. Kelly’s Trapped In The Closet (2007) and Jackass 3D (2010), and even appeared in the video for Kanye West’s ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ – although one can’t help but feel that a cameo in Deadwood would have been more appropriate... Speaking from his home in Louisville, Kentucky amidst preparations for his upcoming tours – “tidying up loose ends and cutting them off so that they don’t get infected,” as he puts it – Oldham is both courteous and eloquent, very much the Dr Jekyll to the Mr Hyde of his persona (although, as he elaborates, the distinction is at times far from clear). “When I was a kid I always found myself quite compelled by the Beauty And The Beast story,” he says. “I feel like when I’m not fully participatory in my music – that is, when I’m not writing or recording or performing on a regular basis – my spirit gets divided very sharply into the decent and tolerable and tolerant human, and the indecent and intolerable and intolerant and unpredictable and potentially despicable beastly nature. They vie for time. When I can be in the music, I feel those two opposing forces become one; they become one in the shape of this Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, and it’s a great relief. It’s like when you hold two magnets with the same charge against each other and try to push them together and they just won’t go... then you flip one and it’s the opposing charge and they click right together. That’s how it seems to me.” The search for the perfect counterpart is one that seems to have preoccupied Oldham through his career. Though he has frequently collaborated with a range of different artists (including Tortoise, longtime friend Matt Sweeney as well as The Cairo Gang), of note is his propensity to invite female singers to contribute to his own 24 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
“My spirit gets divided very sharply into the decent and tolerant human, and the indecent and intolerant and potentially despicable beastly nature...” records, artists such as Scout Niblett (Kiss EP), Faun Fables’ Dawn McCarthy (The Letting Go) or Angel Olsen on last year’s Wolfroy Goes To Town, who provide a counterpoint to Oldham’s own gruffly tremulous quaver. As he sings on the opener of this most recent record, “You will be a match for me / I will be a match for you”. “Music is about collaboration and community,” he explains, “and the greatest manifestation of collaboration and community for a singer is to sing with another person, [be it] in a song written as a duet, or harmonically where the voices are bang up against each other. So it’s [about] looking for someone with whom I feel my voice can have an exciting interplay, either on an ideas level or sonically or both ... Musically, it’s like: that’s what’s missing from my voice. When I sing, it’s incomplete,” he continues, “but when these two voices are there, oh, it’s the complete being that I would like to be musically. If there were a body that was the sound of these two voices singing together, that would be my ideal body.” Perhaps it’s this sense of yearning that creeps into Oldham’s music which has continued to transfix listeners, his voice seeming to carry a frailty made the more consoling by the crackles that colour his precise enunciation. Now 42, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that Oldham will continue to raise a joining of voices against the darkness for another twenty years – though his reasons for continuing to tour are more refreshingly straightforward: “Money.” “We don’t have a very strong government arts support over here,” he chuckles. “We are the people, so we provide our own arts support by soliciting funds from a paying audience, and that’s potentially as it should be ... There are so many great things about playing shows and travelling, but emotional stability is not one of them. Ten years ago, six years ago I thought, ‘Some day I’ll stop travelling.’ The way that record sales go, that seems unlikely ... It’s frustrating because I don’t know how long my body will hold out, but it’s great playing,” he says. “There’s something really phenomenal about all this shit on the computer, on YouTube and everything – if anything, it seems to strengthen the energy and the needs of the live audience. I don’t know how that equation works, but that’s what I’ve observed ... My life is remarkably full of good things.” What: Wolfroy Goes To Town is out now Where: Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall When: Monday March 5
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE PRESENTS
THE COMPOSERS
‘O U R G R EATE ST LIVI NG COM POSER’ TH T THE HE N NE EW YO YOR RK K TIIM MES S
A:
STEVE REICH A CELEBRATION WITH SYNERGY PERCUSSION AND EIGHTH BLACKBIRD INCLUDING MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS FEATURING: /ENSEMBLE OFFSPRING /HALCYON /ACO EMERGING ARTISTS /ORAVA STRING QUARTET /SYDNEY SYMPHONY SINFONIA QUARTET /CONDUCTOR: ROLAND PEELMAN 29 APRIL 6PM CONCERT HALL
B:
ST E V E R E I C H I N C O NVE R SATI O N
IMA M GE E BY SI SILVI LV LVI V A M OG OGN G I GN
REICH DISCUSSES THE TECHNIQUES, INFLUENCES, AND IMPLICATIONS OF HIS WORKS 26 APRIL 6.30PM UTZON ROOM
JOIN US ON FACEBOOK ‘MUSIC AT THE HOUSE’ FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN 1 OF 3 DOUBLE PASSES TO BON IVER
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Made In Japan Ready To Go By Bridie Connellan
Six years after their inception, MIJ’s muchanticipated debut record sees the foursome team up once more with producer Paul ‘Woody’ Annison (Red Riders, Children Collide, Black Cab) at Red Door Sounds in Collingwood. After leading the way on their breakthrough single ‘Oxford Décor’, in 2009, Annison was the perfect mentor for a full-length. “[2009] was the first time we had worked with a producer, so we didn’t really know what they did,” laughs Cooney. “We were very keen to work with [Woody] when we got around to doing the album and, well, if there’s one thing you can rely on him to do it’s to be honest with you. It’s nice to hear, ‘Look, you guys are carrying on a bit…’” But Annison merely helped the lads achieve something that was already underway, as
“We actually recorded the whole lot in two days, live to tape,” Cooney says. “The bass, the drums and the main two guitars without the vocals were all done straight to tape, so what you’re actually hearing is us playing for real; it’s not chopped up layer-upon-layer of studio trickery. I guess it kind of lends itself to the artwork, because it’s quite a stripped-back, natural process.” ‘Natural’ is MIJ’s forte, visually and musically. With the artwork for Sights And Sounds depicting a menacing apricot, grey and rosecream sky, the four continue their trademark appreciation of natural elements, wrapping their music around forests, rocks and adventures. “I guess we’re doing our best to kind of conceptualise the music, especially with this record,” says Cooney. “I think our music is elegant and atmospheric, so something like a flower, and the natural elements of that flower, sums it up quite well. In the photograph [on the ‘Sights And Sounds’ single cover], the flower was sprayed with a blast of liquid nitrogen, and the petals are flying across the side. That natural raw beauty kind of summed up Made In Japan, because we’re not trying to be really tough and hard and horrible. We’re just trying to make something beautiful.” What: Sights And Sounds is out through MGM Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Saturday February 25
Field Music
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Made In Japan are one of those bands who’ve, quite simply, stuck at it. After meeting at a high school bash around 2006, Cooney and guitarist Jono Graham found their tastes quite the musical bromance, and the jams kept coming when they added Tom Davis and Andrew Knox. Their taut brand of indie pop saw the release of their first EP in 2009 and a single signing to General Pants Co’s Major Label in 2010, for ‘Pairs’. Meanwhile, tours supporting the likes of Sparkadia and Bluejuice saw them build a hugely supportive local fanbase.
their sound had already begun to take a more focused direction. Previous single ‘Pairs’ took the best parts of Bloc Party, The (new) Horrors and Foals, and smashed them together with sleepmakeswaves-esque tremolo, a new sound Cooney that says “formed the catalyst for the record”. With a maturity in his own vocals, Cooney’s voice has begun to fuse Erlend Øye with Two Door Cinema Club’s Alex Trimble: a rolling, contemplative croon, and the only element recorded individually for the LP.
North-Eastern Exposure By Nils Hay
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s UK four-piece Field Music release their latest album this month, they celebrate not just a shift in direction, but a small triumph over the economic adversity that plagues much of Europe currently. The album – their fourth – was recorded as a direct result of the demise of the rehearsal and studio space they had shared with fellow North-Easterners The Futureheads for a decade. When the space fell victim to the financial downturn, Sunderland-born brothers Peter and David Brewis – the driving force behind Field Music – struck out and built their own studio – and recorded a new record: Plumb. Deliberately ambiguous, the album’s title refers to the plumblines (defined by Macquarie Dictionary as ‘a string to one end of which is attached a metal bob, used to determine perpendicularity’) used by builders during the construction of the new studio. One of a long list of potential titles, the internet dished up the deciding factor, Peter tells me: “When we typed plumb into, I think it might’ve been WikiDictionary, or the thesaurus, one of the first words that came up was ‘measure’ – the title of our last album – and we thought ‘OK. That settles that.” Besides the title, the space itself directly influenced the sound of Plumb. “We were just testing out the drum sounds and guitar sounds in the new studio,” Peter recalls. “We figure that if you’re in a space and it has a certain kind of sound, then try and use it [so] we were trying to figure out how to use the space and make it a part of the music… It was only after we recorded two or three bits of music that we kind of figured, ‘Actually, it sounds like we’re recording a Field Music album here’ – and that’s when the work really started.” Having a new environment also proved to be mentally liberating for the brothers. “I think that one of the things about the new studio is that
we had carte blanche really to experiment with different sounds,” Peter explains. “We didn’t rely on the old formulas that we’d relied on for the last ten years; we had to try different sounds.” The result is a asymmetric pop concoction that makes a distinct departure from 2010’s doublealbum Measure. “[That album] was very long, had lots of songs of conventional form and conventional length,” Peter agrees. “One of the thoughts with Measure was that it shouldn’t necessarily flow from one song to the next; people can take what they want from the two discs.” Plumb, by comparison, contains 15 tracks in just under 37 minutes, and feels both coherent and concise. “I would like to think that the few people in the world who like Field Music would probably like to hear us attempt something different” Peter muses. “I think we find it more fun, and I would like to think that anyone who was interested in Field Music would find it more fun as well.” It’s a decidedly upbeat assessment from the guy who, several years prior, didn’t feel quite up to the task of opening for Snow Patrol, and guided the band into what was meant to be a permanent hiatus. Reflecting on the intervening years, Peter says, “I definitely think the band – the live band – is more confident and comfortable on what it can and can’t do. I’m confident we could play anywhere, and I’m also less worried about what people think and how they perceive us. I think we’ve learned, in the past three or four years, that we decide what Field Music is and we shouldn’t expect anyone else to necessarily understand what we understand about the band.” What: Plumb is out now through Shock
Antiskeptic Back In The Game By James W Nicoli
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hen the punk rock institution that was Melbourne’s Arthouse closed its doors for the last time in 2011, anyone who had ever seen a show there, played in a band there or just got really drunk in the beer garden knew that Melbourne was losing an iconic live music venue. But as one thing ends, there is always a chance for a new beginning – and for much loved late ‘90s rockers Antiskeptic, those last shows at the infamous venue would mark the beginning of a second life. “We did a reunion show in April with Horsell Common at the Arthouse,” remembers guitarist/vocalist Andrew Kitchen. “We were amazed to see the response, and the fact that there were people from every part of Australia at that gig – it was just amazing.” Those final shows at the Arthouse, which brought together bands old and new (and in many cases re-united), proved to be just the thing to get Antiskeptic back on stage again. And according to Kitchen, there was no turning back from there. “The main reason [we reunited] was actually the response from that gig – and I guess I also feel like the band took several years to really find our sound.” Moreover, the last few years during which Antiskeptic were inactive really helped Kitchen realise exactly what the band meant to him. “Being in a band for so long, and then not being in a band, you just very quickly realise just what the band was for you,” he says. “In some ways it was like your social circuit as well – you’d have really good mates in other states around Australia – and then you’re
not in the band anymore and it’s like, ‘When do I see them again?’ So if anything, the three years off has just made me realise what an amazing experience Antiskeptic was – and [now] I get to have however much of that over again … Writing music, recording music and performing music to people really is just such an honour.” Phase two of Antiskeptic has also seen the band unveil a new lineup, expanding to a four-piece with the addition of a second guitarist – and Kitchen can’t contain his excitement at the prospect of rocking out live, just like the old days. “That moment when you walk out on stage – and hopefully people just raise up a big chant,
you know – and the first thing I’ll do is swing the guitar around my back and do a whole massive row of hi-5’s across the front of the stage. It’s just a magic moment, you know? … And we’ve got a few new songs that we’re pretty keen to play for people as well.” In under a year, Antiskeptic has gone from a chance reunion show to their first Australian tour in years. There’s a new lineup, new songs, and what seems like a whole new energy to the band. “Part of the whole experience – in fact most of the experience – of getting over to Adelaide and Sydney in particlar, just for this particular tour, is the travel. We’re not flying; we
are driving in the Tarago all together, so it should be a lot fun,” Kitchen says. “You know, as cheesy as it sounds, half this tour will be about getting that energy, and half of that develops off stage, getting to know each other, having fun driving and talking to each other about books and songs and movies and life and relationships and whatnot. And that’s kind of how I think the band really becomes a unit.” With: Move To Strike, Emperors, The Miracle Is Now Where: The Lair @ Metro Theatre When: Saturday February 25
“Nature teaches beasts to know their friends” - CORIOLANUS 26 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
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or every musician there comes a moment of clarity, a moment of relief, a moment of gratitude and resolution that years of writing, recording, re-writing, re-recording, re-thinking, re-syncing and re-verbing were all worth it in the end. That God Damn Debut Album Is Being Released. Finally. “It’s a massive relief to have the record done,” says James Cooney, vocalist and drummer of Sydney fourpiece Made In Japan, on the cusp of releasing their first LP Sights And Sounds. “We’ve had the album done since August last year and even before that we released [the single] ‘Pairs’. Fuck that was ages ago man, April 2010. It’s nice to have it ready to go.”
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The Holidays Back From The Break By Benjamin Cooper
A
fter winning the Australian Music Prize’s Best Debut Release title in January last year for 2010’s Post Paradise, Sydney fourpiece The Holidays toured for a brief few months – and then went missing in action. Occasional festival appearances were the only balm for their restless fans; according to bassist Alex Kort, after some brief overseas travel the group have been home-based for the last few months. “We haven’t been playing gigs, which I can assure you is getting old-ish, and we’re all feeling the need to get out there on the road again. There’s really only so much internetting you can do in a day before the mind turns to thoughts of music... the good stuff.” In addition to the AMP nod, the group’s debut gathered strong praise from a disparate array of sources. In the midst of taking out a host of awards in the national dailies, the album had the distinction of being heralded by AMP judge, Fairfax critic and former mess+noise editor Craig Mathieson as the first flash of innovation in Australian indie music since The Avalanches’ Since I Left You. The significance of the acclaim, which was supported by high rotations on the national youth broadcaster,
grows greater still when appreciated in the context of the band’s sonic evolution from their initial forays as undergraduates. Forming at the University of Sydney in 2007, the foursome got a start (like so many others) through the uni’s annual band competition, as purveyors of jangleheavy sounds that bear little resemblance to the rich textures of Post Paradise. Kortt admits the band made a conscious decision to change their sound. “We didn’t sit around trying to come up with a new sound for ourselves,” he says. “But we knew that we had to expand our sound, so we had a few reference points and then just started writing. We’ve never really been the kind of band who agonise too much over anything; it always felt much more natural for us that the album be the product of constant work. Doing stuff and being industrious has always been how we function, and when you’re trying to create something different, I think that kind of approach helps. You might not have seen us touring lately, but that’s just because we’ve been getting ready.” The band’s self-imposed exile has been used wisely. “[There] are about ten demos we’ve agreed on with our label, from the 20-plus ideas we’ve been developing.” The new tracks feature “way more guitars than there are on Post Paradise, which is challenging again as a group,” Kortt says, but he has no regrets about the way they approached their debut. “We had been working together for a few years when we did Post Paradise, but the whole process was very much like starting out again. We’d never really used synths in a big way, and then as we learnt more about the process we suddenly had arpeggiators involved, and our drummer was using an MPC for the first time and creating his own samples.” The band produced the album themselves, but were grateful to have Sing Sing Studios’ Tony Espie on mixing duties. “Having Tony was really useful,” Kortt explains, “because it showed us the value of having someone contributing from outside the group. We’re thinking about doing a few songs on the new album with an outside producer this time, because it’s always good to try new processes – and that element of sharing music with others is what it’s all about, right?”
“Being industrious has always been how we function... You might not have seen us touring lately, but that’s just because we’ve been getting ready.” The sharing and caring will be on full display on March 1 at Cabana Bar, where the band will headline the St Leonards venue’s 7th birthday. It will be a homecoming of sorts too; Cabana holds “fond memories, just not very clear ones” for the band. “There have been many fine evenings held at Cabana,” Kortt continues. “We spent a lot of time there, way back when we were all eighteen – it’s been a sufficient amount of time since we last visited there that we’re allowed back now... Seriously though, it’s awesome that they’re putting on this event, and given they don’t always have live music I think it’s going to be an intense party. I just hope they’re ready.” The band are itching to get on the road again, especially after spending the last two weeks in painstakingly fine-tuning all the songs they’ve been engineering. “It’s funny; once you’ve got a sense of the album, there’s this excitement that pushes you to get the songs out there as soon as possible. But then you have to counter that excitement by being patient and spending the time adjusting the artwork and mixing – and account for the few random things that pop up along the way, too.” Last year the band were approached to tour nationally with the Harvest Festival – an opportunity that, as Kortt says, “you obviously don’t say no to. We felt that we needed to do more, to work harder; as we were watching The Flaming Lips we started talking about how we’d been playing the same set for quite a while. Just having that realisation, standing there together, was really the catalyst for us all to start working on new material. To be honest I think we were all starting to feel the need get away from going stir crazy at home prior to summer. Once we’d played Peats Ridge at New Year’s, we just knew it was time.” What: Cabana Bar’s 7th Birthday With: Hey Now DJs, Rogers Room Where: Cabana Bar, St Leonards
XXX
When: Thursday March 1
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Slow Club Hobnobs and Broomsticks By Robbie Miles
A
lmost two years ago to the day, Slow Club stole my last twenty bucks. At Sydney Festival to see Camera Obscura, I was stunned by the opening act who all but blew them off the stage – and unsure if I’d ever be able to find their music again, I almost had to fake a seizure to get through the crowd at the merch stand to grab their first album, 2009’s Yeah, So?. The long, penniless walk home was worth it.
This tale brings a humble “Ah! Cool. Thank you, that’s nice,” from Charles Watson, the male half of the Sheffield duo, who spoke to me from an alley behind a pub on the narrowest street in England. “We were huge Camera Obscura fans anyway, but we’ve subsequently become like family – and that was quite a show,” he muses. “[Our music] is not a million miles away from what they do.” Slow Club have been compared to many bands, Camera Obscura (wrong side of twee to be accurate) and The White Stripes (two piece with a girl on drums) among them, but each comparison falls short, and does them a disservice: Slow Club are their own beast
entirely. Although they have always achieved an incredibly full sound as a duo, their new album Paradise is a big step up from Yeah, So?. Reigning in the folk elements, and experimenting with different instrumentation – glass bottles, broomsticks, water pipes and chairs – they manage to comfortably avoid that dreaded sophomore syndrome, delivering a second album largely different to the first while still being unmistakably Slow Club. Unfairly labelled as twee on their first outing, Paradise is a much more mature and complex album that rewards repeat listening. Having played together as Slow Club since 2006 (after the breakup of their previous band, The Lonely Hearts), Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor have clear chemistry on stage, and an ability to anticipate each other’s every move. “We’re trying new, different things now. We’ve taken on another drummer, a bass player, a sax player and strings,” Watson informs me. But he quickly assuages any fear that beefing up the band has changed their dynamic. “When you try and introduce other people to something you’ve been doing for years, you realise how in tune you’ve become.” To hold up his end of the bargain in the studio, Charles uses a Fender Musicmaster. “I am a bit of a sucker for vintage guitars, but I’ll only buy one if I’m going to play it. I like guitars that just do one thing really well. I bought a Telecaster to go on tour with, just because they’re harder stock. It’s the first time I bought a guitar like that, maybe in like ten years. I like weird-sounding instruments that have character straight away.” He also has a theory as to what makes a gig really special: “Play some town out in the middle of nowhere, like a cairn in the Scottish highlands. They’ll have the wildest night you’ve ever had, because they can’t have fun every night of the week.” Much the same as coming all the way here, I’d imagine... “We’re just really flattered to be able to come, you know? We’ve got a few more people in the band now.”
“We’re trying new, different things now. We’ve taken on another drummer, a bass player, a sax player and strings. When you try to introduce other people to something you’ve been doing for years, you realise how in tune you’ve become.”
It’s hard not to like someone who speaks just as passionately about his food as his music. “It’s a taste sensation, it’ll fucking blow your mind,” he says of a sandwich he had in Japan, the recipe for which is also published on his blog. And after reading that “hobnobs” helped him through writing sessions, I deliberately didn’t Google them just so I could ask what they were... “Will you be at the show?” he asks. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll bring some. They’re really good with hot drinks.” What: Paradise is out now through Popfrenzy Where: GoodGod Small Club When: Thursday March 1
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Slow Club photo by Laura Pannack
A quick look at their individual blogs illustrates a marked difference between the two musicians. While Rebecca invents words like “adorabonk” to describe cricket players she fancies, Charles’ page largely consists of photographs and paintings. “I draw quite a lot and I paint. I get a lot of pleasure from looking at nice colours. It’s probably not so much to do with the pictures; it’s got to do with the fact that I’m not a very good reader. I’m not all that interested in words… it doesn’t saturate quite as quickly as images and music.” Although they both write songs, Charles in fact directed their last music video and is certainly the more visual of the two. Ever humble, he’s quick to point out that “it’s not like a real music video; just kind of footage from home. It’s something I’d love to get into. I like the idea of just making videos of us goofing around, and rather than putting one of our songs to it, putting dark organs, something really ominous… where people think something horrible’s going to happen and then it doesn’t happen – but everyone seems to be like, ‘Yeah, it’s just a bit sad, isn’t it?’” he laughs.
