The Brag #474

ALWAYS

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EXPATRIATE $ B : F : I H E E H

John Butler Trio (NYE Midnight Set) Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings (usa-nye sEt) tHE bLacK sEedS (nz) fRiEndLY fIreS dj Set (uk-nye sEt) kRaFty kUtS Vs A.sKilLz (UK) tHE hERd (aus) Kaki King (USA) Blood red Shoes (UK) Unknown Mortal Orchestra (USA) Electric Wire Hustle (NZ) King Tide (AUS) mAt. mChUGh & THE SEPERATISTA SOUND SYSTEM (aus) 65DaysoFstatic (UK) Deep Sea Arcade (AUS) Gold Fields (AUS) Gossling (AUS) Will & The People (UK) Chapelier Fou (Fr) The Medics (AUS) NorthEast Party House (AUS) HatFitz and Cara (aus) Tuka (AUS) The Cairos (AUS) The PreaTUREs (AUS) Battleships (AUS) Lime Cordiale (AUS) Daily Meds (AUS) JONES Jnr (AUS) Tigertown (AUS) MicroWave Jenny (AUS) also featuring — The Return of The Dub Shack Plus many more artists to be announced...

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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly

five minutes WITH

MATT RULE FROM THE ANNANDALE HOTEL

l-r: Matt Rule, Matt Gullett, Dan Rule and the new bar (so far...)

T

Could you summarise what’s been going on over at the ‘Dale?

Long story short is that last year, after a potential investor in the business fell through, we faced the prospect of putting the pub on the market. Our goal was to try and find another investor to inject capital to complete much needed work to the hotel, but all we got was developers looking to knock it down. Obviously after ten years that wasn’t really

You’ve raised half of your goal in funds, with some of the money going towards a brand new back bar! Can you tell us about the changes?

The back bar (and toilets) got a make over, as we are keen to utilise the other areas of the hotel apart from the band room – and we’ve also painted the exterior of the hotel, which we think looks great.

We currently trade more as a standalone venue, but we need to trade more like a bar/pub that has a venue in it as well. We’re hoping that the hotel will be opened up to more local clientele, as well as encourage punters who come to shows to get down here earlier. We want to make it the type of bar we’d like to drink in: a little bit old-school, a little bit worn, and plenty of good booze, where you can watch your favourite sports team play – and, of course, good music.

Tell us about the bar’s launch party this Friday?

Things will be officially kicking off in the new back bar this September, when we start trading Tuesday– Sunday, but we thought that finishing the structural-type works was worth a celebration – so we’re having a party this Friday. It’s also a chance for us to say thanks to all the Buy-A-Brick-ers, both corporate and non, and for people to see that their contributions are actually getting results. We’ve managed to convince our old mates Faker to play the night as well, which we’re rapped about!

What’s planned for the future?

We’ll be looking to head into the band room next. It’s been 12 years since that room has been touched; new carpet, staging, production, lighting and a complete reshaping of the style and size of the bar are all planned, which will make a huge difference. From there, a complete overhaul of the kitchen and beer garden are on the cards.

We’re blessed with such an amazing outdoor space behind the hotel, and

we’ve always thought it has been under-utilised, so making that area amazing is a big goal.

Any other events you’re looking forward to at the ‘Dale?

Probably one of the more exciting things we’ll be doing is taking over the Thursday nights ourselves, to create what we hope will become the biggest night west of the city, with the best live entertainment in the band room and great DJs in the back bar. Food and drink will be priced at $5, there’ll be an old school cash badge draw, and entry will be free before 9pm. So for 20 or 30 bucks, punters will be able to have a feed and a nice few drinks, be entertained, and maybe win some cash. Should be fun!

What: The Annandale Hotel launch their new back bar!

With: Faker, Mavens, Castlecomer and DJ Jay Katz Where: The Annandale Hotel When: Friday August 10, with some free drinks from 5pm!

SPLIT SECONDS

Split Seconds are one of those Perth bands that really couldn’t have come from any other city. Their music is all momentous momentum and car-cup holders and wide open roads, and the first NSWers knew of them was when they won four WAMis last year. Then suddenly before you could say ‘who is WAMi?’ they were signed and touring nationally, and all over triple j.

They’ve finally released their debut album You’ll Turn Into Me, which they are launching at The Standard on August 31.

PUBLISHERS: Adam Zammit & Rob Furst EDITOR IN CHIEF: Adam Zammit 9552 6333 adam@peergroupmedia.com EDITOR: Steph Harmon steph@thebrag.com 02 9552 6333 ARTS & ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Dee Jefferson dee@thebrag.com 02 9690 2731 STAFF WRITERS: Alasdair Duncan, Benjamin Cooper NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Alasdair Duncan ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Anna Brown, Katrina Clarke, Georgie Collis, Nicholas Irving, Ashley Mar, Daniel Munns, Thomas Peachy, Pedro Xavier COVER PHOTO: Scott Stewart ADVERTISING: Ross Eldridge - 0422 659 425 / (02) 9690 0806 ross@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Les White - 0405 581 125 / (02) 8394 9027 les@thebrag.com GIG & CLUB GUIDE CO-ORDINATOR: Conrad Richters - gigguide@thebrag.com (rock) clubguide@thebrag.com (dance, hip hop & parties) INTERNS: Verity Cox, Dijana Kumurdian, Natalie Amat REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Benjamin Cooper, Alasdair Duncan, Christie Eliezer, Murray Engleheart, Andrew Geeves, Chris Honnery, Nathan Jolly, Anna Kennedy, Sheridan Morley, Jenny Noyes, Hugh Robertson, Rebecca Saffir, Romi Scodellaro, Jonno Seidler, Rach Seneviratne, Roland K. Smith, Laurence Rosier Staines, Luke Telford, Rick Warner, Alex Sol Watts, Caitlin Welsh 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, editors or staff of The BRAG. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Stephen Forde : accounts@furstmedia.com.au ph - (03) 9428 3600 fax - (03) 9428 3611 Furst Media, 3 Newton Street Richmond Victoria 3121 DEADLINES: Editorial: Wednesday 12pm (no extensions) Artwork/ad bookings: Thursday 12pm (no extensions).

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Georgia Fair

BREAK THE ICE AT UTS

Bluejuice are so much fun, right? They write wacky party songs about drinking and sex and broken legs and – whooah, read that lyric sheet for Company. This is some dark, messed-up stuff. It’s unsteady and unsure and set to a yacht rock soundtrack, which has touchstones in all the obvious places: Billy Joel, Michael McDonald, Toto – you know, all the stuff the kids are listening to. Their brilliantly named Winter Of Our Discotheque tour hits The Loft at the University of Technology Sydney on Friday August 10, which also happens to be where UTS’ huge O’Fest party Break The Ice is happening, featuring Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Georgia Fair, Hey Geronimo, The Preatures (nee The Preachers – yep, that happened!), The Khanz and more. Bluejuice are touring in support of their latest single ‘The Recession’, which the radio still isn’t playing nearly enough.

GO HERE, GO THERE

Go Here, Go There. No, it’s not a random snippet from a tedious argument you’re having with your partner about how they always want to do stuff, but the name of a festival split between The World Bar and Kings Cross Hotel. It’s the fourth installment, it happens on Friday August 10, and $15 will get you a visually appealing item to wrap around your wrist which allows you entry into both venues all night, to watch the likes of Hey Geronimo, Bearhug, Chicks Who Love Guns, Jeremy Neale, The Walking Who, Lime Cordiale, Private Life and a bunch of other chancers. Beers are a tidy $5, too, which means the only thing jangling all night will be arpeggios.

BILLY BRAGG

There are two distinct piles you can sort Billy Bragg’s discography into (assuming you’re the kind who sorts CDs into structurally unsound genre towers): there’s his politically-charged stuff, which is great and exciting and full of righteous anger, but doesn’t translate too well when you are middle-class and Australian

(“There is power in a union” ...probably?), and there is the beautiful, broken stuff (“If you haven’t noticed yet / I’m more impressionable when my cement is wet” – awww, Billy). Also, there is his work with Wilco. S’pose we need a third pile. Anyway, we can discuss that as we watch him plough through his enviable back catalogue on October 27 at The Enmore Theatre. Tickets are on sale now. Bring your docker mates.

KILL CITY CREEPS

Dan Poulter from The Dolly Rocker Movement, the band who briefly painted portions of Sydney paisley a few years ago, has been stalking around the live scene over the past year with his other other band, Kill City Creeps. If Dolly Rocker were T-Rex back in their hippy, Tolkientoking days, Kill City Creeps are Bolan when he slung an electric guitar on, realised he was a babe, and wrote ‘Get It On.’ They headline The Vanguard this Saturday August 11, and bring two Melbourne indie rock delights along for the ride: the frenetic Peep Tempel and the tightlywound Harlots. Tickets are $8.

Blondie

HOMEBAKE 2012!

This year, Homebake decided that it was time to open the bill to baked goods which are still tasty and desirable, but not necessarily made at home. And that’s fine, because as undeniably satisfying and filling as purely home baked goods can be, sometimes you feel like sampling something baked in, say, America, or the UK – which is why America’s Blondie and UK musical comedian Tim Minchin are heading up this year’s massive Homebake bill. Plus: Hilltop Hoods, Kimbra, Angus Stone, Julia Stone (told you they were fighting; separate rooms, separate bills), Birds Of Tokyo, Daniel Merriweather, Sam Sparro, The Saints (‘Just Like Fire Would’ is the best Australian song/pun of the ‘80s), Something For Kate, Sonicanimation (!), Shapeshifter, SIX60, Jinja Safari, The Bamboos, Tim ‘You Am I’ Rogers, San Cisco, Emma Louise, Pond, Ball Park Music, Seekae, DZ Deathrays, Husky and a bunch of others that just wouldn’t fit. It could just be the greatest lineup they’ve pulled together, and it happens on December 8 at The Domain, with tickets a bargain at $99 – snap ‘em up on August 16.

Xxxx

he Annandale Hotel’s been in the press a bunch over the last few years – facing closure, up for sale, Buy-A-Brick and the like.

But there’s been good news of late – their fundraising has gone well, the ‘For Sale’ sign has been pulled down, and now they’re launching a brand new back bar. Owner/ Operator Matt Rule took a break from the renovations to answer some questions...

what we wanted to see – and hence the Buy-A-Brick campaign was born.

It’s been a great way to get both the public and the music industry involved in keeping the Annandale alive and, most importantly, relevant.

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 13

rock music news

free stuff

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

he said she said WITH

LIME CORDIALE recently played is Bill Withers, Elvis Costello, Cosmo Jarvis and Ball Park Music.

Louis and I tend to write a song, and then we take it to Brendan and James. I’m really enjoying that process. Sometimes the song stays almost exactly how we wrote it initially.

Other times, the other two guys rip it apart and it changes completely.

We’re heading into the studio next month with producer Daniel Denholm. We’ve worked with a producer in the past, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be completely different this time. We used to just jump into the studio and start playing; this time, we’re going to spend more time exploring our own sound. With four guys in the band with completely different inspirations, it’s going to be a challenge to find a centre.

Holy shit, there are a lot of bands out there – and a lot of live music. But there should be more considering the amount of people that say, “Yeah, I play in a band. It’s called ‘Wednesday’s Departure’”.

Occasionally, an artist pops up that is really great, and oh so refreshing. Love that.

M

y brother Louis and I used to hate playing music together as kids.

It was embarrassing. Our parents would have a dinner party and we’d be their pet musicians: “Oh, do play us a song, darling!” No! We still don’t play for them.

We’ve all come from classical and jazz

Our music teachers were always great inspirations. My first album was Elvis Presley’s Greatest Hits, and some of my parents’ hippy music. Then later we probably all just listened to So Fresh albums. My most

GUESS WHO’S BACK?

Over 40 American radio stations added Missy Higgins’ stomping, hooky ‘Hello Hello’ to their playlists last week, and her second single from The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle, ‘Everyone’s Waiting’, is enjoying similar treatment at Australian radio. I guess Missy is officially back – and having witnessed her June set, which was mainly standup comedy (from a sit-down piano-stool position, of course) with some amazing songs thrown in, we cannot urge you violently enough to get along to her State Theatre show on November 20, with amazing guests Gurrumul and Emma Louise. Pre-sale tickets go on sale this Tuesday August 7, with general on-sale commencing Thursday.

GOOD HEAVENS!

Hearing Good Heavens’ alarmingly good first single ‘It’s Not Easy Being Mean’ was like seeing your ex holding hands with someone else: you knew it was over, sure, but there was still that corner of your mind swimming in the belief that things would go back to normal. When Sarah Kelly quickly split theredsunband after two sad, sludgy, shoegazey albums, it felt like an ellipsis, not a full stop. But now she has teamed with the original non-Stockdale members of Wolfmother, recorded this incredible debut album, and we hate to admit how good it sounds in case there’s still a chance for theredsunband and this is just a meaningless fling... It doesn’t sound like it though – they have choruses and everything. They launch Good Heavens at The Lansdowne on Friday August 17. Free entry, and free babin’ shoegaze courtesy of support band Bloods.

With: Hey Geronimo, Bearhug, Chicks Who Love Guns, Jeremy Neale (Velociraptor), The Walking Who, Private Life, Thnkr and more Where: Go Here, Go There @ FBi Social and The World Bar, Kings Cross When: Friday August 10

THE BELLIGERENTS

So we went to see Brisbane party-bangers The Belligerents last time they were in Sydney and they were embarrassingly well-behaved. No-one swept drinks off tables or baited security guards, and there was minimal course language involved.

There wasn’t even any blood. No blood! Well, hopefully they live up to the inherent hostilities in their band name when they launch their new EP She Calls The Shots at FBI Social on Saturday August 11, with local acts Conics, WolfWolf and Tom Lark in support.

MYSTERY JETS

Londoners Mystery Jets have been nominated for a BRAG award (a “Braggie”) for Best Album Title for their latest record, Radlands. It was meant to be their big back-porch Americana album, but contains a charming Blur-meets-Gram Parsons feel by virtue of their accents, as well as those baby-bird-chirping guitar lines that all UK

Remember the last time you were stuck in a snowstorm, and all you needed to save your toes from that looming frostbite was a little lighter fluid? Okay, so Alpine’s new single ‘Gasoline’ probably won’t help prevent near death, but it will warm up your insides easier and quicker than skinning a local yeti for his winter coat. A Is For Alpine is the debut album from the Melbourne six-piece, who’ve been sparkling up our airwaves with their honey-drenched pop tunes after scoring last week’s Feature Album on triple j. On the back of national tours with Catcall and The Naked And Famous, Alpine are taking their full-length record all around the country with Clubfeet and Georgi Kay in support. Oxford Art Factory is hosting the Sydney leg on Friday August 31; for your chance to warm up your mitts with one of two double passes, send us in your favourite winter warming remedies.

NIGHTWISH

Ever wonder what Finland has offered the world (besides wife-carrying championships and durable mobile phones)? How about sweeping concept albums by enigmatic metal bands? The spellbindingly symphonic Nightwish are coming south of the Equator to tour their latest record, Imaginaerum.

The band will return to Australia with a show that promises pyrotechnics (probably) and captivating guitar solos laced with soaring vocals (definitely), for the first time since their sold out 2009 tour. They’re playing this time with Swedish metallurgists Sabaton, and Sydney’s own Darker Half providing support. To snap up one of two double passes (so you can carry your wife/husband/Finnish neighbour) to their Sydney show at the Enmore Theatre on Friday January 11, tell us the names of Nightwish’s five current members.

bands seem to have mastered. It’s a great record; even the liberal pedal steel splashed throughout doesn’t seem forced. They have already been announced for Fat As Butter (September 22 on The Foreshore in Newcastle) and have now announced a Sydney show: September 23 at The Metro Theatre. Tickets on sale now.

ROCK’N’ROLL MARKETS

The Sydney Rock‘n’Roll Alternative Markets happen again on Sunday August 12 with over 50 stalls swarming Manning House and Manning Bar from 10:30am. Records, vintage fashion, jewellery, CDs, DVDs, books, all that kinda stuff – and in case you thought you’d be browsing in stately silence, The Toot Toot Toots (a bit like the country Drones, Spurs for Jesus (cow punk), The Drey Rollan Band (rootsy, surf business) and Jordan C Thomas Trio (swing, jazz, dancemoves) will be performing live sets. Gold coin donation!

PEATS RIDGE LINEUP ANNOUNED!

John Butler has written protest songs about the Government, the transit system, uranium mining, global warming, generic cereal brands, the influx of non-microchipped zebras in our national parks, and the cancellation of TV’s Seachange [citation pending]. But his most passionate songs have been about how his John Butler Trio has had to forgo playing the Peats Ridge Festival every year for one reason or other, despite it being pretty much the perfect place for him to play. Well, this year the protests have been heard and he is headlining an extremely impressive lineup, which features The Black Seeds, Friendly Fires (DJ set), The Herd, Kaki King, Krafty Kuts vs A.Skillz, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, King Tide, Electric Wire Hustle, Deep Sea Arcade, Gossling and loads more. It happens December 29–January 1 at the lovely Glenworth Valley, and tickets go on sale on August 20, at 10am.

THE URBAN GUERILLAS

Newtown certainly is becoming the new ‘that place you should go to see live music’, with legendary Adelaide-cum-Sydney band The Urban Guerillas playing two shows within a week as if this is the good old days or something. If you are new to this punk rock band, they regularly played the Sandringham Hotel throughout the ‘80s, receiving support from triple j back when it was Double J (after it was ‘half-a-J-and a whiskey, please’). Now it’s 2012 and it’s nice to see some things haven’t changed too dramatically, with Urban Guerillas playing The Townie last week, and set for another gig at The Union Hotel on Thursday August 9 with The Browny Show and Steph Miller’s Winterstation. There’s free entry, too!

John Butler Trio

“How can you lie there and think of England when you don’t even know who’s in the team,” - BILLY BRAGG 14 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

Missy Higgins photo by Heidi Ross

Missy Higgins

backgrounds, James and Brendan too.

ALPINE

PRESENTS BACK FROM 2012 US TOUR

NEW EMPIRE THURSDAY 9

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PLAYED AT SPLENDOUR

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DJ SAMRAI DJ NINO BROWN DJ NAIKI

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OPENED FOR AC/DC

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RSVP ON FACEBOOK ;OL :[HY 7[` 3PTP[LK ()5 ;OPUR (IV\[ `V\Y JOVPJLZ *HSS .HTISPUN /LSW ^^^ NHTISPUNOLSW UZ^ NV] H\ ;OL :[HY WYHJ[PZLZ [OL YLZWVUZPISL ZLY]PJL VM HSJVOVS .\LZ[Z T\Z[ IL HNLK `LHYZ VY V]LY [V LU[LY [OL *HZPUV

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The Music Network

themusicnetwork.com

Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

THINGS WE HEAR

• Eminem set a new record for friends on Facebook, notching up 60,093,667. Right behind is Rihanna with 59,381,829 “likes”.

Em is the fourth most popular entertainer on YouTube.com, with two billion views.

• Spotify has now got four million subscribers around the world.

• Bruce Springsteen, known for his extremely long live sets, set a new record: four hours and six minutes in Finland, at the end of his Europe tour.

• On the eve of their university tour with Bluejuice, The Preachers have changed their name to The Preatures.

• Azealia Banks, who was in the country only for a few hours to play Splendour In The Grass, hit Twitter to apologise to fans for playing for only 25 minutes. “We used the festival’s equipment and it wasn’t the best gear! I feel really REALLY bad. Like bad enough to cry. My first time in Australia and I feel like I’ve cheated you all.” She’s promised to return for a full tour.

• Lily Allen has told NME she will be recording under her new married name, Lily Rose Cooper; Snoop Dogg will now be known as Snoop Lion.

BROWN, ZAJKO, JOIN MUSICNSW

Kirsty Brown takes over as Executive Officer at MusicNSW from Eliza Sarlos, who has become Creative Director of the Underbelly Arts Festival.

Brown, who was Editor of BRAG until 2010, went on to co-direct Sound Summit and work on the Flickerfest International Short Film Festival.

Chris Zajko moves from Project Coordinator to Project Manager, after Meg Williams joined the Association of Artist Managers.

HEYMANN TO HEAD DEEZER IN OZ

Newly arrived international music streaming service Deezer appointed former Sony and Warner Music executive Thomas Heymann as Country Manager for Australia/New Zealand.

Deezer launched here on April 12 with 18

• A triple j listener who slagged The Doctor on Facebook for his “constant self promotion douchebaggery” during the Splendour broadcast received nearly 10,000 “likes” before the post was yanked. Meantime, a patron who slammed Canberra’s Academy nightclub on its Facebook page over an incident – he claimed security wouldn’t let him back in when he realised he’d left the club without his wallet – received 1600 likes and hundreds of comments from others, the Canberra Times reported.

• In their application to open for Weezer’s first Australian tour in 16 years, Melbourne’s Empra also included a homemade Weezer cake. The icing used the artwork from Weezer’s 1994 Blue Album, replacing the bandmembers' heads with their own.

Promoter Chugg Entertainment was so enchanted it posted a pic of the cake on its Facebook, commenting, “Pretty awesome way to submit your band as a tour support.

All bands take note: we like cake!”

• Twerps, who just sold out shows in Sydney and Melbourne, saw their self-titled album become the third most added to college radio in the US. It debuted at #68 in the CMJ Top 200 airplay charts. They’re touring the US in October.

million tracks, and aims to champion Australian and NZ acts. Heymann wants Deezer to be “the passionate music fan, with compelling and credible editorial.”

KRAVITZ TO SET UP OZ STUDIO?

Lenny Kravitz has been approached to run a recording studio in Surfers Paradise. It will be in the $1 billion Jewel six star resort development, aiming to attract international music acts and film studios to the resort to use its apartments, cafes, spa and conference rooms. Steven Haggart, head of developer RDG who just returned from a fact-finding visit to Miami with Mayor Tom Tate and Moncrieff MP Steve Ciobo, told the Gold Coast Bulletin, “There are major opportunities. We could see unplugged venues springing up around the

recording artists who come to the Gold Coast to record an album. It is obvious why recording stars go to Miami at the moment. We want them to come here.”