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arts frontline
free stuff email: freestuff@thebrag.com
arts, theatre and film news... what's goin' on around town and more...
five minutes WITH
MARK BODE
What was your first experience of art and comics? I was exposed to my dad’s art as early as I can remember. He used to sit me on his lap and guide my hand to colour in his [comic] strips… He’d say I was just hanging out with Cheech the Wizard and we should go visit him; we would make a lunch and go wait for [Cheech] up a small hill by our apartment in Syracuse, NY. And so at 5 years of age, I was already living in my father’s world – not knowing if his reality was real or not. How did you first get into graffiti? My first experience was when I was 7 years old: I was framed by another kid to write FUCK YOU on our apartment building, as a dare. ... Much later, when I was in my 20s, I met [NYC graffiti legend] Dondi in Brooklyn at my mother-inlaw’s bodega. He sought me out there to ask me questions about my dad; he never talked about graf – in fact I thought he was just a fan, and we drew in each other’s sketchbooks. I still have the drawings he did for me. Around 1986, I did my first piece on a pair of doors at a piano warehouse in Oakland, California and that ended up in [graffiti bible] Spraycan Art later that year.
C
omics legend, artist and tattooist Mark Bode hits Oz this month, bringing his bag of tricks and a slew of new work, including a live show that explores the legacy of his father, Vaughn Bode (who died young, in 1975), the man behind infamous comic-strip and street art character Cheech Wizard (see above). We took five with him as he dashed around Melbourne, ahead of his Sydney opening this week.
What do you see as your father’s legacy? His main focus was on creator ownership and underground comics; but the way his characters have been embraced by the urban art movement of graffiti, it would seem that his art will stand the test of time in the streets and in the hearts of street criminals and mural artists. The characters reflect that energy of the haphazard street life that many of us can relate to; everyone can relate to being taken by some
fucked-up lizard, be under Cheech’s hat on the make, or [in the case of women] compare themselves to the voluptuous Bode Broad. What can you tell us about Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of your Cobalt 60 series? Zack is a big Cobalt 60 fan from when he was in film school. He vowed that if he made it as a director he would produce and direct Cobalt 60 as a live action film. It is currently in development and we have done one pass on the screenplay so far; he is all about creator control, and wants me to coach the actors as to how the characters behave and so on.
OXFORD ST DESIGN STORE
The ladies of Tough Titties (our favourite femme design blog) have teamed up with the City of Sydney to create a new store for emerging, boutique and local designers, situated on prime real estate on Oxford Street, just near the Crown Street intersection. Part of the ongoing CoS plan to breathe life into Sydney’s empty retail spaces, the shop – Oxford Street Design Store – will sell nothing for more than $20, and will launch on March 6 with a degustation of limited-edition items designed by boutique stationary outfit The Hungry Workshop, poster designers and Riso printers Grim Press, object design label Page Thirty Three, textile and object designers Dubbleyou, and "more". oxfordstreetdesignstore.com.au
HEAD ON PHOTO FESTIVAL Head On Photo Festival is one of those few places where talent can genuinely trump name-dropping; their annual portrait competition is open to anyone and 32 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
everyone, and judging of the entries is done anonymously – so someone with a keen eye and a no-budget camera has equal footing with the big guns. “To ensure that the selection is not affected by who the photographer is or by the subject of the photograph, judging is done anonymously and no identifying detail is visible to the judging panel at all,” says Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig. The 40 finalists are exhibited in the Head On Portrait Prize Exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography, with a slide show of the next 200 shortlisted portraits. Entries close March 11, all deets at headon.com.au
BLACK CHERRY
Black Cherry is punching strong out of its 2012 corner; their upcoming party will feature swamp/rock/abilly sounds from Melbourne’s Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders, Firebird and The Delta Riggs, Sydney’s Graveyard Rockstars, Jungle Rump’s Rock’n’Roll Karaoke, four DJ sets (including Channel V’s
www.LIKECRAZY.com.au
What: Cartoon Concert / Bode In Oz When: Wednesday Feb 22, 6.30pm / Friday Feb 24, 6-9pm (runs until March 3) Where: The Standard / China Heights More: wearelofi.com.au/collective / chinaheights.com
Britain’s Lucy Moore opens a solo show at Alaska Projects this Wednesday. Called Collide Gemini, the show will encompass her signature mix of painting, photography, sculpture, projection, installation and events; confused? Her artist statement from her PICA residency says that her “practice negotiates patterns of experience and memory through constellations of object, image and film.” Yeah, we have absolutely no idea what to expect, but that’s never stopped us before! Opens Wednesday February 22 at Alaska Projects’ basement digs (Kings Cross Car Park / 9A Elizabeth Bay Road). Alaskaprojects.com
Well, this cannot fail: a sketch comedy that revolves around an alternative rendering of Portland (Oregon) where hipsters, feminists and punks reign supreme, dumpster diving is an art, ‘90s culture still rules and things are so PC it’s painful. Helmed by SNL’s Fred Armisen (above!) and Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein (above!), who play a range of Portlandia’s locals, the show features guest-stars galore, with Selma Blair, Heather Graham, Kyle McLachlan (above!), Steve Buscemi, Gus Van Sant and more popping up throughout season one. The New Yorker wrote an exhaustive piece on it, and you’ll see why when Portlandia premieres Thursday February 23 at 9pm on ABC2 (the hipster version of ABC).
Like Crazy opens in cinemas on March 1. To see what all the fuss is about, email us with your postal address and the name of one of Doremus’ previous feature films.
And what about the China Heights show? All I can say is it's all new, it’s a really cool mishmash of classic Bode art, and it’s almost as good as a beer and a blow job…
COLLIDE GEMINI
PORTLANDIA: WHEN HIPSTERS ATTACK
Thanks to Paramount Pictures, s, we have five in-season double e passes to check out Drake Doremus’ much-anticipated Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Like Crazy. Based on his own experiences, the film is a bittersweet bi exploration of the highs of young love and the lows of long-distance relationships, and stars Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, and Jennifer Lawrence.
What will the Cartoon Concert show involve? It’s a slideshow reading of my father’s and my material where I do the voices for the characters and the sound effects; it’s filled with uncomfortable and very funny moments, as well as an introduction to our influence on graffiti. It’s about 45-minutes long and packed with classic and pornographic material – so I suggest 18+ only…
Jane Gazzo), and performances by burlesque babes Tasia, La Viola Vixen (Bris), and Holly J’aDoll – all doused in Green Fairy Original Czech Absinth cocktails, and set on fire by MC Lauren LaRouge. The time is Saturday March 10, the place is the Factory Theatre, we'll see you there babes. Tickets and full lineup at blackcherrypresents.com.au
Meeting the Mayor
LIKE CRAZY! WIN!
some of which you can find on the cover and inside the latest issue of Ampersand magazine – on the topic of love. Lillian (who recently moved to Sydney and was formerly part of Melbourne art trio Safari Team) says of the show, “I had a problem addiction to romantic comedies. In order to solve this I read lots of scientific explanations for how and why humans fall in and out of love, this including some hilarious facts about human mating rituals. At the same time it has been an attempt to record my own heart and why it does what it does which, even to me, is often strange. I don’t watch as many rom-coms anymore.” Runs until March 4 at MOP (MOP 2/39 Abercrombie St, Chippendale).
Untitled by Rosita Holmes
ADELAIDE @ OLD 505
A tiny slice of Adelaide Fringe will be served up at Slurry’s Old 505 Theatre this week: four local shows will have short runs before they head south for the Fringe. A couple are familiar from previous outings: Lahara (February 24 @ 8pm), which fuses shadow puppetry, digital visuals and world/funk/dub music, was a hit at Sydney Fringe; 100 Years Of Lizards (February 25-26), by the Sexy Tales Comedy Collective, has had runs at Underbelly Arts Festival and Sydney Fringe. Debuting are Tweatre (February 22-23), which fuses improve with tweeted audience suggestions, and subtlenuance's Blind Tasting (March 3 @ 7pm) which fuses a wine tasting with a one-woman performance. All the times and details at venue505.com
ANDY X
To celebrate (oh you know what we mean) the death of Andy Warhol, Australian stage and screen director Jim Sharman (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) will release his new 40-minute art film Andy X online on February 22 at 10.21pm (or 6.21am New York time) – exactly 25 years after his death. USD$6.99 (or 699 Facebook friends – yes, they are now currency; time to lower your standards) buys you a 72-hour window in which to view the film via streaming or download. The presser says there’s “song, verse and montage, with Sharman exploring Warhol’s life from his death-bed in a New York Hospital on 22 February, 1987.” andyxthemovie.com
LOVE BOMB @ MOP
Speaking of Lillian O’Neil (look right): you should probably check out her show Love Bomb, which features massive collages –
AMPERSAND #5
The summer issue of Ampersand has dropped! For all you noobs, Ampersand is “a quarterly literary journal dedicated to the exploration of creativity and societal change through non-fiction, fiction, poetry and visual art” (as per Editor Alice Gage) – or as we say, “a three-month jar of brain candy”. Issue #5 is called The Eleventh Hour, and features art by Lillian O’Neil, soda_jerk, Jenny Kee, and New Yorker illustrator Eric Hanson, a new font by James Harney, a photo-essay of Libya’s Arab Spring by young freelance war photographer Sebastian Meyer, words from Toby Schmitz, John Birmingham... Damn, we can’t fit all the awesome here. Find/ogle/buy it at ampersandmagazine.com.au
adventure into design THINKING | MAKING | CONNECTING
Enrolling now for March 2012. Space Limited! Enrol now on 1300 851 245 or join us at www.billyblue.edu.au Think: Colleges Pty Ltd trading as Billy Blue College of Design, ABN 93 050 049 299, RTO No. 0269, HEP No. 4375, CRICOS Provider Codes: NSW 00246M, QLD 03107J, VIC 03252M.
Australian Tour
29 JAN - 4 MAR
With support from THE RUMJACKS
The Manning Bar Sydney University Saturday 7th April 2012
TUES 7TH FEB EVERGUIDE AND LIFELOUNGE PRESENT: DRIVE (M) WED 8TH FEB TOWER HEIST (M) TTHUR 9TH FEB THE NEVERENDING STORY (M) FRI 10TH FEB THE IDES OF MARCH (M) SAT 11TH FEB PUSS IN BOOTS PG) S 12TH FEB RED DOG (PG) 681'$( 6(66,21 SUN T 14TH FEB DIRTY DANCING (M) TUES W WED 15TH FEB BURNING MAN (PG) TH 16TH FEB FBI PRESENTS: MELANCHOLIA (M) THUR FRI 17TH FEB SHERLOCK HOLMES - A GAME OF SHADOWS (M) SAT 18TH FEB TOP GUN (PG) SUN 19TH FEB BLUES BROTHERS (M) 681'$( 6(66,21 TUES 21ST FEB THE BRAG PRESENTS: LABYRINTH (M) WED 22ND FEB TRACKS PRESENTS: FIGHTING FEAR (M) THUR 23RD FEB KANGAROO ISLAND AND SOUTH AUSTRALIA PRESENT: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (PG) FRI 24TH FEB THE SKIN I LIVE IN (MA 15+) SAT 25TH FEB THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (PG) SUN 26TH FEB YOGAWOMAN (E) 681'$( 6(66,21 TUES 28TH FEB ARRIETTY (CTC) WED 29TH FEB THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (MA 15+) THUR 1ST MAR THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (M) FRI 2ND MAR THE MUPPETS (G) SAT 3RD MAR NEW BALANCE PRESENTS: THE DESCENDANTS (M) SUN 4TH MAR CLOSING NIGHT: YOUNG ADULT (MA 15+) 681'$( 6(66,21 PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE - ALWAYS CHECK THE WEBSITE
BOOK ONLINE
(02) 9563 6000 Tickets available from www.manningbar.com
bondiopenair.com.au /bondiopenair
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
PHOTO BY JAC DILLON
OPENAIR CINEMAS RECOMMEND USING PUBIC TRANSPORT TO GET TO OUR EVENTS. BONDI PARK IS AN ALCOHOL FREE ZONE.
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 33
Apocastrip Wow!! [CABARET] Julie Atlas Muz gets her freak on. By Alexandra Christie
O
The Trailer Park Boys L-R: Julian, Bubbles and Rick
Trailer Park Boys
[COMEDY] Drunk, High and Unemployed By Sean Gleeson
H
ere I was, labouring under the misapprehension that Canada’s Trailer Park Boys was simply pretending to be a true-to-life documentary (along the lines of The Office, Parks and Recreation, and just about every other television comedy the Anglophone world has put to air in the last decade). So imagine my surprise when I get a (reverse charge) phone call early one morning from Sunnyvale Trailer Park’s three most infamous/ drunk/stoned residents: Ricky, Bubbles and Julian. Is this legit, I wonder aloud? Ricky mumbles something in the affirmative, in sugary tones that suggest he’s already spent most of the Canadian afternoon punching sodabottle bongs in Sunnyvale’s backblocks. Julian sighs to himself and takes an audible sip from what I assume is a plastic tumbler of rum and coke. Bubbles makes a few agitated noises, clearly exasperated after a typical day trying to discourage the other two from criminal activity. Fans of the Trailer Park Boys series may recall that we last saw the trio back in prison (for the ninth time in as many years) after a bank job went wrong. In the meantime, drunken Sunnyvale supervisor Jim Lahey absconded to Cuba with the proceeds from the robbery. All things considered, fate has not been kind to the boys in recent years. An elaborate plan to smuggle dope across the US-Canadian border on the back of a model train – stolen from Patrick Swayze, no less – ended with another short stint behind bars. I ask if another foray on the wrong side of the law, and hopefully a big payoff, is really worth the risk? “I’ve been trying to keep away from that kinda bullshit,” says Bubbles, “but every time I turn around I’ve been dealing with these two dickweeds and trying to keep ‘em outta trouble.” “It’s Julian’s fault,” Ricky protests, sourly. “I mean Julian keeps messing everything up; if I was running the show, we’d be retired by now.” Meanwhile, Julian tells me that “85% of the time
on a job, we end up in jail because of Ricky. It’s not my fault. It’s his fault.” The three squabble about this for a while, and, before I accidentally become ear-witness to a punch-on, I change the subject to the matter at hand: the boys are on their way Down Under next month to make a bit of honest coin at the Enmore. Not without some reservations on Ricky's part, of course: “I heard your sharks come out of the water and walk up on the beach and eat people, so I’m a little freaked out about that. I mean, I could take one if I had to.” But any panic in Ricky’s voice dissipates when he starts thinking about the opportunity for a good old-fashioned wipeout in an exotic locale. “I plan on getting drunk and high and passing out in the street somewhere after the show. I don’t know how decent your Australian weed is, but I can’t wait to find out, I know that. I heard there’s a lot of really good farmers down there, so we’ll bring them extra samples.” Julian sounds a word of caution: “Every time we go away somewhere, Ricky really takes up the drink and the drugs quite a bit, and when I’m drunk and he’s drunk he’s about as easy to get on with as a horse or a cow. If we end up in jail… I mean, it might be cool to see what jail is like in Australia, but I’d rather stay out of jail and make some money and meet ladies.” Look out ladies: prize catches coming to your town soon.
n the cusp of bringing her latest show to Australia, Julie Atlas Muz seems in full possession of the indomitable mojo that has made her queen of New York’s underground burlesque scene for at least a decade, regaling me with her thoughts on Mayan fashion, silent cinema and wet panties. Forget ‘sensual’, ‘sexy’, ‘seductive’ – Muz can slide across the stage on her knees while twirling her nipple tassles; she’s freakishly talented, has a background that encompasses performance art, choreography, stage direction and dance, and her ample endowments include the 2006 Miss Exotic World title. The New York Times dubs her “the royalty of burlesque.” Internationally, Muz is recognised as a grand dame of renegade performance, with shows that manage to challenge beliefs and genres whilst seducing the audience with her charming sleaze. “Through the power of dance I tell stories that are beautiful, political, and emotional, with a bold and theatrical irreverence,” Muz says of her particular brand of neo-burlesque.
the show: she’s bringing her '80s fluoro stripper outfit to her new number ‘The Little Girl from Chernobyl’ (“Recently I’ve been pretty obsessed with neon orange,” she tells me) and her favourite Machine Dazzle Sun outfit – suitable attire for a Mayan sun goddess. “Mayan fashion, 1920s American Fashion and 1970s fashion have a similar thread. Almost space-age in the angles of the collars and very futuristic. I really identify with those trends!” Underneath all the glitz and neon orange, professional burlesque does have its downside, and Julie (who is her own manager) does get to do a little complaining about the ferocious and rigorous nature of show biz. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth it, but when so much of your art, life, love, ego and public personality are combined, sometimes it’s really hard for me to get perspective and breathing room. And then sometimes I just act like a dipshit… Ironically, one of the greatest challenges for me is keeping my sense of humour, particularly after flying across the world to do a comic show!” Julie is pretty set on how she wants to make her audience feel, and the kind of visceral effect she hopes to have. “During the show I want the audience to be engaged and cheering us on with a wide-eyed ‘I cannot believe they just did that’ enthusiasm. And then I want the audience to go home (or out) and have a deep, horny, savage fuck-fest… juicy with fun and lots of laughs and wet panties. Hell – where are my panties?!”
In her latest experiment, The Freak and the Showgirl (aka Apocastrip Wow!!), Muz (aka the Showgirl) has teamed up with Mat Fraser (the Freak) in a show that draws inspiration from the Ancient Mayan prediction of a 2012 apocalypse, and early sideshow-horror films like Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1927) and Freaks (1932). Musing on her own final hours, Muz tells me, “Mat and I probably would perform postmodern avant-garde performance vignettes and then have sex. We would want to go out singing and dancing nude, rude and in the mood!” Cue a crazy assemblage of music, dance, and costume. Performance aside, Muz is enthusiastic about her costumes in
What: Trailer Park Boys: Drunk, High and Unemployed Tour When: Friday March 16 Where: Enmore Theatre More: drunkandondrugs.com / abpresents. com.au
What: Apocastrip Wow!! aka The Freak And The Showgirl When: Wednesday Feb 29 / Thursday Mar 1 Where: Gaelic Theatre More: thegaelic.com.au
Julie Atlas Muz
Midsummer
Cora Bissett & Matthew Pidgeon in Midsummer
[THEATRE] Songs, bad sex and surrealism. By Dee Jefferson
F
Three years after the play debuted to rave reviews at Edinburgh Fringe, Bissett and Pidgeon are sunning themselves on the outdoor balcony of Wharf 1, just a week into Sydney Theatre Company’s season of Midsummer. Reprising the role that won her a ‘Best Actress’ Stage Award, Bissett says, “I think David liked the fact that I came from a band background originally, because there’s very much this sort of lo-fi, punky aesthetic to the piece, and I guess he knew I’d bring balls to it.” (At the age of 17, Bissett and her band were signed to a major label, and touring in support of acts like Radiohead.) Bissett and Pidgeon were involved in the creation of Midsummer from the script stage, with parts of their own lives woven into the narrative. “David got us to share a lot of stories of, well, personal 34 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
humiliation, really: drunken tales, sex tales, relationship tales – and just tales of acting like a tit,” Bissett laughs. “We all got together and recounted our hideous drunken sexual failures and disasters,” Pidgeon affirms. A large part of Midsummer's schtick is that it self-consciously co-opts and pokes a stick at rom-com conventions – from the use of certain camera angles, slow-motion and close-ups, to conventions about sexual tension and charmingly flawed and morally conflicted protagonists. Everything in Midsummer is a bit dirtier, funnier, looser and more embarrassing than Hollywood (or Notting Hill) – as, for instance, the sequence in which a hungover Helena barfs on herself and her mildly autistic nephew on the steps of the church durign her sister's wedding. (Bissett sheepishly admits this was lifted from her own life: “I was at my sister’s wedding in Spain, and got just a little bit too excited with the Kava, in the midday sun – and ended up falling asleep with my bridesmaid’s dress around my ankles, on the outdoor toilet at the bottom of the garden; they had to knock the door down and carry me out.”) Another (more surreal) sequence involves a fantasy digression, mid-breakfast, into Bob’s brain, where the ‘The 35th Annual Conference of Bob’ is debating the existential question ‘Is This It?’. “I think that’s just the way David [Greig]’s brain works, I think it goes off at weird tangents,” says
Pidgeon. “[For example], David’s got this idea that you can smell shit everywhere when you get to a certain age [laughs] – apparently that’s some kind of condition!” The major message in Midsummer (as delivered, improbably, by a parking meter) is that ‘Change Is Possible’ – something that both actors can relate to, but particularly Bissett, who has undergone several serious career shifts: having her 15-minutes of rock-star fame come crashing down around her ears at the age of 18 (leaving her unemployed and $40,000 in debt); then getting herself into drama school, followed by five or six years working as an actor – followed by an epiphany (“I kind of had a bit of a crisis,” she says wincing) that lead her to ditch acting
and go into community theatre, as a director. Her first professional production, Roadkill, turned out to be a multi-award-winning and international touring success – and her follow up, The Glasgow Girls, is likely to come to Australia next year. “It was a bit like Bob in the scene with the egg,” she tells me – “just from that one moment or revelation, and making that decision, all this amazing stuff happened.” What: Midsummer: a play with songs When: Until March 10 Where: Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House Tickets: $45 for under-30s from sydneytheatre.com.au
Midsummer (a play with songs) © Lisa Tomasetti 2012
our-or-so years ago Scottish playwright David Greig and Gordon McIntyre of Edinburgh band Ballboy set out to create an ‘indierock’ musical. They decided it would be about a crazy weekend in Edinburgh told from the perspective of a man and a woman going through mid-life crisis. Because they were on a lean budget, they also decided to have just two actors and a simple set – and they looked for actors who could sing and play guitar. That’s how they landed upon Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon, the two charismatic stars of Midsummer.