Lifelines Dating: Katy Perry and John Mayer?

WANNA WORK AT FUTURE CLASSIC?

Future Classic is looking for a Label & Communications Coordinator for their office in Redfern. James McInnes has opted for a change of pace (although he’s staying in the Future Classic DJs, and continuing with their FBi radio show). The gig involves spreading the word on their projects, and managing day-today operations. You need to be an organised self-starter with digital skills, PR experience and a savvy understanding of the media space.

Email jobs@futureclassic.com.au with your story, and anything else that’ll wow them.

AIM’S MUSIC INDUSTRY FORUM

The Australian Institute of Music (AIM) is holding a full-day music industry forum at its campus on Saturday August 11. About 26 industry pros will be speaking (and taking questions) on topics including recording, publishing, A&R, artist management, tour management, venue management and performance. Adam Zammit (co-CEO of Big Day Out and publisher of BRAG and The Music Network) will give a keynote. Among the 26 are Megan Washington, managers Todd Wagstaff, Troy Barrott and Bill Cullen, media folks Kathy McCabe and Matt Coyte, and publisher Simon Moor. There’s an after-party at the Oxford Art Factory. See aimtogethernow2012. eventbrite.com.au

SURRY HILLS FESTIVAL WANTS AN AFTERPARTY

The Festival Company is seeking partners to stage three official Surry Hills Festival afterparties, featuring both live and electronic music. Organised this year by the team behind Peats Ridge Festival, Surry Hills Fest attracts more than 90,000 punters each year, to raise funds for the Surry Hills Neighbourhood Centre.

Established promoters and artist agencies should email info@thefestivalcompany.com by Monday August 6 for an EOI pack.

Dating: Taylor Swift and Robert Kennedy’s environmentalist activist grandson Conor Kennedy.

Engaged: Managers Dave Batty (Jezabels) and Bonnie Dalton (Little Red, Vasco Era, Husky), during a holiday in Venice.

Injured: Two broken bones for The Game during a basketball game in Los Angeles, where a slam dunk went wrong. Someone accidentally stepped on his hand after he fell.

Injured: A Tenacious D gig in Las Vegas was closed by cops after a man was stabbed in the leg when a brawl broke out. A person was arrested.

Arrested: Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante and his wife, for brawling in a hotel room in front of a child.

Arrested: Bone Thugs-NHarmony rapper Krayzie Bone, for drunk driving in LA, allegedly blowing .10, above the .08 legal limit in California.

Died: Bill Doss, 43, founding member of ‘90s band The Olivia Tremor Control and of recording collective Elephant 6, which included The Apples In Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah and Elf Power.

Died: Tony Sly, 41, singer with California punk band No Use For A Name. Cause of death unknown at time of print.

Internationally acclaimed Bangarra Dance Theatre presents a fusion of contemporary dance and indigenous storytelling inspired by the timeless wonder and spiritual resonance of Lake Eyre

exhilarating and engrossing - Sydney Morning Herald visually spectacular, captivating the audience with a simple but flawless unity of music and movement - Time Out Magazine

until 18 August sydneyoperahouse.com.au 02 9250 7777

Scan to preview TERRAIN

Groups (8+) $60 Students $25 Student Rush 2 for $40* *Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Thursdays available from 9am on the day of the performance

16 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

JUST ANNOUNCED

E HIFI 1300 TH COM.AU

Musiq Alternative House Party Soulchild (USA) Rugby

Triple J’s

THEHIFI.

Fri 24 Aug

Fri 14 Sep

Commentary Sat 20 Oct

COMING UP

Fri 17 Aug

Nasum (SWE)

Illy

Sat 18 Aug

Sat 25 Aug

w/ Psycroptic

Dream On Dreamer

Earth (USA)

Fri 31 Aug

Sat 1 Sep

Wheatus (USA)

Full On by Ferry Corsten

Fear Factory (USA) Regurgitator Thu 27 Sep

Sat 22 Sep

So ld O ut

Sat 15 Sep

Unit & Tu Plang Sat 29 Sep

Se llin g

Fri 21 Sep

Hanson (USA)

Thu 13 Sep

Fa st

(FIN)

Se llin g

Apocalyptica

Fa st

Passenger

Fa st

Fri 10 Aug

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BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 17

“We were never meant to be signed, and we know we don’t owe nobody nothing, so we just have fun in this industry while we can.”

A Bizarre Ride By Benjamin Cooper

on albums like the Gold-certified Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde and Labcabincalifornia, the band – now down to Imani and Brown – decided to self-produce 2004’s Humboldt Beginnings.

Their sound may have evolved over more than two decades and through lineup changes, but the physicality and irreverence of their lyrics remain intact. Delivering such consistently high grade product for so many years makes Imani justifiably proud.

“Quality will always rise to the top,” he says. “It’s never assured and you still have to work for it, and accept the help of others.

But we have travelled a lot, and met lots of people along the way, so we’re still strong with our stories. Really though, there’s so many factors that have helped us to be here. It’s a blessing every day we’re on tour.”

The two consider Australia to be a particularly enticing destination. “The great thing about coming to Australia is that now we actually know people out there,” Imani says. “It will be like seeing family members, except ones you really want to see. A lot of times when you’re on tour you don’t know what the place is going to be like. You don’t know what the food is going to taste like, or what parts of the city are good to walk around in... Now we’re fully prepped to find the good restaurants wherever they’ve been hidden. I ain’t talking about the expensive ones necessarily; I mean the classy ones. We try to be of class and give back the love wherever we can, so coming back to Australia is going to be great – we’ll just be chilling with friends wherever we go. The great thing about Australia is I feel like even if we didn’t know people someone would still look after us and show us a good time. It might not be quartz crystals, but it will still be comfortable and happy. It just seems so much more relaxed down there in Australia, even the traffic, and the sky...”

Whether they’re at home or on the road, Imani says the inspiration to create music is constant, so he tries to have basic instruments and recording equipment within reach. “I feel naked if I don’t have the stuff I need to make a beat,” he explains.

“It’s not difficult for me to put together the things around me to make [one], so it doesn’t have to be too complex or anything, but it’s better if I have actual gear. The way I see it is that if we really want to be writers, we have got to have the gear and the drive to just do it... Like some kind of Superman, disappearing into a phone booth.” And will the ideas have to come as fast as a speeding bullet? “Well, you never know,” he muses. “Jay-Z might call up and be all like, ‘Hey Fellas, I want to hear your ideas for a beat.’ If I can’t be useful right then, that’s a wasted opportunity.

“I was reminded of that recently when we were in London for a while,” Imani continues. “We were hanging out with Ghostface Killah, killing time at his show and watching his set. He asked me to start turning out some idea for a song he had, just while we were sitting on the couches. It wasn’t a problem at all because it’s how we came up in this game – we can turn it on whenever it needs to happen. We were never meant to be signed, and we know we don’t owe nobody nothing, so we just have fun in this industry while we can. It’s good.”

In spite of the noise they make about having fun and staying positive – and as much as they clearly aren’t beyond poking fun at themselves and their genre – The Pharcyde have achieved their position thanks to a relentless work ethic in the studio and on the road. “The real truth is that you must first do ten thousand hours – then you will be a master of your craft,” Imani sagely advises. “See as much music and MCs as you can, and learn about true quality. Being able to differentiate between ordinary and excellent is very useful, and not everyone can do it.”

I

t’s not always a bad thing when two grown men laugh in your face – if those two men happen to be original West Coast rappers, for example. It’s very difficult to be annoyed at Imani and Bootie Brown, the core members of Californian hip hop legends The Pharcyde, as they giggle away while slagging off my crappy phone – they sound like they’re having so much fun. Once we’re over this hump, however, the complete professionalism of the two veterans kicks in: “We always do

things properly, you can rest assured,” Imani insists. “It’s the complete package. That’s just how we do.”

Imani and Brown, known to their nearest and dearest as Emandu Wilcox and Romye Robinson respectively, formed The Pharcyde as a dance group in the late 1980s with Slimkid3 (Trevant Hardson) and Fatlip (Derrick Stewart). After championing producers like J-Swift and then-unknown J Dilla

“Everything we’ve all been doing is preparing us to enter through the golden gate, and the timing has to be just right.

Thankfully we can practice our rapping skills while the gate has been closed, but when the golden gate is open we will have to be ready. It could be a while off though, so we must keep practicing,” Imani says. “And who knows?” Brown chimes in. “By the time [the gate opens], your phone might even be working properly...”

What: Pharcyde’s ‘20 Years Of Dedicated Pharcyde Delivery’ Tour With: Computer Jay, DJ Vickone Where: The Beresford When: Wednesday August 22

“I loved you then as I love you still. Though I put you on a pedestal, they put you on the pill,” - BILLY BRAGG 18 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

Xxxx

It’s little wonder that Australia has had such a lasting impact on Imani; Pharcyde were last here in 2009 for the extravagant summer tour of Good Vibrations, which saw them playing alongside luminaries like Fatboy Slim and The Roots. The festival environment presents unique challenges, Imani says. “You got to be smarter; you get the drifters who won’t necessarily know anything about your music, but they’ll still check it out and stay if it’s any good. Making it any good is the tricky part.” Brown interjects: “But then when you get your club shows, it’s completely different again. That kind of [gig] is much more intimate, so we seem to get the die-hard fans coming out in support. We can connect more with the crowd and control everything more, which means a better show for those die-hard fans. That’s important, because we like to think we’re all part of a fraternity. The Pharcyde Fraternity.”

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BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 19

Purity Ring Future Pop By Luke Telford

P

urity Ring is a curious name for a band.

It conjures ideas of chastity, immaculacy – an untainted, white, gleaming sound, utterly clean and uncluttered. Purity rings apparently originated in the ‘90s among sexual abstinence groups in the United States. The idea was that the virginal teenage members of these groups would wear the rings to remind them that resisting sexual urges until marriage was the right thing to do.

In the context of the music on Shrines, the duo’s first album, the name takes on richer, darker undertones – the face of the music certainly seems clean, or clear, but its strident rhythms seem to explicitly allude to the unabashed sensuality at the core of hip hop and modern RnB. It’s music that makes you want to move, and revel in your faculties, rather than pretend they don’t exist. “I think we chose the name long before we knew what we would sound like,” says Megan James, Purity Ring’s vocalist. “Actually, we don’t usually answer that question, because there isn’t really an answer. We didn’t put that much thought into it. It flows well. When someone asks what it means, I don’t mind

just saying, ‘No, don’t think about it that way.

That’s not what it is.’”

That such a potentially potent symbol should turn out to be a dead end is frustrating, but appropriate.

Part of what makes Shrines such an appealing prospect is that it’s difficult to read. Assembled over the internet between Halifax and Montreal, it feels very much a product of the web age. Its instruments are all digital, their sounds pristine and precise. Generically, it’s heavily allusive, drawing in elements of ‘cloud rap’ vassals like Clams Casino or oOoOO. It also seems to share the headspace of acts like Grimes or Laurel Halo – all sickly high definition soft-synths and gently Auto-Tuned vocals, signifiers that imply the emptiness of the most fickle of Top 40 pop music.

Accordingly, Purity Ring’s music has elicited the tag ‘future pop’, which fits well. It sounds futuristic, and it also shares much of chart pop’s clear-eyed, forward-looking palettes. Most importantly – as James perspicaciously points out – the term ‘future pop’ is just another empty placard, signifying nothing and explaining little; a characteristic fitting for something born of the internet. “I think calling it future pop, in a sense, is calling it pop music,” she says. “The word ‘future’ can mean a lot of things.

But I think, when it comes down to it, it means absolutely nothing. It’s kind of like adding an element of space, like an ‘x’ or something, if it were math. X pop. Whatever kind of pop. We consider it pop, but it’s indefinable at this point.”

So much about Shrines begs to be taken at face value – to be treated in the same way you would the perfunctory array of some dazzling Flash animation, or a pragmatic, iTunes chart-topping hit. But the dynamism of the arrangements, and the dazzling, simple beauty of the songs’ harmonic structures and melodic cadences, suggest barely hidden depths. The lyrics are another hint at the possible thematic complexities of the record. James’ innocently childish voice belies verse that revels in disconcerting corporeality – she sings of tearing skin, of spreading sweet flesh over earth like some sort of agrarian balm. On ‘Fineshrine’ she implores the listener to cut open her sternum and curl her ribs around them. It’s viscerally unsettling, but also weirdly inviting and intimate.

“I’d like to think that listening to music can be a learning process. I hope that people listen to what I’m saying. I want people to think about it.”

Despite its wealth of imagery ripe for interpretation, it’s still difficult to shake the feeling that Shrines is little more than a simple pop album at heart. Perhaps looking too deeply for meaning is missing the point. Maybe this record should be heard as a Top 40 pop homage. I ask James: Why is it people still listen to that variety of pop, when its newer permutations pose so many fascinating avenues to discover? “It’s the catchiest thing there is. It’s well produced, it’s easy to listen to, it’s smooth for the most part,” she says. “Another reason, I think, is because we’re told to. It’s like if you turn on the radio, that’s all there is. It’s easy, in that sense. It’s easy to listen to, it’s easy to sing along, the lyrics are simple, you don’t have to really think about it, and it’s there. It’s available. It’s like eating. Would you rather a sandwich with dry bread, or a sandwich with soft, fresh bread?”

What: Shrines is out now on 4AD, through Remote Control Records 20 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

Purity Ring photo bySebastian Mlynarski

There’s nothing wrong with treating music as a functional object – aural wallpaper for your work cubicle or a way to blank out the sound of your commute. But if we’re to hear Shrines as functional pop, or an amalgam of so many already paper-thin influences with no depth of its own, isn’t something lost? Doesn’t music lose its meaning if it’s created to just go down smoothly? “I’d like to think that listening to music can be a learning process.

Sometimes it’s not. It’s just so that [people can have] noise,” says James. “I hope that people listen to what I’m saying, so that they can think about it. I want people to think about it. With pop music, there’s definitely a lot less to think about in terms of lyrics. But if you’re listening to the production, and paying attention to the people who write that, that’s a whole other world that’s surpassed in the general population of listeners. Corin [Roddick, Purity Ring’s instrumentalist] listens to only Top 40 music, and he gets a lot out of it. He chooses to listen to that, not just because it’s easily available. It depends what you’re looking for. If you just want it to be there, then that’s what it is.”

New War Fighting Fit By Mitch Alexander

T

hat whole phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes analogy, it’s not just for lazy sports writers and Marvel comics. It also has a place with bands like New War (…and lazy music writers). While the four-piece call themselves a Melbourne band, the seeds of their dark and brooding synth sound were planted many years ago, in a far off land…

“I’m obviously not from here – I’m from Seattle,” says Chris Pulger, the softly spoken singer, from his Melbourne home. “Mel [Lock, bassist] and I were in this band called Shoplifting over there. We put some stuff out on Kill Rock Stars, but our drummer Hannah was also in The Gossip, so when they went really crazy she took off, about five or six years ago. We were trying to figure out what to do, and Mel is from Melbourne and she was quite keen to come home, so we thought we’d move here for something different.”

Ok, it may not have the trademark good vs. evil narrative of a death and rebirth tale, but out of that slight hiccup of band disintegration came a renewed focus and uncompromised vision. The resulting sound is one steeped in echoey atmospherics and haunting melodies, heavy emotion wrapped in a cloak of detached darkness. If things took time to fall together, it was all part of the plan. “Mel knew Steve – our drummer – before, and they both knew Jessie from around,” Chris explains. “They’re on hiatus, but he’s played keyboards in a band called Sir for a long time. So yeah, we all loosely knew each other, Mel organised for us to meet, and we jammed for a long time – probably for about a year – before we did a show. We’re all sort of perfectionists, and we wanted to come out swinging... The one rule that Mel and I had when we were looking to put a band together is that we didn’t want to have guitar. It took quite a while just to figure out exactly how things would work; to do our own thing, and not something that was easily classifiable.”

while others have bended and merged and elongated and are barely recognisable by the climax. Once again, New War threw down the gauntlet, and Gravina accepted the challenge.

“We just decided to do that in the studio – going into far off places – and it ended up working really well. Other songs twist and turn in different ways every time we play; you’ve got a basic template and you go where it goes. We were relaxed enough and trusting in Lindsay to [make that work.]”

If all it took for a musician to survive was selfbelief, there’d be a lot more crap bands out there. Thankfully, evolution weeds the bulk of them out pretty quickly. New War has that spark of belief and determination, but with the musical talent to back it up. For a group that loiter in the shadows, the future certainly looks bright.

What: New War is out now on Sensory Projects, through Fuse With: Lost Animal, Scattered Order, Four Door Where: The Square, Haymarket When: Saturday August 18

“The one rule that Mel and I had when we were putting a band together is that we didn’t want to have a guitar. It took quite a while to figure out how things would work...”

With the foundation laid, it was time for New War to take their sound to greater audiences.

Their self-titled debut album was produced by legendary Melbourne mainstay Lindsay Gravina, who’s worked with Cosmic Psychos, Magic Dirt and Rowland S. Howard, but despite his expertise, the process was not without its challenges – the two most prominent being capturing New War’s intense sound in a way that would accurately reflect their hypnotic live shows, and doing so quickly with a band more used to taking things at a calculated pace. “We wanted someone that we felt could match where we wanted to go, not just hit record and that’s that,” Chris explains. “Mel had worked with [Gravina] before and he had done a couple of things that we really liked, like the Rowland S. Howard records ... particularly sonically – how they sounded really big but still centred; like a band playing, not overproduced.

Lindsay was working about 20-hour days for I think nine days, just really focussed. He went above and beyond – we wanted to make a good record, and he believed in that.”

A big sound without studio overproduction, without it sounding like the clinical lab experiment of a mad scientist sound engineer, was just one of the particular and slightly contradictory capabilities included in the job description. Years of jamming and rehearsing, and eventually live performance, honed what the band consider to be their style – as unclassifiable as that may be – but it also developed a writing style that was part structure, part improvisation on the day. “With some of the songs, there’s a lot of repetition and a lot of room for the band to move around when playing live. Like in ‘Ghostwalking’; the last half of that song, we just go wherever it takes us. When we actually recorded it, we started experimenting with it and stretching it out,” he explains. “We had only played a shorter version before we recorded it.”

No two New War sets are the same. Some are melancholic affairs with unpredictable lashes of aggression, others are, well, not upbeat exactly, but not as dark as the rest. Some songs have remained unchanged since they were written, BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 21

Linkin Park More Than Meets The Eye By Peter Hodgson

L

Living Things doesn’t really revisit the band’s past so much as take the occasional fond glance back. “It’s like putting to work the life lessons of where we’ve been, but through the present point of view,” Delson says. “I think sonically, or maybe in terms of song approach, this album is very different from A Thousand Suns, and part of that was [intended]; the inspiration of doing something in contrast to what we’d just done. That’s what makes the studio so fun. There are no rules.”

Once again Delson’s guitar is up front, including a few moments that border on

thrash. There’s no real pattern to how Linkin Park songs get written or at which point the guitar role takes shape for any given track.

It’s a very fluid process. “One thing that Rick [Rubin, producer] would encourage us to do is to put vocals on it right away. That helps us to know if the content is good – ‘Is this song, in its bare bones form, a good song?’ – whereas our method of working on our first two albums was almost entirely music-focused first, and then the vocals would go last.

“People say, ‘Is there a message in the album?’ and it’s like, ‘I don’t know! We don’t even know what we just said! We don’t even know what we just played!’” Delson laughs. “In fact, we make the songs in such a postmodern way that when it’s time to prepare for our tours, we literally have to learn how to perform the songs for the first time… I literally have a CD right now of parts that I’m going to play. We have the song on the left and my part on the right and I’m trying to figure out how I played it, or how Mike [Shinoda, guitar/vocals] played it, and how I’m going to play it live to make it sound like it does on the record.”

The band recently introduced a pretty killer merchandise item: a limited edition Linkin Park-branded Transformers set made in collaboration with Hasbro. Based on the 1984 originals, there will be 2000 sets manufactured, featuring Soundwave,

Linkin Park photo by James Minchin

inkin Park’s 2010 album A Thousand Suns divided fans. Some felt it was a step too far away from the rhythmic, anthemic, alternative-tinged hybrid of hard rock, nu metal and rap that had helped them make their name. That didn’t stop the record from selling almost a million copies, but it still meant the band had to step up to reclaim a few skeptical fans the next time round. And that’s exactly what they did: Living Things debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, and sold almost a quarter of a million copies in its first week. It seems the shorter-than-usual break between albums and the return to certain old-school Linkin Park elements paid off. “We have a habit of releasing albums every three or four years,” guitarist Brad Delson tells me. “In Linkin Park time, this is like light speed!”

Lazerbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ravage. “I’ve definitely put in a request for at least one of them – I think I deserve to get at least one, don’t you think?” Delson says. “Joe Hahn [Linkin Park’s DJ] is our resident Transformer connoisseur… He has such a huge collection of toys and art objects. He went to an exhibition in Berlin last month of someone’s private collection of street culture toys and artist collaboration collectibles. He was totally inspired and demoralised at the same time.

Whatever Joe had amassed over the last

decade, this guy had taken it to such an extreme degree that it was staggering.”

So when can we hope to have Linkin Park in Australia again? “Sooner rather than later – maybe even next year. I hope for my sake that those rumours are true, because I would love to spend as much time as possible in your neck of the woods.”

What: Living Things is out through Warner

Jeremy Neale Go Here, Go There By Krissi Weiss

B

est known for fronting the rambunctious and cheeky garage rock band Velociraptor, Jeremy Neale is a man of many talents, and a musician of many projects. The music that he performs under his solo moniker doesn’t quite resemble the party-jam-gone-crazy of his 12-piece project, erring more on the pop side of indie-rock – but there’s nonetheless a vintage feel that manages to creep in.

Neale will be debuting the project in Sydney as part of Go Here, Go There, the fourth in a series of mini-festivals put together between MUM at The World Bar and FBi Social in Kings Cross. “[The set] is part of a short run tour that I’m doing to release a double A-side vinyl – just a two-track release,” Neale explains.

“It’s a really strong lineup for the Sydney show at the mini-festival, so that’s good exposure for the release!” The tracks he is touring are not necessarily new – both have been out for a while – but in true vintage form, Neale was determined to bring the songs to life on vinyl.

“The main single is a song called ‘Darlin’ that I put out a couple of months ago with a film clip.

‘Winter Was The Time’ is on the other side – a single I released earlier this year under this solo moniker. For this run of shows we were

shooting for a five-piece to come, but our sax player can’t make it so we’ll be travelling as a four-piece for this one.”

Velociraptor are doing deservedly well – winning radio play, gigging extensively, and building a national fanbase – but Neale had a few good reasons to start a solo side-project.

“I get to be very precise, and I don’t have to compromise very much. Whatever I dream up as a songwriter I can just make happen; I’m not limited by players so much. That’s not about skill – it’s just that in my other project I have 12 people to think about. [So] if I want to make something just sound like a two-piece or a three-piece, I can do that in this project. It’s a project based on freedom, I guess,” he muses.

“It kind of works against me, though, because I’m competing against myself in a way. People are like, ‘Oh yeah Jeremy, we just saw you last week in ‘Raptor, we don’t care about what you want to do with anything else’. I try to not make mention of it in press releases because while there are many people who enjoy that band, there are just as many who don’t like that band and will dismiss me straight away!”

There are other issues to consider when embarking on a solo project – one being the assumption that it’s going to be just Neale, an acoustic guitar, and a whole lot of melancholy tunes. “You’re right,” he says. “People think that I’m a singer-songwriter and they shouldn’t waste their time – and I did start doing that style at first, and realised I was even boring myself. There’s definitely places where that’s awesome to hear and I love playing it, but it works a little against me. I think the thing that works for me is that I am able to have that everchanging lineup... I was afraid to use my own name because if you brand yourself too early in something you risk being dismissed – and if you release something terrible under your own name, it’s forever ruined.”

Although he attempts to distance himself from his other project, promoters jump on the idea of Velociraptor as a selling point – but Neale seems humoured by that. “It kind of feels like I’m a failed ‘80s star already,” he laughs. “The tragedy has already begun!”

What: MUM and FBi Social present Go Here, Go There With: Hey Geronimo, Bearhug, Chicks Who Love Guns, The Walking Who, Lime Cordiale, The Ruminaters and many more Where: FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel and MUM @ The World Bar When: Friday August 10; a $15 wristband gets you into both venues.

Spaghetti Western Orchestra Hi Ho Silver By Krissi Weiss

S

paghetti Westerns were a sub-genre of the classic American western film that emerged in the ‘60s, so named because they were generally produced and directed

by Italians. Polite, hey? Over 600 European westerns were made in a 20-year period, and of those Serge Leone was one of the most prominent directors. His friend, Ennio Morricone, provided the chaotic, complex and punctuating soundtracks – complete with hilarious soundscapes and organic sound effects – that lent so much impact and humour to Leone’s films. Close to a decade ago saw the birth of The Ennio Morricone Experience, an Australian comic tribute trio that would become The Spaghetti Western Orchestra – one of the most peculiar things you’ll see at Sydney Opera House this year.

“It began in Melbourne as an idea,” creative producer, performer and rhythmic luminary Graeme Leak explains. “We used to get together and play cards and gamble, drink whiskey and smoke cigars, and we used to try different soundtracks out for our gambling nights. We found that the Spaghetti Western soundtracks always got you in the mood to throw your cards down and put your five cents on the table – and in doing that, we started to think that it would be great to do this material on stage. But because it’s written for such large forces, we couldn’t think of a way to do it; we just gave it a go as a quartet,” he says. “When we first started doing it, we would cut up bits of dialogue from the films and bring the fader up on them in-between tracks. Then we started to do that live as well, and then we added the sound effects, and got rid of all of the prerecorded parts...”

While The Ennio Morricone Experience found appreciative audiences both at home and abroad, it was a trip to Edinburgh that cemented the new face of The Spaghetti Western

Orchestra. “When we went to Edinburgh we met Glynis Henderson, who’s the producer of Stomp,” Leak explains. “She wanted to work with us, but she wanted to change the show to make it more international; there were a lot of English language elements. So we worked with a director, Denis Blais, and he shifted the show into a much more visual realm for European and Asian audiences. He amplified the theatrical and character side of things and moved the show from musicians playing on a black stage in dinner suits into the grander scale show that we have now.”

With an overwhelming list of instrumentation including “Double Bass”, “Tasmanian Lottery Balls” and “A Child-Sized Boot”, and a focus on creating every musical piece and thematic soundscape without the help of any digital tracks, the quintet are adept at doing a whole host of things at once, making the show as much a visual experience as a sonic one. “It’s pretty much a polyphonic affair; everyone is doing something different all of the time,” Leak says. “One thing that people always tell us when they come back to the show for a second or a third time is that they see a different show, because their focus is on someone or something different each time.

“I think the good thing about us is that our backgrounds are quite varied,” he continues.

“Most of us are classically trained, Patrick [Cronin] has more of a cabaret background, and Boris [Conley] did a lot of music theatre, and quite a bit of television – he was the Friday Night Funny Man on Frontline many, many years ago. We’ve all taken ourselves into new territory both vocally and theatrically in this act, and it has evolved quite organically into what it is today.”

Where: The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House When: Tuesday August 14 – Sunday August 19

“For the girl with the hour glass figure time runs out very fast,” - BILLY BRAGG 22 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

Hunting Grounds In For The Kill By James Nicoli

I

t may have been a long and occasionally arduous journey but Hunting Grounds have come out the other side intact, and with their debut album In Hindsight in tow. From winning triple j Unearthed High in 2009 to changing their name from Howl in 2011, to criss-crossing the country on a string of high profile support slots, the boys from Ballarat have, after much delay and frustration, finally unleashed their record onto the world. When I chat to guitarist and vocalist Michael Belsar just days before In Hindsight’s official release, there’s a clear sense of relief in his voice. “It was really a huge relief when we finally finished [the album], because we spent so long on it. It got to a point where I thought that we were never going to put it out,” he admits. “But it’s going to be interesting to see where it takes us. I think that’s the thing we’re most excited about.”

For such a young band, the weight of expectation must have surely started to take its toll, with the album’s release date continually pushed back. Yet Hunting Grounds came out the other side all the better for it and when they did finally enter the studio with producer Paul ‘Woody’ Annison, the result was a record steeped in maturity that belies their years. “Everyone was really on the same wavelength. It was a really easy recording process which is unusual [for anyone], and it’s really unusual for us,” admits Belsar.

“A few of the times before that, when we’ve recorded, it’s been a lot more difficult. [This time] everyone had their own ideas but it was just a really easy process, and we took a lot of Woody’s ideas on board. Everyone just seemed to be on the same page.”

Annison has previously worked with the likes of Children Collide, Black Cab and Young Revelry, and he had a significant impact on the band’s record, taking their initial concepts and turning them into polished songs. Lead single ‘Flaws’ is a prime example of the way they worked together in the studio. “[Annison] always wants to take things to the next level, which is really important,” Belsar says. “Originally, ‘Flaws’ was this really sort of boring rock song – you know, with just guitar and bass and drums. It was really average, but he saw something in the melody, I guess. So he had this idea of making it this real tripped-out pop song, and that’s pretty much the reason it sounds the way it does today.”

“We spent so long on the album. It got to a point where I thought that we were never going to put it out. It’s going to be interesting to see where it takes us.”

With six members and three songwriters, things could have very easily become complicated when it came to the writing of the record. Yet the ability to meld each other’s song ideas and transform them into one distinct sound is one of Hunting Grounds’ strengths. “It’s actually a lot more simple than it seems – it seems like it wouldn’t work on paper,” muses Belsar on the band’s writing formula. “But when I write songs, I’ll just write them and demo the whole thing at my house until I bring it to the band, and each person plays their own part. At that point I guess it becomes a Hunting Grounds song. It just seems to work because everyone has their own unique way of doing things – and I guess it’s those unique parts that make up our band’s sound.” Hunting Grounds are not afraid to share around the vocal duties either, with Belsar, Galen Strachan and frontman Lachlan Morrish all providing vocals on the record.

“We didn’t stick to the idea that it had to be two vocalists, and it had to go this way or that way,” explains Belsar. “We sort of wanted it to sound the best; whatever worked best for the album.”

What else worked best for the album? A bit of sneaky marketing. If you’ve been anywhere near Hunting Grounds’ Facebook page recently, you would have no doubt seen that Oprah photo: the talk show queen holding a copy of In Hindsight in her hands. According to Belsar, the band’s photoshopped in-joke had more than a few people fooled, journalists included. “I’ve had interviews today where people have asked me how Oprah got the album,” he laughs. “We put it up on Facebook, and then one of our friends made one with Julian Assange of Wikileaks, and we put that up too – and then fans starting making them and sending them in. So if you go onto Facebook there’s like twenty different random pictures.”

With the release of In Hindsight, Hunting Grounds are now busily preparing for their first headlining tour, and a chance to finally perform the new tracks to their growing audience. “It’s going to be amazing,” Belsar enthuses. “It’s going to be really exciting and new for us to headline our own shows Australia-wide. It’ll be really interesting to see how it all works out. It’s going to be fun being a headline band too, because we’ve done so many supports over the last two years; it’ll be nice to be the band that people are coming to see.”

What: In Hindsight is out now through MGM Where: GoodGod Small Club When: Friday August 10 BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 23

arts frontline

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arts, theatre and film news... what's goin' on around town and more...

five minutes WITH BRIANA

T

he Olympics are almost over, sad face, but 34B Burlesque and its bevy of babes are just getting warmed up for their own special night of games, coquettish competition and game-changing glamour – featuring Kira Hula-la, Rita Fontaine, Cherry Lush, Memphis Mae, Pickled Tink, and Miss Burlesque Australia – Briana Bluebell.

How important is your training in classical ballet to your burlesque work – and what other feathers do you have in your cap? I think dance training of any form is important for everyone. It gives you carriage, co-ordination, confidence, rhythm – the list goes on. I also have a Cert IV in fashion design, property management and hospitality, and I’ve dabbled in pattern-making (boring), a bit of piano, songwriting, event management, advertising, millinery, and I design and make a lot of my own costumes and props.

Briana 'equestrian' Bluebell

How did you win Miss Burlesque Australia this year?

(TIPS PLZ). You have to stand out from the rest; you have to have the X factor; all elements of the routine

VERNON GOD LITTLE

BLUEBELL need to be carefully planned and considered. I spent the best part of 18 months planning my acts out after coming 2nd in 2010. All of my thought and energy went into it. You put in the hard yards and you get results. I look back and I’m glad I didn’t win in 2010 because I was so inexperienced back then. I’ve improved in my themes, costumes, music and general style and I’ve found myself – my burlesque alter-ego. And I guess I have to admit that the huge rhinestoned rotating gun helped me win…but it was the context in which it was used, I believe, that made it effective and impressive!

What sport are you taking on for 34B’s Olympics extravaganza?

Equestrian. I have adapted one of my acts from Miss Burlesque Australia by creating a beautiful wired-frame top hat trimmed with red tulle and flowers, and of course rhinestones and a riding crop and cravat. I love our connection to the mother country and I think that this sport is closely connected and lady-like, which suits my onstage personality!

There is a little silliness contrasted with the glamour, of course – a classic 34B trait! I have jumps I need to get over successfully

throughout the routine and I remove a part of the costume each time I get over a jump!

What have you been following Olympics-wise? Funnily enough I have been watching a bit of the equestrian – and I’m proud to see our Aussies looking so glam!

I've also enjoyed the swimming, although I can’t stand the recent media hype.

Can you give us a sneaky hint about what a couple of the other ladies on the lineup are doing?

Oh I can indeed! I am particularly looking forward to Sheena Miss Demeanour’s French cyclist act, which I’ve heard is a hoot, and of course Kira Hula-la is always fantastic. I always love Rita Fontaine’s acts – she’s so dramatic and when she does funny she’s really funny!

What: 34B Burlesque’s World Burlesque Olympics Where: 34B (44 Oxford Street) When: Friday August 10, 8.30pm More: Tickets $20 for general admission or $30 for a reserved table qbar.iwannaticket.com.au

Visual provocateur Tom Polo is curating a group show at Campelltown Arts Centre this month called There’s A Hole In The Sky: “Nine artists bringing together practices that engage in extended acts of portraiture to discuss notions of anxiety, unease and ways of coping in public or private moments.” Lara Thoms (The Experts Project) will be getting to know local smallbusinesses and their products, and creating a set of hampers that will be raffled off and given back to the community. Also on the lineup are Parisian video artist Ivan Argote, Swiss artist Urs Fischer (who has been known to make houses out of bread), NZ-based video/performance artist Campbell Patterson, and Australians Aleks Danko, Naomi Oliver, Stuart Ringholt, Giselle Stanborough and Michelle Ussher. Opens August 17, more at campbelltown.nsw.gov.au

KINGBROWN AT TATE

Off the back of their recent launch in NYC, local low-brow art mag Kingbrown are launching issue #8 with a show at the TATE, featuring works from its hefty and skate-centric list of contributors, including graf and tattoo-art godfather Mike Giant (who was cutting loose on a wall for the NY launch), German zinester and illustrator Stefan Marx, locals Beastman, Numskull

THE DEEP BLUE SEA! DVD! A strong contender for the most swoonily tragic film of the year so far, Terence Davies' latest film combines his long-held interest in ‘40s and ‘50s-era England with languid lensing, a sensuous colour palette, all forest-greens, navies and russets, and a bittersweet romance between a married woman (played by Rachel Weisz) isz)) and isz and d a cavalier cavalilie cava lierr young fighter pilot (Tom Hiddleston), as it unspools through her memory. Devastating, beautiful – it’s just released through Transmission, and we have five copies up for grabs; to get your hands on one, tell us the name of one other British film director.

and Max Berry, painter-illustrator Ben Horton, competitive skateboarder-turned-photographer Steve Gourley, and heaps more – all curated by the trifecta of Morning Breath Studio (NYC), The Hours (Syd) and New York-based editorart-director team Ian Mutch and Yok. Launches Friday August 10 at the TATE @ Toxteth Hotel (345 Glebe Pt Road). Kingbrownmag.com

FIVE ELIZA/SYDNEY FRINGE

The Sydney Fringe program has dropped – good news if you like your arts inner-western, fresh and bite-sized. The action once again centres around the Newtown School of Arts – aka festival hub Five Eliza – which will feature a Freaky-Tiki pop-up bar courtesy of Newtown Hotel, as well as the hub proper’s bar, which will play host to events like the afternoon Absinthe Masterclasses (Saturdays September 15, 22 and 29), a New Weird Australia showcase gig (Friday September 21), the Fringe Artists markets (Sunday September 9) and the Brain Soup exhibition/party, which brings together a collection of local/emerging Sydney writers, artists and musicians to make a series of short video games (Wednesday September 12). The Fringe runs September 7-30, get acquainted with everything at sydneyfringe.com

Nicole Kidman (1982) fromThe Lewis Morley Archive LLC

A HOLE IN THE SKY Our Nic

Tanya Ronder’s adaptation of DBC Pierre’s Booker Prize-winning novel and darkly comic indictment of dysfunctional modern America comes to New Theatre this month – begging the question: just how do you make a story about a high-school massacre darkly comic? Find out when it opens next week, under the helm of Louise Fischer – who fought over the last five years to get the rights to stage the Olivier Award-nominated adaptation in Sydney. We have four double passes up for grabs to the Wednesday August 15 show; to get your hands on one, tell us the name of one other page-to-stage adaptation.

FASHION FLASHBACK

The bad news is: you missed the World Press Photo exhibition – again; the good news, this one is far less harrowing. The State Library has handpicked 30 iconic images from its collection for the show Flashback: 160 years of Australian Fashion Photos – from mid19th century hand-coloured portraiture through the emergence of professional models in the 1920s, to catwalk pioneers June Dally Watkins and Maggie Tabberer, and a young Nicole Kidman and former Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, snapped by photographers that range from the famous (Helmut Newton and Lewis Morley) to the not-so-famous...

Flashback opens August 13 at the State Library (Macquarie Street, CBD). sl.nsw.gov.au

JURASSIC LOUNGE

PRIMAVERA 2012

The MCA has announced its Primavera lineup – seven emerging young artists, curated around the theme of “imaginary territories, spiritual landscapes and private interior realms.” Three come from NSW: Todd McMillan, whose film installation explores his expedition to remote 24 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

Tasmania to document the ‘Shy Albatross’; Kate Mitchell, who will represent the days of her life so far in a hand-counted mound of unshelled peanuts; and Justine Varga, who will document small changes in the minutiae of her home and studio environment using film, video and photography. From interstate: Dion Beasley (NT), Benjamin Forster (WA), Anastasia Klose (VIC) and Teho Ropeyan (QLD). Primavera runs October 4-December 2. mca.com.au

NAME THAT SONG!

How well do you know your way around a pop pictogram? Find out when MART gallery launch Name That Song! – an exhibition of pictograms from the forthcoming book of the same name, which brings together the illustration talent of local artist Little Gonzales and 99 problems dreamed up by music journalist Michael Wilton.

To make it stressful, there’s a points system – half a point for the song name, another half a point for the artist. So you know, bring your friends, get competitive. Name That Song! opens Thursday August 30 from 6pm at Gallery 2010 (69 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills). Martgallery. com.au / sidebbooks.com

FILM STILLS FROM WESTERNS

Sydney College of the Arts student Andrew Robards is setting up shop down at the Rocks Pop-Up this month, to work on his project Film Stills From Westerns: “a webbased project designed to discover and examine the visual patterns that occur within the repetitious themes and imagery of ‘The Western’ film genre." But what does it all mean?

Hopefully a collection of film stills from westerns (!) that when viewed as a group, reveal the way our mythology of the west has been shaped by moofies like The Searchers, The Shootist, High Noon etc. Andrew is in residence for the next two weeks if you want to go check out his progress (Weds-Sun), and the show opens Thursday August 16 at Lvl 2, 75 1/2 George St The Rocks. therockspopup.tumblr.com / filmstillsfromwesterns.org

Unforgiven – film still © 1992 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Jurassic Lounge – that thing with the dinosaurs and the drinks and the dancing – is returning to the Australian Museum for another season’s Tuesday-night shenanigans. There’s just nothing bad about this – unless you hate live music, silent discos, screenings, art, taxidermy and rare specimens, comedy, and all the good things.

Besides all this, they’ve got several pop-up bars throughout the space, a diner-themed menu of Americana, and entry includes access to the museum’s new exhibition, Deep Oceans, which includes glow-in-the-dark sea creatures, cancercombating sea-sponges, a Bathysphere, and a five-metre giant squid (model). Circle August 28 in the calendar, that’s when it kicks off. jurassiclounge.com

Clint and Morgan just, you know, hanging – in Unforgiven

THE SAPPHIRES

Soul Sisters Sparkle in Wayne Blair’s Stage-to-Screen Adaptation By Dee Jefferson

G

etting a film off the ground in Australia is a famously fraught business; funding sources are few and far between, audiences and the media aren’t terribly supportive, and the box office is often impenetrable.

Even a comedy like Not Suitable for Children, starring TV stars Ryan Kwanten and Ryan Corr, didn’t make much of a dent when it opened last month, despite positive reviews.

Deborah Mailman, Miranda Tapsell, Jessica Mauboy and Shari Sebbens as The Sapphires

But The Sapphires always seemed destined for better things: based on a hit play drawn from true life, starring chart-storming former Australian Idol star Jessica Mauboy, lovable irish larrikin Chris O’Dowd (of Bridesmaids and The IT Crowd) and a slew of irresistibly catchy soul classics, it had all the signs of picking up where Rachel Perkins’ hugely successful musical comedy Bran Nue Dae left off.

Screen and stage actor-director Wayne Blair had an instant reaction to Tony Briggs’ play about four girls from a remote Aboriginal mission in the ‘60s who went on to tour Vietnam singing soul for the soldiers. He starred in Melbourne Theatre Company’s premiere season in 2004, followed by a remount at Sydney’s Belvoir Street in January 2005 (although not in the 2010 touring revival).

Around the same time, Blair took his film Djarns Djarns to Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Crystal Bear for best short film. With Briggs acting in his film, and Goalpost Pictures producing it, it didn’t take long for all three to come together around the idea of a screen adaptation of The Sapphires – with the final ingredient being Logie and AFI Award-winning actress Deborah Mailman, who had played one of the soul sisters in the 2005 stage production and returns in the film to star as ‘mamma bear’ of the group, Gail.

On the big screen, The Sapphires has lost none of the feelgood fervour that made the play such a smash success across the country.

“The story came from Tony’s mum and his family, and he wanted it to be a story for everyone; he wanted it to be a story that has humour,” explains Blair. “And we wanted a film that could travel around the world. Another version of the film might have gone darker and deeper, but there’s always been a sense that The Sapphires was a celebration of these four black

Chris O’Dowd as hapless manager Dave

women. So it wasn’t a matter of ‘keeping it light’ or ignoring [the darker issues] – it was about being true to the original mission statement: to make a story for everyone.”

Consequently, even as difficult issues such as racism and the Stolen Generations arise in the film, they’re ultimately transcended by the power of good humour and good music; and the mission on the Murray river where the girls grow up is portrayed as a place of laughter, community and natty dressing, rather than a place of poverty and isolation.

Blair cites Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple as a touchstone for representing the mission – “You know, what it looked like in the kitchen or in the lounge room of The Color Purple – because we think of it as a very dismal film, but it’s actually quite beautiful. So it was similar to this Sapphires story.”

For the film’s overall tone, he was inspired by The Commitments and Brassed Off – both period dramedies about the transformative power of music within a workingclass community, the former in Northern Ireland, the latter in Northern England. “They’re films that

On set, Blair’s foremost collaborator was director and cinematographer Warwick Thornton, who had his own success story a few years back with Samson & Delilah. “He’s a good friend, so that was cool; we just got on – he’s a Leo I think and I’m a Sagittarian, so it could have been like two roosters in a hen house (laughs) but it was the opposite, we just worked so well together. I think that had an effect on the crew – they just wanted to achieve the day for us.”