Centennial Park
FEBRUARY
MARCH
21 tu The Women on
06 tu The Rocky Horror
the 6th Floor PG
Until 25th March
22 we The Inbetweeners Movie MA15+ 23 th The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo MA15+
Tickets & information moonlight.com.au @moonlightcinema facebook.com/moonlightcinemaSydney
*CTC
No free tickets Check the Classification
24 fr preview: Like Crazy*M 25 sa The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo MA15+ 26 su preview: Headhunters*CTC 28 tu Moneyball M 29 we War Horse M
MARCH 01 th The Iron Lady M 02 fr Young Adult*MA15+ 03 sa Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy*MA15+ 04 su The Descendants M
07 we 08 th 09 fr 10 sa 11 su
Picture Show M Bridesmaids*MA15+ Albert Nobbs M Hugo*PG preview:
Margin Call*MA15+
Top Gun PG 13 tu The Woman in the Fifth M 14 we A Few Best Men MA15+ 15 th Pulp Fiction R18+ 16 fr preview:
A Dangerous Method*MA15+
17 sa The Artist PG 18 su Optus 180 Project CTC 20 21 22 23 24 25
tu we th fr sa su
Chronicle M The Grey CTC Any Questions for Ben? M Safe House*CTC This Means War M The Vow PG
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Arts Snap
Film & Theatre Reviews
At the heart of the arts Where you went last week...
Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.
■ Comedy
JUDITH LUCY: NOTHING FANCY Until March 25 / The Comedy Store When I mentioned to friends that I was going to see Judith Lucy’s new show, the response was the same from every one of them: “Judith Lucy? I fucking hate her”. Now, hate is a strong word – but even so, they made very clear they meant ‘hate’ in the most sincere way, going so far as to call her ‘unfunny’, 'annoying’ and even ‘repulsive’. Apparently, a lot of people dislike Judith Lucy. Not all people, as it turns out, because off the back of her critically acclaimed ABC series, Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, Lucy has just begun a three-week run at Sydney’s flagship comedy venue, The Comedy Store, filling hundreds of seats every night. This kind of popularity is rare in Australia, where prolonged seasons are almost exclusively the domain of large, international festivals.
PICS :: TL
wunder pond group show
So, who are all these people scrambling to see such an ‘unpopular’ comedian? They were an older crowd, mostly flabby middleaged types who seemed giddily excited as they waited for the show to start, loudly erupting with cheers at Lucy’s entrance as she danced over-eagerly towards the microphone before announcing sternly, “that’s quite enough of that”.
09:02:12 :: Tin Sheds Gallery :: 148 City Rd Darlington
What followed was an hour of humiliating and often touching personal stories about her life and the TV show, delivered with brutal honesty and unrelenting cynicism. Interactions with the crowd produced flashes of brilliance, and seemed to be where she really shone; in contrast, the longer setpieces only went for two or three minutes, meaning solid premises were mostly skimmed over and rarely given the depth or time the audience wanted. On the other hand, it meant she covered a lot of ground in her allotted hour – including a frank discussion of how unpopular she is with the under-35s. Likewise, she seemed acutely aware of her divisive position in the Australian cultural landscape. This gritty selfawareness became something of a theme of the night’s proceedings, punctuated by rare, but genuine moments of contrition and humility. For everyone who’s already a fan, this show is a hilarious hour with one of Australia’s best comedians, and if you’re not into her, she’s doing just fine without you. Michael Hing ■ Theatre PICS :: TL
pennies for the ferryman
BABYTEETH Until March 18 / Belvoir St Theatre
08:02:12 :: Kind Of Gallery :: 72 Oxford St Darlinghurst
So often when you go to the theatre, you feel like you’ve seen the play before; Babyteeth is therefore a truly rare thing – an original work. Perhaps it’s my youth and inexperience talking, but I’ve never seen a comedy about a fourteen-year-old dying of cancer before.
Arts Exposed
Written by Rita Kalnejais, Babyteeth spans several weeks in the life of terminally ill teen Milla (Sara West), her parents, friends and neighbours. It’s a tough time for everyone and each character has their own coping mechanisms: her parents have their pills, handily prescribed by her psychiatrist father Henry (Greg Stone), her violin teacher has a new student, and her boyfriend has his drugs (which include Milla’s morphine).
What's in our diary...
THE WALL @ WORLD BAR PRESENTS
CONFESSION BOOTH Wed February 22, 7.30pm World Bar / 24 Bayswater Rd, Kings Cross
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Confession Booth - artwork by Matt Roden
Next up at The Wall @ World Bar is a cocktail of… confessions and cocktails! An evening of live confessional readings called Confession Booth, and featuring Darryn King (Time Out Sydney!), Nadine Von Cohen (The Vine!), Nathan Harrison (Applespiel!), Rhys Muldoon (actor!), Matt Banham (music/ laughter/music) and Symonne Torpy (People Collector). It will be a) hosted by A.H. Cayley (Pedestrian/Thousands) or b) served with liquor or c) all of the two things mentioned. We will be there, with our best sympathetic face and a pot of tea. artonthewall.tumblr.com
Kalnejais has managed to find comedic potential whilst also never shying away from the sadness and tenderness of the situation. The play’s great strength is its ability to combine the horrific reality of the death of a teenager, with the domestic reality that inevitably accompanies this painful process. When life is only sure to last for a few weeks, the simple act of getting a haircut or eating a sandwich takes on a greater importance. Eamon Flack’s direction gives these moments the time they need to take on this significance. The cast more than rise to the challenge of
treading this play’s fine line between comedy and tragedy: Helen Buda as Milla’s mother Anna is both the consummate comedian (with her skirt caught in her underpants after an aborted office sex attempt) and riveting drama queen; Russell Dykstra is hilarious as the firebrand Latvian violin teacher Gidon; and Eamon Farren finds the right balance between off-putting junkie and charming young man – he’s one to watch for sure. Henry Florence ■ Film
BUCK Released 16 February “Your horse is a window to your soul,” proclaims Buck to the captive audience gathered around the dusty arena, sideby-side with their troublesome colts. His students are gripped as this real-life horse whisperer contemplates the relationship between one’s life and the behaviour of one’s horse. All eyes are fixed on Buck as he brings a wayward young animal under his control in just minutes, all the time delivering gems of homespun wisdom. Meet Buck Brannaman, a self-proclaimed cowboy who makes his living travelling the country helping people and horses understand each other better. This thoughtful documentary comes from first-time filmmaker Cindy Meehl, who is herself a Buck Brannaman convert, and builds her portrait on a foundation of interviews with people who are Buck devotees and really care for the man (including filmmaker Robert Redford). It plays the way a love letter reads: spouting adoration and propping the subject up on an ivory pedestal where his methods and person character are untouchable. As the title might suggest, this is an ode to Buck. As a piece of cinema, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. There are times where the film just drags and all the interviewees regurgitate the same reverence. The most interesting parts are the interviews with Buck himself, about his personal history and family. There is some great archival footage of his childhood that is teasingly brief, and Buck’s foster mother is a wonderful character whose appearances are disappointingly staged and edited. As far as action is concerned, don’t hold your breath – this doco is all about creating an atmosphere, and it does that very well. The landscapes are wonderfully captured and the original music by David Robbins deserves a special mention. It’s a worthwhile watch to gain an appreciation for man’s love of his beast. Nicola Josey ■ Theatre
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL WANKING February 14-18 / Sydney Theatre Neil Watkins is brave and unapologetically bold, barefoot in his sharp grey suit and warrior face paint. Over one swift hour he expels fragments of the history of his 33rd year on earth, as a homosexual Irishman full of Catholic shame, with a burgeoning Jesus complex, an internet porn addiction, and a pattern of escapism through disconnected sex and various substances. Over 20 distinct scenes, separated by the dark industrial selected-sounds of Irish electronic producer Oberman Knocks and the snap blackouts and subtle lighting shifts of designer Ciaran O’Melia, Watkins episodically traverses memories and experiences of fear, coming out, self hate, shame, molestation, therapy, love, epiphany, and redemption. It’s heavy stuff, and director Phillip McMahon’s influence can be felt in the lightness that remains through this darkness. It is bare and raw, but the show never broods, keeping pace, and avoiding mistaking emotional intensity for sentimentality. Caged in by O’Melia’s design – a white square marked out on black floor and
See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews
Film & Theatre Reviews
HEAD OVER HEELS
Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.
surrounded by hazy footlights – the savage Watkins delivers brutal truth from inside the ring. The penultimate scene’s poetic song, in which a departed Watkins sings from beyond the grave, is particularly captivating. Told entirely in rhythmic verse, the effect is captivating and melodic. Affording Watkins a thin barrier from the intensity of the subject matter, this verse could, however, also be a barrier between Watkins and his audience. Though light and delicate, retuning one’s ear for verse requires attention, and even with firm concentration it was easy to occasionally lose the thread. Peter Neathway ■ Film
TYRANNOSAUR Opens February 23 Tyrannosaur’s opening moments find Joseph (Peter Mullan), an aging, jobless tough, bellowing drunkenly at no-one in particular. His rage is multidirectional and – it seems fair to guess – chronic. He then kicks his own dog to death. Over the course of Paddy Considine’s BAFTA-winning but stark directorial debut, Joseph will continue to batter and demolish things in an effort to exorcise the wrath that roils within him: a store-front window, smug kids in a pub, his dilapidated garden shed, another dog. Like the prehistoric monster of the title, he’s a solitary brute, still haunted by the passing of his wife to diabetes two years prior. When extinction finally comes, there’s no mistaking that the long, cruel path that leads him there will have been of his own design. It would be easy – very easy – to write Tyrannosaur off as yet another selfserving entry in the long, long lineage of oppressively bleak British kitchen-sink miserablism. So enduring is this subgenre that it’s earned its own nickname:
‘misery porn’. Mike Leigh has made a cottage industry of chronicling exactly this milieu: shabby council estates, lower-class antipathy, domestic unrest, hopelessness. Yet even he might flinch at the litany of grievances Considine presents in Tyrannosaur. (As I recall, Leigh’s never yet made both rape and canicide crucial beats in one of his spirit-corroding opuses.) Where Tyrannosaur trumps, say, Leigh’s gruelling All Or Nothing, is in the mounting agency Considine’s script affords his characters as things progress – we sense catharsis, of one sort or another, might actually be within their reach. When Joseph takes to visiting the compassionate aid shop worker, Hannah (Olivia Colman, who’s stunning), herself the product of bleak circumstances, the relationship develops in unexpected ways, as each keeps the other at arm’s length for fear of enveloping them too wholly into their own respective private hells. Certain lapses in plausibility undermine the dramatic realism Considine is pitching for (are there really no immediate repercussions for the apoplectic Joseph’s violent first-act eruptions?). Nevertheless, thanks to the raw performances of the film's two leads and Considine’s confidence behind the camera, this is worth seeking out – provided you can stomach this sort of thing. Gerard Elson
THE TEMPERAMENTALS
BY JOHN MARANS DIRECTED BY KEVIN JACKSON 7 FEBRUARY — 3 MARCH
TICKETS 1300 13 11 88 NEWTHEATRE.ORG.AU 542 KING STREET NEWTOWN
PRINCIPLE PARTNER
Tyrannosaur
Street Level With Damon Kowarsky & Kyoko Imazu
W
hen Damon and Kyoko met in the Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne, in 2008, it was the beginning of a beautiful thing – a thing where he makes drawings, and she “vandalises” them with her own contributions. The results are surreal fantasies populated by strange creatures and contraptions. Their upcoming show Collaborate will feature a selection of prints of their etching and aquatint works from 2010 to now (including their very first collaboration).
Collaborate: Hanging Flamingo by Damon Kowarsky & Kyoko Imazu
Kyoko – when did you first start drawing? I’ve always been drawing since I was a child but it was nothing serious, I didn’t even think about studying in art school before I came to Australia. I first started going to art school in 2005 and since then I think I’ve taken the practice further and more seriously. Damon – how and when did you get into illustration? I began courtroom illustration in my final year of uni, and archaeological and scientific in the two years after. They were all important to me at the time because they were ways in which drawing was useful and practical – an idea I found completely absent from my art school education. They were also about observation and trying to draw what I saw as clearly as possible. This discipline was useful later on, even though I am now working full-time as an artist. The contacts I made at Melbourne Museum have also endured and the drawings for the chameleon prints in this show were made possible by staff there. Kyoko – how did you two begin collaborating? I saw Damon’s print of the city with a helicopter and I told him I want to vandalise it by putting lots of rabbits on it (I do lots of rabbits in my work). We then started making works together in early 2010. Damon: where do you get your inspiration from? Films are a big one, as is other art (good or bad). But mostly I get ideas by drawing things I see on my travels, and then combining them later with other drawings I have made. I also occasionally have an idea for a picture and then must wait until I find the thing to draw. This was the case with a print
of a Predator Drone I am working on, where it was not until I saw the aircraft in Washington DC could I begin the work. Kyoko: what’s your process for “vandalising” Damon’s pictures? After Damon gives me his drawings, occasionally ideas come up straightaway but usually I look through my old sketchbooks or books on animals and Japanese old spirits/monsters etc to get some rough ideas or inspiration. Damon is happy for me to completely alter his pictures, so I don’t set any boundaries. I keep playing with the pictures by making collage, erasing and drawing until I can have a little chuckle at what I’ve done. If I can have a chuckle, I’m happy to show the pictures to Damon. What: Collaborate When: February 24 – March 21 Where: Japan Foundation Gallery / Lvl 1, Chifley Plaza, 2 Chifley Square, Sydney CBD More: jpf.org.au / kyokoimazu.com / damon.tk
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Album Reviews What's been crossing our ears this week...
ALBUM OF THE WEEK LEONARD COHEN Old Ideas Sony
It’d be nice if Cohen is given time for one more collection, but there’s little reason to be sorry if Old Ideas is the last thing offered before the man hangs up his hat.
Leonard Cohen has been many things. Gypsy Boy. Field Commander. A “lazy bastard in a suit”, as he dryly puts it here, on opener ‘Going Home’. It’s Cohen as weathered seer who permeates Old Ideas however, with the songs almost whispered in a voice like river pebbles worn smooth – always self-deprecating, lit by flashes of debonair wit, while imbued with a quiet air of looking back, summing up and giving thanks. Old Ideas is a relatively modest offering, its ten tracks holding together
DIRTY THREE
But Ellis never called this record their greatest, he only said it would be the one to define them – and after obsessively listening to Toward The Low Sun for the last week, it’s fair to say that it’s as representative of the three artists' capabilities as anything in their combined discographies. The brilliance of Dirty Three is more than their ability to weave aural stories through extended instrumentals. It’s more, even, than the sheer cacophony of sounds they can create via just three elements. On Toward The Low Sun in particular, it lies in the fact that once you pull apart what every band member is doing, they’re almost playing three separate songs that together sound like the one. On album opener ‘Sometimes I Forget You’ve Gone,’ Mick Turner noodles at his guitar while Jim White bashes senseless clatter at his drum kit alongside Ellis’ lethargic piano notes – and somehow, it sounds perfect. It’s not like that’s the only example; each track has its own way of melding disparate threepart songs into a uniform mesh, and it’s equally as impressive each time around. Toward The Low Sun is a rare feat for a ninth album; it’s a record that comes close to matching their best, and suggests that there’s even better to come. Max Easton
Lyrically, Cohen is as immaculate as ever, with streams of precisely crafted verse casting all manner of subtle refractions across the refrains. If art is the concealment of art then Cohen must surely be the undisputed master, the effortless way a word falls just so disguising the sheer sweat that’s gone into the writing of it.
THE CRANBERRIES
Towards The Low Sun Anchor & Hope/ Remote Control When Dirty Three frontman Warren Ellis recently described their upcoming and ninth album as their most definitive to date, it was pretty hard to believe. After all, it’s difficult to imagine any Dirty Three record trumping the ‘90s double of Ocean Songs and Horse Stories, both of which have an almost folkloric standing in Australian music.
with remarkable cohesion, unlike the grab bag of 2004’s Dear Heather, while never outstaying their welcome – something that perhaps could not be said of 2001’s Ten New Songs. Even more refreshing is the absence of the synthy suffusions that drenched both of these, as the team of musical collaborators assembled here support Cohen’s work, with arrangements that are classy in their understatement.
PIETA BROWN Mercury Vitamin Records
Roses Cooking Vinyl Arriving in the postshoegaze/jangle pop mid-‘90s, The Cranberries were set apart by their sincerity and politically charged lyrics, not to mention a unique lead singer. The argument could be made that Roses is a more mellow, introspective effort – but it comes across as though they just couldn’t work up the energy of early hits like ‘Zombie’ and ‘Salvation’. Although always sentimental, this time almost every song is about heartbreak – and by track seven, the overwrought emotion begins to grate. Ten years since their last album, the commercially (and critically) unsuccessful Wake Up And Smell The Coffee, new album Roses plays more like a collection of lost B-sides than a true comeback. Opening track ‘Conduct’ pulls out all the stops, with plaintive strings and driving guitar, but rather than pleasantly reminding me of early high school, it just made me feel old. Unlikely to hook new listeners, the lack of innovation may even disappoint hardcore fans. The instrumentation is also nothing new and, if anything, is pushed further into the background than ever before – perhaps a result of O’Riordan’s recent solo albums. ‘Schizophrenic Playboy’ comes the closest to a comeback and benefits from a third-person perspective, standing out against the listen-to-myloneliness angst. Noel Hogan’s guitar is finally allowed breathing space amongst the strings – elsewhere he’s relegated to acoustic noodling. Title track ‘Roses’ is a breathy slowdance that edges dangerously close to Björk-style vocals, but even this experimentation isn’t enough to save an album that I really wanted to like. At turns strong and brittle, comforting and accusatory, O’Riordan’s astonishing voice hasn’t changed. But to their detriment, neither has anything else.
No wonder so many buy into the ‘channelling from beyond’ theory of songwriting; Cohen plays with the idea on ‘Going Home’, casting himself as the eternal spirit’s hapless puppet. True to the title, other highlights deal with
Pieta Brown has almost the perfect heritage for an American country musician. The granddaughter of two preachers, Brown had lived in seventeen different homes throughout the mid-west by the time she left home at eighteen to pursue her career as a musician. Of course it’s one thing to have lived the life, but it’s another to ably put those stories to record. With her fifth album, Mercury, the sounds of the American heartland are not lost on her, taking the mellow folk of 2010’s One And All and dragging it through a gritty bluescountry grind at odds with her waifish moans. Featuring a who’s who of session players (names like Glenn Worf, David Mansfield and Chad Cromwell feature in the liner notes of albums by Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Aaron Neville and Johnny Cash), Mercury is extraordinarily slick and professional. But the technical precision and expertise does tend to wear a little thin; the sounds of lonely electric guitars and wavering lap steels all sit perfectly in the mix in the exact same way they do on so many records you’ve heard before. Of course, the session musicians aren’t the centerpiece here – that honour is reserved for Brown’s unique poetic charm. Her hushed moans are just as fitting on the dark haunt of ‘Butterfly Blues’ as they are within the heartbroken yearn of ‘I Want It Back.’ Even blues romps like ‘So Many Miles’ aren’t out of place, but it does tend to feel like Brown’s voice is at its best when she’s not strutting. A great release by one of country music’s finest female artists, Mercury is only let down when it doesn’t play to her strengths. Max Easton
Cohen mainstays such as depression (‘The Darkness’), love (‘Crazy To Love You’) or spiritual grace (the hymn ‘Come Healing’). Oliver Downes
VARIOUS ARTISTS
PERFUME GENIUS
Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan Fontana/Universal
Put Your Back N 2 It Matador/Remote Control
To celebrate 50 years of Amnesty International and 50 years since the release of Bob Dylan’s selftitled debut album, Universal Music has released Chimes Of Freedom, a collection of Bob Dylan songs covered by some of the most wellknown artists of last 50 years. Miley Cyrus murders ‘You’re Going To Make Me Lonesome When You Go’, Adele turns in a brilliant performance of later Dylan tune ‘Make You Feel My Love’, Mark Knoffler does ‘Restless Farewell’ justice, punk-poppers Jack’s Mannequin’s version of ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ is surprisingly good, Lenny Kravitz phones in his performance of ‘Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35’, Queens Of The Stone Age attempt to make ‘Outlaw Blues’ swagger, which starts promisingly but falls flat, Silversun Pickups' slowcore version of ‘Not Dark Yet’ is beautiful, while Bettye LaVette makes ‘Most Of The Time’ her own. And so on it goes. Some performances are marvellous, some are mediocre, and some are just plain blasphemous. The best thing about this compilation, apart from the warm fuzzy feeling you get from knowing that a percentage of the retail price is being donated to Amnesty International, is the quantity of material. There are better Dylan cover albums out there, such as Black America Sings Bob Dylan, or the soundtrack to I’m Not There. Both of those compilations feel like albums, while this feels like a hodge podge of songs by too many different bands at different levels, whose only link is the excellent source material. This compilation is pretty ordinary – thankfully, Bob Dylan is anything but.