The biggest challenge on an otherwise blessed production was the hectic shooting schedule, which allowed just six weeks to cover five lead-actors across as many locations, including neverbefore-filmed parts of Saigon. “We just had to be very, very prepared as a team, to get things right every day,” Blair admits. “And you have to break the film down into [smaller tasks] – everything had its place, and we looked at things in isolation: ‘Okay, we’ve gotta shoot this moment before this moment

Alpine

ave you made your New Year’s Eve plan yet? Cancel it. Peats Ridge Festival have just announced their biggest lineup yet!

The festival will celebrate its ninth year of awesome with dream headliner John Butler Trio, who will ring in the New Year alongside jazz and soul masters Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings.

Krafty Kuts vs A.Skillz, The Black Seeds, The Herd and a Friendly Fires DJ set will keep your dancing shoes happy, while Kaki King, Mat McHugh, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Deep Sea Arcade will be appearing alongside heaps of other stellar international and Aussie acts. The three-day arts and music camping spectacular will run from December 29 to January 1 at the gorgeous Glenworth Valley, with all the kooky stages, art installations, theatre, circus and cabaret we’ve come to expect, and a whole heap more to be announced. Tickets go on sale Monday John Butler Trio August 20 at 10am – get ‘em while they’re hot!

WIN!

to get to that moment’ – and that made it easy. You start very slowly at first, and just work your way up.”

Having trained in theatre at QUT, and with the bulk of his career thus far spent in the theatre, Blair credits a slew of television gigs with honing his on-set muscles. “I think to be a good filmmaker or just a good storyteller of any sort, it’s important for me to do it again and again – to learn your craft, make mistakes, so you know what to do next time. So [directing TV] has been the biggest thing for me over the last five or six years.”

Off the back of a triumphant screening at Cannes in May (where king-making distributor Harvey Weinstein bought the US rights) and on the eve of The Sapphires opening Melbourne International Film Festival, Blair sheepishly admits, “I had a realisation just three weeks ago, on the set of [TV miniseries] Redfern Now, and I actually thought on the second or third day, ‘Yeah, I’m going well. Now I can finally call myself a director.’ (laughs) It was seriously only three weeks ago.”

What: The Sapphires When: In cinemas from August 9

S AY W EA IV G

PEATS RIDGE 2012 TICKETS! WIN!

have a sense of team, or a sense of family; and they’ve all got their wants and needs, and they’re fractured – but as a team and a family unit they get through each day.”

H

To win a double pass to Peats Ridge, email freestuff@ thebrag.com with the name of another act who’s headlined the festival in the past.

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 25

Beauty [FILM] Desire And Loathing In South Africa By Dee Jefferson

N

ot many films have made it out of South Africa into general cinema circulation over the last decade – you could probably count them on two hands, and in Australia they would include genre fare like District 9 and Tsotsi, co-productions such as Phillip Noyce’s Catch A Fire, Steve Jacobs’ Coetzee adaptation Disgrace, and Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, and smaller arthouse fare like Skin, Yesterday, Life, Above All, and the documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony.

Not one of these doesn’t take as its inspiration fraught social issues in the country – from apartheid and racism to violence, AIDS, and poverty. Films dealing with homosexuality are less common – both within South Africa but also in its international output. So with his sophomore feature Beauty (or Skoonheid), South African director Oliver Hermanus breaks new ground, by portraying the fall-out of apartheid’s repressively hetero-normative and Anglo-centric atmosphere through the eyes of a middle-aged, closeted-homosexual Afrikaner – and by managing to sell the film overseas, thanks in no small part to its screening in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section section last year, where it picked up the Queer Palm.

Despite being a mixed-race (“I’m what you call ‘coloured,’” he says candidly) child of the apartheid era (he was 11 when the general election took place in 1994, and so grew up in the kind of environment where his communist academic father and

“We all have ambitions and dreams of meeting the perfect partner, and it can get dysfunctional at a certain point.”

activist mother buried contraband political literature and banned films in the backyard), Hermanus seems guided less by a political agenda than a social one. His debut feature, Shirley Adams, is a portrait of motherhood and poverty in Cape Town's outer suburbs; Beauty has a humanist rather than necessarily queer point of origin.

“The concept of beauty was the hinge; I wanted to have a character who had a very tense relationship with the concept of beauty or the virtue of beauty, because he feels like he’s outside of that world,” Hermanus explains. “He feels that there are beautiful people in the world, and they walk into a room and immediately have a hold over people – and he doesn’t identify as being like that.

I connected with that part of the character, and then the rest of him kind of just formed – in terms of how far removed was he, and then the question of how strong can I make that pursuit of happiness or that pursuit of an object of desire. Because if it was a married man who wants to have an affair with another woman, it’s not such a great journey for the character to make.”

The result is François, a paunchy, middleaged Afrikaner businessman, husband and father, who keeps his homosexuality under tight wraps, only letting it out at topsecret rural orgies amongst a strictly limited subset of conservative homosexuals – no coloureds, no fags; until he meets dreamy 23-year-old Christian, the son of one of his long-lost friends. Beauty charts the evolution of François’ fantasy of a romance with Christian, as it also develops into a romance about the kind of life he could have lived.

“He’s denied himself so much, and he’s refused so much of who he is, really, so for him to then be exposed to that other person who could potentially be everything he’s ever wanted [is overwhelming],” says Hermanus.

“And I think that everyone can maybe identify with that aspect of [François] – we all have ambitions and dreams of meeting the perfect partner, and it can get dysfunctional at a certain point.”

Deon Lotz as François in Beauty Remarkably, Beauty pulls off an abrupt rightturn in which its more-or-less empathetic protagonist turns into a kind of monster. “That kind of society can produce this experience for someone, where they [feel that] it’s their last chance for something,” Hermanus explains. “[There was] a debate about how far into his own self-hatred is [François]; because if he’s putting himself out there for the first time, and he’s trusting slowly but surely in this delusion that this other person cares for him, the way that we’d built him up – it was always a question of how would he react to that moment of rejection.”

The male-on-male rape scene in Beauty has made it somewhat notorious in a country where male rape is so taboo that Hermanus and his team couldn’t find even one man willing to talk to them about their personal experiences of rape. “People don’t report it,” the director says simply. “The repercussions of this violent act [in South Africa] are not as you would imagine in a Hollywood film...no retribution or reporting or accountability.”

Hermanus’ film has also become notorious as an example of how arthouse cinema languishes in a country dominated by escapist, Hollywood fare. A two-hour film dominated

by static shots and close-ups of characters in repose, it proved a challenging proposition for South African audiences – prompting the director to write a newspaper column titled ‘Slow and Boring for Dummies’. “[Our audiences] are so used to gorging on all this Hollywood stuff that they actually don’t know how to watch anything, to experience it; they’ve lost that ability, or maybe they never had it. And that was a big debate because it just seemed that people would dismiss [the film] because they didn’t understand that just because something is long and slow, doesn’t mean it’s boring.

“I find it interesting to watch the characters unfold through their eyes, seeing their emotions and experiences in real time – because I feel like that’s a chance for there to be a real connection with the character, as opposed to constructing it through photography or the cutting or the music,” the director argues – though he later admits that “it’s a matter of taste; you either enjoy those kinds of experiences or you don’t.”

What: Beauty – Dir. Oliver Hermanus When: Now showing at Chauvel Cinema

Richard Ford [BOOKS] A Life Less Ordinary By Matt Roden

I

f you grew up in the suburbs, you can find yourself studying them. Spend time wandering their streets, these places we built and sing about, and you might read about the ‘burbs to try and find a modern answer. You may have bumped up against Richard Ford.

In his decades-leaping Sportswriter trilogy, Ford seemed to dip in and out of Cheever’s pool, to have been handed the baton by Updike’s Rabbit, to have taken over the day shift from the darker Moody. Protagonist Frank Bascombe – internal monologuer, realtor, father, divorcee and man of his times – was un-fazed by much except his own personal mantras, aware and accepting of fortune’s tides. The trilogy, including 1996’s Pulitzerwinning Independence Day and 2006’s Lay of the Land, ran ragged in its mental play-byplays, the character’s course through lonely long-weekends a tumult of emotion, memory and extrapolated intentions and potentials.

I happen to think they’re damn great, both structurally and on a humanistic level. They burn with a self-righteous empathy.

“I did it exactly the way I’ve written everything since 1982,” says Ford, post-nap chipper by phone on the last legs of his Southern Hemisphere publicity tour. “I’ve got a way I write these things, and whether it’s the best way I don’t know, but I’ve found it’s the way where I get the most out of me. It’s important for me to bring to the page everything I know, and everything I do. Without leaving anything out. Which means I have devised a crucible within which I immerse myself.”

26 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

Ford is a well-written character himself, famed for posting a pistol-slugged negative review to the New York Times early in his career, a unique and distinctly decipherable piece of countercriticism. He keeps his working notebooks in a big old freezer, alongside buck-shot ducks and other game, all the safer from a fire he’s never experienced. He charts a delicate course between New Yorker-endorsed neurosis and rugged self-assurance. You get the feeling he may be terrible company for a singular beer, but probably great after the second. He’s a thinker and a writer. And a talker.

“Writing is a vocation. Your life and your work are coterminous. They run along the same line - you’re never anywhere in your life when your mind isn’t working, and you’re never working where you’re not drawing from your life. It’s not like a profession where you get in your car and go off and be a doctor, come home and you’re not a doctor anymore. Shit, you’re a writer 24 hours a day.”

All of Ford’s books reflect this, whether he’s streaming micro or macro, this constant churn.

I would think he might not ever switch it off. In the Sportswriter books Frank can be midway through telling a lady he loves her, to have his mind drift to a pain-in-the-ass client at work, to some old flame, to his next drink, to his dead son. In Canada, the young Dell is constantly trying to see behind the quick grin of his cowboy father, to parry the stern swat of his mother, to garner the true meaning of their words.

“That reverse thinking is something that I do.

Richard Ford I don’t trust people basically. If you tell me there’s a cab queue down the street, I’ll walk down there, but I’ll be thinking ‘Now what about this cab queue you promised?’ I’m trying to break out of conventional modes of thinking, which I’m strongly attracted to. We’re all strongly attracted to these modes – you don’t want every conversation you have with someone to be a conundrum. But I’m trying not to get locked into convention, to think outside of those little boxes.

“I remember one time I was listening to the poet Galway Kinnell,” Ford says, narrowing in on an example, “and the line in the poem is Galway himself talking to his son Fergus, and he looks down at his son and says: 'Fergus, don’t cry, or, cry.'5 And it’s just a tiny little line that probably wouldn’t be revelatory to anyone but me, but it made me think about being a writer, and how you have to think outside these ordinary presumptions.”

The unordinary events in Canada deftly wave away any presumptions the main character or reader may have about the unfolding action. And then, like in all of Ford’s work, what’s left to do is settle in and work out how to deal with what is dealt – how will this event determine how you should proceed?

“Define yourself in a way that’s liberating, define yourself in a way that is not just the way the world expects. When my father died, even then at the age of sixteen, I remember being sad that my father had passed, but I also felt a sort of relief and liberation. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh gee, I’m not supposed to feel like that.’ But I felt that way. I’m always aware that the way you’re supposed to be is only a choice of the ways that you can be.”

What: Canada by Richard Ford When: Out now through Bloomsbury

Richard Ford photo by Robert Jordan

By contrast, Ford’s new novel Canada cuts the chatter completely to focus on two instances in a young boy’s life, from the reserved and patient point of view of an aged narrator.

Its consistency of topic, its dedication to a molasses-like dribbling of detail, its audacity in focus, might come as a sucker-punch to fans of Ford’s Sportswriter trilogy, but the author refuses to acknowledge a change in form.

This is how Richard Ford talks, in a voice that still rides the lilts of the Mississippi, where he was born in 1944. He is what one may lazily imagine a true Southerner to be: polite, congenial, and unfaltering in his own thoughts and actions. Any curve balls at the public Q&A yesterday? “Nope.” Anyone seeing things in the book that took you by surprise? “No siree.”

Film & Theatre Reviews Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.

Released August 2 Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies kicked off the brief micro-fad of mashing up classic or historical fiction with pulpy horror elements.

While the feature film adaptation of that particular novel quietly decomposes in a cellar at Lionsgate Studios, audiences will have to make do with GrahameSmith’s rather more marketable follow-up, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which posits that the US President, not content with freeing the slaves, fighting a civil war and running a country, was also an axewielding scourge of the undead.

Like the book it’s based on, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter hews fairly close to the historical record in its depiction of Lincoln’s life, filling in the gaps with vampire-related shenanigans; Lincoln really did lose his mother at a young age, although here the responsible party is a vampire Lincoln’s father has slighted.

Like a frontier-era Bruce Wayne, young Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) grows up with a burning desire for revenge, not realising the extent of the evil conspiracy his quest will embroil him in. After a botched attempt at avenging his mother, young Lincoln is taken in by Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper), a dandyish figure with a grudge of his own against undead America and a few dark secrets to boot. Sturges trains Lincoln in the ways of decapitating people in slow motion and sends him out into the world, where he teaches himself the law, woos his future wife Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and eventually makes the move into politics, all against Sturges’s advice. Meanwhile, in the slaveholding South, an ancient vampire called Adam (Rufus Sewell) plots to turn half the country into a gigantic blood farm.

The mash-up approach works reasonably well on the page, but proves problematic on screen; the non-action scenes have the stilted, on-the-nose timbre of the generic Hollywood biopic, while the glossy, hyperkinetic action sequences feel shoehorned in. The overall effect is rather like watching someone else play a hack-andslash video game with incredibly long, self-important cut-scenes. None of this is helped by Walker’s Lincoln, who is far more convincing when making puppy-dog eyes at Mary Todd than when he’s called upon to replicate Lincoln’s stirring oratory.

Director Timur Bekmambetov comes from the Zack Snyder school of action filmmaking, constantly slowing down the action to better demonstrate the superhuman badassery of all concerned, but like Snyder’s Sucker Punch, Abraham Lincoln would be a lot more fun if it didn’t take its ludicrous premise so seriously.

Rob Newcombe ■ Film

THE SAPPHIRES Opens August 9 The Sapphires tells the true story of four indigenous women who formed a singing group and went to Vietnam to entertain American soldiers in the ‘60s, although you can tell it takes one or two liberties with the truth. It’s set in a brightlycoloured world where people burst into song at a moment’s notice, love almost always conquers prejudice, and nothing is insurmountable with a little help from your soul sisters. There’s nothing wrong with a little cinematic escapism, provided it’s well done, and The Sapphires does it really well. It’s a deftly-made popcorn flick – pretty to look at, with a plot that cracks along and the requisite amounts of laughter and heartbreak.

Gail (Deborah Mailman), Julie (Jessica Mauboy) and Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell) are a trio of indigenous girls from a remote Indigenous mission. Having grown up singing for their family and community, now they sing country-and-western songs to an indifferent and often hostile audience

of white people at the local pub – until lovable Irish drunk Dave (Chris O’Dowd) swoops in and offers to take them under his wing. He convinces them to drop the country-and-western act in favour of soul music, and they persuade him to help them get to Melbourne, where auditions are being held for highly-paid gigs singing for American GIs in Vietnam. After a series of rehearsal montages and a reunion with a stray cousin, Kay (Sydney thesp and NIDA graduate Shari Sebbens, currently on stage at Griffin Theatre Company in A Hoax), it’s off to Saigon. Life in the war zone is fun and flirty until suddenly it’s not; bonds are made and broken, lessons are learned, and soul songs are sung.

The movie makes a few attempts at depth, tackling issues of racism and identity – but these things seldom get in the way of upbeat musical numbers. The performances are all excellent – Mauboy’s character is quickly appointed the lead singer of the group, and she has a set of pipes that were made for soul. The soundtrack is packed with Marvin Gaye and Four Tops songs, and the musical numbers capture their infectious energy.

O’Dowd, last seen in Bridesmaids, does his usual rumpled and charming thing, and Mailman’s performance anchors the film emotionally. The Sapphires is pure entertainment, and as musicals go, I’ll take this over an episode of Glee any day.

Alasdair Duncan ■ Theatre

APPLESPIEL MAKE A BAND AND TAKE ON THE RECORDING INDUSTRY

mca artbar x jess olivieri 27:07:12 :: Museum of Contemporary Art :: Circular Quay 9245 2400

Reviewed July 28 / Performance Space It’s Splendour weekend and everyone who reckons they take music seriously is probably on Belongil Fields gyrating to Azealia Banks, and good on them.

For the rest of us, though, contemporary performance group Applespiel provided an excellent alternative: a live-action documentary about a band called Applespiel.

Using four cameras and clever staging, Carriageworks’ Bay 19 becomes a recording studio, a stadium, the scene of a hip-hop music video, and everything in between. Operated via remote control and a fully visible control panel, the four cameras feed live to the screen suspended above the space, creating the film as we watch it being shot. They splice together interviews, concert footage, studio shots and backstage candids to build 90 minutes of ‘footage’ – all performed live onstage – that is hilarious, accurate and touching.

The show works because these guys genuinely love their product. Small details – costume references, gags about specific instruments, turns of phrase – are the work of native observers. They’re not blind to the pretentions of musicians or the music documentary genre, and these come in for some biting parody, which left the audience howling with recognition. But they’re not shooting to kill, and the satire can turn on a dime to simple and heart-rending sincerity.

The music is genuine (and genuinely catchy) as well, with an entire album’s worth of songs (referencing everyone from Kanye to Florence Welch) written and performed by various combinations of the eight Applespiel members.

The highs and lows of Applespiel (the band) aren’t quite as extreme as they could be – no one dies of an overdose or wins a Grammy – but perhaps that’s because Applespiel (the contemporary performance group) haven’t quite got to either extreme yet either. It’s a bit of a running gag that the band and the people performing them might be the same in important ways, and this in turn makes the show less about a band called Applespiel and more about any person who ever tried to sit down with another person to make something beautiful. It’s honest, witty and innovative work from the rising stars of contemporary performance.

Rebecca Saffir

See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews

tina fiveash: selected works

PICS :: TL

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

At the heart of the arts Where you went last week...

PICS :: TL

■ Film

Arts Snap

27:07:12 :: Platform72 :: 72 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9045 7272

Arts Exposed What's in our diary...

NEVER NOT FUNNY The Standard / Lvl 3 383 Bourke St Wednesday August 8 from 7pm Storytelling machine the Campfire Collective have regrouped around the idea of a monthly alt-comedy evening; expect a mash-up of stand up, sketch, music, theatre, performance art – anything funny, with none of those wincey bad impro moments. Topping their bill this week is Michael Chamberlin, whose boyish looks belie a decade’s-worth of experience in story-oriented stand-up and writing for Backberner, Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight and Rove, with comedy/rock duo Smart Casual (brothers Fletcher Jones and Roger David) and Shane Matheson (with or without his Fabulous Singing Bucket of Gravel, we’re not sure) taking support duties. wearethestandard.com.au

Smart Casual

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 27

Album Reviews

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

ALBUM OF THE WEEK LIARS

WIXIW Mute/EMI I caught a Liars set last year in LA, at one of those urban-fashion-meets-street-art soirees.

They delivered a set so fundamentally punk-rock that they left the designer-clad crowd shaking in their faux-biker ankle boots. The trio’s new album, WIXIW, retains that same ferocity I witnessed on stage, but it’s of a much more subtle, subdued kind.

Who said the world’s biggest battle is between man and machine? WIXIW proves we can co-exist in perfect harmony.

A new dawn of electronic experimentalism has befallen the band, with explosions of buzzing guitar exchanged for hypnotic synths and spacey, ambient samples, and singer Angus Andrews’ gritty, muffled howl on records past replaced by a smooth, at times baritone vocal that could belong to a tipsy Don Draper.

MILLENCOLIN

ELTON JOHN VS PNAU

The Melancholy Connection Epitaph

Forever dear to the skateboard generation of the mid‘90s, who exclusively listened to all things Californian and liquid-papered NOFX logos on their backpacks, Sweden's Millencolin have maintained a popularity that doggedly refuses to dissipate after 20 years. They still sell out shows, and 2000’s Pennybridge Pioneers is still a formidable punk album, 12 years after its release.

So for their die-hard fan base, the band decided to release their second collection of B-Sides and rarities. It’s probably lucky it’s just for the die-hards though, because the compilation requires patience.

The album works like sedimentary layers of Millencolin’s recent history.

The songs from the Pennybridge Pioneers and Home From Home album period (2000-2003) are noticeably better than the later work. ‘Dinner Dog’ and ‘Queen’s Gambit’ from the Pioneers sessions match that album’s melodic creativity, while ‘Absolute Zero’, ‘Bull By The Horns’ and ‘Into The Maze’ from the Home From Home sessions show a heavier dynamic, where production focus creates a thick guitar intensity. Stand-alone 2003 single ‘E20 Norr’, sung in Swedish, captures the band at their best; it’s well-paced and (dare I say it) emotional pop-punk, with sing-along choruses and energetic builds that many bands mimic but few ever master.

But after these gems, it’s unfortunately just dross. ‘Phony Tony’, ‘Mind The Mice’ and ‘Junkie For Success’ are clearly B-sides; predictable and formulaic punk-by-numbers. The two new songs included are better: ‘Out Of Nowhere’ is littered with emotion and bombastic breakdowns, while ‘Carry You’ is quintessential Millencolin, melodic and irresistible.

The story goes that on a trip to Sydney, Elton John became so enamoured with Pnau’s music that he more or less adopted the pair, taking them back to London and signing them to his management company.

Perhaps seeing the potential to reinvent himself as a dance artist, or perhaps just for a bit of a laugh, he set the lads loose on the master tapes of his ‘70s recordings and told them to make a remix album – any remix album they wanted. Pnau broke the recordings down into numerous instrumental and vocal samples, and then rebuilt the songs from the ground up, fitting elements of dozens of different recordings together into eight all-new tracks.

The resulting album is the perfect blend of Pnau’s loved-up, stargazing dance tracks and Elton John’s melancholy pop. Pnau haven’t worked this freely with samples since their Sambanova days, and they are right in their element here. The arrangements pulse and shimmer, drawing on disco and Balearic sounds with hands-in-the-air abandon.

John’s vocals are rearranged and reconfigured, verses and choruses from various different sources blurring together into all new shapes.