If you miss when Sufjan Stevens made tremulous little songs about tiny moments of great personal significance, have Matador got a treat for you. Perfume Genius draws timetested motifs and references into his orbit – which is quiet and still and full of unspoken heartbreak – and he lets them do the speaking. ‘No Tear’ uses a deep, draggy vocal treatment to cast an eerie shadow beneath the otherwise hopeful mantra of the chorus. It’s one of several tracks that incorporates the steady rolling cadences of gospel – another is ‘Take Me Home’, which even features a gospel-like backing choir and the clammy reverb of an empty church. It builds up to a torch-song chorus where Hadreas’s papery, emotive voice (think Sufjan or Paul Simon) twists around a gorgeous ladder of notes, before climbing down again in an anti-climactic coda that was foreshadowed in the simple refrain: the classic, heartbreaking juxtaposition of “Let me down easy” asked in such a hopeful tone. And closer ‘Sister Song’ has a melody like a folk lullaby – a form that might not be the oldest in the book, but to almost anyone it’s the first they remember. Put Your Back N 2 It is Hadreas’ second album, and for all the gloomy song titles (‘Dirge’, ‘AWOL Marine’, ‘Dark Parts’) there are fewer wrenching confessionals than the debut. The over-too-soon ‘Hood’ – a minute of sparse keys, 30 seconds of warm, sleepy piano blues and then it’s gone again – is regretful but resolute. “You would never call me baby / if you knew the truth” he croons ruefully. “Oh, but I waited so long for your love.” Simple enough to be true; creative enough to be new on every listen. Quietly epic and very special.
Roland Kay-Smith Caitlin Welsh
Robbie Miles
INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK I, A MAN You’re Boring Us All Independent Half a year on from their promising debut EP, You’re Boring Us All further develops Melbourne outfit I, a Man’s reputation for distinctive, inventive guitar sounds. Built around the dialogue between the six strings of singer Daniel Moss and fellow axeman Ash Hunter, they take a textural approach to their instruments. Whether rippling in ambient washes, strumming with a drone and twang, or coiling together for big, shimmering chords – as on lead single
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‘Sometimes’ – their playing possesses both intelligence and flexibility. Anchoring their spacious soundscapes are the durable rhythm section of Matt Pinxt and drummer Sumner Fish, their own nimble lines and beats locking in and around the guitars as they stretch and scrape in novel directions. The title track that opens the EP quickly demonstrates their knack for blending the cerebral with the instinctive. Upward flights of picked chords play against a steady backbeat, before Pinxt’s bass yawns through the gaps. Moss’ tender alto and splashes of guitar strumming fill the picture in a beautiful wash of distinctive elements not dissimilar to the watercolours that grace the cover artwork.
The organic way that their tunes transform and swell is at once calming and thrilling, from the steady hum of ‘Haight Ashbury’ over thumping toms and droning chords, which shifts and turns for a vivid ascending edge, to the melancholic plucking of ‘Chores’ – particularly its beautiful midsection of chromatic chord changes that somehow recalls the technicolour shifts of Pink Floyd. They even manage to make the typically tricky five-four time signature sound natural on ‘Fivefour’ (geddit?). A set of clever and diverse songs that never obscure the group’s love for a tender hook. Al Newstead
OFFICE MIXTAPE And here are the albums that have helped BRAG HQ get through the week... BAND OF SKULLS - Sweet Sour EMMA RUSSACK - Sounds Of Our City GUIDED BY VOICES - Human Amusements At Hourly Rates
FOUR TET - Everything Ecstatic JENNY LEWIS - Acid Tongue
Remedy
More than The Cure since 1989 with Murray Engleheart
LONG JOURNEY
All that talk from the Annandale stage from Off’s Keith Morris and Jim Jones from The Jim Jones Revue has finally come into focus: March sees the release of The Journey Is Long, another tribute to The Gun Club’s late Jeffrey Lee Pierce, on which various devotees do their thing with songs that the great man had sketched out, as well as some of his more established tunes. Among them are Nick Cave, Mark Lanegan, Warren Ellis, Deborah Harry (duetting with Cave), Tex Perkins pairing up with Lydia Lunch, the glorious and completely forgotten Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, and the aforementioned Jim Jones Revue. By 2013 there should also be yet another comp of “reanimated” JLP music called The Task Has Overwhelmed Us.
LOU: FROM VU TO LULU
Conventional business thinking probably figured that Lou Reed and Metallica touring the Lulu slab together would have been a recipe for riots and lousy ticket sales. A pity. We’d sure have gone along. But Mr Reed has chosen a far lower road than that: touring Europe in June and July under the banner of ‘From Vu To Lulu’. Doing that Lulu stuff without the maul and pummel of Metallica as his virtual backing band spells high art tedium to us...
BILL WARD FTW
And the Black Sabbath without Bill Ward PR disaster rolls on, with no one seemingly making any attempt to move into damage control mode – which means that a great legend continues to be shat upon from a great height. And there’s some killer proWard campaign lines running out there. One argues that if Led Zeppelin reunited while John Bonham was still with us would they get another drummer? But really, in bottom-line terms why doesn’t Ozzy simply pick up the phone and talk to his old mate and thrash something out? Or demand that someone else does? Come on Double O! Stand up man! This is important.
HEAVEN
Australia’s greatest international metal hope, Heaven, are reforming in their classic ‘80s lineup with singer Allan Fryer (the man who very nearly replaced Bon Scott in AC/ DC), guitarist John Haese, bassist Laurie Marlow and drummer Joe Turtur. Late guitarist Kelly is being replaced by Mich Perry. A national tour will hopefully kick off at the end of May.
@ 794 PARRAMATTA ROAD, LEWISHAM (02) 9560 8755
HANDSOME DICK
The week before last was a biggie for former Dictators frontman Handsome Dick Manitoba, in more ways than one: not only did the massively slimmed-down singer’s outfit, Manitoba, open for Guns N’ Roses at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, but it was also almost three years exactly since he had a clearly successful major heart operation. Good stuff.
GRATEFUL DEAD
Yikes! Hot on the heels of that 75-disc set of their entire European tour from 1972 comes another massive effort from The Grateful Dead. This time it’s (only) a 14-DVD set, called All The Years Combine, which is due in April. While we’d say that, as much as we love The Dead, it’s more fun listening to what they do than watching them do it, this is still a package that’s damn tough to argue with. Included are The Grateful Dead Movie (the classic film from 1974, shot at Winterland in San Francisco before they took a long break from the road), The Closing Of Winterland; Dead Ahead; Truckin’ Up To Buffalo; Ticket To New Year’s; Downhill From Here; View From The Vault; View From The Vault Vol. 2; View From The Vault Vol. 3; View From The Vault Vol. 4; and So Far.
794 PARRAMATTA RD, LEWISHAM PH: (02) 9560 8755
February
Thursday 23rd
t r a p e h t y a l P Friday 24th
Half way H o m eb ou y
JESUS AND MARY AGAIN
The Jesus And Mary Chain – with both Reid brothers (whose battles once made those of Noel and Liam seem like a pillow fight) – have reformed just months after their back-catalogue was reissued in high deluxe style. They’ll be playing a select number of dates in the US in March.
Saturday 25th
M o t h er B r od y Thursday 1st
M AR CH
W is h in g F ic t io n The Grateful Dead
ON THE TURNTABLE On the Remedy turntable is King Snake Roost’s Ground Into The Dirt, in which one of the baddest of bad-arsed acts ever to drag themselves across the Australian landscape do a brutal blue singlet underbelly take on Oz rock. This is music for a road trip that’s going to end very, very badly – but because it’s not pretty, you can’t look away. Also spinning is The Warlocks’ Phoenix, with all its early Velvet Underground and Stooges’ sonic touchstones. A great pity they ran out of steam.
TOUR AND INDUSTRY NEWS The Chickenstones launch their second album, Hell Hath No Fury, at the I-94 Bar Club’s Sunday Session on Sunday March 11, upstairs at the Sando in Newtown. The swampabilly/horror/swamp outfit formed in 2007 from the remains of The Pannadolls, Hatemail and Fruitworld. Helping out on the night are closing act 25th Floor with their tribute to Patti Smith, and Big Al Creed (Hell Crab City, New Christs) doing a solo set of punk rock favourites. $10 bucks in and doors open at 7pm. Chickenstones go on about 8.20pm. OK, some ticketing news regarding that killer Dig It Up! – Hoodoo Gurus Invitational show on April 22 at the Enmore, Notes live and the Green Room, with a lineup including The Hard-Ons, The Sonics, Died Pretty, Redd Kross, the 5.6.7.8’s, The Fleshtones, Royal Headache and more. The A-Reserve
tickets sold out very quickly, but there’s now a handful more A-Reserve seats available. Equally, a C-Reserve ticket (in the nosebleed section but with GA access) is on offer at the very special price of just $99 plus booking fee. Playing their only Sydney show and first Australian gig in almost a year, The Deniz Tek Group comes to the I-94 Bar Club at the Sando this Sunday February 26. Backed by an outfit comprised of Andy Newman (ME-262, Visitors) and Calvin Welch (Soul Movers), the DTG melds a mix of Tek originals and tunes penned for his previous bands – all riding on the back of the recent career retrospective, The Citadel Years. Lending support are those gentlemen of fuzz and Farfisa, The Intercontinental Playboys, who are back after a hiatus, and the off-the-wall Men From UNCLE. Doors open at 7pm.
Send stuff to remedy@ozemail.com.au by 6pm Wednesdays. Pics to art@thebrag.com www.facebook.com/remedy4rock
Friday 2nd
Ge n ed ef ec t Saturday 3rd
P o l a r k n ig h t s COMING SOON Cr a sh Through , Tonk s Green , Gods Of R a p ture , E sca p ist, E nvi t ik us, Ca sca de , Par t isa n Code , Gr a nd Pl a n , The Cruel K ind , E vil Ugly, The Da m ned Hum a ns And Ma n y More. . .
www.sydneylivehouse.com FOR ALL VENUE BOOKING ENQUIRIES.
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live reviews what we've been to see...
LAURA MARLING
Sydney Opera House Thursday February 9
Laura Marling doesn’t do encores. “Anyone who’s seen us play before will know what’s coming – but I can’t believe I’m doing it at the Opera House,” she tells a spellbound audience, at the close of the exquisite ‘What He Wrote’ towards the end of the evening. “But here we go: if you did want an encore, that was the last song. If you didn’t, it was the second-tolast song… We’re re-claiming the encore.” It was an echo of Marling’s last Sydney show at the Factory Theatre in August 2010, where she surprised the audience with a similar stand against the farce of the modern encore. And as with that show, she opened the night by walking on stage with a smile, a drink and a sweet little wave – and the audience swooned, hushed, and never wanted her to leave.
The first half of the show is filled with last year’s A Creature I Don’t Know start to finish – and from her band’s complete mastery, you’d never guess that this was the first time they’d played the album all the way through since the studio. Marling changes the mood of the Concert Hall deftly, gently and completely – switching from the Spanish-tinged sweetness of ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ to the lived-in but up-beat balladry of ‘Salinas’, to her dark, wry, sexy delivery of ‘The Beast’, with the stage lights lit red around her as she calls for Sophia, the Goddess of power, but gets the Beast instead: “Tonight he lies with ME” she savagely spits. Her five-piece band (on keys, drums, double bass, cello, mandolin, banjo and more between them), with the glorious vocals of cellist Ruth de Turberville, will build you a mountain's worth of each song's intricacies – before Marling tears right through it all with a solo moment so momentous that it slides right down your spine. The second half of the show is more laid back, a selection of favourites from her first two Mercury-nominated full-length albums (and yep, she’s just turned 22), with fans offered highlights like the full-
bodied ‘Ghosts’, the waltzy ‘My Manic And I’, favourite ‘Rambling Man’, and the hidden title track of Alas I Cannot Swim. And it turns out Laura Marling is also quite funny – despite being, as she admits, extremely nervous. After reaching to the bottom of her barrel for some icebreaking facts – apparently the queen drinks six units of alcohol a day (“I like her style. I respect that.”) and also has a manual license (“FACT.”) – we hear that Marling’s mother texted her before the show: “Good luck, have fun, and for God’s sake smile.” “She thinks I don’t smile enough on stage – not because I’m nervous, but because I’m being actively cruel to the audience,” Marling says. “I hope you know that I’m quite fond of you all.” It’s a private moment that transports us to the anxiety of a mother back home in England, whose very young daughter is playing one of the most prestigious music halls on the other side of the world – and it lends so much weight to the heartbreaking ‘Goodbye England’ that a few of us are stifling sniffles by the end. Steph Harmon
RGE POPOV
OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS : GEO
YUCK
show. Songs like ‘Suicide Policeman’ and ‘Shook Down’ burst out in colour amidst the reverb and the noise, which Blumberg does an admirable job of ramping up just so the band don’t look entirely serious.
Oxford Art Factory Thursday February 9 You wouldn’t know it from their sound-marred set at Laneway, but Yuck are actually a technically excellent group of musicians. Sure, their music sits conveniently in that pocket of 19941996 where practically every rock tune was killer and we all loved everything and wore cargo pants, but they’ve managed to take the slacker grunge element and add some more pretty, shoegazey elements to it, which comes out a lot more in their live performance (particularly when it's mixed correctly). The Yuck catalogue, which is currently one very good album, can be roughly divided into fast-paced distortion ‘bangers’ and finger-picked torch songs that turn into heavy emotional choruses drenched in feedback. It’s actually the latter which work better tonight, showing off not only the versatility of the two guitarists on stage but also frontman Daniel Blumberg, who is on-note the entire
The interplay of Blumberg and Max Bloom’s lead and chord lines are perhaps the most useful indicator that Yuck have a lifespan beyond the Sonic Youth comparisons. Already they’re expanding well beyond that template – and sure, that Japanese bass player is hitting root notes and exists mainly as hipster eye candy but dammit, they’re together, and every song – save the last over-extended My Bloody Valentine homage – goes off. This must be one of the most overlooked groups to come out for Laneway, perhaps because of their unfortunate place in the alphabet (and therefore the bill poster), but you should be as excited as I am about Yuck. They’ve got a lot of good stuff coming yet. Jonno Seidler
OUR PHOTOGRAPHER : ASHL
EY MAR
THE DRUMS, CULTS The Enmore Theatre Wednesday February 8
feist
PICS :: KC
Totally new to Cults, I had little clue as to what to expect from them. The long, dark, greasy locks each band member possessed had me feeling mildly jealous and preparing for, I dunno, maybe something kinda swampy? You probably shouldn’t judge a band by their hair, but I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed when the sleigh bells intro gave way to a performance of fairly twee, shoegazey, ultimately-samey festival pop.
07:02:12 :: The Enmore Theatre:: 118-132 Enmore Rd Newtown 9550 3666 40 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
sunshiney pop – and from the outset, the energy they put into the show almost let one forget the drizzly weather dampening streets and spirits outside. Frontman Jonathan Pierce put the kitchen sink into it, and the audience ate out of his flailing hands – only problem was, his vocals were all but drowned out by a combination of the crowd having a set-long sing-along, and poor mixing. The only thing that really sounded good from where I stood, bang in the centre of the standing section, were, in fact, the drums. Towards the end of the set I made a bathroom stop and discovered how much clearer and more dynamic the whole thing sounded from the sidelines.
I hate to criticise a band for being derivative, but this performance just felt like watching a rock band with a xylophone perform a bunch of Motown songs: hipstamatic filter set to MGMT. It wasn’t unenjoyable – they had a lot of sweet melodies and great pop hooks – but I couldn’t get lost in it; it felt calculated and unjoyous. That element of soul present in a lot of their songs comes across as purely academic, and it just wasn’t fun enough for me to enjoy it from a more superficial, sunshiney pop perspective.
There’s something about their particular mix of shiny happy surf pop melodies and fast, pop punk drumming that must really appeal to teenagers – there didn’t seem to be many people in the all-ages audience who were actually over 20, but there were plenty of under-15s. All of them were having a blast, busting moves and singing along with their hands in the air. Personally, I wasn’t sold on The Drums’ schtick, but I respect the fact they have one – and heaps of fun tunes that they play with buckets of energy, too.
The Drums are all about summery,
Jenny Noyes
live reviews what we've been to see...
M83
Metro Theatre Thursday February 9 This show was never going to live up to my expectations; I knew that from the start. Nobody in that room could know the mood I was in when I first sat down and listened to Hurry Up We’re Dreaming; nobody else could understand how strengthening and reassuring the stratospheric vocals, the luminous harmonies, the cinematic embrace of excess and romanticism were as they filtered into my tired, sad brain for the first time. None of you were there to witness it as this album filled me up when I felt wrung out like a kitchen sponge. I sort of just wanted it to be just me in a room full of pop music, allencompassing and sympathetic. Luckily, the second-best way to enjoy M83 is in a crowd of like-minded fans all riding the same sentimental wave, all borne aloft by equal parts electro-pop pulse and pearlised shoegaze wash. From the moment a single member of the band emerged wearing the mental Gonzoas-drawn-by-Maurice-Sendak mask from the cover of the album, the crowd was mostly captivated. (The rest of them were chatting loudly near me – they weren’t even Only There For The Hit, as they kept at it all through ‘Midnight City’.) Happily, Anthony Gonzalez and Co. devoted a good amount of time to Saturdays = Youth and earlier, though it’s always a bit sad to see the diminishing returns on the old stuff from newer crowds – the spectacular videogame car-
chase of ‘Sitting’ ought to inspire a rave, but everyone just stands there. Saturdays and Hurry Up fans were well-represented in the crowd, though, and for the most part they watched and danced with various measures of confusion at some of the earlier stuff, most of which sounds like throwing Mogwai down a wind tunnel in the ‘80s. On stage, everything was executed flawlessly – Morgan Kibby continues to be a gem, raving away in her tinfoil cocktail dress and gathering most of the band to her corner to jam the fuck out during closer ‘Couleurs’. The sound was underwhelming, but the band was tight, and Gonzalez is a serious, passionate frontman with great biceps and a crucial capacity for keeping all the components of some very busy songs tied together. And if I'm honest, that moment where everyone was bellowing “THE CITY IS MY CHURCH” was better live than it ever was in my head. Caitlin Welsh
OUR PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY
MAR
AUSTRA, KOOL THING The Basement Thursday February 9
I arrive at the Basement to a houseparty vibe. Last time I was here it was a dinner show, but tonight there are no gastronomic distractions and the dining room is transformed into a cosy dance floor. I recognise faces from Sunday’s Laneway Festival, among them Austra’s lead singer Katie Stelmanis, who is hangin’ out mid-crowd as if it were her party. Relaxed and unpretentious, she moves to the front for opening band, Kool Thing. Berlin-based duo Kool Thing are initially kinda cool. They co-deliver vocals over a spooked-out zip-zappy beat with a Sonic Youth-ish guitar solo. The following songs lose the haunted feel, I tire of the simultaneous singing, and I’m quickly left feeling like I should like them. Maybe I need to check out their album.
OUR PHOTOGRAPHER : GEORGE
PORTUGAL. THE MAN, GIVERS Metro Theatre Tuesday February 7
Not to be that guy, but I first saw Givers at a festival in New Orleans last year. They’re from Lafayette, a college town an hour or so out of the city, and their last show at the end of a long US tour was a joyous homecoming, a thrilled crowd basking in their unselfconscious energy and obvious skill. They sparked a similar, if more surprised, vibe at Laneway this year, and while they’re best experienced with the sun on your face and a smile in your heart or some shit like that, a gloomy Metro (with the Curtain Of Less-Than-Stellar Ticket Sales drawn ominously afore the top half of the room) was still mostly transformed by the barrage of happy. Givers combine that infuriatingly current Afro-pop joyousness thing with tight, busy arrangements and shifting time signatures that they bring from their improvisational
music backgrounds. They sport mad grins as they turn to one another and twist into spiky, sparkling, deceptively intricate and bottom-heavy little jams that recall Battles at their poppiest. It’s telling when they bust out a fun Talking Heads medley (‘Girlfriend Is Better’/’Sugar On My Tongue’/’This Must Be The Place’) – while they nail the covers, only the sweet last track really suits them; darkness is best served as subtext for Givers. As Portugal. The Man tune up onstage behind another curtain, some promising shredding is audible, and a knot of bellowing diehards forms up the front. They’ve been waiting a long time for this – it’s taken eight years and seven studio albums to get Wasilla’s finest to our shores. With minimal patter, PTM delve into the back-catalogue a bit, lean heavily on 2011’s In The Mountain In The Cloud, and add two of their standard live covers into the mix (a Zeppelin-size ‘Helter
POPOV
Skelter’, and a closing segue into ‘All The Young Dudes’ that drives home just how much they owe to Bowie). The wry, MGMTcovering-Oasis psych notes of their recorded output deepen when played live, wallowing in a homicidally loud wall of swollen guitars that would do battle with the Black Angels at their heaviest, lightened with unabashed whoaohs and roadhouse-anthem choruses. The vocals are buried deep which is a shame, but helps bring drummer Jason Sechrist to the fore. The man has a – yes, I’m going there – Bonham-like capacity for combining heavy rock gravitas and opulent slither, and the immense thump of his bass kick anchors the sound when it threatens to disappear into the muddy mix. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything T-Rex ever did, help a brother out by buying a PTM record. We’ve suffered without them long enough and they can’t come back too soon. Caitlin Welsh
I’ve read that Stelmanis was classically trained, but there’s no better way to prove it than by sitting herself at a grand piano, alone on stage, and playing a song fit for a neo-romantic Austrian opera. The song is ‘The Beast’, off Austra’s debut record Feel It Break, and it’s a profound insight into her talent. She’s joined onstage by her band and her otherworldly identical twin backup singers, as things shift from classical to electronic. New wave was made for dancing, and Austra’s slightly creepy beats, clean synths and exquisite voices get bodies moving and elbows over ears. Dressed like Latvian gypsies, Stelmanis and the twins dance like wind-up toys. It’s hands-in-the-air music, perhaps due to her voice being so liberating and heavenly while her music is so club-ready and grounded. ‘Darken Her Horse’ gets hands twirling hippy-style above heads, while the uplifting ‘Lose It’ combines hands over heads with joyous jumps. It’s a shame management keep the house lights half up, because as Austra roll into ‘Beat And The Pulse’ the voices harmonise dreamily and the Basement dance floor actually goes off. Tyler Broyles
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 41
snap sn ap up all night out all week . . .
vans bowl-o-rama party profile
It’s called: Vans Bowl-a-Rama Festival Official Afterparty feat. Los Capitanes It sounds: Just like the Vans Warped Tour circa 1995 – except it’s free and this time Los Capitanes has pubes. Who’s playing/skating? Some of the best skaters from around the globe (including Bucky Lasek and Bob Burnquist) shredding up the iconic Bondi Bowl during the day, with Los Capitanes supplying sonic support at the official Bowl-O-Rama after party at the Beach Road Hotel as part of their Rest For The Wicked tour. Sell it to us: Apart from being the biggest concrete-skate in the Southern Hemisphere, Bowl-O-Rama will also play host to art shows, video premieres and skate stalls throughout the week, all tied together with a punk/ska/rock/ reggae soundtrack lovingly provided by Los Capitanes. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The bit when the band took their pants off onstage and the audience followed their lead, coalescing in a giant punkrock orgy down on Bondi Beach. (It’ll be safe sex though, between the flags). Crowd specs: Skaters, punks, babes, über-trendy Bondi hipsters. Wallet damage: FREE! Where: Beach Road Hotel, Bondi
goons of doom
PICS :: AM
When: Saturday February 25 / doors 7pm, Los Capitanes at 10pm.
spectrum
PICS :: RR
PICS :: KC
11:02:12 :: The Standard :: Level 3/383 Bourke St Surry Hills 93313100
hall & oates
PICS :: AM
11:02:12 :: Spectrum :: 34 Oxford St Darlinghurst 93601375
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: ASHLEY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) NA :: OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER HAN ROU ETTE ROS :: OV POP RGE MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY :: GEO
42 :: BRAG :: 450: 20:02:12
step-panther
PICS :: KC
08:02:12 :: Entertainment Centre :: 35 Harbour Street Sydney 9320 4200
10:02:12 :: Beach Road Hotel :: 71 Beach Rd Bondi Beach 9130 7247
snap sn ap up all night out all week . . .