The Melancholy Connection should be taken as a collection of off-cuts for the fans, not a studio album.

It’s better not to even think about the level of studio skill that went into creating Good Morning To The Night – doing so will probably make your head hurt. Just let songs like ‘Sad’ and ‘Phoenix’ wash over you, and be glad this happened.

Rick Warner

Alasdair Duncan

Critically panned, Liars’ heavily experimental 2004 album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned saw the

Big Moon Ritual Silver Arrow/Warner

There’s a pretty cut-and-dry process when you’ve got an album deal on a label. You record an album, and then you take it on the road. It’s fairly simple. But industry veteran Chris Robinson, previously of the swaggering ‘90s blues-rock outfit The Black Crowes, decided on another way. With his new band The Chris Robinson Brotherhood, he spent over a year on tour, road-testing the songs that were to eventually feature on their debut album Big Moon Ritual.

As he told an interviewer recently, “If you go and make an album right off the bat, you’ve already made decisions on some things that will probably change once you’ve played 50 or 60 shows.” The time that he took to craft these songs can be heard in the recording.

Though Big Moon Ritual is still a meandering jam-band album, there are no question marks as to where each song is heading. Each follows a path cut into the earth by the stream of live shows from which the songs were shaped. 12-minute opener ‘Tulsa Yesterday’ is a warm and summery honky-tonk piano-led number; Robinson’s unmistakable vocal phrasing comes to the fore in ‘Rosalee’, where squonky keys bop around traditional Americana rock’n’roll; Adam MacDougall’s arsenal of vintage analogue synths cosmically swirl around the blues songs ‘Tomorrow Blues’ and ‘Reflections Of A Broken Mirror’ – but it’s the beautiful ballad ‘Beware, Oh Take Care’ that is the album’s most glorious moment.

Chris Robinson has always had a knack for enticing you on whatever journey he’s on, and you’re with him on every note of Big Moon Ritual. This album exudes a kind of tidal freedom that’s hard to resist.

Come Midnight Art As Catharsis For a decade, I’ve stewed on the question: “Where does doom metal go from here?” Too many doom bands have records about dragons, wizards, devil women and bongs, backed by thick, viciously slow, down-tuned riffs with the occasional motorbike sample.

These things make it fun, but something new is needed to save the genre from stagnating.

By the end of the 17-minute opening track, ‘Premonition, Void, Aftermath’, it’s

28 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

With scrupulous attention to detail, Adrift For Days infuse elements of drone, stoner, psychedelic rock, sludge and post-metal into these six songs and in doing so steer clear of predictability.

Perceived ends of songs are just new beginnings, psychedelic storms make way for a Capella vocals, Spanish guitars sweep you into new terrain, and it all sounds effortless – like it was meant to be.

Mississippi-based singer-songwriter Dent May is back with his second album Do Things, and quite honestly, it’s hard to take him seriously – which is exactly what he wants. (I’m like putty in his novelty-sized hands!). It seems everything is a joke to May, including his music – and if you keep that in mind, you can enjoy this album at face value.

May is all candy pop and cheesy synth, icing each track with cringingly immature lyrics. It’s fun for a few songs, but on Do Things there are ten of them. The same disco-inclined synth hooks and tinny drum machine beats back most tracks on this album, from ‘Rent Money’ to ‘Fun’ to ‘Best Friend’, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish one song from the next. Drenched in dreamy, melodic harmonies, May’s influences are clear: Do Things plays like a slapstick indie homage to The Beach Boys, most obvious on the track ‘Tell Her’, which is strikingly similar to ‘God Only Knows’.

May never claimed he was a poet, or declared any desire to emotionally move listeners with his lyrics (“Don’t know what’s in store for me, but I think it’s gonna be fun”), but a tentrack novelty album would test the patience of a saint. Perhaps I’m being too cynical, and should just shut up and dance. Which, by the way, is at times simply unavoidable – there’s no denying the involuntary toe tap and shoulder wiggle to ‘Wedding Day’ that accompanied my melodramatic search for depth in a shallow pool.

Maybe if it was warmer outside, and we were all vacant balls of golden sunshine tanning by the pool, Do Things would make more of a splash.

Erin Bromhead

The lyrics steer away from traditional doom, too. While they’re bleak and agonised there’s an intensely personal, introspective focus, which brings a real sense of maturity to the album. Singer Mick Kaslik shows off his vocal range but also his ability to sing, chant, whisper and unleash demon-awakening screams. In the mammoth 20-minute closing track ‘Eyes That Look Down From Above’, this scream triggers a sludgy psychedelic journey that drones exquisitely, and apocalyptically, to close the album.

If you thought doom was a dead-end genre, let Adrift For Days lead you to the future.

Tyler Broyles

THE FLAMING LIPS

Do Things Stop Start/EMI

Rick Warner

clear that Sydney’s Adrift For Days are taking doom somewhere beyond the void. Their sound is gargantuan, like it was recorded at an amplifier-melting volume. And their songs unfold with genuine creativity – importantly for me, it doesn’t feel remotely formulaic or forced.

Erin Bromhead

DENT MAY

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK ADRIFT FOR DAYS

band fall off the deep end into conceptual oblivion.

WIXIW dips its feet in the same unknown murky waters, but instead of drowning, it swims.

THE CHRIS ROBINSON BROTHERHOOD

Good Morning To The Night Universal

Good Morning To The Night is credited to Elton John vs Pnau, but the ‘vs’ is actually pretty redundant.

The English pop star and the Australian dance duo’s respective styles mesh so effortlessly that this collaboration sounds as if it was always meant to be.

This is smart, clean, calculated music that transcends space and time. Sound heavy?

It is. Opener ‘The Exact Color Of Doubt’ invites you aboard the spaceship, where you stay enclosed in an extraterrestrial metallic bullet until the album’s end.

Andrews’ vocals shift between a deep drone echoing The National’s Matt Berninger on tracks like ‘No.1 Against The Rush’, while on ‘Ill Valley Prodigies’ he reaches a pitch as high and ethereal as Thom Yorke. The meaty bass and manic pace of ‘Brats’ catapults you into the middle of a dizzy, sweaty dancefloor, before you’re beamed back down to earth with ‘Annual Moon Words’, as Andrews’ fittingly concludes “I’m on my way down”.

The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends Warner At a music festival in Spain last year, I watched The Flaming Lips for five minutes before their signature show antics (rainbow balloons, glitter bombs, people in animal suits, Wayne Coyne sporting enormous papier mache hands...) started to grate. What I’d found so charming, magical and celebratory the first time I saw them play – at Big Day Out in 2004 – just seemed overblown and narcissistic this time around. It felt like the gimmicks had taken over the music.

A jaded non-believer might describe the Heady Fwends project as the logical next chapter in the Flaming Lips narrative of musical-gimmickmaking, complete with limited edition vinyl pressed with the collaborators’ blood. Part of me agrees with that. The other part is a sucker for their brand of sincere-silly, whimsical psychapocalyptic merriment – and despite initial protests, I found myself coming around to this collection of songs. Even the album opener featuring Ke$ha; ‘You Must Be Upgraded’ is 2012’s response to Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ – a jarring, noisy, hedonist’s anthem that dares the listener to switch off and refuse the upgrade, or step up to the robot’s challenge.

The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends returns to the scene of 2002’s Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in terms of its sound, sci-fi motifs and world’s-end themes, but there are few songs if any on this album (‘Children Of The Moon’ with Tame Impala; ‘Ashes In The Air’ with Bon Iver, perhaps) that come anywhere near rivalling the sublime pop anthems on that record.

That’s not to say this record lacks substance – it’s just more interested in creating an atmosphere and taking its listeners, and Fwends, on a swift and heady ride to the moon and back.

Jenny Noyes

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

DAPPLED CITIES - Lake Air THE HOLD STEADY - Almost Killed Me FRANK OCEAN - Channel Orange

THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM - Handwritten BRIGHT EYES - Fevers & Mirrors

live reviews What we've been to see...

MIIKE SNOW

Miike Snow’s signature glitchy, blippy sounds.

The Metro Theatre Monday July 30 Miike Snow may have formed after collaborating as producers and writers for Britney Spears, but their understated, otherworldly pop in no way suggests such unholy circumstances. Tonight, the trio performed as a six-member band all dressed in black, as if to enforce the creative unity under the band’s one-man moniker. Opening with ‘Enter The Joker’s Lair’, Miike Snow’s palpitating beats and exotic soundscapes turned the Metro into a cultish dance cavern – we the people were being led by frontman Andrew Wyatt, who resembled some kind of moody Messiah.

jack white

Crowd interaction stayed fairly minimal, but with all the swirling smoke, the jetblack outfits and the pulsating, dystopian dance music, it felt fitting. Andrew Wyatt was a silent hero; the Jesus of Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City, where the bat-signal had been replaced by a luminescent Miike Snow jackalope.

Rachitha Seneviratne

PICS :: TL

The Miike Snow members moved about slowly and mysteriously, obscured by a kind of winter fog discharged by about 42 smoke machines working overtime.

The fog never let up, but the constant battle to make out the band added to the feeling of being at a hazy rave aboard a Star Wars spaceship. The centrepiece of the visual show was a huge, metallic Death Star console that was actually a convoluted synthesiser; the source of

The band’s commercial pop background does them a world of good – their songs are diverse and immediately memorable.

While having this inimitable Scandinavian quirkiness about them, they’ve honed their craft so that almost everyone is able to enjoy and relate. ‘Sylvia’ was a mournful anthem that the packed house sang in unison. ‘Black And Blue’ started as a ballad with just Wyatt and his piano, before turning into a bona fide floor-filler. They knew how to tweak their songs for a live setting – pulling it back with ‘Sans Soleil’ and letting the crowd fill the instruments’ void; finishing with ‘Animal’, but beefing it up with a prominent bass end.

26:07:12 :: Hordern Pavilion :: 122 Lang Rd Moore Park 8117 6700

FRIENDS, HOWLER, ZULU WINTER Oxford Art Factory Wednesday July 25

Billing itself as a mini-Splendour In The Grass gave this evening’s lineup of the best of the US and UK free reign to thrown around buckets of attitude. And given some of the bands’ images are fairly strongly predicated on such antics, It was almost a certainty that there would be rock star histrionics aplenty.

Not from Britain’s Zulu Winter, however, who are the most sweet-natured of young lads. There was the slightest head movement during favourite ‘We Should Be Swimming’ from guitarist Henry Walton (such a marvellously English name!), but all sight lines were trained firmly on frontman Will Daunt. More specifically, on his ridiculously compelling and high cheekbones, which go some way to hiding vocals that are earnest and robust without being particularly memorable.

Surprisingly, Jordan Gatesmith from Minneapolis’ Howler can really belt out a tune. The band, and Gatesmith in particular, have been the subject of earnest PR and online hype of late

that praises/denigrates their destructive slacker vibe. But the truth is that the band are a little misrepresented – earlier this year, Gatesmith admitted to being a pretty chilled-out guy, who “doesn’t understand why people think we’re arseholes.” Ultimately they’re showmen, and tonight it came down to bodies on the floor; as ‘Back Of Your Neck’ rang out, even the staunchest of stationary peeps up the back inched towards a little hip shimmy.

After much frustrated waiting, Brooklynites Friends finally filed onto the stage to smack us out with the promise of sexy mayhem. As she took to the mic it was very clear that most of the venue’s occupants were here for the group’s badass vocalist, Sam Urbani. Casually clad in singlet and shorts, Urbani whipped the crowd into a frenzy with some quite unexpected, yet nonetheless epic, vocal twists and turns.

But throughout the set, and even during breakout single ‘I’m His Girl’, the band’s over-the-top on-stage antics felt a little disingenuous. Good thing all eyes in the room are rooted to Urbani, with the freeloving agent of cool turning in a fittingly wild show.

Benjamin Cooper

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live reviews What we've been to see...

METRIC, GOLD FIELDS The Hi-Fi, Sydney Thursday July 26

RINA CLARKE

PHOTOGRAPHER : KAT

THE SHINS

The Hordern Pavilion Wednesday July 25 The Shins are not a Hordern sort of band. They’ve had a solid rise over the years, starting with a very public Hollywood endorsement of their first album, to the point where they can play third-to-last in the Splendour Supertop to a huge and enraptured crowd who know every word. But as much as the pastoral pastels of Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow have been built upon on subsequent records with subtle distortion and synths and wry pop sheen, they lack a certain epic quality that’s necessary to fill this huge concrete box.

Unhelped by the atmosphere, the show also suffered from a distinct lack of energy onstage. For most of the set, frontman and core Shin James Mercer sounds like he’s giving his vocal performance 85-90%, and the new lineup behind him – new to Australian audiences, though they’ve been playing together for near to a year – doesn’t quite sound like a band yet, lacking the vitality and cohesion of the grinning young outfit I saw at the Metro in 2005. Made up of celebrated players like Richard Swift and Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer, the band don’t lack for skill, but they’re at their sharpest on the new stuff. Old favourites like ‘Kissing The Lipless’, ‘Know Your Onion!’, and ‘Saint Simon’ feel a bit

off and blunted, matching the originals note-for-note but without the lightness of touch that marks the first two records.

Swift’s clean keys sound almost alien against the fresh folk melodies. The Port Of Morrow material fares better, with the slightly draggy arrangements bringing out an oddly pleasing ‘70s soft-rock vibe that wasn’t there on record – ‘No Way Down’ has a percussive sparkle with echoes of Tusk.

For longtime fans, it was an almostperfect set list, if not a perfect performance. ‘Caring Is Creepy’ popped up second, crackling with the same subdued, thrilling tension; Mercer made a shrewd choice playing the rollicking ‘So Says I’ straight after its Port equivalent ‘No Way Down’, both songs about frustrations with an obtuse and unfair political culture. ‘New Slang’, with the same slowed-down vibe, takes on a Simon & Garfunkel air, and the eerie coo of the wordless hook is one of the loveliest things you can sing with a crowd.

We bustled into the Hi-Fi to catch some splattering strobes flashing through the room, with a brood of charismatic lads that seemed to fill the entire stage. The venue was packed and the room vibrating, with the dramatic lighting highlighting the vigorous execution of the five-strong support act Gold Fields. The Ballarat-born youngsters have been making quite a stir on the j’s with single ‘Treehouse’, which they played for the audience in its most gleaming form.

Their synth-based, drum-laden, Metronomyinspired goodness, with duelling guitars and a charging rhythm section, left the crowd on a definite high.

Trying to find a direct vantage point was difficult through the thick teeming crowd, but after a few false starts (and just over half an hour behind schedule), Metric finally appeared. The crowd roared as frontwoman Emily Haines leapt towards the mic – “I’m just as fucked up as they say” – and continued though ‘Artificial Nocturne’ without a fault. Their stripped-back, synth-based approach to the show was a given on the back of their latest release Synthetica, creating a brooding yet atmospheric mood.

‘Youth Without Youth’ followed; a hardhitting, drum-heavy testament to the new

record’s strength, with a recurring groove that left the majority of the congregation convulsing to the beat. ‘Lost Kitten’ and ‘Empty’ saw Haines clasp a tambourine and dance across the stage as the energy in the room built, and it wasn’t hard to get excited by the opening exuberance of ‘Help I’m Alive’, as bassist Joshua Winstead went full steam. The fever pitched in ‘Stadium Love’, which rounded out the pre-encore set, during which I encountered a 70-somethingyear-old gentleman rocking out so hard he found no further use for a shirt, and promptly removed it.

After returning to the stage for the rompy ‘Monster Hospital’ and ‘Gold Guns And Girls’, most of Metric left the stage for an acoustic episode of ‘Gimme Sympathy’ with James Shaw on guitar, as Haines explained her lack of crowd banter as a means of allowing the opus to speak for itself. “Too much talking, not enough music,” she proclaimed as she evoked an all-in sing-along; “Come on baby, play me something like ‘Here Comes The Sun’.” Although the finish, lighters-out in the crowd as the band re-emerged to sway on stage, was a little too saccharine for this reviewer’s palate, my new shirtless comrade and the rest of the onlookers ate it up in spades.

Verity Cox

They end on a strange note, with ‘Port of Morrow’ – Mercer’s best vocal performance of the night, sultry and boyish and perfectly controlled – erupting into wonderfully doomy guitars but sinking again into a listless, self-indulgent jam that dissipated into the front half of a too-big room.

Caitlin Welsh

PHOTOGRAPHER : TIM

LEVY

SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS

Belongil Fields, Byron Bay July 27-29

When you rock up to the first morning of a three-day festival, the last thing you want to do is get pelted with pea-sized hailstones. But after that minor meterological fakeout, Byron Bay turned on an exquisite weekend to welcome Splendour In The Grass back to its spiritual home.

Post-hail on Friday, we joined the moist masses at Alison Wonderland and Yacht Club DJs to dance ourselves dry. Then it was back to Big Scary, invariably the best choice for your mid-afternoon sing-along at every festival ever.

After a quick trek to Hippie Corner to scope out Michael Kiwanuka at the GW McLennan Tent, to locate the kofta balls tent, and to laugh uproariously at the shocked, whining owners of now-mud-enveloped Chucks and thongs (did you know you can get the weather forecast on the internet now, guys?), we set up at the main stage for huge night of standing in the one spot.

Few people seemed to mind that the non-‘Black Betty’ portion of Spiderbait’s set felt flat and toothless; The Shins played with the energy and cohesion that had been sorely missing from their Sydney sideshow a few days earlier; At The Drive-In tore strips off everything with a set that was mesmerising even for a person with the sorest of feet and familiarity with exactly one song. After grumbling punters had made the hardest choice of the whole weekend – bail for Explosions In The Sky or stay put – Jack White reassured everyone in the Supertop they’d chosen well. His bands (male to start, ladies swapped in at halftime) beefed up the crackling sparseness of White Stripes classics like a frantic ‘Hotel Yorba’ and ‘Slowly Turning Into You’, while White’s towering guitars made the not-quite-so-classic new material sound rather biblical.

Guitars were the real winners on Saturday; Last Dinosaurs and Bleeding Knees Club were an HOLAS IRVING

PHOTOGRAPHER : NIC

30 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

early highlight, the sonic equivalent of a Berocca Slurpee. Band Of Skulls – on far too early at 5pm – had the crowd eating out of their hands, tearing into enormous, languid riffs.

Mudhoney visibly converted some of the young ‘uns crowding in for the next act, Lana Del Rey, in what was the most genius scheduling decision of the weekend. (She looked pleased to be there and dressed like a flowergirl and we left after four songs, the end.) The night ended with the biggest and baddest crowds we saw all weekend as both Miike Snow and Bloc Party put on raging sets (BREAKING: bellowing “SO FUCKING USELESS” is still fun).

With Beth Ditto, Jack White and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez in the mix, the contest for Best Frontperson was tight, but Josh Tillman

as Father John Misty took it out on Sunday with his Jagger-meets-Nilsson, crazy-preacher snake-hips antics. Lord knows how he stayed behind a Fleet Foxes drum kit for so long – he’s a born bandleader, and easily locked up our Set Of The Festival (although the thousands more people who went to Yuksek instead threatened to physically fight us on that).

Man, people really love The Kooks and Blue King Brown, huh?

Azealia Banks’ whelming 25-minute appearance was plagued by technical difficulties; she explained this repeatedly in a sugarsweet Harlem accent whose tense undertones did not bode well for some sound tech somewhere. (“I guess that cunt gettin’ fired,” mused a friend.) But hey, that crowd was not there for the deep cuts, and ‘212’ was as rowdy and sweaty as it needed to be.

Rumours had been flying all weekend as to whether The Smashing Pumpkins would be

LANA DEL REY

The Enmore Theatre Thursday July 26 Lana Del Rey’s first major performance after hype went into overdrive, on Saturday Night Live in January, was universally slammed. NBC’s Brian Williams called it “one of the worst outings in SNL history”, fellow muso Juliette Lewis said it was like “watching a 12-year-old in their bedroom” pretending to perform, and YouTube comments – well, why give them more space. Highlighting questionable priorities with some unfortunate sentence structure, Del Rey defended her performance in Rolling Stone – “I thought I looked beautiful and sounded fine” – but her following Australian tour was cancelled quicksmart. All of this made her re-scheduled appearance as delightful a prospect for the schadenfreuders amongst us as it was for the fans. For the record, I count myself as both.

HLEY MAR

PHOTOGRAPHER : AS

playing nothing but new stuff or a greatest hits set, but either way Billy has not been all about the crowd-pleasing the last two trips out here. So these Gossip virgins skipped what was apparently a blissful trip down Nobody Understands My Special Pain Lane – well worth it to witness the glory that is Beth Ditto in full flight. The band is a brilliantly tight unit but Ditto’s combination of sweaty punk-soul diva belting and drawling, sweet-as-pie patter steals the show. Reports from the main tent were positive, but nothing beats a party where there’s room to dance.

Caitlin Welsh & Hugh Robertson

The soundsystem was playing the theme to Married With Children across an overexcitable crowd when some eyelashes, lips, hair and flowers finally swanned onto the stage: “I’ve been waiting to get here,” she purred. We all know Del Rey by now: a sexed-up, DIY, Monroe-meets-Jackie-meets-trailertrash façade invented (gasp!) by songwriter Lizzie Grant. Character-work has existed in pop music since pop music was a thing, and as much as the internet hated being hoodwinked, the LDR dilemma cut deeper than that: while the personas adopted by Nicki, Gaga and Beyoncé hurl some fierce feministas at the male gaze of the music industry, Del Rey was simply hamming up the sex, singing songs from the perspective of a damaged, weak woman who batted her lashes at jerks as if feminism wasn't a thing. And on stage tonight, with the screen behind her featuring footage of herself in various curve-enhancing poses, the importance of her image to her music couldn’t have been more obvious.

The surprising part? Lady can sing. With a backing band led by keys and a string section (and, notably, without a drum in sight), the pared-back and chilled-out orchestral arrangements lent the brilliant tracks from Born To Die a grandiose, melodramatic air that was more ‘Video Games’ than ‘Diet Mountain Dew’. For the most part Lana was centre stage, spotlighted and still (save occasional sweeping hand gestures), framed by ferns, palms and pot plants, and really, really attractive. She wasn’t stilted or awkward or flat at all, and she embellished melodies with confident vibrato flourishes. It was only when she jumped down into the photographer pit to flirt “in the flashbulbs of your pretty cameras” that her voice faltered or was lost completely – which was worth it when Del Rey re-emerged from the throng during her rendition of ‘Heart Shaped Box’ (“You do know the song is about my vagina right?” tweeted Courtney Love last week, when she heard about the Nirvana cover) brandishing a koala bear carrying an American flag. Following a soaring version of album highlight ‘National Anthem’, she picked up the bear again and left the stage sans encore.

So there you have it. Lana Del Rey has a good voice, is very pretty, writes great songs, and can play them live. The backlash to the backlash has begun.

Steph Harmon BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 31

snap sn ap

mum

PICS :: TP

up all night out all week . . .

27:07:12 :: The World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700

It’s called: Bluejuice’s Winter Of Our Discotheque tour.

Who’s playing? Bluejuice, The Preatures (nee The Preachers), Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Georgia Fair, Hey Geronimo and more.

Sell it to us: There'll be irreparable hearing damage. There'll be over-priced merchandise. There'll be a lifetime of regret. Wait... what was the question?

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: If we do our jobs properly, you’ll wake up the next morning lying on a heart-shaped bed in a Mediterranean villa, being fed frozen grapes by our sound engineer. You’ll thank us.

father john misty

PICS :: KC

It sounds like: Stray mangy dogs fighting over the finest San Daniele prosciutto, lobster, and a chocolate cake dipped in gold-leaf nutmeg.

27:07:12 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711

Crowd specs: It’s at a university, so presumably there’ll be students there.

Don’t let that put you off though.

Wallet damage: $28.60. Whole numbers are too easy.

Where: O Fest's 'Break The Ice' @ Glasshouse & The Loft, UTS When: Friday August 10, 8pm

snow big deal

PICS :: PX

party profile

bluejuice's winter of our discotheque

velociraptor

PICS :: KC

28:07:12 :: GoodGod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool Street Sydney 8084 0587

27:07:12 :: Upstairs Beresford :: L1 354 Bourke St Surry Hills 83135000 32 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

:: ANNA BROWN :: KATRINA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PEDRO NS MUN IEL DAN :: MAR ASHLEY CLARKE :: GEORGIA COLLIS :: XAVIER ::

snap sn ap up all night out all week . . .

faker @ the annandale party profile

It’s called: The Annandale Hotel’s back bar launch, feat. Faker.

It sounds like: Rock – straight up, the way you like it.

Who’s playing? Faker, The Mavens, Castlecomer and DJ Jay Katz (Sounds Of Seduction).

Sell it to us: Be the first to experience The Annandale Hotel’s brand-spanking-new back bar (which comes hand-in-hand with the 'Dale's totally refurbished restrooms and an interior and exterior paint job), and help the Annandale team celebrate with some fresh tasty drink specials and a special guest performance from Faker. Oh, and if you get there early at 5pm, there's free drinks!

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: How much the Annandale is taking a turn for the better. We're all very excited with how everything is coming along!

Crowd specs: People who love live music, nice toilets and new bars.

Wallet damage: Free before 9pm / $15 after.

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

WED 8 AUG THU 9 AUG

Where: The one and only Annandale Hotel.

When: Friday August 10, from 5pm

LIVE PERFORMANCE BY PALMS

M I C HA E L C HA M B E R L I N SMART CASUAL SHANE MATHESON

An exclusive private investor evening including a presentation by 'Matty G'. Including never seen before time lapse footage of his journey painting through Indonesia, his paintings and music.

HOSTED BY TOM WILLIAMS PRESENTATION BY MATTY G RSVP: MATT@MATTHEWGILLETT.COM

FRI 10 AUG WED 11 AUG

SOSUEME

band of skulls

PICS :: AM

COLLARBONES OCEANICS / EMBASSY ALISON WONDERLAND JOYRIDE / DEVOLA

27:07:12 :: Factory Theatre ::105 Victoria Rd Enmore 9550 3666

FEAT. THE ENIGMA QUARTET & STREETON TRIO

WED 15 AUG THU 16 AUG HOSTED BY:

JAMES KERLEY

SEA LEGS ILUKA THE DARKENED SEAS THE GREASE ARRESTOR

(Channel V’s Cash Cab, Taken Out, Nova, & currently Channel 9/Go!’s Eclipse Music TV)

PUB TRIVIA ON STEROIDS

COMING UP

AUG

17/18th 22nd 23rd 24th 30th

CHILDREN COLLIDE ADAM LAMBERT - SOLD OUT! DIE! DIE! DIE! GIN WIGMORE JACK COWEL & BRENDAN MCLEAN

youth lagoon

PICS :: AB

OPEN TIL 3AM COME VISIT US AT FACEBOOK.COM/THESTANDARDSYDNEY

TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT WEARETHESTANDARD.COM.AU

28:07:12 :: Factory Theatre ::105 Victoria Rd Enmore 9550 3666

:: ANNA BROWN :: KATRINA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PEDRO NS MUN IEL DAN :: ASHLEY MAR CLARKE :: GEORGIA COLLIS :: XAVIER ::

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 33

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

FRIDAY AUGUST 10

Chicks Who Love Guns

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 8 ROCK & POP

Kings Cross Hotel & The World Bar, Kings Cross

MUM & FBi Social Present

Go Here, Go There: Hey Geronimo, Bearhug, Chicks Who Love Guns, Jeremy Neale, The Walking Who, Lime Cordiale, Private Life, Thnkr, Corpus, The Ruminaters, Black Zeros, Actor Slash Model, The Chitticks, Polographia DJs, MUM DJs $15 8pm Monday Jam Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale free 8pm

MONDAY AUGUST 6

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

ROCK & POP

Sarah Paton The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 8.30pm Tommy Emmanuel, Frank Vignola Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $79.90 (+ bf)–$119.90 8pm

JAZZ

Adam Page 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Lionel Robinson Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm

Andrew Denniston, Bart Thrupp, Chris Brooken, Massimo Presti Kellys On King, Newtown free 7pm

Mandi Jarry Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 8.30pm Rob Henry The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm Songwriters Association Open Mic Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt free 7pm

JAZZ

TUESDAY AUGUST 7 ROCK & POP

Adam Pringle and Friends Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel free 8pm

Jazzgroove: The Pillars, Slide Albatross 505 Club, Surry Hills $8 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Shane Flew Dee Why RSL Club free

ACOUSTIC & FOLK Andrew Denniston, EvaMaria Hess, Peter Williams

Brad Johns Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Butterfly Boucher, Van Hoorn, Katie Herzig (USA) Brass Monkey, Cronulla $17.85 7pm Cambo The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 9.30pm Dan Spillane Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 6pm Expatriate, I Am Apollo Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm Fox Control, Phebe Starr, Kate Brown Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Heath Burdell Northies, Cronulla free 7.30pm Jager Presents Annandale Hotel 7.30pm Live and Local: John Vella, Adam George, Elle Mayu, Will Taylor and Henry Gearin Lizzotte’s, Dee Why $15 8pm Mandi Jarry Summer Hill Hotel free 7.30pm Miss Pia And Her Lonesome Playboys, Twilight Rhythm Boys, DJ Brian Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7pm Musos Jam Night Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt free 8pm Old Man Crow, Low Dirty Shame Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Punch Brothers (USA) The Basement, Circular Quay $44–$98.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm Roland K Smith & The Sinners, Billy Goat & The Mongrels, The Ramalamas Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $10 8pm Sam & Jamie Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 9.30pm Scream: Cosmic King, Out Of Context, Facing Zero, Terminal Illness, Cranking Old Bastards Forest Inn Hotel, Bexley $15 7pm Soheyla, Thieves, Anikiko The Vanguard, Newtown $15.80–$50.80 (dinner & show) 8pm Tommy Emmanuel, Frank Vignola Enmore Theatre $79.90– $99.90 8pm

The Folk Informal: Bonez, Pocket of Stones, Dan Crestani, The Belle Havens FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 6pm Greg Sita, Two Screws Loose, Matt McGowen Cat and Fiddle Hotel, Balmain free 6.30pm Helmut Uhlmann The Loft, UTs, Ultimo free 6pm Russell Neal, Gavin Fitzgerald, Ken Mclean, Pete Scully, Paul McGowan Coach & Horses Hotel, Randwick free 7pm

THURSDAY AUGUST 9 ROCK & POP

An Evening With Jim Keays & Russell Morris with a Tribute to Darryl Cotton The Bridge Hotel, Rozelle $25 (+ bf) 8pm Butterfly Boucher Camelot Lounge, Marrickville sold out 7pm Chase The Sun Peachtree Hotel, Penrith free 8pm Down To Earth – Emerging Artist Showcase: Burn Antares, Doc Holliday Takes The Shotgun, Huckleberry Hastings The Basement, Circular Quay $10 8pm Gnome, Leure Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Harts, Hawaii 94 GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $5 8pm Hey Baby, Chakra, Midnight Butterfly Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Hot Damn!: Heights, Pledge This!, Asura, Life Beyond Spectrum, Darlinghurst 8pm Leroy Lee, Sui Zhen, Eli Wolfe FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Little Bastard, Papa Polko & The Bin Rats, Jack Dawson Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Mandi Jarry Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Mayfall, Rooftop Profets Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $10 8pm New Empire, In Measures, The Short List Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7pm

Ollie Brown James Squire Brewhouse, Sydney 8pm Paisley Park, Bexley De Lion Brass Monkey, Cronulla $14.30 7pm Pinky Beecroft & The White Russians The Vanguard, Newtown $23.80 (+ bf)–$58.80 (dinner & show) 8pm Stereo Addicts, Sunday, DJ Starjumps The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $15 (+ bf) 8pm Toni Childs (USA) Penrith Panthers, Evans Theatre 8pm Urban Guerillas, The Browny Show, Steph Miller’s Winterstation Union Hotel, Newtown free 7pm Vultures: Danielle Allars, Lo Five, DJ Skar The Lansdowne, Broadway free 9pm

JAZZ

The Cellar Jazz Jam: Phil Stack Trio The Spice Cellar, Sydney free 9pm David Devito Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $49 8pm Eastside Live 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Lionel Robinson Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Peter Head The Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Andrew Denniston, HiddenAce, Gilbert Whyte Ettalong B/C free 7.30pm Black Diamond, Simon Marrable Corrimal Hotel free 7.30pm David Helfgott City Recital Hall, Sydney $59 Helmutt Uhlmann Horse & Jockey Hotel, Homebush free 7.30pm Marty From Reckless The Marlborough Hotel, Newtown free 8.30pm Russell Neal, Nick Domenicos, Spencer McCullum Kogarah Hotel free 7pm

FRIDAY AUGUST 10 ROCK & POP

Adrift For Days, Spacebong, Summonus,

JAZZ

Craig Scott Quintet 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Peter Head The Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Black Diamond, Richard Murphy, Nathan Cole Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 6.30pm

Hunting Grounds

“For the girl with the hour glass figure time runs out very fast,” - BILLY BRAGG 34 :: BRAG :: 474 : 06:08:12

Xxx

pick of the week

Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 7pm Black Diamond George IV Inn, Picton free 7.30pm Russell Neal, Maxine Kauter, Emad Younan, Under the Purple Tree, 2 Picks No Sticks Betti Laila, Pete Scully, The Offsiders Taverners Hill Hotel, Leichhardt free 7pm

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

Faker

We Lost the Sea Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale free 7pm Big Way Out The Marlborough Hotel, Newtown free 10.30pm Billy Talent (CAN) UNSW Roundhouse, Kensington $51.70 (+ bf) 7.30pm Blake Saban 3 James Squire Brewhouse, Sydney 8pm Brad Johns Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Break The Ice Fest: Bluejuice, Hungry Kids of Hungary, The Preatures, Georgia Fair, Hey Geronimo, Private Life, Nova & the Experience, The Khanz, Bang Bang Rock N Roll, Former Love, Jenny Broke The Window, DJ Canecutter, DJ Ribz Glasshouse Bar & The Loft, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo $28.10 (+ bf) 6pm Civilians, Colour Coding, Harts, Devola Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Collard Greens & Gravy, Supro The Vanguard, Newtown $23.80–$58.80 (dinner & show) 8pm Cotton Keays & Morris Revesby Heights Ex-Servicemen’s Memorial Club $30 8pm Day Ravies, No Art, Rat King Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst 8pm Eddie Boyd and the Phatapillars, Funkwit Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 8pm Faker, Mavens, Castlecomer, Jay Katz Annandale Hotel free (early bird)–$15 5pm Fireballs The Hi-Fi Sydney, Moore Park $30 (+ bf) 7.30pm Fred Smith & A Few Good Spooky Men Notes Live, Enmore $28.05 7pm Granny Fist, Burial Chamber, Meel, Lower Back Problems Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm The Headliners Dundas Sports Club free 8.30pm Hunting Grounds, Gung Ho GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $18.40 8pm Isaac Grahem, Weightless, Harboured Roxburry Hotel, Glebe $10 8pm Johnny Casino Y Los Secretos, Hell Crab City, The Dunhill Blues The Square, Haymarket $10 8pm King Tide, Benjalu Brass Monkey, Cronulla $25.50 7pm

La Huva, Restless Leg, Man & Woman The Excelsior, Glebe free Melissa Tkautz, Black Diamond Hearts, DJ Smithers Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 6.30pm MUM & FBi Social Present Go Here Go There: Hey Geronimo, Bearhug, Chicks Who Love Guns, Jeremy Neale, The Walking Who, Lime Cordiale, Private Life, Thnkr, Corpus, The Ruminaters, Black Zero, Actor Slash Model, Polographia DJs, MUM DJs FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel & The World Bar, Kings Cross $15 8pm Peter Northcote The Basement, Circular Quay $25 8pm Pseudo Echo Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $25 (+ bf) 8pm Roots: Easy Company, This Is Dividers, The City Shake Up, Prevailing Disorder Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Sosueme: Collarbones, Oceanics, Embassy, Alison Wonderland, DJ Joyride, Devola The Standard, Surry Hills $10 8pm Steve Edmonds Band Karuah Hotel free 7.30pm Velvet Hotel Engadine RSL & Citizens Club free 8pm

JAZZ

Bernie McGann Quartet The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $10-$20 8.30pm Lloyd Spiegel Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $15 7.30pm Nic Jeffries, Carrie Lakin Blue Beat, Doulbe Bay $15 (+ bf) 7pm Sirens Big Band 505 Club, Surry Hills $15 (conc)–$20 8.30pm

SATURDAY AUGUST 11 ROCK & POP

The Accidents, Battleships, Private Life, Bert & Ernie Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Baby et Lulu: Abby Dobson, Lara Goodridge Brass Monkey, Cronulla $25.50 7pm The Belligerents, Conics, WolfWolf, Tom Lark FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Blackbreaks, Scatterfly, Angels of the Tattooed Generation The Square, Haymarket $12 8pm

Classical Clubbing: Enigma Quartet, Streeton Trio The Standard, Surry Hills $25 5pm Coldplay Tribute Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills free 10pm Dirty Deeds – The AC/DC Show Everglades Country Club, Woy Woy $20 7pm Dynamic Duo Brighton RSL Club, BrightonLe-Sands free 8pm Erkstok Rock Festival: Smokin’ Mirrors, Foundry Road, Vanity Riots, Gutter Tactic, Emperical, Hard As Nails, Belle & Her Ghetto Rockers Valve Bar, Tempe 2pm The Falls, Stu Larsen Hellen Rose Schauersbergen Laboratorium, Surry Hills $15 8pm Fiona Leigh Jones Duo Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Flux, DJ Shag Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7.30pm The Foreday Riders 45th Anniversary: Ray Beadle, Lez Karski, John Power, Andrew Reid, Phil B. Colson, Bridie King Notes Live, Enmore $39.80 7pm The Grand Lethals, Kaleidescope, The Sculptures, The Mannequins, The Dalton Gang’s Last Raid, The Brave The Gladstone, Chippendale free 7pm Hue Williams Crown Hotel, Surry Hills free 8pm Indie Warhol: Disco Is Dead, Skull Squadron, Kate Gogarty, Harts, Tales In Space, The Mannequinns, Through A Glass Darlky, Fever Pitch, Erik The Red, Dan Crestani, DJ Alley Cats The Lansdowne, Broadway free 3pm Johnny Casino Y Los Secretos, 4 Barrel Hemi, Brown Esky Manly Fisho’s $15 (+ bf) 8pm Kill City Creeps, The Peep Tempels, The Harlots The Vanguard, Newtown $8 8pm King Tide, Lime Cordiale, The Widowbirds, Callithump Annandale Hotel $15 8pm Kittens: Teal, Fushia, Professor, Kittens DJs Spectrum, Darlinghurst $5-$10 9pm Peppermint Jam The Marlborough Hotel, Newtown free 10.30pm Perdition, Headbutt, Unknown To God, Ivan And The Backpackers Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 (+ bf) 8pm Rattle & Hum U2 Show Oatley Hotel free 8.30pm Rolling Stoned Blacktown RSL Club free 9.30pm The Ruminators, Warchief, The Guppies Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm SFX: Seasons, The City Shakeup, Swing From A Streetlight St James Hotel, Sydney $15-$20 9pm Sharron Bowman Engadine RSL & Citizens Club free 8pm Snakadaktal, Sures, Fishing Metro Theatre, Sydney $20 8pm all-ages Steve Edmonds Band Hornsby Inn free 8.30pm

Stormcellar Royal Hotel, Bondi free 8.30pm Tim Rogers, Catherine Britt Lizzotte’s, Dee Why $44 8pm Toni Childs (USA) Revesby Workers Club 8pm Twerps, Songs GoodGod Small Club, Sydney sold out 8pm

JAZZ

The Alco Hotlicks, Master of Ribongia, Hello Vera 505 Club, Surry Hills $20 (conc)–$25 8pm Baby Et Lulu, Abby Dobson, Lara Goodridge Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Blue Moon Quartet Supper Club, Fairfield RSL free 7pm Coffin Brothers The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $10-$20 8.30pm Peter Head The Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 5pm Petulant Frenzy Play Frank Zappa Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $22 (+ bf) 7pm The Strides The Basement, Circular Quay $22 (+ bf) 8pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Connected Café / Wine Bar, Leichhardt free 7.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK Aaron & Dane Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 8pm Josh McIvor The Belvedere Hotel free Mat Toms Oatley Hotel free 2pm

Nadya and the 101 Candles Orkestra Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $25-$30 7.30pm Simon Bruce, Sam Buckingham Rozelle Markets free 10.30am

SUNDAY AUGUST 12 ROCK & POP

Ace Brighton RSL Club, BrightonLe-Sands free 7pm Black Saban 3, Jack Davidson, Oliver Goss, Calling Mayday Valve Bar, Tempe 5pm Blues Sunday: Mark Hopper Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Bones Atlas Brass Monkey, Cronulla $14.30 7pm Dave Tice Band Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel free 4pm Faith Lee, The Wild Comforts, The Campervan Dancers The Vanguard, Newtown $13.80–$48.80 (dinner & show) 8pm Johnny Casino Y Los Secretos The Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $10 7pm Johnny G & The E Types Botany View Hotel, Newtown free 7pm Kucka, Rainbow Chan, Emily Grantham, FM Annandale Hotel $10 7pm No Brakes Marrickville Bowling Club free 4.30pm

The Pinks, Wolf Mail Sofo Strays Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 2pm Steve Edmonds Band Premier Hotel, Broadmeadow free 4pm Suite Az Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 8.30pm Sydney Rock ‘n’ Roll & Alternative Market: The Toot Toot Toots, Spurs for Jesus, The Drey Rollan Band, The Jordan C Thomas Trio, Jack Shit, Brian, Rod Almighty, The Crimplenes Manning Bar, Sydney University, Camperdown $1 10.30am Tripping Billys, Fanny Lumsden & The Thrillseekers The Lansdowne, Broadway free 7pm Vibrations At Valve: The Phat Controller, Hypergiant, Shanghai Taxis Valve Bar, Tempe $15 1pm Zoltan Harbord Beach Hotel free 6pm

JAZZ

The Peter Head Trio The Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK Dave Calandra, Anna Wetherup Rozelle Markets free 10.30am Kerrianne Cox The Red Rattler, Marrickville $10-$15 2pm Russell Neal Salisbury Hotel, Stanmore free 2pm

wed

08 Aug

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

thu

09 Aug

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

fri

10 Aug

(5:00PM - 8:00PM)

(9:30PM - 1:30AM)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

sat

11 Aug

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

SATURDAY NIGHT

(9:00PM - 1:30AM)

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

sun

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

Aug

SUNDAY NIGHT

12

(8:30PM - 12:00AM)

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 35

gig picks up all night out all week...