LV L 3 , 3 8 3 B O U R K E S T S U R RY H I L L S
L I V E M U S I C , V I S U A L A R T, T H E AT R E , CO M E DY, B U R L E S Q U E & B O O Z E
WED22 FEB THU 23 FEB ROAD SHOW
PICS :: AM
the pains of being pure at heart
SISTER JANE CAITLIN PARK MAGNETIC HEADS THE MAPLE TRAIL
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360 FEB 24 25 THU 1 MAR FRI 2 MAR NICKY NIGHT TIME + KATO VALARIE YUM + LUX LIFE FREE ENTRY FREE PIZZA Plus
M i - L i f e P H OTO G RA P H Y R E E L
COLLARBONES
A PROJECTED PHOTOGRAPHIC INSTALLATION SHOWCASING LIFESTYLES OF THE STRANGE, THE OBSCURE & THE ORDINARY.
BOATFRIENDS
LO - F I C O L L E C T I V E P R E S E N T S
bleeding knees club
PICS :: GP
SAT 3 MAR THU 8 MAR Animated shorts by Dave Carter
07:02:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Sydney 92673787
the lansdowne party profile
It’s called: Rock Steady Friday nights. It sounds like: Alternative rocky live sets.
"It’s only a matter of time until Dave Carter is a household name. He has timing that most film-makers would kill for."
DRINKS SPECIAL4-9PM
5 BEERS 5 VODKAS
$
$
PARADE VIEWING PLATFORM LEVEL 3 IN THE STANDARD!
Mike ‘Beavis and Butthead’ Judge’s Animation Show
Dave Carter is an independent stopframe animator. His animations have been commissioned by, among others, MTV, Comedy Central, Mike Judge’s Animation Show, MondoMedia and Sony BMG.
Who’s playing? Ya Aha, Grand Union and supports, followed by rock DJs till close. Sell it to us: Friday night at the Lansdowne has evolved into a fun-filled party night for anyone who likes to have a good time and enjoys quality live music for free. With rock bands kicking off every week from 8pm we’re filling up quick and we keep pumping through to the wee hours. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The state-of-the-art sound and topnotch stage set-up. Crowd specs: Anyone looking for a good time rocking out to some quality free music. Wallet damage: FREE with drink specials all night ($6 Jack Daniels RTDs) Where: The Lansdowne / 2-6 City Road, Chippendale When: Friday February 24 (and weekly)
OPEN TIL 3AM COME VISIT US AT FACEBOOK.COM/THESTANDARDSYDNEY
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT MOSHTIX.COM.AU/THESTANDARD WEARETHESTANDARD.COM.AU
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: ASHLEY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) NA :: OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER HAN ROU ETTE ROS :: OV POP RGE MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY :: GEO
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 43
g g guide gig g
send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com
Marilyn Manson
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22
ROCK & POP
ROCK & POP
Cambo The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm Erykah Badu (USA) Sydney Opera House $79– $129 8pm Matt Jones Trio The Three Wise Monkeys, Sydney free 10pm Rockin’ With Rah Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel free 8pm Steve Tonge Coogee Bat Hotel free 9pm
JAZZ
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26
Sydney Olympic Park
Soundwave:
Slipknot (USA), System of a Down (USA), Limp Bizkit (USA), Marilyn Manson (USA), A Day To Remember (USA), Machine Head (USA), Lamb of God (USA), Trivium (USA), Alterbridge (USA), Lostprophets (Wales), Angels & Airwaves (USA), Cobra Starship (USA), The Used (USA), You Me At Six (England), Devin Townsend Project (Canada), Unwritten Law (USA), Dashboard Confessional (USA), Thursday (USA), Dillinger Escape Plan (USA), Mastodon (USA), Underoath (USA), Steel Panther (USA), Jack’s Mannequin (USA), Meshuggah (Sweden), Enter Shikari (UK), Hatebreed (USA), Cathedral (UK), Switchfoot (USA), Paradise Lost (UK) and loads more $164.25 (+ bf) 11am 44 :: BRAG :: 450 : 20:02:12
Cope St Parade, George Washingmachine 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 8pm Jim Gannon Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Monday Jam: Danny G Felix, Djay Kohinga The Lansdowne, Broadway free 9pm Sonic Mayhem Orchestra Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $10 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Kathryn Selby City Recital Hall, Sydney $15 12.30pm all-ages Massimo Presti, Aaron Prentice, Russell Neal Kelly’s On King, Newtown free 7pm
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 21 ROCK & POP
Adam Pringle and Friends Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel free 7.30pm Bondi Jam Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm Bryce Cohen Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Hue Williams Jack’s Bar & Grill free 6.30pm James Parrino Coogee Bar Hotel free 9pm The Labyrinth: Richard In Your Mind (solo), Spookyland (solo) Bondi Open Air Cinema @ Bondi Pavillion $14-$45 (+ bf) 5.30pm Rob Henry The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm They Call Me Bruce Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 8.30pm
JAZZ
Alister Spence Trio, Aaron Blackey Quintet 505 Club, Surry Hills $8 (conc)–$15 8pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel free 8pm Sketches So Far: Ray Mann Three (DJ Set) Jurassic Lounge @ Australian Museum, Sydney $15–$20 5.30pm World In The Basement: Johanna Elms, Fuego Lento, Jamino & Group Lafaya The Basement, Circular Quay $15 (+ bf) 8.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Laurie McGinness, Jake Bennett, Michelle Christensen, Sean Renford, Boris Sladakovic, Russell Neal Dee Why RSL free 6.30pm The Songwriter Sessions Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 7.30pm
Anatta, Upside Down Miss Jane, The Furry Lips, L.G.T. Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $10 8pm Andy Mammers Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 9.30pm BDI Town & Country Hotel, St Peters free 7.30pm Cabins, The Cairos Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm The Damned Humans, The Window, Parethia Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Dan Spillane Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 6pm Jagermeister Presents: Tempting Eve, Bin Juicem Class 1C, The Spoon Collective Annandale Hotel $8 7.30pm Jamie Lindsay Northies, Cronulla free 7.30pm Jon Stevens, Ashleigh Mannix Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $62 6pm Madison Violet Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Mary Kiani (UK) The Basement, Circular Quay $27.50 (+ bf) 7.30pm Matt Jones Trio Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 11pm Mick Thomas The Famous Spiegeltent, Forecourt, Sydney Opera House $25 (+ bf) 7pm Mike Bennett The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 8.30pm Muso’s Jam Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt free 8pm Nicky Kurta Summer Hill Hotel free 7.30pm Paul Hayward’s Punk Rock Karaoke Band Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Rick Price Notes Live, Enmore $23.50 7pm Safari Suites The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm Samba Mundi Macquarie Hotel, Sydney free 8pm The Smith Artichoke Gallery, Manly free 7.30pm Sneaky Sound System, The Holidays, Papa Vs Pretty, Owl Eyes, Deap Sea Arcade, Strange Talk, The Never Ever, Sures Nantes, Set Sail, Leroy Lee, Gerard Masters, Kill City Creeps, Mark Wilkinson, Ben Morris & MC Losty, Nukewood, John Glover, Oaks & Lennox, DJ Willie Glasshouse Bar, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo $20–$30 3pm Steve Tonge Duo O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 9pm The Study: Hannah & Josh, The Stringsmiths, Ofelli The Gaelic Club, Surry Hills free 7pm Tom Trewlawny Coogee Bay Hotel free 9pm UNSW O-Week: Bluejuice Roundhouse, Kensington $23.50 7pm
JAZZ
Hammerhead 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8pm Jimmy Vargas, Lilana Scarlatta, Angie Hubbard Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $10 9pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel free 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Bec Sandridge GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $10 8pm John Chesher, Gavin Fitzgerald, Laura & Susie, Lynette Smith, TAOS Coach & Horses Hotel, Randwick free 7pm Raoul Graf Taren Point Hotel free 7pm Tommy Pickett, Alex Thompson, Greg Sita Cookies Lounge and Bar, Bakehouse Quarter, North Strathfield free 8pm Warren Munce, Boris Sladakovic, Russell Neal Cat and Fiddle Hotel, Balmain free 6.30pm
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23 ROCK & POP
Andy Mammers Harbord Beach Hotel 7pm Ange Murphy Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Broken Stone Records Roadshow: Sister Jane, Caitlin Park, The Maple Trail, Magnetic Heads The Standard, Darlinghurst $15 (+ bf) 8pm Cara Kavanagh Duo O’Malley’s Hotel, Kings Cross 9.30pm Cool Runnings: The Bashmment Crew Sandringham Hotel, Newtown 8pm Craig Thommo Coogee Bay Hotel free 10pm Dave White The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm David Agius Dee Why Hotel 8pm Doug Parkinson Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $51 6pm The Dyno-Mics, Big Village MCs Macquarie Hotel, Sydney free Elizabeth Rose GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $10 (+ bf) 8pm Exekute, Abacination, Putrefaction, Head In A Jar Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Family Friendly Karaoke Town & Country Hotel, St Peters free 7pm Finn National Press Club, Barton free 7pm Geoff Yule Smith Sofitel Sydney Wentworth Hotel free 5.30pm Glass Chain Campbelltown RSL $15 7pm Go/No-Go, M.I.T., DJ Skar The Lansdowne, Broadway free 9pm Grand Plan, Karmic Dirt, Senza Sole Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt $8 8pm Greg Byrne Northies-Cronulla Hotel – Sports Bar 9.15pm Hot Damn: Pledge This!, Andee Van Damage, Anchored Spectrum, Darlinghurst $15$20 8pm In-Cyde, Dawn Heist, Nobody Knew They Were Robots The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $12 (+ bf) 7pm Johnathan Devoy Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Journos Jam: 7 Network Band & Channel 10 Band, Kirsty Lee, Bambalam Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills $20 (+ bf) 5.30pm sold out The Kumpnee The Factory Floor, Factory Theatre, Enmore $10 (+ bf) 7.30pm Madison Violet (Canada) Notes Live, Enmore $14.30 7pm
Marilyn Manson photo by PEROU
pick of the week
MONDAY FEBRUARY 20
g g guide gig g
send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com Michael McGlynn Greengate Hotel 8pm Musos Club Jam Night Carousel Hotel, Rooty Hill free 8pm Open Mic Night Excelsior Hotel, Glebe free 7pm Open Mic Night Petersham Bowling Club free 7pm Pantelis Thalassinos (Greece) Enmore Theatre $61.70–$97.10 (+ bf) 8pm Rick Price Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Sam and Jamie Trio Maloney Hotel, Sydney 9.30pm SDS Broken Bones Party: Redcoats, The Faders, DJ Gian Paulo Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 7pm SLAM Day: Ghosts on Broadway, Divide and Conquer The Gaelic Club, Surry Hills $18.40 8pm SLAM Day: Papa Vs Pretty, Cabins, Palms Annandale Hotel free 6pm Speakeasy The Whitehouse Hotel, Petersham 8pm Steve Tonge Observer Hotel, The Rocks Tangled Up In Bob: Dave Debs The Basement, Circular Quay $20 (+ bf) 8pm
JAZZ
Adrian Mears Quartet 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8pm Glenn Rhodes Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Jeremy Rose Trio The Spice Cellar, Sydney free 4pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel free 8pm Sax In The City: Jeremy Rose & Mark Isaacs The Spice Cellar, Sydney free 6pm Vince Jones Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $22 9pm
COUNTRY
Tribute To The Grand Ole Opry: Kane Dyson, Daniel Marando, Emma Swift, The Vanguard Pickers The Vanguard, Newtown $20 (+ bf) 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Kirk Burgess Edinburgh Castel Hotel, Sydney free 7pm Matt Toms The Marlborough Hotel, Newtown free 8.30pm Russell Neal Kogarah Hotel free 7pm Simon Marrable, Pauly Vella, Halfwait, Helmut Uhlmann Mars Hill Café, Parramatta free 8pm
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24 ROCK & POP
360, Mat Cant The Standard, Surry Hills $20 (+ bf) 8pm sold out AM 2 PM Kingswood Sports Club free 7.30pm The Angels Revesby Workers Club 8pm Australian Pink Show Engadine Tavern free 9.30pm The Australian Van Morrison Show: Van the Man The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf) 9pm Ben Finn, Michael McGlynn Castle Hill RSL 6.30pm
Big Radio Dynamite Mounties free 9pm Black Diamond Hearts, Beatville Boys Crows Nest Hotel 6.30pm B-Massive Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Carter Rollins Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Chris Connolly Guildford Leagues Club free 10pm Dan Mangan (Canada) Notes Live, Enmore $37.75 7pm David Agius Novotel – Brewery Bar, Olympic Park 5pm Death Cab For Cutie (USA), Dappled Cities Enmore Theatre $67.10 (+ bf) 8pm sold out Double Barrel Coogee Bay Hotel free 10pm Drill, Zeahorse, Toydeath, Manic Sleeper Cell Sandringham Hotel, Newtown 8pm Endless Summer Beach Party Marlborough Hotel, Newtown free 10.30pm Finn Old Canberra Inn, Lyneham free 8.30pm From Afar Fitzroy Hotel, Windsor free 8.30pm Gang of Brothers Blue Beat, Double Bay $10 10pm Gene Maynard Band Town & Country Hotel, St Peters free 8.30pm Geoff Rana, Dan Lawrence Observer Hotel, The Rocks 8.30pm Geoff Rana Parramatta RSL 5pm Geoff Yule Smith Sofitel Sydney Wentworth Hotel free 6pm Glass Chain Oriental Hotel, Springwood free 9pm Greg Byrne Harbord Beach Hotel 8pm Harlequin Duo Mean Fiddler Hotel, Rouse Hill 9pm Heath Burdell Grand Hotel, Rockdale 5.30pm Iluka, Axle Whitehead, Bears With Guns, Lime Cordiale Trackdown Scoring Stage, Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park $10 7pm In-Cyde, Dawn Heist The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $12 (+ bf) 8pm Jconnexion Vineyard Hotel free 9pm Jeremy Edwards & the Dust Radio Band Empire Hotel, Annandale $15 8pm John Field Duo Pioneer Tavern, Penrith 8pm The Last Waltz Revival Show Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $43 6pm The Leisure Bandits, We The People, Kane Sarich, Spenda C Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Lies N Destruction Guns N Roses Tribute Bull N Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills free 9.30pm Love & Guts Art Show: Hell City Glamours Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 7pm Luke Dixon Duo Stacks Taverna, Sydney 5pm Luke Robinson Northies-Cronulla Hotel – Sports Bar 9pm Machinations Bridge Hotel, Rozelle $49.50 8pm Making, Simo Soo, Thomas William vs Scissor Lock, Haunts Dirty Shirlows, Marrickville $10 8pm Mandi Jarry Macquarie Hotel, Liverpool 5.30pm
Matt Jones Trio Level 1, East Leagues Club, Bondi Junction free 8.30pm Mayer Hawthorne (USA), Electric Empire, Fantine Metro Theatre, Sydney $45 (+ bf) 8pm MUM: City Calm Down, Argetina, These New South Whales, The Bogey Lowensteins, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm Murder By Death (USA), Eleventh He Reaches London Hermann’s Bar, Darlington $25.10-$29.50 (+ bf) 8pm Neon Heart, L.U.S.T., Olympic Ayres, DJ Cee Cee The Gaelic Club, Surry Hills $13.30 8pm Nicky Kurta World Square Pub, Sydney 6pm Panama Seymour Theatre Centre, Chippendale free 6pm all-ages Parkway Drive Sutherland Entertainment Centre $25 (+ bf) 8pm all-ages Pocket Of Stones, Toy The Faxtory Floor, Factory Theatre, Enmore $10 (+ bf) 8pm The Rebel Rousers Bankstown Trotting Club free 8pm Remmos K, Shanobro, Aunty Hu Hu Town and Country Hotel, St Peters free 8.30pm Renae Kearney O’Malley’s Hotel, Kings Cross 8pm Rob Henry PJ Gallaghers, Drummoyne 10pm Sam and Jamie Trio Kirribilli Hotel 8pm SLAM Day: Fait Accompli, Raise The Crazy, Devine Electric, Blackie Annandale Hotel free 7.30pm Steve Edmonds Band Warilla Bowling Club free 8pm Triple Treat Tour: Northeast Party House, Nantes, Millions Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $12 (+ bf) 8pm Vanity Riots, Virginia Killstyxx, Become The Catalyst, Arcaien Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Venus Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill 8pm Wolf Call: The Gooch Palms, Los Sundowners, Bain Wolfkind, DJ Blackbear, Flash & Crash DJs GoodGod Small Club $10 9pm Ya Aha, The Grand Union, Kolonel Bizarre, Belle Havens The Lansdowne, Broadway free 9pm Zoltan PJ’s Irish Pub, Parramatta 9pm
Rick Fensom Collaroy Beach Hotel free 5.30pm
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25 ROCK & POP
12 Selection Showcase Valve Bar, Tempe 6pm 360, Mat Cant The Standard, Surry Hills $20 (+ bf) 8pm sold out The ‘70s Show: The Love Generation Guildford Leagues Club $7 (member)–$10 8.30pm Andy Mammers Rydges, Parramatta 5pm Angie Dean Castle Hill RSL – Piano Lounge 6.30pm Antiskeptic, Move To Strike, Emperors, The Miracle Is Now The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $25 (+ bf) 8pm Band Down Under Oatley Hotel free 8.30pm Ben Finn Brewhouse, Marayong 8pm Benjamin’s Big Band, The Drum Police North Bondi RSL Club free 8pm Bluehouse The Red Rattler, Marrickville $15 7.30pm The Cairos Spectrum, Darlinghurst $12 (+ bf) 8pm Carl Fidler, Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks 4pm Cash – 80th Birthday Celebration: Daniel Thompson, Camille and Stuie
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! Notes Live, Enmore $34.70 7pm Creedence and Friends Bull & Bush, Baulkham Hills 10pm Dan Spillane Northies-Cronulla Hotel – Sports Bar 9pm Dave Tice and Mark Evans Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 4pm David Agius Caste Hill RSL – Terrace Bar 8.30pm Death Cab For Cutie (USA), Dappled Cities Enmore Theatre $67.10 (+ bf) 8pm Dirty Deeds – The AC/DC Show Narrabeen RSL Club $5 8pm Fatt Lipp Carousel Inn, Rooty Hill free 8.30pm FGMT, Black Magic, Kontempt, Madam Wu with Elise Graham The Lansdowne, Broadway free 9pm Fiona Leigh Jones Duo Harbord Beach Hotel 8.30pm The Fireballs, Hysteria
wed
22 Feb
(9:00PM - 12:00AM)
thu
23 Feb
(9:00PM - 12:00AM)
fri
24 Feb (5:00PM - 8:00PM)
JAZZ
The Arrebato Ensemble 505 Club, Surry Hills $15 (conc)–$20 8pm Matt Baker Quartet (USA) The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $10-$20 8.30pm Sam Gill Quartet Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm
Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Fire! Santa Rosa Fire!, Sures, 1929indian GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $10 (+ bf) 8pm Flamin’ Beauties Home Tavern, Wagga 10pm Forever Diamond Level 1, East Leagues Club free 9pm For The Funk Of It: Zimzalabim, Kakhand, Foreigndub DJs The Hampshire Hotel, Camperdown free 7pm Framed Music Fitzroy Hotel, Windsor free 8.30pm Heath Burdell Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany 7pm John Field Duo Stacks Taverna, Sydney 5pm King Parrot, Wolfkahn, Inebrious Bastards, Infested Entrails, Festering Drippage Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt 8pm King Tide, Quixotics Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $25 6pm
(9:30PM - 1:30AM)
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
SATURDAY AFTERNOON (4:30PM - 7:30PM)
sat
25 Feb
sun
SATURDAY NIGHT
26 Feb
(4:30PM - 7:30PM)
SUNDAY NIGHT
ACOUSTIC & FOLK Black Diamond, I N I C I a T E, Kid Vegaz Everglades Country Club, Woy Woy free 7.30pm Craig Thommo The Belvedere Hotel free 8pm Kirk Burgess Collingwood Hotel, Liverpool free 4.30pm LJ Chatswood RSL free 5pm
(9:00PM - 12:00AM)
(8:30PM - 12:00AM)
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 45
g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com Reload North Nowra Tavern free 9pm Renae Kearney Novotel – Menu 33, Rooty Hill 6.30pm Sam and Jamie Show Novotel – Brewery Bar, Olympic Park 4.30pm Scott Donaldson Mean Fiddler Hotel – Piano Man, Rouse Hill 9pm Seattle Sound Blacktown RSL Club free 10pm SLAM Day: The Fauves, Little Lovers, Tom Ugly, March of the Real Fly, Jack Carty Annandale Hotel free 7.30pm Steve Edmonds Band Dicey Riley’s Hotel, Wollongong free 8.30pm The Study: Jordan Miller, Ollie Browne, Fire Tree Gaelic Theatre, Surry Hills 8pm Stunner vs XQ (Zimbabwe) The Factory Floor, Faxtory Theatre, Enmore $40-$45 7pm Swight Escobar, Gonzalo Porta & The Sydney Salsa All Stars Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $20 (+ bf) 9pm Taipan, Unknown To God, Straight Satan, Nobody Knew They Were Robots Town & Country Hotel, St Peters $10 8pm Talk It Up Crows Nest Hotel 11.15pm Vans Bowl-A-Rama 2012 Awards Night: Los Capitanes, Dave Slade, Frank Xavier, Scott Wolfe Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 7pm Venus Mean Fiddler Hotel, Rouse Hill 5.30pm Vibrations At Valve Band Competition: The Broken
Line, Anonymous, Antisocial Society Club, Hey Baby Valve Bar, Tempe 12pm Who’s Shout, Ether Town & Country Hotel, St Peters free 1pm Zoltan Ettamogah Hotel, Rouse Hill 1pm
Tall Pop Syndrome Marlborough Hotel, Newtown free 10.30pm
JAZZ
ROCK & POP
Blue Moon Quartet Supper Club, Fairfield RSL Club free 7pm Cameron Undy’s Abstract Brotherhood, Ben Vander Wal 505 Club, Surry Hills $15 (conc)–$20 8pm The Catholics The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $15-$25 8.30pm Nativosoul The Basement, Circular Quay $20 (+ bf) 7.30pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel free 5pm Salsa Masquerade: Dright ‘Chocolate’ Escobar, Sydney Salsa Allstars Blue Beat, Double Bay $20 10pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Benn Gunn Hollywood Bar & Cafe, Hoyts Broadway free 6pm Darren Bennett, Oliver Goss Terrey Hills Tavern free 7.30pm Hannah Matysek, Benja William, Kel Royal Exchange Hotel, Marrickville free 7.30pm John Vella Rosebay Hotel free 7.30pm Josh McIvor The Belvedere Hotel free 9pm
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26 50 Million Beers Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel free 4pm 8 Ball Aitken Marrickville Bowling Club 4.30pm Antoine O’Malley’s Hotel, Kings Cross 5pm Blue Sunday: Dauno Martinez Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $10 8.30pm Blues Sunday: Mark Hopper Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Bob Downe’s Retro-Gras Tea-Dance Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills $20 (+ bf) 6pm Britney Spears The Cabaret: Christie Whelan Riverside Theatres, Parramatta $40 3pm A Concert For Life: The Torchsong Country Soul Band, Velvet Road, Steph Miller Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt $18 5pm Dave White Duo Northies Bar, Northies Cronulla Hotel 2.30pm David Agius Duo Sports Bar, Northies Cronulla Hotel 8pm Dollshay Mean Fiddler Hotel, Rouse Hill 12pm
L2 Kings Cross Hotel
Tuesday February 21 9pm // FREE
JURASSIC LOUNGE AFTER PARTY: AXTON FRICK FBi DJs MELANIE OTUHOUMA + ADELE CUTBUSH
Friday February 24
Machine Head Down Thunder Rverstone Sports Hotel free Drive: Peter Northcote, Brydon Stace Bridge Hotel, Rozelle $10 3.30pm Finn Home Tavern, Wagga 9pm Harbour Master Level 1, East Leagues Club free 6pm Heath Burdell, White Brothers Ettamogah Hotel, Rouse Hill 1pm Intercontinental Playboys, Men From UNCLE Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $10 7pm Mike Bennett, Rob Henry, Cambo Observer Hotel, The Rocks 4pm Nicky Kurta Harbord Beach Hotel 6.30pm The Robuck Family VJ’s, Chatswood $22 3pm Rockafillies: Kira Peru, Carrie Phillis & the Downtown Three, Sally Street, Pia Andersen, Sally Marett, Kitty Van Horne, Sarah J Hyland,
Sara O’Connor The Vanguard, Newtown $18 (+ bf) 8pm Soundwave: Slipknot (USA), System of a Down (USA), Slipknot (USA), Limp Bizkit (U.S.A), Marilyn Manson (USA), A Day To Remember (USA), Machine Head (USA), Lamb of God (USA), Trivium (USA), Alterbridge (United States), Lostprophets (Wales), Angels & Airwaves (USA), Cobra Starship (USA), The Used (USA), You Me At Six (England), Devin Townsend Project (Canada), Unwritten Law (USA), Coal Chamber (USA), Dashboard Confessional (USA), Thursday (USA), Forever the Sickest Kids (USA), Raised Fist (Sweden), Dillinger Escape Plan (USA), Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society, Mastodon (USA), Underoath (USA), Saves The Day (USA), The Mission In Motion, Circa Survive (USA), Steel Panther (USA), Jack’s Mannequin, Meshuggah (Sweden), Zebrahead, The
www.fbisocial.com
Wednesday February 22 1pm // FREE
LUNCH BREAK PRESENTED BY ALBERTS:
CAITLIN PARK Live Broadcast FBi Radio 94.5FM!