Twerps

Glasshouse Bar & The Loft, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo $28.10 (+ bf) 6pm

Snakadaktal, Sures, Fishing Metro Theatre, Sydney $20 7.30pm all-ages

Faker, Mavens, Castlecomer, Jay Katz Annandale Hotel free (early bird)–$15 5pm

Tim Rogers, Catherine Britt Lizzotte’s, Dee Why $44 8pm

Hunting Grounds, Gung Ho GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $18.40 7pm Pseudo Echo Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $25 (+ bf) 8pm Sosueme: Collarbones, Oceanics, Embassy, Alison Wonderland, DJ Joyride, Devola The Standard, Surry Hills $10 8pm

SATURDAY AUGUST 11 WEDNESDAY AUGUST 8

Leroy Lee, Sui Zhen, Eli Wolfe FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm

The Accidents, Battleships, Private Life, Bert & Ernie Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm

Expatriate, I Am Apollo Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm

Urban Guerillas, The Browny Show, Steph Miller’s Winterstation Union Hotel, Newtown free 7pm

The Falls, Stu Larsen Hellen Rose Schauersbergen Laboratorium, Surry Hills $15 8pm

The Punch Brothers (USA) The Basement, Circular Quay $44– $98.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm

THURSDAY AUGUST 9 Down To Earth – Emerging Artist Showcase: Burn Antares, Doc Holliday Takes The Shotgun, Huckleberry Hastings The Basement, Circular Quay $10 8pm

36 :: BRAG :: 474 : 06:08:12

FRIDAY AUGUST 10 Break The Ice Fest: Bluejuice, Hungry Kids of Hungary, The Preatures, Georgia Fair, Hey Geronimo, Private Life, Nova & the Experience, The Khanz, Bang Bang Rock N Roll, Former Love, Jenny Broke The Window, DJ Canecutter, DJ Ribz

Tim Rogers

Twerps, Songs GoodGod Small Club, Sydney sold out 8pm

SUNDAY AUGUST 12 Sydney Rock ‘n’ Roll & Alternative Market: The Toot Toot Toots, Spurs for Jesus, The Drey Rollan Band, The Jordan C Thomas Trio, Jack Shit, Brian, Rod Almighty, The Crimplenes Manning Bar, Sydney University entry by gold coin 10.30am

Indie Warhol: Disco Is Dead, Skull Squadron, Kate Gogarty, Harts, Tales In Space, The Mannequinns, Through A Glass Darkly, Fever Pitch, Erik The Red, Dan Crestani, DJ Alley Cats The Lansdowne, Broadway free 3pm King Tide, Lime Cordiale, The Widowbirds, Callithump Annandale Hotel $15 8pm

Georgia Fair

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

brag beats

homebrew

inside

in your face

also: + club guide + club snaps

kate simko

y C d e h l t b i B h i t on T y o e w n n d 0 H y S a l t l 1 a

DATE Saturday 18th August 2012 TIME 7pm - midnight WHERE Sydney Town Hall rmed Confi p: e Lin U ul Patrol,

, So aders & the The F a Raspa d s s a e ts n i Van ie Ca lin Zomb guest Pau ial spec sted by: Ho man Gold Mike

DRESS Leave your tuxedos and ball gowns at home and raid your local Op Shop.

Think sequins, faux fur, velvet, leather or your mum’s wedding gown!

$1

00

In & clud foo es d a dr ll n ink igh s t

www.varietyopshopball.com.au

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 37

dance music news

free stuff

club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Alasdair Duncan

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

five things WITH

Doctor Werewolf

MIKE WITCOMBE

just started a full-time job at The Sound Alliance, as head graphic designer.

The Music You Make I play all things house, from disco to 4. techno. I like to think of it as sophisticated house music. It’s all about the groove for me, and picking the right tunes to create the right vibe; it’s definitely not about just playing what’s hot in the Top Ten Deep House Chart on Beatport. On the production side of things, I’ve got an EP coming out on Reckless Republic later this year. I also have a side project with Julien Beltzung (YokoO) called Life Less Ordinary. We’re working on a project at the moment with Matthew Dekay for his label with Lee Burridge, All Day I Dream – and we’re also working on a remix for an up-and-coming label out of Zurich called Pins And Needles.

5.

Growing Up I can’t exactly remember this, but my 1. dad – who is a drummer – bought me a drumkit at the age of three. Probably not one of his greatest ideas at the time, but I like to think it helped shape my appreciation and love for making music.

2.

Inspirations I spent close to 12 months in Berlin last year, which really opened my eyes, ears

and mind to so many new things. It’s such a creative hub for musicians and artists; people thrive off other people’s creativity, which makes it such an inspiring city to be in.

Your Group Since my return to Sydney, I’ve been 3. getting lots of love from the lovely people at The Spice Cellar, the Picnic warehouse parties, Strange Fruit and S.A.S.H. I also

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs

Music, Right Here, Right Now The underground scene in Sydney is thriving at the moment; it’s come such a long way in the last couple of years. More and more people are appreciating quality music, and more often than not you’re spoilt for choice with great parties every weekend.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t get ruined by this incident in Kings Cross. It would be a shame to see the scene compromised by a minority of drunken idiots.

With: Gabby, Dean Relf, Murat Kilic, Nic Scali Where: The Spice Cellar When: Saturday August 11

record, entitled Low And Behold, High And Beyond, is out this month, and to celebrate they will embark on a tour of Australia.

Spikey Tee, Ben White and Matt Short form the core of the group along with Spraggon himself, and on the coming tour, they will be joined on stage by Cherie Mathieson and L.A. Mitchell. They appear at The Standard on Thursday September 13.

CYBERNETIC EXPRESS

Simon Foretti used to be a part of the beloved hip hop outfi t 1200 Techniques, but now he has a new thing going on – saving the world from impending cyber attack via the magic of disco. With his new solo project Cybernetic Express, Foretti is making spaced-out electronic music inspired by the Italo disco sound of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. “Protecting our information and identities, and defending the world from a cyber war – which would be bigger and far more catastrophic than any war ever experienced on Earth,” he said of the project’s aim. “Cybernetic Express have fought many a war in the deepest outreaches of intergalactic space, and have acquired the information and systems required to counter these attacks.” So there you have it. The debut Cybernetic Express EP, Love Rocket, is set for release in September on the Rubber Records label.

TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS!

The UK’s Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs is the moniker of Orlando Higginbottom (true story), the man behind one of the best releases of the year: his debut album, Trouble.

The album blends cutting-edge dance tracks with melancholy pop, sounding a little like Hot Chip or maybe even Junior Boys, but with a style and a voice still very much its own. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs has already been announced for the Falls and Southbound festivals in 2012 and 2013, but if you can’t make it to either, you’re in luck – a very special one-off Sydney show has just been announced. You can see him at Oxford Art Factory on Thursday October 4, with support from the Future Classic DJs, as well as another special guest who has yet to be announced. Head along to see just why this young producer is one of electronic music’s most exciting new prospects.

BOYS NOIZE ANNOUNCE THIRD ALBUM

Big news for fans of Boys Noize! Earlier this year, producer Alex Ridha – maker of squelchy German techno goodness – announced that his upcoming album was 98.9% fi nished. Well, it seems he’s fi nally knocked the rest of it over, as the record, entitled Out Of The Black, has now confirmed a release date of October 2.

Ridha released the track ‘What You Want’ exclusively to Rolling Stone, and it’s indeed very Boys Noize-ish, with heavily treated vocals and thumping, squelchy beats. He’s said that the track is inspired by his love of vintage Beastie Boys, although its main vocal hook seems to be directly inspired by Public Image Limited’s ‘The Order Of Death’. It’s 38 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

been a long wait for new material from Boys Noize, who’s been busy producing tracks for the likes of Scissor Sisters and Kelis, and collaborating with Erol Alkan – so this return is long overdue. Hopefully this means a new live show, but we’ll have to wait and see...

SOLA ROSA AUSTRALIAN TOUR

From humble beginnings as a self-released solo project, Sola Rosa has evolved into one of New Zealand’s most beloved and durable electronic acts. With a style that spans hip hop, reggae, jazz, Latin, soul and funk, and a collective of dedicated musicians around him, Sola Rosa’s Andrew Spraggon has toured the world and produced a clutch of well-received albums. The fi fth Sola Rosa

BURSSS

If all the word ‘moombahton’ does for you is remind you of the Olympics, i) That’s not how you spell baton, and ii) You need to get out more. Moombahton is actually a music genre, a fusion of reggaetron and electronic fundamentals that’s taking over the dance music scene. Here enters Bursss. Taking place at Whaat Club (20 Bayswater Road, Kings Cross – the old Le Panic) on Friday August 10, the bass-heavy event welcomes a cosmological lineup that includes chief dubstep duo Doctor Werewolf, Queensland party juggernauts Surecut Kids, Sydney frontrunners The Mane Thing and off-kilter beat fanatic Blaze Tripp. We’ve got two double passes to give away – if you want one, tell us the name of another artist who peddles in the genre... the hit singles ‘Just Friends (Sunny)’ and ‘Love’ and earning him a Grammy, and since then he has gone on to amass seven Top 10 singles on the US Billboard charts.

So committed is Musiq Soulchild to the art of love that he even penned a self-help book, 143 – Love According To Musiq, which lays out the importance of loving and accepting yourself in order to fi nd happiness.

His sixth album, MusiqintheMagiq, was released last year, and in honour of it he’ll be heading to Australia for a tour. You can catch the music-maker and lover himself at the Hi-Fi, Entertainment Quarter, on Friday September 14.

Thundamentals

TZU

It’s been a long time coming, but the new album from TZU is almost here, and it sounds like quite a doozy. Entitled Millions Of Moments, the album sees the Melbourne crew delving even further into the electronic territory they explored on their last album, Computer Love. But not only that – it’s a concept album. The ‘millions of moments’ referred to in the title take place at many points throughout history – the heroine of the piece, Persephone, trials a new drug that sends her hurtling through time, inhabiting the minds of an array of people from the 18th century through to the apocalypse. It sounds like quite a trip, but TZU certainly have the sense of adventure needed to pull such a thing off. The group’s new single, ‘Beautiful’, is out this week, and they’re soon to hit the road as part of their Millions Of Moments Tour. You can catch TZU at The Standard on Saturday October 13, with special guests Sietta.

MUSIQ SOULCHILD

Philadelphia’s Musiq Soulchild left home in his late teens to begin a career in music, and from his early days of beat-boxing for MCs, freestyling at open mic nights, and singing a capella on the streets, he built himself up into a million-selling artist. His debut album was released in 2000, spawning

THUNDAMENTALS NATIONAL TOUR

Blue Mountains-born (but Newtownbased) hip hop trio Thundamentals hit all new career highs when they stepped into triple j studios a few months back to perform on Like A Version – their cover of Matt Corby’s ‘Brother’ hit such a nerve that it inspired an outpouring of texts and Tweets, and within days it had become the most popular video on triple j’s YouTube channel. Making the most of all this, the group are set to embark on their first and only headlining tour of 2012. The Get Busy Tour sees the group taking a break from writing their new record to reconnect with fans, before heading back to the studios. They will be hitting the road in style, with a full horn section and guest vocalists – and even better than that, every ticket to the Sydney show comes with a download code for an MP3 of an exclusive new track. You can catch Thundamentals at Oxford Art Factory on Friday November 9, and it’s recommended you get in quickly, as tickets are selling fast.

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 39

dance music news

free stuff

club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Alasdair Duncan

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

five things WITH

Kate Simko

CONCORD DAWN Inspirations I grew up listening to jazz 2. and prog rock in my early teenage years, then grunge and hip hop, then dance music in my late teens. I’m still into just about anything, as long as it’s made with truth, integrity and honesty.

Your Crew This is the longest time 3.

I’ve had the same job in my life; nothing else really ever lasted more than six months. And I’ve managed without having to make music for money, which I am thankful for. I mostly do stuff by myself, apart from collaborating with vocalists, but I have a few team-ups planned when I get back to Europe in a month or so.

The Music You Make I make drum and bass, and 4. only drum and bass at this point

1.

Growing Up I come from a whole family of singers; uncles, aunties, the lot.

The music I make is kind of the antithesis of what they sung –

choral music and musical theatre and the like – but if I didn’t have that to try and be the opposite of, who knows what I would be making now?

SHOCKONE RETURNS

It’s been a busy year for ShockOne, but the producer – originally from Perth and currently residing in London – has still made the time for a series of homecoming shows later in the year. Otherwise known as Karl Thomas, he started his musical career in a metal band with Rob and Gareth of Pendulum, but soon veered off on his own drum and bass direction – although given his rock background, his tunes emphasise chords and melody just as much as they do beats and thumping bass lines. He’s released a handful of singles and EPs on the Viper Recordings label, and has hinted that an album might be coming in the second half of 2012 – but if you want your fix sooner, you can catch him on Saturday September 1 at Oxford Art Factory.

UNDER THE RADAR #19: OPERATION WHITE OUT

The next instalment of the Under The Radar series of warehouse parties is approaching, and they’re taking aim squarely at eradicating the winter blues. Entitled Operation White

– and that’s what I play when I’m out, too. If you can’t find two hours worth of decent drum and bass to spin right now, there is something wrong with you! It’s not that I don’t like other kinds

of music, but when I went to see McCoy Tyner a few months back, I wasn’t there to hear any techno, you know what I mean?

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

Music is becoming more and more about promotion and marketing right now. More people need to close their eyes and LISTEN to it, rather than watching a light show or checking out some pretty girl in a music video.

In Vienna where I live, there is a really healthy electronic music scene that is free of much of the Autotuned cheese and aerobics soundtracks that are infiltrating dance music these days. With any luck we have reached a peak in terms of the popularity of corporate dance pop, and people are going to soon return to dark, dirty, truthful, underground dance music – one can only hope!

With: Vertigo, Embi, Hydraulix, Detektives, Diskoriot and more Where: Bass Mafia @ Chinese Laundry When: Friday August 10

Out, the next in their series of parties aims to get you in from the cold, and get the blood coursing through your veins via a night of moderate to heavy dancing. Behind the decks will be Haha Industries’ own mission commanders D&D, otherwise known as Dean Dixon and Dave Fernandes. The party is BYO and tickets are strictly limited, but are available through the This Is White Label website – and should the event sell out, the location will not be made public.

GOLDEN CAGE PRESENTS: KATE SIMKO & CHLOE HARRIS We’re all familiar with Philip Glass and his spectacular back catalogue, but sometimes his music can seem pretty damn minimal.

Sure it’s relaxing, but we can’t always be sitting around drinking earl grey and stroking our beards, yeah? Thank heavens for Kate Simko, who was personally approached to remix Glass’s ‘Houston Skyline’ – which turned out to be not a bad little collab at all. Along with Simko, and in the fashion of praising our fairer sex, Chloe Harris will also be touring our shores for the first time, with a one-night-only Sydney excusive doubleheaded fiasco. Presented by Golden Cage, the ladies are bringing their remarkable productions – and in Simko’s case, a live A/V show – to The Civic Underground on Saturday August 11, with supports from Robbie Lowe, Sam Roberts, Gemma Van D and Garth Linton. For your chance to win one of two double passes, let us know your favourite lady of the moment.

Oliver Tank

AGWA BOAT PARTY: SUBBAN & MIGUEL CAMPBELL

News broke a few weeks back that both Subban and Miguel Campbell would be heading to Australia over the summer – and it’s now been confirmed that their Sydney appearance will take place on the decks of the Starship Sydney, launching the 2012/2013 season of the AGWA Yacht Club parties. Birmingham’s Ashique ‘Subb-an’ Subhan was named DJ Magazine’s Best Breakthrough DJ of last year – he has notched up releases on such revered labels as Crosstown Rebels, Spectral, Saved

OUTSIDEIN FESTIVAL

Big Freedia

OutsideIn, making its debut this November, is a boutique festival event – but it’s also a meeting of some of Sydney’s finest musical and creative minds. A collaboration between touring and management agency Astral People, tastemaking label Yes Please, and the very lovely folk at GoodGod Small Club, the festival will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists, and some seriously tasty beats. At the top of the bill are Smoke DZA of the USA and Australia’s own Oliver Tank, whose live show has definitely come into its own this past year. Also appearing are HTRK (AUS/UK), Flume, Shigeto (USA), Africa Hi-Tech (USA/UK), Jesse Boykins III (USA), Melo-X (USA), Collarbones, Thrupence, Polographia and Dro Carey, with many more to be announced. It happens at The Factory on November 10, with early bird tickets available for $44 from this Thursday.

and My Favourite Robot, and remixed the likes of Jamie Woon, Lana Del Rey, Noir & Haze and Hollis P Monroe. Miguel Campbell, meanwhile, has been a house DJ since the early 1990s, and was most recently added to the Hot Creations team in 2010. Local support will come courtesy of Brohn, Co-op, Le Brouts, Sam Roberts and T-Boy – AGWA Yacht Club 014 takes place on Starship Sydney on Saturday November 17.

FORESHORE FESTIVAL: SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT

BRAG PRESENTS: BIG FREEDIA

Big Freedia is the undisputed queen diva of the New Orleans hip hip movement known as “sissy bounce” – and this October, the transgender MC and her dance posse return to Australia for a series of ferocious, sweaty shows. “I wanted a catchy name that rhymed, and my mother had a club called Diva that I worked for,” she explains, on the origins of her name. “I called myself the queen of diva – so I coined it: Big Freedia Queen Diva.” Bounce music is a style of urban music unique to New Orleans, and over the last decade Big Freedia has established herself as the face of its colourful sissy bounce subculture. Those who went to her last show at GoodGod Small Club will testify to the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to stand still – the frenetic booty beats of singles ‘Azz Everywhere’ and ‘Excuse’ aren’t even the half of it. If you missed out, you’ve got a second chance: she’s playing at GoodGod on Friday October 19.

40 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

The Foreshore Festival lineup dropped a couple of weeks back, and it featured some pretty massive names, with Tiësto, Calvin Harris and Example right up the top of the bill. The festival has just made its second announcement, and now it’s looking even stronger. Soul singer Daniel Merriweather heads up the second announcement alongside Oz hip hop star Illy, with Ball Park Music, Bingo Players, Zedd, The Rubens and Alpine. Van She and Rufus have recently toured the country together, and both of those live acts have also been added to the bill, with Van She set to show off the blissful electro pop songs from their second album Idea Of Happiness, and Rufus showcasing the strong

material from their two EPs. The Foreshore Festival happens Saturday November 24 at Commonwealth Park in Canberra, and tickets are on sale now.

PRODUCER RAILS AGAINST FAKE DJS

Perhaps inspired by Paris Hilton’s recent turn behind the decks, or perhaps by the general move towards digital technology over the beauty of real vinyl records, man, a mysterious producer known as Camoflaug3 has released a track called ‘Fake DJ’. You may have heard it already, but if not, it’s a big room house track containing a lengthy vocal sample about the devolution of the craft of the DJ. To sum it up: in the beginning, there were DJs who mixed with two turntables and felt grooves and whatnot, and they were pretty alright, but now there are DJs who push buttons and look at waveforms and stuff, and they’re generally not alright. The original version of the track is streaming now on SoundCloud, along with a remix purportedly by DJ Sneak, the old-school Chicago DJ who recently made headlines for railing against Swedish House Mafia.

Whoever Camoflaug3 happens to be, further entertaining snark will surely arise from this, so stay tuned…

Home Brew Listen Up By Benjamin Cooper

S

torming the domestic pop music charts to become the first kings of New Zealand hip hop since Scribe is all in a day’s work for Harry Huavi. Known as Haz Beats, the artist serves as the DJ of West Auckland outfit Home Brew alongside rappers Tim Scott and Lui Gumaka. The group is distinguished by their ability to flawlessly transition from hacking through political folly to crooning down real low with a bluesy kind of nihilism. It’s challenging and socially conscious art, but when we speak Beats has more pressing concerns. “I’ve got a bit of a messed up face at the moment, from an argument I had with someone last night,” he confesses. “I’m going over to see my mum at her place, to get looked after. Hopefully she doesn’t get too mad at me.”

Beats appears to be a compelling jumble of contradictions: he’s not worried about admitting to a music journalist that he’s just been in a fight, as he simultaneously confesses to not wanting to disappoint his mother. It’s only fitting that the group’s self-titled debut, which was released in May after three years of work, is a similarly complicated affair.

The songs shift from humorously dry slants on addiction to gospel choir-backed soulful funk ballads. After covering such an array of sounds, it’s particularly impressive to hear the slow jam chops of the Esther Stephens-sung

“For us personally, ‘Listen To Us’ is just a song, but for a lot of other people it became this other thing. It became hell political, which is kind of funny, ‘cause I don’t know shit about politics...”

‘Basketball Court’. The romance of the track is no accident, with Beats joking that such a dynamic exists between him and fellow rapper (and West Auckland dweller) Tim Scott. “Truth be told, we got together, before music, on an internet dating site,” he laughs. “And even though I’m from South Auckland we got along, so we decided, ‘Okay, let’s do it, let’s make some music!’”

The initial collaboration happened via constant emailing, and Beats acknowledges the bouts of childlike joy he experienced recurrently throughout the process. “It was awesome to be constantly getting presents [from Scott], because I’d never had that before,” he says.

“I’d make the beat then send it to him, while he would send stuff he had recorded. We were constantly working every day, and we still are – it never gets boring. I think that’s why we’re probably still together and as strong as we are.”

Relentless work in the studio and on tour has come to define the band, but it’s the group’s political leanings that have generated the greatest buzz online and across their home country. Their breakout single, the MC Tourettes-featuring ‘Listen To Us’, is a direct attack on NZ Prime Minister John Key and his government. Scott savagely attacks economic policies and the legal system, with the song dominating blogs nationally prior to last year’s election. But Beats pleads ignorance: “I just made the beats, pretty much,” he says.

“Tourettes had heard one of our songs and decided he wanted to work with us. For us personally it’s just a song, but for a lot of other people it became this other thing. It became hell political, which is kind of funny, ‘cause I don’t know shit about politics. As long it gets people thinking, I s’pose...”

Facial injuries notwithstanding, Beats assures me that the collective strength of Home Brew won’t be effected during their upcoming Australian tour. In fact, he even has a kind-ofplan to generate maximum crowd involvement from his situation. “Recently we played a show at Wanaka, on the South Island. It’s near the snow so it obviously gets pretty cold, and

I decided to wear a ski mask for the whole show. This guy down the front kept yelling at me to ‘show us ya face!’, and I kept smiling but refusing. Then the biggest moment came during the encore, when I took off the mask and showed them my face, and the crowd went off! I felt like a fucking king, man,” he says. “We probably won’t need to do it in Australia though – my face should be nicely healed by then...”

It’ll be the second time the group have been to Australia, with Beats having (mostly) fond recollections of their previous tour. “We came out a while ago and played with Seth Sentry,” he says. “It was a really great tour, and we met up with a lot of family and friends, particularly in Melbourne. It was really nice to be near the beach, too... When we did Melbourne we played down at St Kilda, which was pretty awesome. But playing pub shows is usually a

lot of fun.” Unfortunately Beats doesn’t want to enter into the necessary capital city debate, although he does admit to being thankful his Sydney show is in the relatively-inner-city suburb of Marrickville. “We’ve had some pretty wild times in the [outer] suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Once we were out in the sticks, some far-flung suburb of Melbourne, playing a show at some crusty club. We were doing our thing and the crowd just turned on us. I thought they were going to attack us, full on,” he says. “Seriously though – we’ve always had a great reaction, and we’re keen as to come over. Can’t wait, ‘ey.”