8pm // $10
PEAR & THE AWKWARD ORCHESTRA + MISS LITTLE + HELLO VERA
Saturday February 25
Thursday February 23 8pm // $10
SLAM SHOWCASE: SAVE LIVE AUSTRALIAN MUSIC BEARHUG
+ SKULLSQUADRON + LYYAR + THE CADRES
Sunday February 26
8pm // $10
8pm // $12
Midnight-3am // FREE
3PM // $5
BIG DUMB KID (SINGLE LAUNCH) +DEADBEAT & HAZY + OLD MEN OF MOSS MOUNTAIN + NAKAGIN
RADIANT LIVE:
LATE NIGHT SOCIAL:
AFTERNOON DELIGHT:
RADIANT LIVE:
46 :: BRAG :: 450 : 20:02:12
MARK MCGUIRE (US / EMERALDS)
+ BLANK REALM + GUESTS
ENNSU + PRESIDENT BIRD + FRAMES Live Broadcast FBi Radio 94.5FM!
LOOSE JOINTS (3-5PM) & FOREIGNDUB AIRWAYVZ (5-7PM) + GUESTS - BABYBOOMA Live Broadcast FBi Radio 94.5FM!
Xxxx
Kyle Taylor Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Made in Japan, Jenny Broke The Windows, Hello Vera Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $12 (+ bf) 8pm Madison Violet The Vault, Windsor 8pm Mainline Engadine Tavern free 9.30pm Mandi Jarry Duo Narrabeen Sands 8pm Mark McGuire (USA), Blank Realm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $12 8pm Matchbox 20 Tribute Kingswood Sports Club free 8.30pm Matt Jones PJ Gallaghers, Drummoyne 10pm Maze, Argentina, Battleships Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Michael McGlynn Kirribilli Hotel 9.30pm Mother Brdy, Carni Meat Wheeler, Stellar Addiction, Another Avenue Live House, Lewisham $10 8pm Mystery Guest Coogee Bay Hotel free 10pm Nicky Kurta Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Beach Bar 5.30pm Parkway Drive Penrith Panthers $25 (+ bf) 8pm all-ages Pop Fiction Castle Hill RSL – Cocktail Bar 10.30pm Radio Ink, Screaming Bikini, Bec & Ben, PhDJ Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 8pm Reckless Duo Ettamogah Pub, Rouse Hill 6.30pm
gig guide send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com Sisters of Mercy (UK), Enter Shikari (UK), Four Year Strong (USA), Black Veil Brides (USA), Madina Lake, Hatebreed (USA), Biohazzard, Tims of Grace, CKY, Street Dogs (USA), Gojira (France), Kvelertak, Letlive, HELLYEAH (USA), Cro-Mags (USA), The Cab, Relient K (USA), Versaemerge (USA), Heroes For Hire, Kill Hannah, Chimaira (USA), The Dangerous Summer (USA), Framing Hanley (USA), Watain, Royal Republic, I Am The Avalanche, Turisas (Finland), River City Extension, Bad Religion (USA), Strung Out (USA), Staind (USA), Wednesday 13 (USA), Unearth (USA), The Pretty Reckless (USA), Cathedral, Shadows Fall (USA), Tonight Alive, Motionless In White, Break Even, Heaven Shall Burn, Your Demise, A Rocket To The Moon, The Ready Set, The Menzingers, Dream On, Dreamer, Kittie, Dredg (USA), Attack! Attack! (UK), The Smoking Hearts, Summer Set, Bush (England), In Flames, The
Black Dahlia Murder (USA), Holy Grail (USA), Hyro Da Hero, These Kids Wear Crowns (Canada), In This Moment, Black Tide, Kids In Glass Houses, Fireworks (USA), Conditions, Cherribomb, Switchfoot (USA), Paradise Lost (UK) Sydney Olympic Park $164.25 (+ bf) 11am South Devine, Taylor Hogan, Monks Of Molenwah, The Nocturnals Annandale Hotel $5 6pm Steve Edmonds Band The Vault, Windsor 2.30pm Steve Tonge Kirribilli Hotel 4pm Sunday Soup Mix 3rd Birthday: Helpful Kitchen Gods, Call To Colour, Dr Delites Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale free 5pm Sydney Blues Society Botany View Hotel free 7pm Them Apples Town & Country Hotel, St Peters free 4pm
JAZZ
The Peter Head Trio The Harbour View Hotel free 4pm
The Subterraneans Town Hall Hotel, Newtown free 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK Anthony Hughes Oatley Hotel free 2pm Benn Gunn Waverley Bowling Club free 3pm Black Diamond Avalon Beach RSL Club free 6.30pm Black Diamond Salisbury Hotel, Stanmore free 2pm James McIntosh Town & Country Hotel, St Peters free 1pm JJ Coogee Bay Hotel free 7.30pm Lawrence Baker The Belvedere Hotel free 4pm LJ Bayview Tavern, Gladesville free 6pm Rick Fensom Collaroy Beach Hotel free 2pm Shane MacKenzie Cohibar, Darling Harbour free 3pm
gig picks
FEBRUARY
BEACH ROAD PARTIES
Thur 23
THE SDS BROKEN BONES Party
+ CORBIN HARRIS PRO BOARD LAUNCH + THE FADERS + DJ GIAN PAULO
up all night out all week...
Fri 24
MONDAY FEBRUARY 20 Erykah Badu (USA) Sydney Opera House $79–$129 8pm
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 21
Love & Guts ART SHOW FEATURING...
Papa vs Pretty SLAM Day: Papa Vs Pretty, Cabins, Palms Annandale Hotel free 6pm
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24 Richard In Your Mind The Labyrinth Screening: Richard In Your Mind (solo), Spookyland (solo) Bondi Open Air Cinema @ Bondi Pavillion $14-$45 (+ bf) 5.30pm
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22 Cabins, The Cairos, Young Pretties Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm Sneaky Sound System, The Holidays, Papa Vs Pretty, Owl Eyes, Deap Sea Arcade, Strange Talk, The Never Ever, Sures Nantes, Set Sail, Leroy Lee, Gerard Masters, Kill City Creeps, Mark Wilkinson, Ben Morris & MC Losty, Nukewood, John Glover, Oaks & Lennox, DJ Willie Glasshouse Bar, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo $20–$30 3pm
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23 Broken Stone Records Roadshow: Sister Jane, Caitlin Park, The Maple Trail, Magnetic Heads The Standard, Darlinghurst $15 (+ bf) 8pm Elizabeth Rose GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $10 (+ bf) 8pm
Dan Mangan (Canada), Leader Cheetah (duo) Notes Live, Enmore $37.75 7pm Mayer Hawthorne (USA), Electric Empire, Fantine Metro Theatre, Sydney $45 (+ bf) 8pm Triple Treat Tour: Northeast Party House, Nantes, Millions Oxford Art Factory $12 (+ bf) 8pm Wolf Call: The Gooch Palms, Los Sundowners, Bain Wolfkind, DJ Blackbear, Flash & Crash DJs GoodGod Small Club $10 9pm
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25 Antiskeptic, Move To Strike, Emperors, The Miracle Is Now The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $25 (+ bf) 8pm
Sat 25
VANS BOWL-A-RAMA 2012 AWARDS NIGHT FEATURING...
Death Cab For Cutie (USA), Dappled Cities Enmore Theatre $67.10 (+ bf) 8pm Fire! Santa Rosa Fire!, Sures, 1929indian GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $10 8pm Made in Japan, Jenny Broke The Window, Hello Vera Oxford Art Factory $12 (+ bf) 8pm Vans Bowl-A-Rama 2012 Awards Night: Los Capitanes, Dave Slade, Frank Xavier, Scott Wolfe Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 7pm
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 47
48 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
BRAG’s guide to dance, hip hop and club culture
brag beats
inside
the orb
also: + club guide + club snaps + columns
the juan maclean on dfa, lcd and fmf...
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 49
dance music news
free stuff
club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
five things WITH
Bomb The Bass
SHADES OF GRAY live performance to composing music for film and television. At the moment I supplement my income from Shades of Gray with my other business, which focuses on creating music for advertising, TV and film. The Music You Make Our music oscillates between house/ 4. techno and disco. We like to include different elements and samples in our songs to make them more colourful; it’s always quite boring for us to stick to only one genre. At Spice Cellar, we’ll be launching our album Soul Machine, and celebrating six years of Beef Records.
Growing Up [Michal]: I pretty much grew up in the 1. studio. My father ran a recording company which was located in our house, so I was surrounded by music from an early age. [Nick]: To be honest, I didn’t grow up in a very musical family. I didn’t take piano lessons or play guitar or anything like that. I really discovered music later in life. Inspirations [Michal]: One of the first albums I got 2. was by Prince. I loved Prince at the time. Later on I discovered electronic music like Underworld and Leftfield, through Radio 1. Soon after that I started going to parties and Prague, and decided that I wanted to be spinning records for the rest of my life…
[Nick]: I get inspired by the creative people around me and other producers that I work with in the studio, with Michal being the obvious person there. But lately we’ve been collaborating with various artists – most recently, Nicone from Berlin. Your Crew [Michal]: We’re both full-time musos. I 3. run the label, write music, organise bookings/ PR and other stuff – there is always so much to do, I don’t even have time for a day job. [Nick]: Once I realised I wanted to make music my life, at the ripe old age of about 25, I headed towards the goal of making a dollar out of it. Around ten years later, I’ve realised that it is one of the hardest industries to make money in. I’ve dabbled in everything, from busking to
Oddisee
Music, Right Here, Right Now [Michael]: There is so much great music 5. around, and so many people are inspired and motivated to do stuff – it’s great! The biggest challenge is to filter out all the crap, and to not get lost in the huge amount of music getting released every day. It’s not easy to make money from music, but hard work pays off. [Nick]: The main reason I got into music was to vibe off it and serve up a slice of my own. As long as I can find something out there that keeps that fire burning, I’m in! With: Soul Machine is out now through Beef Records With: Schwa, Garry Todd, Murat Kilic, Rifraf, JML Where: Beef Records Label Night @ The Spice Cellar When: Saturday February 25
PET SHOP BOYS DROP FORMAT
One of the most endearing songwriting pairings of modern times, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe (collectively the Pet Shop Boys), have just released a new compilation, Format – a followup to their fan-favourite b-sides compilation Alternative. In picking up where its predecessor left off, Format collates 38 tracks from the flip sides of PSB albums spanning the period of 1996 (Bilingual) through to 2009 (Yes), along with a few bonus tracks from over that period. The Boys’ official site notes that all tracks have been remastered, while the CD booklet
THE ORB + BOMB THE BASS SIDESHOW
So you’ve probably heard the rumours about two mind-blowingly awesome electronic acts joining forces at The Metro Theatre on Saturday February 25 for a Playground Weekender sideshow. And by now you probably know that the two acts in question is chill-out luminary The Orb and the legendary Bomb The Bass. And if you know all that you probably also know that Anikiko and DJ Shane SOS will be joining them on the night. Well, smartypants, we bet you didn’t know that BRAG has two double passes to give away. If you want to get your hands on them, just tell us what country the headliners are from.
features an interview with Tennant and Lowe by the inimitable Jon Savage. “When you’re doing something as a b-side you don’t have any sense of constraint whatsoever; nobody’s going to say ‘they’re not going to play that on the radio’, because they’re not meant to be played on the radio,” Tennant said of the tracks collected on Format when I spoke to him ahead of his NYE performance in Sydney. “Sometimes they are more eccentric songs, and sometimes they’re more dark or macabre kind of songs. They’re the songs that aren’t really meant to be mainstream Pet Shop Boys.” Format is out now digitally and, for those of us who still fetishise archaic formats, on CD!
ODDISEE + KATALYST + M-PHAZES
On Thursday March 1 at the Civic Underground, three of hip hop’s finest, Oddisee, Katalyst and M-Phazes, will perform under one roof, and also judge the inaugural itsofficial.com.au beatbattle in Sydney. Hailing out of Washington and affiliated with Mello Music Group/Low Budget Crew, Oddisee is also a member of Diamond District and widely regarded as one of the best producer/MCs in the game, having worked with the likes of Jazzy Jeff, Talib Kweli and Raekwon, Apollo Brown and Saigon among many others. Katalyst, meanwhile, will be playing an exclusive DJ set to preview his Quakers project with Geoff Barrow from Portishead (see the appropriate news item), while M-Phazes has produced for the likes of Pharaohe Monch, Talib Kweli, Bliss n Eso and Kimbra. There will also be support from Big Village’s Ellesquire, DJ Frenzie and DJ Ology, along with four Sydney producers vying for the abovementioned beatbattle title. $25 tickets are available online.
PORTISHEAD SIDE PROJECT
Portishead’s Geoff Barrow is involved in a new hip hop project, Quakers, a trio comprised of Barrow (under the alias Fuzzface), Katalyst and 7STU7, who’ll release their 41-track debut album on Stones Throw later in the year. Quakers’ debut album is, according to Katalyst, “a pretty dirty, heavy kind of lo-fi hip hop record”, and started with beats that Barrow posted to MySpace, which were available for anyone to download, rap over, and send in for consideration. The final album features appearances from Guilty Simpson, MED, Aloe Blacc and Dead Prez among others. In further exciting news, Portishead have reportedly returned to the studio, recording the follow-up to 2008’s acclaimed comeback album Third – so now we eagerly await the comeback album from that comeback album... 50 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
KIRK DEGIORGIO
British veteran Kirk Degiorgio will headline One22 on Saturday March 10. Despite his origins, Degiorgio’s intricately arranged techno-funk is often associated with Detroit and Carl Craig, his ’90s techno peer and a releaser and remixer of his work. But having recorded under numerous aliases including As One, Elegy, Esoterik – ‘Starwaves’, anyone? – Critical Phase, Family Values, Super-A-Loof and The Off World Ensemble, Degiorgio’s sonic sensibility stretches well beyond that traditionally associated with the motor city, and possesses an individual sound that often traverses jazz, soul, and funk elements into an electronic environ. In support, Haul Music’s Christian Vance will be performing a live set, along with Claire Morgan and Matttt. Presale tickets are available through Resident Advisor.
Diafrix
DIAFRIX TOUR
The Footscray duo of Diafrix have been a mainstay in the Aussie hip hop scene since the bad old days of 2001, representing at festivals like Big Day Out, Meredith and Good Vibrations. Diafrix are coming off a breakout year in 2011, in which they were hand-picked as the national support act for one Bruno Mars, toured Europe, and released their biggest single to date, the Daniel Merriweather-assisted ‘Simple Man’. Now the pair have dropped a new single, ‘Running It’, a so-called “mellow, catchy creeper” that is a harbinger for their forthcoming LP, produced by Styalz Fuego, which is due for release in mid-2012. Diafrix are embarking on a national tour to pave the way for the release, and play The Annandale Hotel on Friday March 9 alongside Joelistics – who himself has a new EP, The Shining, out on Elefant Traks on February 24.
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dance music news
free stuff
club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
QBERT
he said she said WITH
FRANKIE FROM THE ITALIAN JOB I’ve always been into music, and becoming a DJ was something that was always at the back of my mind. I used to collect records and mix at home but never really thought of having a career in it. One day an old girlfriend of mine convinced me to make a demo tape and send it out – a few weeks later I had my first gig!
M
y mother was a big influence on me musically. She was really into disco and soul. Donna Summer and Barry White were her favourites and they propagated my love for uplifting,
sexy music. Prince is my favourite musician; his music is incredibly diverse and he’s an electrifying performer. Purple Rain was a birthday gift to me from my mother and the first album I ever owned.
OLIVER HUNTEMANN RELEASES PARANOIA
German techno producer Oliver Huntemann will release his fourth album, Paranoia, on his Ideal Audio imprint at the start of March, just in time for his tour of Australia, which includes a spot at Future Music Festival at Randwick Racecourse on Saturday March 10. While exploring austere minimalist soundscapes, the presence of guest vocalists Robert Owens and Danish singer Ane Trolle (who has previously worked with Trentemoller) would seem to suggest that the LP will venturing into more diverse sonic territory. To use the words of someone who has heard the release, “Paranoia is tinged with a dark pessimistic edge and filled with caustic industrial aggression that shifts across genre boundaries.” ...The CD version of Paranoia comes with a bonus DVD in which all twelve album tracks have been interpreted by a range of different visual artists commissioned from around the globe, and will be available through Balance Music.
MICHAEL ROTHER (NEU!) AUSTRALIAN TOUR
NEU! founder Michael Rother will perform at Oxford Art Factory on Saturday March 17, re-uniting with NEU! drummer Hans Lempe and original Harmonia member Dieter Moebius. A
We never really planned The Italian Job. Danny Velicious and I played back to back at a couple of Hed Kandi parties in Sydney, and Teko (the label boss) came up with the idea of making something out of it: The Italian Job was born! Since then we’ve been extremely busy in the studio producing, and playing together as Hed Kandi residents. We make house music, we play house music, we love house music! Our sets vary between vocal uplifting house to a more tribal main room sound.
Whether playing alone or as the Italian Job, I’m always full of high energy music to move me and my floor. Our record bag is filled with tracks by Bingo Players, Olav Basosski, The Cube Guys, Dennis Ferrer and our own remixes and edits, including a cheeky remix of ‘Controversy’ by Prince!
Forget your first kiss. Forget your graduation. Forget the birth of your first child. The Bass Bizarre is the life-changing experience to end all life-changing experiences. On Friday February 24, hip hop pioneer and allround super talented dude, DJ Qbert, will be joining forces with similarly skilled Reeps One to hit up Chinese Laundry in a flurry of dubstep, hip hop, drum‘n’bass, beatboxing and turntablism. Sound like something you need in your life? Send us a picture of something bizarre, and we might send you back a double pass... Qbert
Personally I think house music is doing great at the moment. The hard electronic edge that was apparent over the past few years has softened and become funkier. Genres are less distinct now, so playing various styles is easier and that’s a good thing, considering how much amazing music is out there! Being creative with what you do is very important in this industry. To succeed you’ve got to stand out. Where: Hedkandi @ Goldfish When: Saturday February 25
precursor to trance, electro-pop and experimental art-rock, Rother pioneered hypnotic and intense beats as well as spacious, avant-garde sounds that characterised the work of NEU!. Hailed as one of the founding fathers of Krautrock, Rother even had a brief stint as the guitarist in Kraftwerk before forming NEU! with Klaus Dinger in 1971. But far from being some irrelevant fossil, Rother has continually developed his sonic palette, which is illustrated by his collaborative partners, including Sonic Youth’s drummer Steve Shelley, Brian Eno, John Frusciante and Red Hot Chili Peppers. “These days I enjoy adding more spontaneous stuff on stage, as well as mixing all the sounds,” Rother stated recently, ahead of his Australia tour. “Hopefully each evening will have an individual signature; that’s the aim.” $45 presale tickets are available online.
Stimming
LAURENT GARNIER ON ED BANGER (!)
French techno veteran Laurent Garnier has returned from the wilderness and, in rather surprising news, has signed to Ed Banger records – an imprint traditionally associated with electro noise tracks consumed largely by teenagers on ecstasy (just ask Seidler...). Pedro ‘Busy P’ Winter’s label has apparently been
STIMMING TOUR
Hamburg-based producer Martin Stimming, a linchpin of the Diynamic Music label, will headline the next in Subsonic’s End of the Line Long Weekend sub-brand on Easter Monday, April 9 at The Abercrombie Hotel. Stimming shot to prominence through releases on Buzzin’ Fly and Liebe Detail before the release of his debut album, Reflections, back in 2009. He’s subsequently remixed electronic music deity such as Luomo, Sascha Funke and Nina Kraviz, Alexander Kowalski and Blagger, while steadily releasing EPs that continue to garner critical and dancefloor accolades for offering top-drawer spiky techhouse hybrids and evocative house grooves – a pattern Stimming broke with his brooding and decidedly melancholic sophomore album, Liquorice, which dropped last year. With the party commencing at midday for those who want to maintain the Easter rave, Picnic’s Kali will be opening proceedings at noon outdoors, while Future Classic’s Jimi Polar will be following on with an early afternoon set. Thereafter Mad Racket mainman Simon Caldwell will take to the decks, ahead of Subsonic residents MSG and Marcotix, the Glitch DJs, highly touted Melbourne DJ Volta and Defined By Rhythm among others. Limited $20 first release tickets are available from Resident Advisor.
Alphamama
ALPHAMAMA: TRUTH, TRIPS AND REVELATIONS
Following on from the success of her debut EP last year, Sydney’s own Alphamama is gearing up to release her debut album, Truth, Trips and Revelations, with an album launch party at Oxford Art Factory on Wednesday March 7. Traversing urban soul, pop and reggae, Alphamama will be flanked by an all-girl line up of dancers, musicians and artists. Special guests Sura Indonesia Dancers, Mirrah, Dj Flygirl Tee, Femmefatales and Killaqueenz will be representing on the night, with $10 presage tickets available online.
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angling to release Garnier’s material for years, and purportedly sealed the deal to sign Garnier’s forthcoming EP, Timeless, with “some mojitos on the beach”. Garnier has been releasing dance music for over two decades and helmed his own label, the now defunct F Communications – and he’s clearly changed his mind about Ed Banger (synonymous with that abovementioned “crunching” sound pushed by their key artists Justice, SebastiAn and Mr. Oizo) since 2009, when he referred to them in an interview as “all about marketing and how to exist in the scene, even without making music.” He continued, “A lot of the new guys now, we wouldn’t have signed them to F Communications, because it’s not our thing... Some of them I like – I’m not saying it’s all crap – but a lot of it just doesn’t talk to me. I feel a
lot of it is marketing more than anything else.” Age softens us all I suppose... Let’s just hope Garnier’s music hasn’t also lost its bite.
BURIAL RETURNS
Reclusive UK producer Burial has released a new EP, Kindred, which is out now from Hyperdub’s online store. Kindred is Burial’s first release since his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it limited edition collaboration with Massive Attack (which is well worth checking for those who missed it) and was described by a highly regarded online rag as follows: “With sharp percussion that could be as indebted to the precision drums of Photek as it is UK garage, there’s also hints of Slimzeeera grime in the track’s bassline – that is, after it’s been torched and stubbed out.”
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Juan MacLean Back To The Future By Matt Cowley Future Will Come, written in conjunction with another DFA luminary, Nancy Wang, brought with it the new wave-flavoured crossover single ‘One Day’. MacLean’s first foray to our shores was in 2008, when he toured here with The Juan MacLean band (featuring another couple of DFA unknowns: Nick and Alex of Holy Ghost!) in support of Cut Copy. At the time I was working at a small record store that MacLean visited for an impromptu DJ set, and remember conversing with a bemused MacLean about his experience with Australian crowds on that tour – he was surprised that a band like Cut Copy, who were considered relatively niche and ‘hip’ in America, was flocked to in their home country by what he described as mostly florescent-clad teenage girls.
“H
ello John, how are you?” I try to begin my interview sounding informed, flying past stage names and aiming for instant familiarity. “It’s Juan, if that’s okay,” replies DFA heavyweight Juan MacLean, down the line from his New York City studio. “Everyone calls me Juan, maybe only my mother ever calls me John, so let’s go with Juan.”
The metamorphosis from John to Juan has been a slow and steady progression for MacLean, beginning in the mid-‘90s with his tenure in the moderately successful, Sub Popsigned punk/funk band, Six Finger Satellite. During this period he was introduced to a young New York sound tech named James Murphy who built and maintained a gargantuan touring PA rig for the band, which was lovingly nicknamed ‘Death From Above’. Fast-forward to early 2001 and MacLean had left the industry
to work as an English teacher, but retained a strong friendship with Murphy, who was in the process of re-inventing himself as label manager and in-house record producer for his own fledgling record label (also named Death From Above). On Murphy’s urging, MacLean returned to music, beginning to produce tracks, b-sides and remixes for Murphy’s DFA label compilations under the moniker ‘The Juan MacLean’, with other then-unheard of acts like The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem. The rest is history: The Rapture & LCD Soundsystem exploded, disco-inspired indieelectro returned to dance floors across the globe, the DFA label became synonymous with a new wave of ‘NYC cool’, and MacLean’s star rose as one of the label’s most ubiquitous producers. His 2005 album Less Than Human contained dance hit ‘Give Me Every Little Thing’, while his follow-up 2009 album The
When pressed on whether his expectations of an Australian dance music audience has changed since then, MacLean is diplomatic in his response. “Well, I do remember that conversation! But I’ve been back to Australia a couple of times since then on different tours and festivals, and I’ve found the crowds to be more varied since that first Cut Copy tour – and always very receptive. I think that especially with the bigger festivals, if you have enough people who love music in the one space you’re always going to find a great group of people that are into your thing, your scene, if you know what I mean.” It’s hard to talk about the DFA ‘scene’ without addressing the recent sell-out final shows of LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden. I ask Juan what impact that show had on him and his musical family-at-large. “You know, it’s a weird thing because it wasn’t just that one show,” he answers. “It was like a week-long celebration that was both exhilarating and exhausting. It’s hard to put a finger on what’s changed after that. I mean DFA has always been more of a collective, people moving between projects and working together, and nothing about that has really changed. But at the same time, the LCD band was at the centre of that. So I mean James is still around, still doing things, and everyone is still working together on music and that’s still the same – but there is definitely a big part that was the band. It’s not missing, but it’s changed, you know?”
“DFA has always been more of a collective, but there is definitely a big part that was LCD Soundsystem... It’s not missing, but it’s changed, you know?” MacLean’s next album is one of the new projects that the DFA team has moved on to. “Yeah, I’m currently in the studio now,” he says. “I’m working with Nancy on this record again, and most of the other guys from the band and the label are floating in and out. I’ve built this great new modular that I’m using on it – all wooden panels, black front, the real old classic deal.” And will we be seeing the band again? “Yeah, the band is something I pull together after the record is done. Once I’ve written the record I’ll see who’s available to play, and we’ll pull it together to tour.” Before then, MacLean is heading to Australia with James Murphy, to DJ at Future Music Festival. The record store I first met him at has since expired – a common trend in modern music retail – and I feel obliged to press MacLean on whether it’s become difficult to continually update his vinyl-only DJ sets. “You know what, it’s not so bad. I do a lot of my shopping online or, when I’m in the UK, I drop into Phonica. They’ve really got a great range and it’s up to date, so I don’t find it hard at all. But it depends where you are – it’s very regional, good record stores. I mean in NYC, there’s nothing,” he says. “You’d think it was booming with all the labels, but there really isn’t a good shop to go to.” What: Juan Maclean (DJ set) With: James Murphy & Pat Mahoney (LCD Soundsystem/DFA), Azari & III, New Order, Swedish House Mafia and more Where: Future Music Festival @ Royal Randwick Racecourse When: Saturday March 10
The Orb
Sample Products By Leigh Salter
‘P
ink Floyd for the ‘90s’ and ‘spaceobsessed knob twiddlers’ are just two of the ways in which The Orb have been described – but complimentary or not, founding member Dr. Alex Paterson can see no reason to give a shit. “I’m still here 25 years later talking to you, so I think we must be doing something right,” he says. Through Paterson’s early morning croak, he assures me that his “blissed-out drug music” is a good match for the double billing of co-headliners The Orb and Bomb The Bass, who are heading to the Metro Theatre this weekend. “It’s good. I think we both come from the same school of plagiarism.” “As it happens, I used to go out and buy Bomb The Bass’ records for when I was DJing back in the early days,” Paterson recalls. “We’ve both always listened to music with the same ear for working out how you can make something new out of something old, I think.” Paterson’s mention of ‘plagiarism’ is more self-referential than accusatory; in its earliest form, The Orb was an excuse for Paterson and Jim Cauty to create sampling anarchy. But Cauty fell out with Alex following their 1991 debut album, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, and went on to raise hell as one half of The
“The sampler made it easy for artists like us to completely alter a sound to use in recording – so much so that we got away with a lot more than most people know about...” 54 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
KLF with Bill Drummond, who’s own free-forall approach to using copy-protected music was as prolific as their lunatic stunts. The Orb continued on with some-time members – Youth (ex-Killing Joke), Kris ‘Thrash’ Weston, Tim Bran and various others – before Paterson’s longest serving ‘co-Orbist’ joined in 1995, the Germanborn Thomas Fehlmann. With so many cohorts under the bridge, I have to wonder: is Alex the archetypal ‘difficult artist’? “No, I think it’s more that there’s a kind of snobbery among a lot of English DJs, and many of them seemed to be in competition with each other – and I didn’t want to be a part of that,” he answers. “Thomas didn’t behave in that way, which was a new experience for me. We do things for one another, not for selfaggrandising reasons.” Although linked to the sample revolution born out of hip hop, The Orb claimed
their own distinct niche as ‘ambient electronic pioneers’ – a term which Paterson is immensely proud of. “I was an A&R scout in the early ‘80s so I always had my ear to ground, wanting to know what was going on in music, and nobody was doing ambient house music before The Orb formed.” Paterson, a recreational pot-smoker, spotted a gap in the dance-oriented club scene for chill-out music that wouldn’t completely kill the listener’s vibe. “A lot of people were putting on stuff like Neil Young or Pink Floyd after a night out clubbing, so we thought we’d set about changing that by offering an alternative.” The two premiere ambient house chill-out records were The KLF’s Chill Out and The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld – which Paterson now admits was heavily inspired by Brian Eno.
“My day-job back then was working for Roxy Music’s record label in London, and Eno was one of the reasons I got into making music of my own,” he explains – but Eno apparently was keen to distance himself as an influence of Paterson’s work. Indeed, The Orb were gaining exposure for a lot of the wrong reasons in the early ‘90s; sampling on that level was a major concern for labels wanting to release music without lawyers banging at the door. “The sampler made it easy for artists like us to completely alter a sound to use in a recording – so much so that we got away with a lot more than most people know about,” he laughs. “I can say that now, because if a sample isn’t claimed within seven years, forget it – no one’s going to go to the trouble. But it got to stage where our label [Island] wanted us to provide all the different parts to each of our records on separate tapes, so they could see what we were trying to sneak in there. The funny thing was, the samples were so unrecognisable after we’d finished with them that Island couldn’t even tell what they were anyway!” For all the artists who griped about their work being sampled on an Orb record, there were as many who proclaimed it as an honour, as Alex recalls. “When Steve Reich heard his guitar turn up on ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, he got in touch with us and said, ‘I fucking love this, I never thought someone could do this with my music. It’s amazing.’ He wanted to go on record as a supporter of what I was doing. It’s just when publishers and record labels get onto you that it all goes to shit. They’re the only ones really worried about losing money; it’s rarely the artists, as far as I can tell.” With: Bomb The Bass Where: The Metro Theatre When: Saturday February 25 More: Also playing with Chic, Boy & Bear, Roots Manuva, Unkle Sounds, Shapeshifter, Black Lips, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and loads more, at Playground Weekender, Wisemans Ferry from March 2-4.
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Deep Impressions Underground Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery
Alex Under
Presents
S
The fantasy of all fantasies: BRAG presents Bowie on the big screen, in uncomfortably-tight leggings and a spiky mullet. Featuring pre-screening solo sets from
RICHARD IN YOUR MIND and SPOOKYLAND. showing
TUESDAY 21ST FEBRUARY 05:30 PM - 11:00 PM
BOOK ONLINE bondiopenair.com.au
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
PHOTO BY JAC DILLON
OPENAIR CINEMAS RECOMMEND USING PUBIC TRANSPORT TO GET TO OUR EVENTS. BONDI PARK IS AN ALCOHOL FREE ZONE.
56 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
panish producer and CMYK label boss Alex Under will release his second album, La Máquina de Bolas at the end of March through Soma Records. The album arrives a whopping seven years after 2005’s Trapez LP release, Dispositivos De Mi Granja, and represents something of a departure from the practised minimal style of his earlier works. The album’s title translates as ‘the ball machine’, which is fitting for the delicately calibrated and propulsive sounds explored by Under on this release. Featuring eight tracks, ‘Bola1’ – ‘Bola7’ (there is ‘Bola6.2’ just to prevent things from becoming too linear), La Máquina de Bolas is very much designed to be listened to as a whole, and shuns club soundscapes for a more brooding, introspective mood. (When I first played the album promo, cranking it on my Bose™ surround sound stereo fairly late at night, I received the following message from my unsuspecting housemate who was trying to get to sleep in the next room: “From my side of the wall, all I hear is the heavy drone of bass… like a washing machine”.) Though on first listen I was initially surprised at the approach Under had taken, I’ve since come around to the atmospheric, mid-tempo feel of the release: “washing machine” it ain’t! In terms of the Soma catalogue, La Máquina de Bolas sits much closer to The Black Dog than anything released by Slam et al, but that isn’t such a bad thing. On the evidence of La Máquina de Bolas, Under has moved beyond techno, and in doing so has created an evocative album that rewards a couple of listens. In the long run, I have a feeling this is a release one will be able to come back to on many occasions, in contrast to the ‘club albums’ churned out by many artists that offer slight variations on the same worn template. Any fans fearing that Under may have hung up his immensely impressive techno boots need not panic – both his forthcoming El Alma del Tiempo EP, and his recent remix of Pablo’s ‘Turn the page’ (both released on Soma), traverse tougher club sounds to sate your dancing needs. Revered Swedish producer Aril Brikha will headline a joint venture between T-Quest and Shrug at new techno hotspot One22 on Saturday March 17. Born in Iran with Assyrian ancestry, Brikha has a lengthy back catalogue of memorable productions, but his 1998 breakthrough track ‘Groove La Chord’ and the Deeparture In Time album (released early 2000 on Derrick May’s Transmat imprint) are probably the quintessential releases he will be remembered for. Still, Brikha’s later work, which includes releases on Kompakt, Music Man, Poker Flat, Connaisseur and remixes of Octave One, Deetron, and Kollektiv Turmstrasse, should not be discounted by any stretch, and have confirmed the man’s status as a pioneer of deep techno soul. (A clumsy description I know, but you get my drift.) Support will feature Shrug’s Dave Stuart, Robbie Lowe, the T-Quest DJs themselves (DarkChild playing backto-back with Galaktik) and Subsonic’s MSG. Doors open at 9pm, with limited $15 first-release tickets available from Resident Advisor. Claro Intelecto, whose real name is plain old Mark Stewart, will release a new album, Reform Club, on April 16 through Amsterdam’s Delsin Records, home to producers like Morphosis and Redshape. It will be the first album from the Manchester techno proponent since 2008’s acclaimed Metanarrative. Save for a handful of remixes
LOOKING DEEPER FRIDAY MARCH 2 Aphex Twin Enmore Theatre
SATURDAY MARCH 10 Silicone Soul Spice Cellar
SATURDAY MARCH 17 Aril Brikha One22 (122 Pitt St)
THURSDAY APRIL 5 Moodymann Spice Cellar
Moodymann of the likes of Depeche Mode, The Black Dog and Delphic, Intelecto had been quiet since 2009’s Chadderton EP, before he released the Second Blood EP last month. In terms of what to expect from the LP, a distinctly unpretentious press release offers, “There are blissed out and sun kissed moments that look to the future right at the heart of the album, but the thing slowly rebuilds to more kinetic but just as softedged techno peaks flashed with acid, icy hi-hats and ambient static in the ensuing tracks.” I’ve never previously read a press release describing an album as a ‘thing’ before, but there’s a first time for everything I suppose! (It’s hardly the most flattering term – although there’s no denying that John Carpenter’s The Thing is an absolute corker.) If a cryptic video on his Facebook page is anything to go by, the inimitable Detroit producer Kenny Dixon Jr, aka Moodymann, has a new album on the way. Accompanied by the text “new LP coming soon, produced by Moody, executive producer Jimmy D, featuring ????”, the video doesn’t give much away, but it seems designed to provoke the kind of assumptions that I’m now communicating to you in print: namely that Kenny Dixon Jnr. will release his first new full-length since 2009’s Anotha Black Sunday in May 2012! And the good news doesn’t stop there, with Moodymann touring Australia over the Easter weekend and playing a show at the Spice Cellar on Easter Thursday. Moodyman's not alone in terms of club heavyweights who will be in town over that period either: Stimming, Martin Buttrich, Roman Flugel and tINI are all scheduled to play in Sydney during a weekend traditionally associated with scoffing chocolate eggs (I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of religious landmark in there also). The long and short of it is, ditch any family Easter plans – things are going to get large.
Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com
Soul Sedation
Soul, Dub, Hip Hop & Bottom-heavy Beats with Tony Edwards Soul Sedation goes live every Wednesday night on Bondi FM (88.0 or bondifm. com.au). Tune in 10pm 'til midnight to hear a deep and soulful selection of the tunes covered here, and plenty more that I don't have room for. oul Sedation caught Ray Mann at his GoodGod show last week. The man has been living in Berlin for some time now and the new grooves and ideas – from his Sketches project – are slightly more off-kilter than his old, classic style funk and soul grooves, and we heard a bit of both on the night. Ray’s also been practicing his guitar chops and led us on some psychedelic solos during the show; it was killer stuff.