What: Home Brew is out now With: Sky’High, DJ Substance Where: The Factory Theatre When: Saturday August 11

Kate Simko Lights And Lustre By Rick Warner

S

itting comfortably in the boundless originality that exists between the definition of house and techno, Chicago native Kate Simko has never bothered with labelling her music. Her productions sway from deep grooves and ambient electronica through to percussive tech-house, effortlessly held together with the common thread of melody and subtle tension. As a classically-trained pianist, it’s to be expected that her music would hold a delicacy and texture often omitted in the clubbing world, although she hardly comes across as an overt music snob when talking about what’s in her DJ kit. “I like music that has a real expression of emotion in it, and that doesn’t require classical training,” she says, before quickly adding: “But I do appreciate when harmonies are in key.”

Growing up in the birthplace of house, where the likes of Larry Heard and DJ Pierre are held aloft as divine entities, it seems obvious that a young Simko would find herself fascinated with dance music. However, it was acts like Autechre and labels like Warp that made her take notice, not the unmistakable jacking feel of Chicago house. “My first memories are of a friend giving me some mixtapes when I was in my first year of high school. I really fell in love with the music. We’d drive around in my friend’s car listening to the tapes. Then from there I started going to underground parties in Chicago, and was blown away by the DJs. A lot of the Detroit guys were coming through town then too, and some bigger European DJs.” After studying music technology in college, further studies in musical composition led her to Santiago, Chile, where she met Andres Bucci.

She made her recording debut with Bucci as Detalles, a melodically rich ambient outfit that was released on Cologne minimal techno powerhouse Traum Schallplatten in 2003. But when she reflects back on the media attention during that period of her life, it’s with a sense of frustration. “Pigeon-holed is a good way to put it,” she muses. “I think people put music or

artists into boxes because it’s easier to make sense of it that way. The ‘minimal’ tag was stuck on me for a long time. It doesn’t really bother me.

It just wasn’t an accurate way of describing a lot of my songs.”

On her return to the US, Simko went about shucking that tag. She fell in with Ryan Elliott, Matthew Dear and the Ghostly International crew, and began to break away from the confines of Detalles. After a collection of singles on Seattle’s Kupei Musica and the experimental Spectral Sound, she released her debut album, Lights Out, in 2011 – a very different beast than her work as Detalles. “The approach with Detalles was really streamlined, because we made both albums from start to finish in just two months each time,” she says. “My album was a more extended obsession, for better or worse!”

Although Lights Out was created without her previous studio partner Andres Bucci around, Simko did return back to South America to work on it – in 2009 and 2010, she headed down to Buenos Aires, Argentina. “Living in a foreign city always teaches you about yourself, and puts you in a different headspace,” she says. “I had a lot of time to write ideas in a journal and just focus on making music. If I wrote the album in Chicago, there would have been a lot less breathing room than I had in Buenos Aires. I love that city and it inspires me a lot.”

The album process saw her veer from her usual writing methods: ideas were streamed, but not over-scrutinised; songs were left to simmer, only to be re-examined days later to see how they worked in the grander Lights Out scheme. I ask how her approach to writing music has evolved since then. “I’ve become a lot more comfortable making more melodic tracks lately. Also, I obsess about the details less and just get on with things, which has ended up giving my new songs a cleaner feel.” Although firmly entrenched in the artist stable for Ghostly International and a few other favoured labels, Kate Simko chose to release her debut album on Jan Krueger and Daze Maxim’s Hello?Repeat label, out of Berlin.

While other labels were willing to release

“Living in a foreign city always teaches you about yourself, and puts you in a different headspace. If I wrote the album in Chicago, there would have been a lot less breathing room...”

Lights Out digitally, Hello?Repeat offered to release the album on double-pack vinyl and CD, which, according to Kate, “sealed the deal.” There’s something to be said about the tangibility of a physical album, after all. “I’m so happy to have an album on CD and vinyl to pull off the shelf years from now.”

Kate Simko plays Australia for the first time in August, bringing with her the live PA/ AV show that has been in place since the beginning of the Lights Out tour. Comprising HD footage from her travels around the world, she will control the visuals in real-time in the midst of her live set. “One of the reasons I wanted to add visuals to my live set was to give the audience more to look at,” she explains. “There’s something special about seeing a band play live [with] multiple things happening at once. Adding the visuals is sort of like adding another band member, I guess.”

And as for the music? “We’ll just have to feel the vibe in Sydney that night and see.”

With: Chloe Harris (USA), Robbie Lowe, Sam Roberts, Gemma Van D, Garth Linton Where: Golden Cage @ Civic Hotel When: Saturday August 11

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 41

club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

club pick of the week Kate Simko

SATURDAY AUGUST 11

Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Elly K, Yogi & Husky 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs free 8pm Manning Bar, Sydney University, Camperdown Snowball The Only, Nice & Ego, Movement, Nuff Jockey DJs, Beat The System DJs, Salt Club Night Crew $5-$10 (+ bf) 7pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Critical Sound Sydney Kasra (UK), Sabre (UK), Rival, Dauntless $25 9pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs 9pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Turnt Up Thursdays Nacho Pop, Leon Smith 9pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Swag Thursdays Resident DJs 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Shag, Gillex, Ali, Dan Bombings free (student)-$5 8pm

FRIDAY AUGUST 10

Civic Underground, Sydney

Golden Cage: Kate Simko (USA), Chloe Harris (USA), Robbie Lowe, Sam Roberts, Gemma Van D, Garth Linton $20-$30 $15-$25 9pm MONDAY AUGUST 6 Scruffy Murphys, Sydney Mother Of A Monday DJ Smokin Joe free 8pm The Sugar Mill, Kings Cross Makeout Mondays DJs free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jazz DJs free 7pm

TUESDAY AUGUST 7 Empire Hotel, Kings Cross Tight Resident DJs free 9pm Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel Salsa DJ Willie Sabor free 8pm Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket Bounce free 10pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Coyote Tuesday Residents DJs 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jam Jam DJs free 8pm 42 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 8 The Bank Hotel – Velvet Room, Newtown Lady L, Resident DJs free 9pm The Bank Nightclub, Kings Cross Money Talks DJs free 10pm Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free Flinders Hotel, Surry Hills Hip Hop Resident DJs free 8pm Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale Frat House DJ Alley Cats free 8pm The Marlborough Hotel – Cellar Bar, Newtown Student Night DJ Pauly free 8pm The Ranch Hotel, Eastwood Hump – Back To School Party Helena, Crazy Chris Coast, Steve Frank 8.30pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Cream Resident DJs free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Hydraulix, Peeps, Sure Cut Kids, Brown Bear, Brothers Grimm, E-Cats, Taylor Wolf, Kevvy K $5 9pm

THURSDAY AUGUST 9 Annandale Hotel Outspoken Herb, Deadbeat & Hazy, Telopea faet.

EaRelevant, Biscotti, Le’Panther AKA Thaxxy Harlem $10 (+ bf) 8pm The Cool Room, Australian Hotel & Brewery, Rouse Hill Pimps & Hoes Party Bombs Away, Big Will, Troy T, Anthony K 8pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Gelato Natalie Conway, Fantine Pritoula, Richard Sanford, Joshua Beagley, Maurice Suckau 9pm GoodGod Front Bar, Sydney Girls Gone Mild Hanna & Eliza Reilly free 8pm The Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney The Greenwood Thursday Nights Resident DJs free 8pm Gypsy Lounge, Darlinghurst Naked Resident DJs 9pm Ivy Poolclub & Changeroom, Sydney Changeroom Thursdays

Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs free 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Movement The Optimen, Bankrupt Billionaires free 8pm Candy’s Apartment, Kings Cross Night Moves Night Moves DJs $10 (conc)–$15 9pm Cargo Lounge, King St Wharf Kick On Fridays Resident DJs free 4pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Bass Mafia Concord Dawn (NZ), Vertigo, EMBI, Hydraulix, Detektives, Diskoriot, Brosman, Eggo, Big Deal Gillespie $15-$25 10pm Civic Underground, Sydney The Seed 2.0 Resident DJs 9pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Gimme Five Shamus, DJ Ander Hitchcock free 8pm The Criteron Hotel, Singleton Inthemix Awards Tour 2012 Kronic, Chardy 10pm Epping Hotel Flirt Flirt DJs free GoodGod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney FC@GG Future Classic DJs, Ze $10 11pm Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Sublime Peewee Ferris, MC Suga Shane, Matt Ferreira, John Young, Flite, I.K.O. 9pm Ivy Changeroom, Sydney Love Gun Fridays Tina Turntables, The Apprentice, Hooligan 8pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Ivan Drago, DJ Rain Julz free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Falcona Agency DJs 8pm The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill I Love The Fid Fridays G-Wizard, Bounce Crew DJs, Nukewood, KDB, Task free$10 8pm The Marlborough Hotel – Cellar Bar, Newtown DJ Simon Laing free 8pm Metro Theatre, Sydney Red Bull Thre3style Z-Trip (USA), DJ Perplex $39.70 (+ bf) 8pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm Oatley Hotel We Love Oatley Hotel Fridays DJ tone free 8pm

Omega Lounge, City Tattersalls Club, Sydney Unwind Fridays DJ Greg Summerfield free 5.30pm One22, Sydney Compound Dizz1, Tuff Sherm, Templar Soundsystem, Bootyspoon, Clark Cohen, Speakeasy, CBFantasy $10 10pm Opera Bar, Circular Quay Meem Soundsystem free 7pm Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay The Thousands Live Issue: Naughty Rappers, Sunset People, Jingle Jangle free 6.30pm Pontoon, Darling Harbour Perfect Resident DJs free 9pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Mr Casanova Competition Resident DJs 8pm Scruffy Murphy’s, Sydney Frisky Friday DJs free 6pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Blotter Label Party Frames, Sir Jonathan, Moonbase Commander $10 10pm The Standard, Surry Hills Sosueme Alison Wonderland, DJ Joyride, Devola, Collarbones, Oceanics, Embassy $10 (+ bf) 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Eve Resident DJs 9pm The Watershed Hotel Bring On The Weekend! DJ Matt Roberts free 8pm Whaat Club, Kings Cross Burss Doctor Werewolf, Surecut Kids, The Mane Thing, Blaze Tripp $15 (+ bf) 9pm Zink Bar, Cronulla Far Out Friday Derek Turner 7pm

SATURDAY AUGUST 11 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Strange Fruit Strange Fruit DJs free 9pm The Argyle, The Rocks Release Yourself Kato, Lavida, Chivalry, Aviery Jamieson free 8pm Arthouse Hotel, Sydney Flirt Resident DJs free-$10 9pm Bank Hotel, Newtown Meem free 8pm BJs Nightclub, Bondi Junction DJ Shane Taylor 10pm Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst Hand That MC A Mic #2 Electric Elements Crew, Sammy G, B-Mac, Elemont, Poetic Transition $10-$15 8pm The Burdekin Hotel, Darlinghurst Children 2012 Stevie B, Jorgie Jay, Captain Kirk, Micky D, Steve S, DK1, Darrin Blaikey, Dave Brave, Drew Koning, Jay Austin, Trent Cooper, Evy, Rath $50 (+ bf) 9pm Candy’s Apartment, Kings Cross Disco! Disco! Sherlock Bones, Shortrat, SMS, Disco Volante, LumberJacks, Stalker, Axslm, Monkey Bonez, DJ Kole, Blow Out DJs 9pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Hybrid Classics Tour Hybrid Soundsystem (UK), Stevie Mink, Spenda C, Devola, Georgia, Joe Barrs, Mike Big FX, Matt O’Brien $25 9pm City Hotel, Sydney Passion Tim Culbert, Ctrl Alt Delicious, Sneaky Simon, Jimmy Savage $10 12pm Civic Underground, Sydney Golden Cage Kate Simko (USA), Chloe Harris (USA), Robbie Lowe, Sam Roberts, Gemma Van D, Garth Linton $20-$30 $15-$25 9pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Starfuckers Starfuckers DJs 10pm

Cohibar, Darling Harbour Yellow Sox DJ Brynstar free 8pm Establishment, Sydney The Ultimate Sienna Experience Resident DJs 8.20pm The Factory Theatre, Enmore Homebrew (NZ), Sky’High, DJ Substance, Soul Benefits, Klue, Kween G $30 (+ bf)– $40 8pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Hands Up! Staggman 11.30pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Switch Reekay Garcia, Leisure Bureau, Matt Cahill, Johnny Gleeson, Tom Kelly 6pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney Same Old Scene Gloves, Valerie Yum, Sexazzaweapon, Power Suit $10 11.59pm The Green Room Lounge, Enmore Vinyl Solution DJ Nic Dalton free 7pm Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Homemade Saturdays Resident DJs 9pm Ivy, Sydney Ministry of Sound Sessions Tour Tom Piper, Timmy Trumpet, Jeff Drake, Tass, Chris Fraser $20 8pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Simon Laing, DJ Michael Stewart free 8pm La Cita, King St Wharf Miami DJ U-Turn, DJ Ricky Ro, DJ Agee Ortiz, DJ Asado, Mc Cocoman, La Fiesta free The Marlborough Hotel – Cellar Bar, Newtown Resident DJs free 8pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Halfway Crooks 90s Edition Captain Franco, Levins, Toni Toni Lee $10 10pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Resident DJs 8pm Soho, Potts Point The Usual Suspects The Aston Shuffle DJs, John Glover, Oakes & Lennox, Mike Rukus, Jack Bailey, Bounce Crew DJs, Taylor Wolf, 14th Minute, Barfly 9pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice Mike Witcombe, Gabby, Dean Relf $20 10pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Trademark Saturdays Billy B, Daniel Berti, Jo Funk, Steve Play, Troy T, MC Deekay 9pm Tunnel Nightclub, Kings Cross ONE Saturdays Resident DJs $10-$20 10pm UNSW Roundhouse, Kensington Hard Attack – Blessed By Kaos DJ Promo (NL), Scope DJ (NL), Alphaverb (NL), Armageddon Project (IT), Mark N, Decipher & Shinra, Spellbound, The Strangerz, Lihan, Napoleon, Toon, Raziel, Vanth, Catzeyez & Spindo, Refresh, Flex Armstrong, Satanism, Re=Percussion, Crucifie $71.60 (+ bf) 4pm V Bar, Sydney The M Shift 250 – The Final Show The Audiophilez, Dirty D, Tony Why, Toddy Trix, Andy Wright, Leigh Westren, Mysterees, Def Tonez w/ MC D, Ryza, Bruno free 4pm The Watershed Hotel Watershed Presents…

Skybar $20 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Midnight Sleaze, Blaze Tripp. Hannah Gibbs, Kraymer, Kato, Mike Hyper, Pablo Calamari, Alistair Erskine, Nemo, Mane Thing, Manjazz, Zeus, Mars Monero $15-$20 8pm

club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

SUNDAY AUGUST 12 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays Murat Kilic, Pete Nouveau, John Jack, Dean Relf, Kerry Wallace, Matt Weir $10 2pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Martini Club Tom Kelly,

Straight Up Steve 6pm Hugo’s Lounge, Kings Cross Sneaky Sundays Sneaky Sound System, Resident DJs 8pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident DJs 8pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst

Daydreams Daydreams DJs 4.30am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays DJ Troy T, Resident DJs 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours Nic Scali, Murat Kilic $20 4am The Watershed Hotel Afternoon DJs DJ Brynstar 4pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen Soup Kitchen DJs, Your Shot Finalists free 9pm

club picks up all night out all week...

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 8 The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Hydraulix, Peeps, Sure Cut Kids, Brown Bear, Brothers Grimm, E-Cats, Taylor Wolf, Kevvy K $5 9pm

THURSDAY AUGUST 9 Annandale Hotel Outspoken Herb, Deadbeat & Hazy, Telopea faet. EaRelevant, Biscotti, Le’Panther AKA Thaxxy Harlem $10 (+ bf) 8pm The Cool Room, Australian Hotel & Brewery, Rouse Hill Pimps & Hoes Party Bombs Away, Big Will, Troy T, Anthony K 8pm

FRIDAY AUGUST 10 Chinese Laundry, Sydney Bass Mafia Concord Dawn (NZ), Vertigo, EMBI, Hydraulix, Detektives, Diskoriot, Brosman, Eggo, Big Deal Gillespie $15-$25 10pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney FC@GG Future Classic DJs, Ze $10 11pm Metro Theatre, Sydney Red Bull Thre3style Z-Trip (USA), DJ Perplex $39.70 (+ bf) 9pm One22, Sydney Compound Dizz1, Tuff Sherm, Templar Soundsystem, Bootyspoon, Clark Cohen, Speakeasy, CBFantasy $10 10pm Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay The Thousands Live Issue: Naughty Rappers, Sunset People, Jingle Jangle free 6.30–9.30pm

Manning Bar, Sydney University Snowball The Only, Nice & Ego, Movement, Nuff Jockey DJs, Beat The System DJs, Salt Club Night Crew $5-$10 (+ bf) 7pm

Whaat Club, Kings Cross Burss Doctor Werewolf, Surecut Kids, The Mane Thing, Blaze Tripp $15 (+ bf) 9pm

The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Shag, Gillex, Ali, Dan Bombings free (student)-$5 8pm

SATURDAY AUGUST 11 Chinese Laundry, Sydney Hybrid Classics Tour Hybrid Soundsystem (UK), Stevie Mink, Spenda C, Devola, Georgia, Joe Barrs, Mike Big FX, Matt O’Brien $25 9pm The Factory Theatre, Enmore Home Brew (NZ), Sky’High, DJ Substance, Soul Benefits, Klue, Kween G $30 (+ bf)–$40 8pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Halfway Crooks ‘90s Edition Captain Franco, Levins, Toni Toni Lee $10 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice Mike Witcombe, Gabby, Dean Relf $20 10pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Midnight Sleaze, Blaze Tripp.

Hannah Gibbs, Kraymer, Kato, Mike Hyper, Pablo Calamari, Alistair Erskine, Nemo, Mane Thing, Manjazz, Zeus, Mars Monero $15-$20 8pm

SUNDAY AUGUST 12 Z-Trip

Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays Murat Kilic, Pete Nouveau, John Jack, Dean Relf, Kerry Wallace, Matt Weir $10 2pm Mane Thing

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 43

snap

hump wednesdays

PICS :: GC

up all night out all week . . .

sash sundays

PICS :: AM

01:08:12 :: The Ranch Hotel :: Cnr Epping and Herring Rd Marsfield 9887 2411

ben korbel

PICS :: AM

29:07:12 :: The Abercrombie Hotel :: 100 Broadway Ultimo 9211 3486

roy davis jnr

PICS :: PX

27:07:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney

the khanz

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28:07:12 :: The Goldfish :: 111 Darlinghurst Rd Potts Point 8354 6630

28:07:12 :: FBi Social :: 244-248 William St Kings Cross 9331 9900

It’s called: Pimps & Hoes Party It sounds like: All the latest phattest dance tunes.

Who’s spinning? Bombs Away + Troy T, Big Will & Antho

ny K. Three songs you’ll hear on the night: ‘Big Booty Bitches’, ‘Swagger’ and ‘What Happens In Vegas.’

And one you definitely won’t: Any John Farnh am.

Sell it to us: It will be another legendary theme party at The Brewery – these things go off. The Brewery is the hottest Thursday night spot, and we’ve got one of the biggest acts in Australia, Bombs Away, playin g – so expect one crazy theme party!

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Drinking plenty of wet pussy shots and dancing on the stripper poles.

Crowd specs: 18- to 25-year-old party anima ls.

Wallet damage: $5 house spirits, free entry if you dress up or get there before 9.30pm; if not, it’s $10 entry.

Where: The Cool Room @ The Australian Brewe ry / 350 Annangrove Rd, Rouse Hill When: Thursday August 9

44 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

yuksek

PICS :: PX

party profile

we love thursdays

28:07:12 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711 :: ANNA BROWN :: KATRINA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PEDRO NS MUN IEL DAN :: MAR LEY ASH CLARKE :: GEORGIA GOLLIS :: XAVIER ::

HEY BIGGIE & TUPAC. YOU SHOULD’VE SORTED IT OUT WITH LASERS. LASER TAG ALL GROWN UP $5 LASER TAG FOR FACEBOOK FANS. FACEBOOK.COM/STRIKEBOWLING.

STRIKEBOWLINGBAR.COM.AU

BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12 :: 45

snap up all night out all week . . .

motorik

It’s called: BURSSS! It sounds like: A cross between Jesus and Fergie.

Who’s spinning? Doctor Werewolf, Surecut Kids, The Mane Thing and Blaze Tripp.

Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Mane Thing – ‘Bring Ya Booty’; Doctor Werewolf – ‘Lasercat Rocket Attack’; The Dixie Cups – ‘Iko Iko (Surecut Kids Remix)’; and Blaze Tripp’s wonky basslines!

And one you definitely won’t: ‘Call Me Mayb e’.

Sell it to us: Imagine, if you will, a barrage of beards descending on decks – all the while screaming “BURSSS” at the top of their lungs, whilst you’re as merry as Robin Hood after he’s just discovered Little John’s not so little…

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The bit where we find Jax from The Mane Thing upside down behind the couch at 10am saying “BURSS”, having not remembered that we brought him home with us.

Crowd specs: Human, preferably!

Wallet damage: You can’t put a price on happi ness, but if you were going to it’d be $20 on the door (or $15 if you’re game enoug h to say “BURSSS!”) Where: Whaat Club / 20 Bayswater Road, Kings Cross When: Friday August 10, 9pm

PICS :: KC

26:07:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700

party profile

propaganda

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bursss!

girl unit

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27:07:12 :: Club 77 :: 77 William Street Darlinghurst 9361 4981

vakula

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28:07:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999

loose kaboose

PICS :: KC

28:07:12 :: Marrickville Bowling Club :: 91 Sydenham Rd Marrickville 9557 1185

strike

PICS :: AM

27:07:12 :: GoodGod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

28:07:12 :: Strike Bowling :: King St Wharf Darling Harbour 1300 787 453 46 :: BRAG :: 474 :: 06:08:12

:: ANNA BROWN :: KATRINA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) RO OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER NS :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PED MUN IEL DAN :: MAR LEY ASH :: CLARKE :: GEORGIA GOLLIS XAVIER ::