S
Playground Weekender is almost upon us; every time it rolls around it’s an emotional time for this column, considering all the great times had up there over the last five years... Certainly the party has changed somewhat as the years have rolled on – any event as well publicised as Playground does – and it’s with a mixed sense of dread and anticipation that I head towards the first weekend in March: Can it be as good as the first couple of years? Will we be able to maintain the mood? Will the detractors get to me, even though I try hard not to let them? Will the rain have stopped by then? Like I said, mixed emotions. I’m forced to report the sad news that Fat Freddy’s Drop have had to pull out of this year’s event – but you will be able to catch all these incredible artists: Chic ft Nile Rodgers, Roots Manuva, Shapeshifter, Bonobo, Greg Wilson, The Cuban Brothers, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie… As well as a wide swathe of dope locals. If you’re not heading up to PGW, there’s some killer sideshows happening: Hudson Mohawke and Rustie will blow up the place this Saturday February 25 at the Manning Bar (bass heads will want to get involved with that one for sure); Bonobo plays the Metro on Friday March 2; and Chic play the Metro on March 5. DJ Quik plays the Gaelic Theatre on Thursday March 15. Something of a statesman of the early hip hop scene, the California native has produced for the likes of 2Pac, Nate Dogg, Jay-Z, Snoop and Dre. Staying true to hip hop’s roots, you won’t hear any Auto-Tune at all at this gig, and it’s his first time in the country to boot. The producer’s eighth studio album, The Book Of David, is out now. And further on the underground hip hop front: Washington emcee/producer Oddisee, a member of the Diamond District crew, is headed our way. Look up the Mello Music Group if you’d like to get your head around this guy; he’s got some incredible output, and masses of it as well. Katalyst will be on support (he’s got a new album due out on Stones Throw with Jeff Barrow next month), as well M-Phazes. All in all that’s a pretty serious lineup. It goes down Friday March 1 at the Civic Underground.
ON THE ROAD FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24 Mayer Hawthorne Metro Theatre
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25
Hudson Mohawke, Rustie Manning Bar
THURSDAY MARCH 1 DJ Krush Upstairs Beresford
FRIDAY MARCH 2 Bonobo Metro Theatre
MARCH 2-4
Playground Weekender Wiseman’s Ferry
MONDAY MARCH 5 Chic ft. Nile Rodgers Metro Theatre
FRIDAY MARCH 16 Hermitude Oxford Art Factory
FRIDAY MARCH 23 Watussi, True Vibenation, Alphamama Metro Theatre
DEBUT ALBUM ‘LOVE DRIVE COMMISSION’ RELEASED FEB 24TH SUPPORTING JOELISTIC & DIAFRIX
- MARCH 9TH - THE ANNANDALE - MARCH 10TH - GREAT NORTHERN, NEWCASTLE
On top of her show at Sydney Opera House, Erykah Badu also stopped in at the Ivy Pool last Sunday evening for a DJ set under her DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown alias... Just briefly in new music, because this edition is all about the live shows: you can now pre-order order the new EP from Burial – Kindred. The British producer changed the game with his 2007 album Untrue, and paved the way for acts like Jamie Woon and SBTRKT to break through with their postdubstep sound. Check out the EP to see if he’s still cooking up the goods.
We has internets!
This Saturday night, the Funkdafied crew are hosting another of their legendary boat parties. You’ll be able to catch German duo Mo’Horizons as well as Karsten John and DJ Hudge, with local support from JC and Gian Arpino. Dancefloor jazz heads will need to get on board this boat. Departs midday from the Man O War steps, and the afterparty kicks on at the Slip Inn. And last but not least, US soul legend Charles Bradley is back in town on Friday March 16. He’ll rock the stage at the Factory with The Cactus Channel and Twist N Shout DJs on support.
Extra bits and moving bits without the inky fingers. Charles Bradley
www.thebrag.com
Send stuff for this column to tonyedwards001@gmail.com by 6pm Wednesdays. All pics to art@thebrag.com BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 57
club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com
club pick of the week Hudson Mohawke
Soho, Potts Point Femme Fatale Resident & Guest DJs 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Jack Shit, Shag, Conrad Greenleaf, Dan Bombings free-$5 9pm
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25
Manning Bar, Sydney University, Camperdown
Hudson Mohawke (UK), Rustie (UK) $51 (+ bf) 9pm MONDAY FEBRUARY 20 Goldfish, Kings Cross We Owe You One 6pm Scubar. Sydney Crab Racing 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jazz S.W.I.M. Team DJs free 7pm
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 21 Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel DJ Willie Sabor 8pm Goldfish, Kings Cross We Owe You One 6pm Scruffy Murphy’s, Sydney Frat House free Scubar, Sydney Backpacker Karaoke 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Coyote Tuesday DJ Johnny B, DJ Shipwreck, MC Fro, Dr Rhythm $10 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Tuesdays Andy & Mike, Conrad Greenleaf, Ping Pong Tiddly free 8pm 58 :: BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22 Bank Hotel, Newtown Wednesdays With Lady L Jimmy D, Sandi Hotrod Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free 8pm The Flinders Hotel, Darlinghurst Hip Hop DJs free 8pm Hunky Dory Social Club, Darlinghurst Jazz Club Eastside 89.7FM Radio DJs free-$10 8pm Kit & Kaboodle Supper Club, Kings Cross Resident DJs 8pm Landsdowne Hotel, Broadway Frat House Wolf & The Gang free 9pm Ruby Rabbit, Darlinghurst Resident DJs 9pm Scubar, Sydney Schoonerversity 3pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Glovecats, Creature Colour, A-Tonez, Clockwerk, King Lee, Adrian Gidaro, Romulus, Remus & The Wolf $5 9pm
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23 The Arthouse Hotel, Sydney Lounge DJs 8pm Bar 100, The Rocks The Powder Room 5pm Cargo Lounge, Kings St Wharf Dance The Way You Feel 6pm The Flinders Hotel, Darlinghurst Hippies from Hell DJs free 8pm Goldfish, Kings Cross We Owe You One 6pm Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Resident DJs free 8pm Ivy, Sydney Ivy Live DJs free 6pm The Lansdowne, Broadway Vultures DJs free 8pm Low 302, Darlinghurst Thursday Switch DJs free 9pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15$20 8pm Ruby Rabbit, Darlinghurst Resident DJs 9pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Flaunt Dim SLM, DJ Task 8pm
34 Degrees South, Bondi Get Down Get Down DJs free 8pm Arthouse Hotel, Sydney After Dark Resident DJ 9pm Bar 100, The Rocks Shut Up & Strut Cissy Strut 8pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Movement DJ Lancelot free 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Button Down Disco Vengeance, Kyro & Bomber, Sherlock Bones, Durty Mindz, Webs 8pm Cargo Lounge, Kings St Wharf Kick On DJs Chinese Laundry, Sydney The Bass Bizarre World Tour Q-Bert (USA), Reeps One (UK), Asylum, Typhonics, Blog Wars DJs, Detecktives, Disarmed, Aaron Smith $20$25 10pm City Hotel, Sydney One Night in Cuba Mani, Nandez, DJ Yamaya, Av El Cubano, DJ Coco $15 8pm Civic Underground, Sydney Volar Resident DJs 10pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour DJ Jeddy Rowland, DJ Anders Kitchcock, Special Guest DJ free Epping Hotel Flirt Resident DJs 9pm GoodGod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Home The Venue, Sydney Delicous & Sublime Fridays Resident & Guest DJs 9pm Hotel Chambers, Martin Place F**k Me I’m Famous Resident DJs $15 9pm Hugo’s Lounge, Kings Cross Rat Pack DJs Jackson’s On George, Sydney Ultimate Party Venue Resident DJs free Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Falcona Fridays Devola, Wolf Wolf, Isbjorn, Bernie Dingo, DJ Rumfoord $10 8pm Kong’s Jungle Lounge, Bondi Junction W!ldlive Fridays Resident DJs $10 10pm The Marlborough Hotel Level 1, Newtown Resident DJs free The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill Inthemix Summer Series Anna Lunoe, Wax Motif 9pm Oatley Hotel We Love Oatley Hotel Fridays free 8pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst The Hellfire Club DJ Jay, Jack Shit, Sveta, DJ Tokolshe, Karl Anderson $25 9.30pm The Roxy, Parramatta Fridaze DJ Willi, DJ A-Stylez, DJ Nems, DJ Billy B, DJ Troy T, DJ Joy Kaz, DJ Master Jay, DJ Daniel Berti 4pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Pay Day Fridays Dim SLM, DJ Troy T 8pm Soho, Potts Point Soho Fridays Resident & Guest DJs free 8pm Space, Sydney Zaia Resident DJs 9.45pm Spectrum, Darlinghurst Twist and Shout 60s Dance Party Dylabolical, Mr Chad $5 9pm
The Standard, Surry Hills 360 $23.50 (+ bf) 8pm sold out Tunnel Nightclub, Kings Cross Why Sleep? DJs $10-$15 10pm The Watershed Hotel Watershed Presents... Mashup-D-Place DJ K-Note, Judgement, Fasmwa The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM MUM DJs $10-$15 8pm
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25 Agincourt Basement, Sydney Mutilate Geoff Da Chef, Mack Da Ripper, Matrix, H-Lock, The Saint, Napoleon The Impaler free 9pm Arq Nightclub, Taylor Square Dance Jake Kilby, Jayson Forbes, Rob Davis, Jimmy Dee, Justin Scott $15-$25 9pm Arthouse Hotel, Sydney Vamp Music Resident DJs 9pm Bar 100, The Rocks My Place Omega Soundsystem Bella Vista, Man O War Jetty, Sydney Harbour High Flyers Boat Party Mo’ Horizons (GER), Karsten John (GER), DJ Hudge (UK), JC, Gian Arpino $55-$75 12pm The Burdekin, Darlinghurst One World Chris Padilla (USA), Justin Ryan (USA), Lee Decker, Troy Cox, Kam Shafaati, Kate Monroe, Jim Jam, Colin Gaff, Gavyn Vincze, Greg Boladian $40 (+ bf) 10pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Ritual Teez, Moo Who, Somg! Kittens!, Fawkes, Stress Less, Leanzy, M9, Habbits & The Kid, Camo 9pm Cargo Lounge, Kings St Wharf Kick On DJs Chinese Laundry, Sydney AC Slater (USA), Peking Duk, Mo’ Funk, A-Tonez, Audiobotz, Moonchild, Athson, Whitecat, Digital Love, Jack Fuller, Lola Siren $15-$25 9pm Club 77, Woolloomooloo Starfuckers Starfuckers DJs 9pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour DJ Brynstar, Mudrockets free Dee Why Hotel Kiss & Fly Saturdays Resident
AC Slater
DJs 9pm Epping Hotel Back Traxx Back Traxx DJs 9pm Establishment, Sydney Sienna Valentine’s Special G-Wizard, Troy T, Lilo, Def Rok 9pm The Flinders Hotel, Darlinghurst Horne Dogg free 8pm Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale Darkroom Launch Party H.P.S.?, Andrew Wowk, Martin Stance, Scott Kilpatrick, GBanga, Kate Doherty, Shepz, Eric Thomas, Oliver Gurney, Simon P, Custard Jim $10-$15 6pm Goldfish, Kings Cross HedKandi The Italian Job, Emmet Greene (IRE), Phil Hudson (UK), Danny Simms, Tom Kelly, Miss P (UK) free$20 9pm GoodGod Front Bar, Sydney GoodGod All Stars Yo Gritto DJs, Jingle Jangle DJs, Love Kings DJs, Captain Franco free 8pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney Badonkadonk Kato, Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Levins, Dance Studio 101 Dancers $5 11pm Groove Saint, Albury Inthemix Summer Series The Only 9pm Home The Venue, Sydney Homemade Saturdays Mobin Master $20-$25 9pm Hotel Sweeneys, Sydney Killpop Kuriosity Kills, Snap Neck DJs $5-$10 2pm Ivy, Sydney Pure Ivy Foniko, Lancelot, Ben Morris, Liam Sampras, Johnny Sommerville, Bilman $20 9pm Jackson’s On George, Sydney Ultimate Party Venue Resident DJs free Kit & Kaboodle Supper Club, Kings Cross Kitty Kitty Bang Bang Resident DJs 8pm Manning Bar, Sydney University, Camperdown Hudson Mohawke (UK), Rustie (UK) $29.75-$35 (+ bf) 9pm The Marlborough Hotel Level 1, Newtown Resident DJs free The Metro Theatre, Sydney The Orb (UK), Bomb The Bass (UK), Anikiko, Shane Sos 7.30pm MV Aussie Legend, Sydney Harbour Shindig Boat Party 2012
club guide send your listings to: clubguide@thebrag.com Christian Stevens, Mark Galpin, Dave Rogers, Jim Smith, Urby, Johnny Darko $45-$55 (+ bf) 5pm One22, Sydney Defined By Rhythm, Club Junque, Mark Craven, Methodixxx $10-$15 10pm Ruby Rabbit, Darlinghurst Resident DJs 9pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Adamo, Charlie Brown, Dim SLM, Klimax, Stevie J, Jo Funk, Dsico Kid, Joey Kaz 8pm Selina’s Nightclub, Coogee Bay Hotel Resident DJs 8pm Spectrum, Darlinghurst Kittens Kittens DJs $5-$10 11.30pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Shades Of Gray, Schwa, Uone, Garry Todd, JML $20 10pm The Standard, Surry Hills 360 $23.50 (+ bf) 8pm Starship Sydney AGWA Yacht Club 013 Lee Burridge, Greg Wilson, Co-op DJs, Mike Buhl, Brohn 2pm Tunnel Nightclub, Kings Cross
ONE Saturdays DJs $10-$20 10pm The Watershed Hotel Watreshed Presents... Skybar The World Bar, Kings Cross Wham Act Yo Age, Kato, Boonie, Adam Bozetto, T-Bo, Illya, Mehow, Rodskeez, Mattt, Zues, Mike Hyper, Astrix Little, Shamozzle $15$20 8pm
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26 Bank Hotel, Newtown Sundays Kitty Glitter free 4pm Bar 100, The Rocks Funkdafied Sundays DJs 5pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 5pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Martini Club free 6pm Gypsey Nightclub, Darlinghurst Sensation 169 Resident DJs
$10-$15 11am Ivy Pool, Sydney Marco Polo Drop Out Orchestra (Sweden) $15 (+ bf) 1pm Ivy, Sydney Soul II Soul Sound System (UK) $59 (+ bf) 8pm Name This Bar, Darlinghurst Sunday Sets DJ Competition Flight Deck free 6pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets free DJ Tone Paragon Hotel, Sydney Lucy Bourke free 1pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Loose Ends Matty Vaughn free 10pm Ruby Rabbit, Darlinghurst Resident DJs 9pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Bobby Digital, Teknix, Dim SLM, Troy T, Tony Shock 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice SlowBlow, Murat Kilic $20 4am The Watershed Hotel Afternoon DJs DJ Brynstar The World Bar, Kings Cross Dust Danny Daze, Simon Caldwell, Gabby, Alley Oop, James Taylor $10-$20 7pm
club picks up all night out all week...
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22
The Spice Cellar, Sydney Shades Of Gray, Schwa, Uone, Garry Todd, JML $20 10pm
Hunky Dory Social Club, Darlinghurst Jazz Club Eastside 89.7FM Radio DJs free-$10 8pm
Starship Sydney AGWA Yacht Club 013 Lee Burridge, Greg Wilson, Co-op DJs, Mike Buhl, Brohn 2pm
The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Glovecats, Creature Colour, A-Tonez, Clockwerk, King Lee, Adrian Gidaro, Romulus, Remus & The Wolf $5 9pm
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23 The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Jack Shit, Shag, Conrad Greenleaf, Dan Bombings free-$5 9pm
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24 Chinese Laundry, Sydney The Bass Bizarre World Tour Q-Bert (USA), Reeps One (UK), Asylum, Typhonic, Blog Wars DJs, Detecktives, Disarmed, Aaron Smith $20-$25 10pm
The World Bar, Kings Cross Wham Act Yo Age, Kato, Boonie, Adam Bozetto, T-Bo, Illya, Mehow, Rodskeez, Mattt, Zues, Mike Hyper, Astrix Little, Shamozzle $15-$20 8pm
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26 Ivy, Sydney Soul II Soul Sound System (UK) $59 (+ bf) 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Dust Danny Daze, Simon Caldwell, Gabby, Alley Oop, James Taylor $10-$20 7pm
Spectrum, Darlinghurst Twist and Shout 60s Dance Party Dylabolical, Mr Chad $5 9pm The Standard, Surry Hills 360 $23.50 (+ bf) 8pm sold out
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25 Chinese Laundry, Sydney AC Slater (USA), Peking Duk, Mo’ Funk, A-Tonez, Audiobotz, Moonchild, Athson, Whitecat, Digital Love, Jack Fuller, Lola Siren $15-$25 9pm Goldfish, Kings Cross HedKandi The Italian Job, Emmet Greene (IRE), Phil Hudson (UK), Danny Simms, Tom Kelly, Miss P (UK) free-$20 9pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney Badonkadonk Kato, Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Levins, Dance Studio 101 Dancers $5 11pm The Metro Theatre, Sydney The Orb (UK), Bomb The Bass (UK), Anikiko, Shane Sos 7.30pm
Soul II Soul's Jazzy B
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 59
snap
PICS :: AM
peter horrevorts
john digweed
PICS :: AM
up all night out all week . . .
11:02:12 :: Greenwood Hotel :: 36 Blue St North Sydney 9964 9477
the exchange hotel
PICS :: KC
11:02:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney
cadillac @ the island
PICS :: GP
10:02:12 :: The Exchange Hotel :: 34 Oxford St Darlinghurst 93601375
11:02:12 :: The Island, Sydney Harbour :: theislandsydney.com.au
It’s called: ‘60s Dance Party – Back to Schoo l Edition It sounds like: An end-of-semester toga party and kegger at an American college frat house in about 1969… Toga toga toga! Who’s playing? DJs Dylabolical and Mr Chad . Three songs you’ll hear on the night: ‘Louie Louie’ – The Kingsmen; ‘Twist and Shout’ – The Beatles; ‘Try A Little Tenderness’ – Otis Redding. And one you definitely won’t: Anything releas ed after 1971.
Sell it to us: It’s a $5 dance party where we play nothing but ‘60s tracks… Being O-Week, we’re spinning backto-school classics from Animal House, Ferris Bueller, American Graffit i, The Wonder Years, Happy Days, Rushmore and others… The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Doing the Duckie dance from Pretty In Pink! Crowd specs: No dress code, no guest list, no worries! Wallet damage: Five dollars! Where: Spectrum / upstairs at 34 Oxford St, Darlinghurst. When: Friday February 24 / 9pm – late.
60 :: BRAG :: 450: 20:02:12
propaganda's 1st birthday 09:02:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 93577700 :: KATRINA CLARKE :: ASHLEY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER ETTE ROUHANNA :: ROS :: OV POP RGE GEO :: MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY
PICS :: TP
party profile
twist & shout
&
Keep It Movin’ presents
Oddisee
[Mello Music Group/Low Budget/Diamond District]
INVITATIONAL PRODUCER BEAT BATTLE / SHOWCASE FOR MORE DETAILS GO TO ITSOFFICIAL.COM.AU/BEATBATTLE
>Ì> ÞÃÌ [
Exclusive DJ set previewing his Quakers album out on Stones Throw in March
]
* >âiÃÊUÊ iÃµÕ ÀiÊUÊ Ê Ài â iÊUÊ Ê" }Þ MARCH
01 UÊ Û VÊ Ìi ]ÊÎnnÊ* ÌÌÊ-Ì]Ê-Þ` iÞ
n« ÊÌ Ê >ÌiÊUÊ/ ÝÊfÓxÊÌ ÀÕÊ Ã Ì Ý]Ê ÀiÊ ÊÌ iÊ` À ODDISEE'S "ROCK CREEK PARK" ALBUM OUT NOW
DESIGN: APRIL77.COM
THURSDAY
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CASH PRIZES TEAM SHIRTS DRINK SPECIALS STARTS FEB 28 REGISTER NOW AT STRIKEBOWLINGBAR.COM.AU/SOCIAL-LEAGUE
BRAG :: 450 :: 20:02:12 :: 61
snap up all night out all week . . .
halfway crooks
It’s called: Dust feat. Danny Daze It sounds like: Deep house and provocative bass lines. Who’s spinning? Danny Daze, Simon Caldw ell, Gabby, Alley Oop, James Taylor and Steve Sullivan. Three songs you’ll hear on the night: ‘Your Everything’, ‘Fall Away From Love’ and Bazar’s ‘Hard to Find (Danny Daze Love Dub)’. And one you definitely won’t: With these eclectic selectors, there are no guarantees. Sell it to us: house and techno kingpin Danny Daze will be bringing his moon-tan and bag of musical delights, to play amongst the lasers in this intimate nightclub show. Supported by an all-sta r Sydney lineup across two rooms, this will be Sunday party in full effect. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Our new late-night disco friends. Crowd specs: Lovers and dancefloor shake rs. Wallet damage: $10 presale email emma@thew orldbar.com Where: World Bar / 24 Bayswater Rd, Kings Cross. When: Sunday February 26 / 7pm-late.
PICS :: RR
party profile
dust @ world bar
falcona fridays
PICS :: AM
11:02:12 :: Phoenix Bar :: 34 Oxford St Darlinghurst 93601375
we got the fete
PICS :: GP
10:02:12 :: Kit & Kaboodle :: 33/37 Darlinghurst Rd Potts Point 9368 0300
love kings
PICS :: KC
08:02:12 :: The Wall@World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 93577700
10:02:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 93577700 :: KATRINA CLARKE :: ASHLEY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER ETTE ROUHANNA :: ROS :: OV POP RGE GEO :: MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY
62 :: BRAG :: 450: 20:02:12
space dimension controller 11:01:12 :: The Civic Hotel :: 388 Pitt St 80807000
PICS :: RR
mum
PICS :: TP
10:02:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Sydney 92673787
WHAT WOULD YOU HIDE TO PROTECT YOUR FAMILY?
Strong coarse language and violence
IN CINEMAS FEBRUARY 23